The piece in which a reporter admits the media punished Hillary Clinton with excessive “but her emails” coverage because her team treated their non-story like… a non-story. https://t.co/ZEvy1LWqsA
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) February 11, 2022
… with something other than glory. Phillip Bump is usually better than this, so I assume a Defcon 2 all-points alert must’ve gone out:
… This has been a lengthy exegesis, I admit, but it reiterates a few important points. First, that Clinton’s position in 2016 combined with the novelty of the question at issue were factors that don’t map cleanly onto the current scenario with Trump. Second, that the idea there was voluminous attention paid to Clinton-related emails in the last weeks of the campaign is inflated by the emails released by WikiLeaks, emails which were not ones from her server. And, third, that while the coverage of the server was probably broader than it needed to be in retrospect, it was often driven by news-related events. The media covered that late-October announcement about the investigation being reconsidered, often while emphasizing uncertainty about what it meant. Should it not have?
Consider, too, that the initial story told us something new about Clinton: that this candidate running a campaign predicated on her experience had worked around governmental rules and constraints. Learning this about Trump is … not new. This is also earlier in the presidential election cycle and, for Trump, represents not an apparent apex of his alleged misbehavior but something much lower on that pyramid.
What’s most important to remember when comparing the Trump and Clinton situations, though, is that we are comparing 20 months of reporting on Clinton with a week of reporting on Trump. We don’t know what the months between now and 2024 will bring. We can’t. The National Archives has asked the Justice Department to begin an investigation, so we’re not yet at the equivalent November 2016, merely August 2015. We will see what happens…
Look, everyone in the Beltway media already knew Donald Trump was a thieving loser! But we had to work really hard to convince y’all that Hillary was as terrible as we wanted to believe she was!
"They didn't treat us with the respect we feel we so richly deserve, so we got Trump elected instead" is quite the take to expect to get a sympathetic listen.
— Jerry's gone (@Jerrysgone1) February 11, 2022
There were 650+ straight days of coverage with hourly updates and daily polling about her "trustworthiness". At the same time, she was putting out policy idea after policy idea and there are members of the media who, to this day, still claim, "I don't know what she stood for."
— EILUJB (@Va2021J) February 11, 2022
How does it feel to be a catspaw useful idiot for Fox News, Mr. Bump?
so weird how this narrative immediately appeared the second trump got caught stealing classified documents https://t.co/v9oSUPRrIR
— kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 11, 2022
Danielx
This makes me feel stabby.
zhena gogolia
@Danielx: I CAN’T EVEN READ IT
Baud
From the prior thread
Hillary Clinton agrees that the NYT is garbage. (retweeted by Hillary)
Click on link to see statement.
mrmoshpotato
@Danielx:
@zhena gogolia: No kidding!
Chetan Murthy
Huh, Mr. Philip Bump of WaPo. Guess I’m glad I canceled my subscription back in December, and I never even go to their front page. Fuck you, Mr. Philip Bump.
zhena gogolia
@Chetan Murthy: FUCK HIM
ETA: I’m sorry about your diabetes diagnosis.
debbie
@Danielx:
You think that’s bad? Pah! The NYT’s daily podcast, The Daily, is on my radio. Tonight’s piece is about Joe Rogan. It has started out with a description of his listeners: “They’re mostly men, they’re very smart…” A few minutes later: “Joe Rogan is a really smart guy…”
BlueGuitarist
They just keep pretending that the GW Bush administration didn’t keep emails on an private server, an RNC server!, and 22 million of them went missing….
mrmoshpotato
@debbie:
Oh for fuck’s sake!
zhena gogolia
The Cauvin take:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aeNGqI6P5U
Chetan Murthy
@zhena gogolia: I’ve been desperate to be able to go out, solely so I can go to the gym/pool and work out. B/c all the things I tried at home for working out either didn’t work, or (biking near my house, which is on serious hills) injured my knees.
