US 2018 November elections

[Sean Hayden]

Nobody's cuffing Trump. He's going to serve his term and he may even get reelected. These are crazy times. The Feds can't straighten him out, nobody cares what they've got on him and Trump doesn't either! Hell, a lot of us probably want to see the piss tape for the lulz.

[Tero]

There's some real substance to this at the 3 minute and later parts

[Forty Two]

Why do you do that? It's pretty crazy what Fox is doing right? Why do you ignore it?

I rarely, if ever, watch FoxNews, so, I'm not clear on what they're "doing." I acknowledge that they are clearly biased in favor of Republicans, that's for sure - overall, as a network, that's the case. It appears Shep Smith has no issue breaking away from that norm, though.

How can you be that afraid of leftists? You act like you're at war.

That may be your perception, but I certainly do not "fear" leftists, nor do I act as if I am at war. I oppose socialism, and modern progressivism politically, so, I voice that opposition in my posts. I think left wing economic views, including socialism, and including the anti-capitalist policies of the far left, do great damage to society and are detrimental to the greater good. They hurt people. They also tend to be very oppressive and dismissive of the rights and dignity of the individual, in favor of group dynamics, Critical Theory, Postmodernist philosophy. All of that I think is wrong headed, and injurious to society.

That's fine I guess, but if it's true then it means you can't be trusted to be straight with me or anyone else regarding these issues. It's too important that you win.

Not accurate at all. There are folks here far more wedded to ideology than I am, and far more unable to criticize their own sides. I don't see you lecturing others on their inability to be "straight with" you about Trump, for example. How many people here wouldn't credit him with saving a puppy from a burning building if he ran into the fire himself?
I would hope you would at least be able to admit that I have criticized Republicans, and even Trump, on multiple occasions in discussions here.

Yes, Fox is insane but ultimately they are fighting on the right side. --fuck that-- I'm a Republican, but if by denying it more people are able to move away from the left then that's good. The 'moderates' have been pulling people from the center to the left, after all, so fight fire with fire right? --fuck that-- Let's just be as honest as we can at all times.

I don't care what side they're fighing on, nor do I think that side is correct on every issue.

What do you think I've been "dishonest" about? About Fox News' general position on the right hand side of the political spectrum, and the way they spin the news on shows like Fox and Friends, and various pundits like Laura Inghram and Tucker Carlson tend to push for the Republicans most of the time? I haven't in the least denied that. That's why when I watch the news, I tend to flip between CNN and MSNBC, because I know CNN champions the Democrats with vigor and MSNBC is progressive leftist all the way, generally speaking.

[Forty Two]

Nobody's cuffing Trump. He's going to serve his term and he may even get reelected. These are crazy times. The Feds can't straighten him out, nobody cares what they've got on him and Trump doesn't either! Hell, a lot of us probably want to see the piss tape for the lulz.

What are you referring to, specifically, when you say "nobody cares what they've got on him?"

[Forty Two]

I'm seriously thinking of cutting the cord and going to straight streaming, maybe with an HD antenna to pick up the local news. Problem is we're renting the place out during the winter and people want TV.

My wife and I were just talking about that. We get a ton of stuff just with Wifi.

Only.... the cable and other companies always have you kind of hamstrung. If you just buy wi-fi, it's like $70 a month now, minimum. To get wi-fi and basic FIOS or cable, it's like $30 more per month. So, you wind up figuring $30 is not enough to warrant canceling the cable or fiber optic. I haven't been sold on satellite - it always seems like a scam - they give you a low introductory rate and then lock you in to a 3 year contract or something, and then the price skyrockets later so they can make up the shortfall on the introductory rate.

If I could find cheap wi-fi, I'd get rid of cable/fiber optic for good.

