Against my better judgment, I checked CNN’s homepage, and I found this:
Yes. Donald Trump has insulted every race, creed, and religion, called for the execution of people’s families, called for a ban on Muslims, and basically every repulsive thing you can imagine, but it’s Hillary who might have gone too far.
Your liberal media.
JMG
CNN has gone all in on appealing to the Fox crowd. Trump is their ratings magnet. An attack on him is an attack on the network’s bottom line.
Ignore CNN. It has no information function. In fact, stop watching all cable news. BBC America will take care of your information needs.
Jerzy Russian
You have to admit, saying “May the Force be with you” was a bridge too far.
jp
I believe the young people say, “I cannot even.”
Alce_e_ardilla
The Trump cannot fail, he can only be failed
Redshift
Send to me that even an idiotic question about whether a Democrat went “too far” in attacking Trump is good publicity for appealing to the non-wingnut majority of the country.
inkadu
And CNN had to fact check it because CNN doesn’t know about the subjunctive case.
MattF
Too bad about CNN. Never used to watch it very much– my main CNN memory was that cross-eyed anchorperson… whose name I forget… But she was fun to watch, ‘tho a bit distracting.
ETA: Bobbie Battista!
Scratch
She’s a democrat. By definition, anything a democrat says goes too far.
In other stuff, yesterday I picked up a box of Humalog Insulin Kwikpens (holds 1500 units of insulin in total). I can see that the retail price is $560. As I remember it, back in 1990 or so, I could buy vials of NPH and R insulins (1000 units in a vial) for about $20. According to the dept of labor inflation calculator, $30 back then is about 86.41 in today’s dollars.
Yeah, of course there was some research involved in developing Humalog which has a faster action profile than R insulin, but that’s just fucking insane.
I ended up writing a Facebook post about it and sharing it publicly to my timeline.
Baud
I’m afraid Trump supporters will never vote for Hillary now.
Germy
@MattF: Bobbie’s at The Onion now?
Oatler.
“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pundits. The creatures outside looked from pundit to Republican, and from Republican to pundit again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Unabogie
I guess there’s a different standard for “serious” candidates and Trump. Only they don’t treat Trump like a joke. They give him massive amounts of free airtime, so much so that he doesn’t need to buy any advertising.
This failure of the media dwarfs the clusterfuck they created at the runup to the Iraq war.
wmd
@Jerzy Russian: Yoda i knew. Hillary, no Yoda are you.
Stacy
IOKIYAR
rikyrah
Sahil Kapur
@sahilkapur
“On Syria and regime change, @HillaryClinton aligns with @MarcoRubio; @BernieSanders aligns with @TedCruz. http://bloom.bg/1MoJZYW“
Germy
@Baud: I read somewhere that all disgruntled Bernie supporters will vote for Trump after HRC wins the nom.
Tom
Don’t worry, the CNN headline will soon change to “Tough Talk from Trump”:
You see, it’s all about talking tough, not actually doing anything (and ignore the more terrorists part, that’s not important).
CaseyL
CNN was terrific in its early years, because Ted Turner was running it and he knew what a news channel should be.
One small but interesting note: by Turner decree, reporters and anchors on CNN could not use the word “foreign.” They had to say “international.” Turner envisioned CNN going global, and when you’re global, nothing is foreign. But he also wanted viewers to think of themselves as internationalists, and the word “foreign” evokes alien-ness.
The rot set in as soon as he sold it to Time Warner – an entertainment conglomerate.
Mike J
@JMG: .
You’ve never actually watched BBC’s coverage of American politics, have you? They spew the same right wing talking points the rest of them do.,
oldgold
Are we better off with 24/7 cable news?
Not too long ago, I would have considered this question asinine. Today, not so much.
Unabogie
@Germy: I talked to a Bernie supporter at a Bernie debate party, and I asked her if she would vote Hillary if Bernie lost. She said Trump at least brought up some good points.
AAARRRRGHHH!!!
Guachi
Rule of Headlines: if the headline asks a yes/no question, the answer is always “no”.