Just *desperate*. So in a way, this is ….. well, it’s no news at all. I’m angry at my fellow unvaxxed/unboosted SFans, for not doing their duty, angry that I can’t get a fourth shot (though I plan to pretend I’m an undocumented immigrant, and fuck the rules, I’ll take along $500 and offer them that, if need be), angry that we’re going to relax masking next week, and just angry in general.
I know this is easy to fix: Just get back in the gym and start working out like I was before the pandemic.
During my doctor’s appointment, at first he told me that with things they way they are, he wouldn’t go to the gym either. But after we discussed all the various things I’d tried to work out at home, and how they weren’t working, he said “your chance of a heart attack or stroke is higher than your chance of catching covid: if I were you, I’d go to the gym”. And then last night he called with the diabetes diagnosis (from blood work).
Goddammit, the reason we live in a civilized society with an organized state, is so that we don’t have to make tradeoffs like this. The state is supposed to protect us from pathogens, ffs. And we’re supposed to know our civic duty, and do it, b/c it’s our *duty*.
Goddamn. If I never hear about some poor person who can’t fucking get their fucking vaccine, I’ll be glad. B/c the next time that happens, that person will get a fucking earful. I literally damaged my health, doing my fucking duty, and these assholes can’t get a shot? FUCK THEM.
Scout211
@Danielx:
Dis you post downstairs about your iPhone? (Nym slightly different). If so, did you get your phone fixed? Get the link I posted? If not so, never mind. ?
Anne Laurie
For ‘smart’, read ‘rich’. Like the old jape: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?
zhena gogolia
@Chetan Murthy: I hear you. I’ve had some similar problems related to not being able to get my regular gym time.
Kay
2015. They had the narrative written before the campaign even started. They cribbed all of it from “Clinton Cash”.
It was all bad work. It all sucked. The emails get all the attention and they were a low point but there were no high points.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
will that gibberish make sense if I go back and read the “lengthy exegesis” that precedes it?
Meh, not worth it.
I’ll give him partial credit for being willing to address the issue at all. AFAIK, the wagon-circlers at the NYT have not.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s totally unreadable and really badly written. They have their heads so far up their own asses.
Kay
Maybe it’s better. Can you imagine the NYTimes feeding frenzy if she had won? They would have been bat shit insane for 4 years.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: I know what you mean, but really — Trump wasn’t better than ANYTHING.
Kathleen
@Kay: This was my reply to Philip Bump on WaPoo:
Ksmiami
Burn the village to the ground. Pour lye on the ashes
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: “If you’re so smart, why do you say such stupid things?”
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I love how he tries to parse the distinct email stories when the over the top coverage confused the public at the time.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
Every Presidential appointment, every appearance, every speech, every decision large and small, for four years all approached as if she’s presumptively guilty of wrongdoing.
Also- they knew the emails issue was bullshit because they stopped addressing the substance of it completely and moved briskly over to how her “handling” of the emails issue was the problem. That’s the bullshit move they make when they know there’s no “there, there” but they love the story and don’t want to let it go.
CaseyL
The “best and brightest” among the MSM are neither. This is really wrecking merry hell with my notions of civilization being anything other than an ephemeral phenomenon, brought about more by luck than anything else, and ever so easily brought down once the courtiers and rentiers get in on the act.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No. The only thing clear in that pixel puke dump was “well we never trusted the Clintons because Bill reasons something something so we naturally didn’t believe it was a non story when her people had the temerity to tell us that.” Like Kay said, Beltway’s Clinton hatred had been passed down through the media’s institutional DNA.
Scout211
The new excuse is that TFG and his loyal minions were preserving all the presidential documents to eventually add to his presidential library. Yeah, sure. I totally believe that, don’t you? Source
Just One More Canuck
Show business kids making movies of themselves, you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else
The Dangerman
I wonder how many those Top Secret documents at Mar a Lago got scanned, encrypted, and sent to Putin.