[Forty Two]

MSNBC never employs Republicans in prominent roles, and it never ever brings on pro-Trump guests. The Washington Post never prints pro-Trump editorial writers ('Trump could be the most honest president in modern history'), nor The New York Times. Anybody who's actually looked at the media outlets Forty Two implies are worse than Fox because they're so one-sided knows that he's either ignorant or being duplicitous.

Who said "worse?" Having people on is not making them unbiased. FoxNews has Democrats on. However, the pundits attack them, and castigate them, and argue them into corners, just like MSNBC and CNN do to Republicans. You're not watching or paying attention if you don't see how biased MSNBC and CNN are. They are plainly in the camp of the Democrats. And Fox News is plainly in the camp of Republicans.

In March, a Pew Research Center study -- yes, Pew -- found that 85 percent of MSNBC's programming is dedicated to "opinion," versus 15 percent that is dedicated to "news." Fox News dedicated just 55 percent of its programming to "opinion" and 45 percent to "news." (CNN dedicates 46 percent to "opinion" and 54 percent to "news.") During the 2012 election, the ratio of unfavorable to favorable treatment in stories on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on MSNBC “was roughly 23-to-1; the negative-to-positive ratio on Fox News was 8-to-1.”

Ok, fine. But MSNBC's opinions are rooted in fact, whereas the Bill O'Reillys and Sean Hannitys willingly peddle misinformation!

But see, that's the thing. Many of MSNBC's opinions aren't rooted in fact. Many of them are rooted in unfounded speculation. Melissa Harris-Perry's recent claim that Obamacare is a racially loaded term conceived of "by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man" is based on... what? The fact that the term was first used by a woman? The fact that, from Reaganomics to Hillarycare, we've always ascribed names to signature policies and legislation?v

https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/20 ... ews-179175

“Biased” doesn’t cut it. To watch MSNBC for an afternoon is not so much to be given a slanted account of what is happening here in America, but instead to witness a series of discussions about current events in parallel America II... America II, as anyone who watches the channel will discover rather swiftly, hosts a supermajority of well-meaning multi-culti, progressive types whose foolproof plans for explosive economic growth, uniform social justice, and general human utopia are constantly being undone by a blossoming white-supremacist movement, split apart by neo-secessionists, and existentially threatened by traitors whose defining characteristic is a never-quite-explained hatred for progress. America II features no gray areas whatsoever: All local variation is apartheid, each and every identification requirement is the second coming of Jim Crow, all criticism of the government is sedition. It’s exhausting. ...

Perhaps the most startling thing about the network is that one doesn’t need to even infer or twist anything in order to wallow in the gratifying stupefaction that its hosts just said what they just said.... But with MSNBC, no such mendacity is necessary. No clever editing. No false contexts. One can just read the transcripts. They meant to say that. ... After all, what would one possibly add to Martin Bashir’s suggestions that someone should defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth, that conservatives are using the acronym “IRS” as a stand-in for “n***er,” or that Ted Cruz is the “David Koresh” of the Republican party? What could be achieved by sexing up Chris Matthews’s conviction that tea partiers “still count blacks as three-fifths” of a person, or that the perpetrators of 9/11 “just have a different perspective”? What might a worker bee charged with feeding the outrage machine do to make more impressive Joy Reid’s asseveration that Republicans are “resentful” of “post-1964 America,” or to improve upon Ed Schultz’s faith that “God supports Obamacare,” or to render more absurd Michael Eric Dyson’s contention that Eric Holder is “the chief lawgiver” and the “Moses of our time”?

https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/20 ... ews-179175

MSNBC doesn't even try to mask its bias. https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/12/ ... c-w-cooke/

[L'Emmerdeur]

Anybody who's actually looked at the media outlets Forty Two implies are worse than Fox because they're so one-sided knows that he's either ignorant or being duplicitous.

Who said "worse?" Having people on is not making them unbiased. FoxNews has Democrats on. However, the pundits attack them, and castigate them, and argue them into corners, just like MSNBC and CNN do to Republicans. You're not watching or paying attention if you don't see how biased MSNBC and CNN are. They are plainly in the camp of the Democrats. And Fox News is plainly in the camp of Republicans.