Amir Khalid
Hillary wasn’t even the first to call the tone of Trump’s rhetoric fascist. Others had been doing that for weeks. And of course it’s not just his talk, it’s also the atmosphere at his rallies. It wasn’t any Democrat who took to shouting “Sieg Heil!” at one of them, or to beating up people of colour, was it? And the Donald has still to disavow any of this shameful conduct.
Unabogie
@srv: If this is true (and Hersh has a poor record with this sort of thing — Iran invasion imminent anyone?) then how is this an indictment of Obama and not a crime perpetrated by these generals? Are you advocating that military officers replace civilian control with their own personal beliefs?
Also, obvious trolling thread derail is obvious.
jonas
Hundreds of years from now when historians are analyzing the great collapse of American civilization, I don’t think it will be nutcakes like Trump and his followers that really get the blame — the books will be written about how the media basically allowed politicians to start defining what was or was not reality and just reported “viewpoints” rather than the real facts. Thus there is no climate change, only the “debate” over climate change. Suggesting that we summarily execute families of suspected terrorists is not eliminationist, fascist demagoguery, but merely one of several responses offered on fighting terrorism. Maybe there is a film of a premature baby undergoing a vivisection at Planned Parenthood. Or not. Who’s to say? The unrelenting fecklessness of our supine media in the face of the right’s attempts to practice politics in a fact-free zone — and this really began with Bush and the push for the Iraq War — will be diagnosed as the major reason for the eventual implosion of our civil society and the republic.
Pogonip
Cole, I must issue a small correction: Trump did NOT insult white, female, ambidextrous, number-crunching non-pet-owning Christians. He made me feel like the only kid who doesn’t get picked for the team.
MattF
@Pogonip: As long as they’re not menstruating.
ruemara
I dunno. I just got roped into yet another dumb discussion about how important it is to not vote for Hillary to save the Democratic Party from itself. When you hear a bunch of supposedly smart people detail how Hillary would totally lose to Trump because she can’t excite people like him, plus she’s just the same and that if Bernie isn’t the nominee and the world has to go to hell to show just how stupid everyone is for not voting for the obvious best choice, then so be it, you can’t mock this shit. I’m seeing an incredible amount of nihilism these days.
Iowa Old Lady
@Unabogie: That she’s willing to go from Sanders to Trump is a sign this person doesn’t really give a hoot about Sanders’s policy or experience or honorable nature.
Gin & Tonic
Vaguely related, but I’ve been busy with family obligations and haven’t read many threads here lately. Did I miss HAMMER TIME!? Can’t see much about it in the news.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: You beat me to that comment.
@ruemara: I view it as privilege, not nihilism.
Suzanne
I am still in mild shock that they had to ask a question about who is going to pick out the fucking flower arrangements and china.
Although it was really touching how O’Malley, Sanders, and Clinton were all obviously very supportive and proud of their spouses and the good they have done in the world on behalf of others. It was in total contrast to the grossness of the other side, who still apparently think that women are just for homemaking and child-rearing.
ruemara
@Baud: do you think you can explain to a person or two who was liberal™ long before you were born, that they have unexamined privilege issues? Look, I like some of these people, I’m just trying to back out before I lose my temper, not nuke the internet.
Ruckus
@jp:
You are way out of date.
I used to say that. And I could easily have grandkids old enough to drink. Alcohol. Legally.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mike J: Yup. I can’t watch Katty Kay on the BBC America broadcast for just that reason. She seems to be a big St. John McCain fan.
The international correspondents seem a bit more balanced, but everyone has a bias. They’re human, after all.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
News is considered a money sink with brief moments of net cash in TV land. To become a profit-center the TV execs have turned to Infotainment which rapidly becomes propaganda when dealing with anything substantive. Trump is good for gathering eyeballs, which is good for selling advertising, so anyone attacking Trump — unless they are good for eyeballs too (see: Cruz, Rubio, etc.) — is attacking the Infotainment profit center, thus the bottom line of the Infotainment Medium company. As Edward R. Murrow put it, “if radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, and only when packaged to fit the advertising appropriation of a sponsor, then I don’t care what you call it — I say it isn’t news.”