ETA: or Kim.
Starboard Tack
@zhena gogolia: Me three. I’ve kept my weight down but the shoulder I smashed in a motorcycle crash younks ago hurts all the time. Only so much I can do with Therabands.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I just heard on NPR that truckers blocking the Ambassador Bridge “have agreed to allow one lane of traffic” to pass through. That’s how it was reported. Like they’re a legitimate authority making a concession. End of the Marketplace program.
different-church-lady
[Hitler invades France.]
“Learning this about Hitler is… not new.
Kay
@Kathleen:
He actually admits this:
That’s a lot of words saying “we don’t like them and we never have”.
The part that amazes me is a lot of the Clinton haters in the media were not old enough to hate Bill and Hillary Clinton as a personal, lived experience. They pass it down like a cherished heirloom.
Kathleen
@CaseyL: I used to attribute their malfeasance to them being evil. I was wrong. I now attribute their malfeasance to narcissism, laziness and ignorance. They’re still evil but at least I can identify all their other qualities.
japa21
@Kay: A political reporter in Chicago, who I normally consider fairly astute, made a ridiculous statement in September of 2016. He said, and this is pretty close to verbatim, “She will still face lots of questions about the server, and, let’s be honest, there is a lot that she still has to explain.” This was well after the first Comey statement came out, clearing her (in a rather clumsy way) of any legal wrongdoing. This was well after she had made definitive statement after definitive statement about the issue.
And not once did he state what she needed to explain. It should be noted that this was on Chicago television which broadcast into parts of Wisconsin.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s probably the most honest thing I’ve read from the media on this.
debbie
Kay
My favorite part of Bill Clinton was what inspired such contempt in media- his scrappiness and ambition and climbing. He was a salesman, but I like salespeople, generally. You can know what they’re doing and still be happy to go along for the ride. He wanted to sell me good stuff. I just don’t hate people for that.
different-church-lady
@japa21:
“You appear to be a human being with lady parts. Can you explain why you think we should allow you to be President?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: reminds me of this from Mitt Romney, notable not only for its return to some vintage MittBot 2000 attempts to simulate human speech patterns and language-based interpersonal communication modes /whirrrr….. CLANK/
Mitt Romney in an office with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in their 20s G-Men suits: “By gum, fellows, I feel that Mr Capone’s tax evasion is so far down on the list of actions meritorious of his being prosecuted….”
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Spot on.
Kathleen
@Kay: Thank you! I thought of you when I read his justification. He gave away the game plan when he listed that as Reason #1. These people are not very bright nor are they very good writers.
Mike in NC
I read somewhere today that an abandoned phone booth would work just fine as Trump’s presidential library.
Brachiator
This is why I hate the idea of the importance of “narratives.” At some point, some reporters and a chunk of voters decided that Clinton was untrustworthy, no matter what. And so they went after her with hammer and tong and decided that she must be hiding something.
At the same time, Trump, a criminal hiding in plain sight, could do whatever he wanted and slap the press around, but it was OK with his supporters, because he was a man of the people.
There was nothing to the butter emails stories, and as far as I can see, in a period during which there were all kinds of data breaches and hacks, Clinton was not hacked. Meanwhile, Trump gave secrets away and God knows what his relationship with dictators was.
Some reporters were nothing more than grubby hacks. Others seemed to get caught up in the bullshit and figured that they had to follow the butter emails lie because, well, because that was the narrative.
But someone with deliberate bad intent determined that the narrative had to be that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy, and once they threw the lie out there, the rest of the grubby press was eager to snap it up.
Viva BrisVegas
The 2016 MSM coverage might have been down to Clinton hatred, but remember how Gore was treated by them in 2000. It was a somewhat less reprehensible but possibly even more stupid campaign of denigration.
I suspect Obama avoided some of this in 2008 because they couldn’t pull the same stunt to the same degree without looking like obviously overt racists. So frustrated, they went with (partly) covert racism for the next eight years.