I wrote that you implied that left-leaning media outlets are worse than Fox News because no 'dissenting voice' could be found on them, and that's exactly what you did.

Would 'twere such a dissenting voice could be found on CNN, MSNBC, ...

[Sean Hayden]

Nobody's cuffing Trump. He's going to serve his term and he may even get reelected. These are crazy times. The Feds can't straighten him out, nobody cares what they've got on him and Trump doesn't either! Hell, a lot of us probably want to see the piss tape for the lulz.

What are you referring to, specifically, when you say "nobody cares what they've got on him?"

Have you got amnesia? Do you want a list of the trouble he's been in every time someone brings it up? Do you want all the times he's been dragged to court and forced to settle? Do you want to talk about his University? Or something else? Or, do you want to pretend that in all that shit, and there's plenty, the Feds couldn't find anything Trump might not want to be made public if he, or we as a country were sane?

Because that was the point of my post. I was ribbing both the Feds who have abused their power to the point of pressuring even Presidents in the past and Trump and co who don't give a fuck what Trump has done. He's their guy no matter what --a fucking saint that Trump.

[Sean Hayden]

[Rum]

I haven't been following this thread so forgive me if this has been raised before. I was listening to the BBC World Service this afternoon, covering the run-up to the elections.

One Trump supporter said that he (and quite a lot of other Trumpian Republics) actually believe that the migrant 'caravan' has been populated/ infiltrated by ISIS fighters from the Middle East/South Asia area and that it was part of their plan to create mayhem in the USA.

I'm not discounting the possibility of the odd terrorist crossing the border under that sort of guise, but the level of hype and hysteria over this non-issue really quite shocked me.

Is this really the level to which debate has sunk in the USA these days?

[Sean Hayden]

--sunk? I guess I'm a youngin, cause I can't remember a time when it was better.


For some perspective, I grew up around putting faggots and people with AIDS on their own islands. Ah, I'm so proud of youngsters today. They are sooooooooooo much better, and yet old idiots keep telling them they'll be the death of us! The nerve of these backward conservatives sometimes.

[Rum]

--sunk? I guess I'm a youngin, cause I can't remember a time when it was better.


For some perspective, I grew up around putting faggots and people with AIDS on their own islands. Ah, I'm so proud of youngsters today. They are sooooooooooo much better, and yet old idiots keep telling them they'll be the death of us! The nerve of these backward conservatives sometimes.

I can't claim that we are much better, though I wish I could. The Brexit debate was pretty hysterical at times.

[Scot Dutchy]

The trouble is modern politics. Lying is the way discussion takes place these days. The tactic is say a lie and so long nobody comments let it hang. By the time any fact checks are done damage is achieved. Throw in a retraction or just keep saying the same lie. That's how Trump does it and the Brexiteers.

On the BBC Pm programme the BBC American correspondent said Trump was swept to power by the rednecks. Dont they have any quality left in reporters these days. Do Americans really believe Trump? Without question?

[Seabass]

I haven't been following this thread so forgive me if this has been raised before. I was listening to the BBC World Service this afternoon, covering the run-up to the elections.

One Trump supporter said that he (and quite a lot of other Trumpian Republics) actually believe that the migrant 'caravan' has been populated/ infiltrated by ISIS fighters from the Middle East/South Asia area and that it was part of their plan to create mayhem in the USA.

I'm not discounting the possibility of the odd terrorist crossing the border under that sort of guise, but the level of hype and hysteria over this non-issue really quite shocked me.

Is this really the level to which debate has sunk in the USA these days?

Here's a little taste of Fox News. Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Infowars, etc, are even worse of course.

[Tero]

Morning Joe, MSNBC
Joe: Trump could talk about jobs in closing message, but he's 'chosen to attack brown people'