Arcadia Berger
@Scratch: What your Humalog vs. R insulin experience says to me is that we need to find some other way of compensating the developers of new medical treatments besides retail price.
I don’t know what that is — maybe tax reductions? — but clearly letting people set their prices any Shkreling way they please is not working out.
Mike J
@Suzanne:
It shouldn’t surprise you at all that the media act like that when even nominal liberals refuse to believe that Hillary can do anything on her own. The unhinged supporters of one candidate constantly point to things they disliked about Bill’s time in office and refuse to consider that Hillary may have any agency of her own.
Baud
@ruemara: No, I wouldn’t have the patience.
Matt McIrvin
@Germy: Yeah, from srv.
Germy
Love the photo they ran with for Did She Go Too Far?
She’s got her hands up, saying “Rawwrrr!”
Germy
@Matt McIrvin: “My far left candidate didn’t win, so I think I’ll go with the far right candidate. And waiter, may I have some barbecue sauce for my ice cream, please?”
Ruckus
@Mike J:
Well it’s not like she’s been a senator or SoS.
But really I think part of the problem is that the rethuglican candidates (other than tDump) are all willing puppets. So the perspective is that all candidates for the job are puppets. And who do they hate more than Bill Clinton? And a woman? How can a woman possibly be a real person? Model, nude short film actress sure but, a real person, with real responsibilities?
/snark, just in case it wasn’t blindingly obvious.
Anoniminous
@Germy:
And I read somewhere Hillary went too far in her criticisms of Trump.
Oh. It was at the top of this thread! So it must be true!
:-)
sherparick
@JMG: Also Al Jazeera America, Canadian Broadcasting, and Deutshe Welle.
? Martin
Sanders made the key progressive point that Clinton and even Obama don’t ever seem to make: taxing the middle class is fine so long as you are spending that money on things that returns greater benefits than the taxpayer could achieve on their own. That’s the key liberal point. That’s the point behind ACA and extends to single payer. That’s the point behind infrastructure spending – roads, etc. That’s also the point behind defense spending, Medicare, and Social Security.
All of these can be taken too far, of course, and we would argue that with defense spending that’s happened, but it’s good to see that point being articulated again.
Scratch
@Arcadia Berger:
Maybe that or maybe let Medicare finally negotiate drug prices. As far as drug prices go, it would probably help a lot if we had a single-payer system.
Overall, I suspect it would be better if we funded universities as research institutions to look for drugs. Take the profit motive out of it, consider the idea of medications as a public and common good. Another potential imminent problem we’re facing is that we need to put money into new antibiotics research because there isn’t enough profit in them for private research. The continued development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria could become a serious public health threat that private research is going to be unable to handle.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@ruemara: Keep this in your back pocket when you have another discussion like that. From CAP:
It’s hard to see those trends doing anything but strengthening this time around, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
Stop endangering CNN’s ratings surge, you bitch!
sherparick
@jonas: If you want to read the details of our “failed media experiment,” Drifttglass is go to reading. http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/12/sunday-morning-comin-down_19.html
Botsplainer
@Tom:
It’s the legacy of John Fucking Wayne and bullshit swagger.
Mystical Chick
Oh for pity sake! I’m 100% Bernie but if HRC gets the nom, I am not a fool. I will vote for her because there’s a lot at stake and we don’t have time to play stupid ass games like taking your ball and going home because your person didn’t win.
I can’t say that I’d get out there campaigning for her the way I would for Sanders but I surely will cast my vote for her. People make me want to hurl sometimes. Don’t be asses, yo.
Botsplainer
@srv:
Another anonymous piece of shit from Sy Hersh.
Can the useless old fuck just slip into a coma already? His act got old long ago.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: The networks used to be run by guys with vision. Now they’re run by Ferengi shitstains.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mystical Chick: They can’t help it. They learned it from Ralph.
Linnaeus
@? Martin:
Agreed. This is why the mantra of “middle class tax cuts” bothers me. I mean, I get the political appeal of it, but in the end, broad based programs for the public good need a broad based source of funding.