Clinton was not an outlier. This is how the MSM operates.
OzarkHillbilly
I thought those went extinct, haven’t seen one in over a decade.
JWR
O/T, but on today’s early morning NPR, I heard a piece about the supply chain shortages at the Canadian border. They mentioned chips, then moved on to larger bits of the chain and said the auto makers are considering flying those in but that’s expensive, and yada yada yah.
Then, near the end, they mentioned the truck blockade, which “came out of nowhere”, and that was that about the blockade. Yeah, right, NPR. This well organized bridge blockade just organically sprang to life. By magic!
PS. Here it is:
Nice jerb, NPR
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Gotta be honest, Kay, I hate salesmen. Often very pushy people who won’t take “no” for an answer. I never really got that vibe from Clinton tbh
Eunicecycle
About the email story, it infuriates me to this day that the FBI announced they were reopening the investigation on Hillary while at the same time secretly investigating Trump. They were definitely not treated the same
ETA : And the answer to Bumps question, shouldn’t it have been reported: NO.
Kelly
@Chetan Murthy: Pool should be safe. De-humidifier requires tremendous air flow which should thin out any aerial virus
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Sorry about that news, dude
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JWR: I don’t know enough about trucking or police culture to know how much of this is true, but if this is what it takes to shut this shit down, I guess I’ll root for teh trumpy demographic that’s going to keep the roads open. I guess….
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Viva BrisVegas:
Did the MSM treat Carter poorly, too? Johnson? Kennedy? Or is that far enough back that the MSM was different in those days, pre-Watergate/Vietnam? I know that FDR’s health was kept a secret by the press
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
For good or ill, most Americans want to be left alone and not have their lives interrupted. They may look the other way if the police are beating up on liberal or minority protestors, but they would be livid if the police did nothing to keep the roads open.
Righties live in fear of waking the slumbering beast.
CaseyL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Carter, definitely. They loved Jerry Ford, hated Carter and never gave him a break.
Johnson… it’s hard to say. I’ve become so jaded about mass movements being actually about the issue they’ve supposed to be about.
Then, as now, journalists followed the novel, the glittery, the loud. (It was Gene McCarthy, after all, who likened them all to birds on a wire, all landing and leaving at the same time.) So when a sizeable number of activists, young and not-young, rose up against Johnson because of the War, the MSM of the time took note. And their coverage of Johnson has to have been affected by it.
The anti-war thing was very real – until the draft ended. Then… crickets, more or less. The anti-war activist uprising around Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy were very real… but now I’ve seen Bernie Sanders’ followers do their best to lay waste to the Democrats and in retrospect wonder how much of that Youthful Fervor was ratfuckery, even back then.
Mike in NC
@OzarkHillbilly: Phone booths can still be found. There’s one at the local private airport a few miles from us. Obviously with no phone installed.
NotMax
@debbie
*sigh*
Pod people….
//
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Booths, not so much. Pay phones still abundant. Three of them at the small shopping center closest to the domicile.
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
One thing Bill shared with salesmen (and saleswomen) was using charm to win people over. I’ve known many salesmen; I used to be one myself. The degrees of charmingfullness vary, but there’s always some line of bullshit designed to win you over.
Cacti
The librul media can never just say unequivocally:
“Yep, we fucked up.”
Kathleen
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My recollection was that the media loved JFK. At least the WH press corps did. I don’t think they liked any Democratic President after him (including Johnson and definitely Carter).
Baud
Fuck LBJ.
Kathleen
@CaseyL: I think there was a lot of that in the 60’s &70’s.
frosty
@Kay: @zhena gogolia: A Clinton presidency would have been terrible. Not as bad as Trump, but a shitshow just the same. Maybe dogshit instead of batshit, right?