Baud
@? Martin: @Linnaeus:
Agree. But a presidential campaign is not a good time to raise that argument for the first time, especially when people are supposedly cynical of government.
JPL
Hugh Hewitt thinks mention of the video is a game changer.
@Unabogie: Trump isn’t coherent most of the time.
Gin & Tonic
Here we go, Il Donaldo goes all Bob in Portland on us.
p.a.
Great tangental post by Atrios.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
It’s definitely a political risk to make that argument. I’m not sure, however, that there really is a good time to do it.
Yes, people are cynical about government, but at some point you have to find a way to change the conversation. Maybe Sanders is miscalculating by trying it now, but it has to start somewhere.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: I do wonder whether Vlad will be enthused by “It hasn’t been proved that he ever killed amybody.” But when Donald’s your BFF, you know he’s doing his best– so maybe that’s good enough.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
Well, hopefully his movement can build on this for the future if he can’t convince voters this time around.
Ruckus
@Linnaeus:
It does have to start somewhere.
Taxes are the cost of being alive. Hence the saying, death and taxes are the only two certainties.
How much tax you pay should have some correspondence to how well being alive feels/is. Good roads, good healthcare, etc. It also helps if the world doesn’t look like many are starving rather than living, IOW don’t be so selfish with the good life.
It’s not a political risk to explain the truth, unless all the people you expect to vote for you are delusional. That last part works out well for conservatives.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
I hope so, too. This needs to be a long game kind of thing. Aye, that’s the rub.
ETA: Building lasting political infrastructure is key, both inside and outside of the party. And it’s hard to find people with the temperament to do that.
Mandalay
@John Cole:
You are comparing apples with oranges. CNN was asking whether Clinton went “too far” when she claimed that “He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter...They are going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”
AFAIK nobody, including Clinton, has been able to substantiate that bold claim. CNN’s journalism is certainly tacky, but Clinton needlessly overplayed her hand and deserved the blowback.
I don’t understand why politicians make very specific claims that they can’t support. It’s a dumb thing to do – keep the accusations vague.
Mike J
@Linnaeus:
This is true of course. The problem is convincing middle class voters that government programs designed to help them actually will. This is why the Republicans hate the ACA so much. They will do anything they can to cripple any program that might help a potential voter, because if people see the program work, they’ll vote for Democrats.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
This exactly.
Linnaeus
@Ruckus:
Well, it is a risk in the context of our current political discourse, but it’s one worth taking.
Linnaeus
@Mike J:
Yeah, that’s definitely the hard part. That’s going to take years. The right didn’t get where they are today overnight, and neither will we.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: The Donald is just taking care of his fascist bro.
Baud
@Linnaeus: It was going to take years years ago. I remember them talking about the long game when I was at Kos. Then Obama got elected, and they switched immediately to “I want my pony now.” I’m a bit skeptical about the whole thing now.
Ruckus
@Mike J:
While the vote for democrats thing has merit, I think it’s because many conservatives think that they worked hard and made something of themselves, so that’s all that others have to do. Many have no idea that life isn’t the same as when they were kids or when their parents were kids. After all life is different for different generations but the pace of change has been rather dramatic in the last, oh 100 yrs, even more so in the last 50. As just one example, my father’s family moved, when he was an infant, from Kansas City 97-98 yrs ago, in a horse drawn wagon. The roads, such as they were, were mostly dirt paths, few could afford cars and even if you could gas was not all that widely available. 48 yrs ago I bought my first new car (with money I earned) and could drive it cross country at a reasonable pace. Or fly on a scheduled airline. Today one can talk most anywhere in the world with a phone that you can carry to most anywhere in the world. And a person working, even at a skill job in their teens, very, very likely can not afford a new car.
Conservatives want everything to be the way it was, failing to realize that it never really was that way for many, never is and never can be.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
Understandable.
Chris
@jonas:
Of course, that’s all assuming that future historians are reproducing a more or less accurate image of our times, and aren’t 1) writing whatever history pleases the MOTU of their era or 2) blinkered by the biases of their own era.