BlueGuitarist
@Kay:
Didn’t do the same re W, also 2nd member of ex pres family, with media relationship exemplified by GHWB saying his favorite bumper sticker was “annoy the media re-elect Bush”
weak effort at myth to cover up the reality of doing the bidding of powerful Republicans
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@CaseyL:
Thanks for the answer
different-church-lady
@frosty: Whole lot more people would still be alive right now.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, but they wouldn’t appreciate it because they wouldn’t know any better.
NotMax
“Proof? We don’t need no stinkin’ proof.”
different-church-lady
@Baud: If it actually worked that way (you have to appreciate being alive in order to do it) the world would be a much better place.
Redshift
A week? How many years have we known about TFG destroying official documents he was required to preserve?
Treating “destroying paperwork like a mob boss” and “carting boxes of classified documents off to the presidential palace” like different stories is as dishonest as the same claim about butter emails and wikileaks.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
It’s funny to think that if JFK wasn’t killed in ’63 it would be “Fuck JFK” instead
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The press and the political establishment have always been intertwined. The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton and immediately went to town on one of their political enemies, Thomas Jefferson.
The press thought that Harry Truman was a dumb cluck. They could not touch Eisenhower, but the East Coast press hated Nixon, who was a creature of the Los Angeles Times. JFK charmed everybody. The press soured on LBJ. Many in the press were wary of Robert Kennedy, and resented him from stealing the anti-war youth from Clean Gene McCarthy. Other members of the press loved RFK without reservation.
As president Nixon could never do cocktail parties and Beltway chit chat, so they hated him even more than he deserved (and he deserved a lot). And so it goes.
Chetan Murthy
@frosty: Congress (b/c filled with angry GrOPers) during a Clinton presidency would have been terrible. But I’d still trade that for TFG’s Reign of Error. If only b/c she’d have managed covid better.
Mike E
It’s Munchausen by proxy the way the 4th Estate is poisoning the body politic while simultaneously reporting the carnage with endless concern. Fuggem.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kathleen:
Hmm. Interesting. It does seem like JFK was loved by a lot people at the time and his untimely death only cemented positive opinions of him and that time; Camelot and all that. One has to wonder how his legacy would be viewed today if he had lived and been re-elected. I remember reading that Kennedy was escalating America’s involvement in Vietnam
CaseyL
@Chetan Murthy: Except she never would have gotten any kind of credit.
Imagine 25,000 total deaths from Covid, total, if an H. Clinton Administration had been running the response.
25K deaths would have been miraculously low – but we only know that in retrospect. She would have been attacked 24/7 for the “horrorific” casualty count.
NotMax
FYI.
TCM, Sunday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking.
Sure Lurkalot
@Cacti:
More infuriating, they think they are justifiably angry when anyone points out their mistakes and both sides bullshit. Can’t find the link, but one of Mags’ workmates was incredulous that anyone would presume she held her access tidbits to boost book sales and now here’s Mr. Bump mansplaining and pissy that anyone would dare think the Hillary’s email deluge was unreasonable.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL: I agree with you. She’d have gone down in history as a terrible president, and even if we did better than other Western nations, the argument would be ‘but she should have been able to do better!”
But she’d have saved a lotta lives.
Starfish
A new and less redacted version of the Muller report has been released by the Department of Justice.
Roger Stone’s name had been redacted a lot. Muller chose not to charge Stone and Trump, Jr. with computer crimes. Facebook and Twitter are mentioned in here.
Sure Lurkalot
@NotMax: Who better to investigate fraud than someone guilty of fraud? He is a fraud expert for chrissakes!
Mike E
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Odds were against JFK surviving long into another term, he was pretty ill from Addison’s/war injuries and the cocktail of drugs he was taking.
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL: I’m not sure it would have been that low, given the global situation. But your point holds.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
They should all be kicked in the dick. It’s my cherished heirloom for this trash.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Eh, I’m not so sure. Look at what happened to Biden and how conservatives responded to COVID under him. Maybe a couple hundred thousand less (which isn’t nothing to be clear), but the public health response to COVID would’ve still been politicized and we’d probably still be in a similar place with vaccinations
Kalakal
@debbie: Joe Rogan, the man for whom the phrase “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” was coined
Brachiator
@frosty:
There is no way of intelligently speculating about this. None. Nada. Zip.