I can just imagine the historians of plutocratic nation a few centuries in the future writing about the tragic, well-intentioned but short-sighted experiments of the twentieth century where Western nations thought to give their people welfare states, only to watch their societies collapse in the next century due to the accumulated, inhuman burden of taxation and regulation…
JVader
@JMG: The joke is on CNN… the faux news crowd will NEVER watch CNN no matter how much “bothsiderism” they engage in. BBCA, Maddow, Kornacki, O’Donnell and that other dude are about it. Maddow is about the only real voice for progressives and the rest is shit.
J R in WV
People are being stupid. Do you not know that there is TV news everywhere today? Do you think ISIS/ISIL whatever needs to make special video of Trump being a fascist? Every new channel in the world carries the message of hate that man is generating, because it is so newsworthy.
Every Arabic language TV channel carries Trump’s demands for concentration camps for Muslims, his desire to kill the families of Islamic fighters, his hate for people who aren’t white Christiams, his rejection of immigration of Muslims.
So I don’t think Clinton needs to look very far for proof of Trump’s message being received in the MIddle East. All she needs to do is to use al Jazeera in Arabic or Persian, and then add a crawl of Trump’s words in English to match the other language’s translation of Trumps’s own words.
People trying to say that Trump’s incendiary language isn’t helping every single militant Islamic group raise money and recruit new fighters, well, that’s just simple-minded stupidity. Of course his hateful speech outrages Muslims at least as much as it outrages Americans who aren’t Nazis. Duh, people!!
Villago Delenda Est
Donald Trump is just one of Daesh’s stellar recruiters operating openly in this country. He and his fellow Klown Kar Kavorters are giving black letter aid and comfort to an enemy.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Jeremy Carter, 28, died early Sunday after his heart stopped at his family’s home in Peachtree City.
Baud
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Oh damn.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Sucks.
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney continues to be animated.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well that stick up his ass and with someone else’s probably now shriveled up heart……
Satby
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: So sad for the Carter’s.
WaterGirl
@Mystical Chick: I am probably 100% any democrat but Hilary, and I will still vote for her. I just don’t get people who can’t see the damage they would do by voting republican.
WaterGirl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: First I read that as jimmy Carter and was greatly saddened. Seconds later I took in that it was a grandson, but it’s still heartbreaking. So young, a terrible loss.
I wonder if he was the grandson who put Romney’s 47% tape out there.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@WaterGirl: Jason was the grandson with the 47% tape.
Satby
@J R in WV: @Villago Delenda Est: I can vouch for the fact that my two exchange daughters, one Arab and both Muslim, get DAILY queries from friends and family back home about the harassment and levels of hate they are subjected to here. When they reply they’ve had no trouble, they aren’t always believed; the assumption being they don’t feel safe enough to be truthful. The xenophobia and hate speech by Trump and his minions are going to blow back horribly on this country if it’s not loudly defeated and repudiated.
CarolDuhart2
And these days all it takes is to post the video on youtube. No need to make extra effort.
Brachiator
Did she go too far?
I heard one bozo on the radio claim that the clothes she wore was “inappropriate” for a presidential candidate appearing on a debate.
Silly season never ends.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: You know, girl clothes!
mclaren
Trump was supposed to bring balance to the Force, not destroy it!
Daffyd Folaman
@Mike J: bbc world service news used to be a very fine operation , but since the politicians and bean counters have more or less taken over at the beeb it has gone down the toilet and there seems to be no chance that it will ever be the same .As for Katty Kay , the three weeks she was absent from the US broadcasts her replacements did a far better job than she was doing, I get a charge that the presenters go by the job title of “journalist” not by the previous title of either “news reader or presenter”I think journalist is stretching it a bit
amk
@srv: That senile dude was roundly mocked and then ignored for his last ‘expose’, you dimwit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: HAMMER TIME has yet to manifest. I’m thinking Jeb balked at wearing the parachute pants.
Joey Maloney
@Germy: Don’t you mean “May I have some anthrax for my tire rims, please?”