Trump was a petulant criminal, and one of the worst presidents ever. No one could have been as bad a he was.
Side question. Had he decided to run, could Biden have won in 2016?
Starfish
@CaseyL: I always wondered that if with her experience in state department she could have kept it as a much smaller level, an epidemic v a pandemic. Would she have had connections in China to let her know stuff and shut things down faster?
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You might be right. OTOH, it’s possible that the US would have gotten the bug under control early on (and we wouldn’t have had all the superspreader events in NY, other big cities). And I can imagine President Clinton putting 14-day quarantine in place for international travelers.
Maybe you’re right, and we’d still end up in the same place. Maybe not. I just know that she’d have tried her level best to save lives, and with the enormous resources of the United States Government available, I think she’d have succeeded quite a bit.
Who knows. All on that other timeline where maybe, just maybe, I’m not completely and utterly disgusted with my countrymen.
BlueGuitarist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
there’s evidence for plans to withdraw and diplomatic initiatives, as well as military escalation plans; no way to know what JFK would have done.
don’t underestimate how many people hated JFK (like Ted Cruz’s father) illustrated in the deranged “wanted for treason” leaflets distributed in Dallas.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: You’ve been doing a lot of dick kicking lately. I certainly hope you’re using steel toe boots. Or those really pointy western boots. Either way, carry on. ?
Starfish
@Brachiator: Possibly.
1) The Clintons were tainted because the Republican Party liked them that way.
2) We had just had two people from the same family in the presidency with the Bushes. There was no appetite for it.
Could Biden have won? Maybe. But the media really loved the Trump circus. Biden boring v Trump circus? Maybe we would have had the same outcome. Who knows?
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
Absofuckinglutely.
Instead, we’ve got millions of RWNJs, the vast majority of whom consider themselves ‘pro-life,’ actively monkeywrenching our efforts to fight this plague, and a whole bunch of idiot centrists saying it’s time for us to be ‘over’ Covid, as if that’ll make it go away. And as if a million Americans dead from this plague matter less to them than their being inconvenienced to the extent of having to wear masks when they go to the freakin’ grocery. Fuck ’em all.
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist: This.
trollhattan
Daughter reports half the track team freshmen have come down with the ‘rona. “Stupid freshmen” says the sophomore.
I got nuttin’.
Kathleen
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’ve read the opposite – that he was going to scale back.
frosty
@Brachiator: Biden winning on 2016? Maybe, since he wouldn’t have had the Clinton baggage.
By terrible, I mean the nonstop pushback she would have received as President. She would have done her best but it would have been banging her head against a brick wall. Both Congress and the media.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
He did almost cause world war 3 once or twice… who knows what else he might have gotten up to.
Kathleen
@mrmoshpotato: Please proceed!
Chetan Murthy
@Kathleen: It’s certainly the impression one gets from The Best and the Brightest: that after listening to his “experts” for years and years, Kennedy had had enough, and was going to draw down our presence in Vietnam. When he was assassinated, Johnson had to keep that presence up, so that he could enact his domestic agenda without enormous pushback from the press and certain factions of the US population and political class, aka “who lost
ChinaVietnamAfghanistan?”lowtechcyclist
Amidst all the other crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration (who should have been impeached, convicted, then tried for war crimes), I had totally forgotten about this comparatively minor one. But I remember it now.
And more to the point, this totally dismembers Bump’s claim that Hillary’s email server was some big deal that they’d never seen before. They had, and when Dubya did it, it was a story, but hardly anything on the level of Butter Emails.
And then, of course, when Trump and Jared and all the rest of those bozos were conducting confidential government business on insecure personal phones – just months after crucifying Hillary over the server – they treated it like a minor story, over and over and over again.
There was absolutely no excuse, no justification that holds an ounce of water, for the media’s differential treatment of Hillary’s emails from the way they treated similar stories when they occurred in Republican administrations both before and after. They nitpick every last damn thing that Dems do, then they basically give the Rethugs a free pass. And the fucking misogynists in the media went after Hillary like she was the freakin’ Witch Queen.
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist:
come sit next to me (on the other end of the Zoom call). Maddening, these dicks are.
Starfish
@Starfish: That time when I asked everyone if they wanted to read the Muller report again and they all said “Naah”
prostratedragon
Bump is singing all the parts in this MSM Men’s Chorus number.
Viva BrisVegas
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
As I recall, everybody hated Johnson, except the people who thought bombing North Vietnam back to the stone age was a good idea.
As for Carter, look up “killer rabbit”, “lust in my heart”, “malaise” and “jogging”.
Kattails
@CaseyL: Johnson said that if he walked on water across the Potomac, the media’s report would be “Johnson can’t swim”.
There seems to be a direct correlation between the level of ire-inducing news, and the well-honed sharpness of the knives in my kitchen drawer.
Beau of the fifth column had three different YouTube commentaries, two on the Canadian truckers and one on the extremely I’ll-advised threat about the SuperBowl. Not sure how to link from my iPad but worth a look to see how he pivoted in response to the “sovereign citizen” type crap.
Kathleen
@Chetan Murthy: Maybe I’m being unfair, but I have the impression younger liberal academics actively despise JFK and believe he didn’t accomplish anything. I would be interested in hearing what younger people heard about him in their high school or college history classes.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Tetanus is gruesome. Spite and ignorance are hellofa drugs
raven
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Hey Hey LBJ
How many kids did you kill today??
raven
Look, up yonder in the sky, now, what is that I pray?
It’s a bird it’s a plane, it’s a man insane, it’s my President lbj
He’s flying high way up in the sky just like Superman,
But I have got a little piece of kryptonite,
Yes, I’ll bring him back to land.
Said come out Lyndon with your hands held high,
Drop your guns, baby, and reach for the sky.
I’ve got you surrounded and you ain’t got a chance,
Gonna send you back to Texas, make you work on your ranch,
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
He can call Super Woman and his Super Dogs,
But it sure won’t do him no good,
Yeah, I found out why from a Russian spy
That he ain’t nothing but a comic book.
We’ll pull him off the stands and clean up the land,
Yes, we’ll have us a brand new day.
What is more I got the Fantastic Four
And Doctor Strange to help him on his way.
Said come out Lyndon with your hands held high,
Drop your guns, baby, and reach for the sky.
We got you surrounded and you ain’t got a chance,
Gonna send you back to Texas make you work on your ranch,
Yeah yeah, oh yeah.
Yeah, gonna make him eat flowers.
Yeah, make him drop some acid…
Brachiator
@frosty:
Appreciate the clarification.
I agree that there would have been tremendous opposition from the GOP and many in the media.
But still, things would have been so much different.
Except for Trump claiming that the election was stolen.
raven
President LBJ “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny=. of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties…. ”
Killing Floor, Electric Flag.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Or natural selection will rid us of these fools.
Eolirin
Totally off topic and maybe it got brought up in an earlier thread, but yesterday the Senate also passed the bill that’ll ban mandatory arbitration on sexual harassment cases (retroactively too). So it’s headed to Biden’s desk and should become law shortly.
This is kind of a big deal.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
This. Trump was and is a catastrophe, but it really is worth considering the alternative timeline if Hillary were to have gotten those 80,000 additional votes she needed to win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
The Republicans would have controlled both houses of Congress, and they would have tied her in knots. She’d have been lucky to get her Cabinet confirmed, let alone Federal judges. Because she wouldn’t be able to get shit done on account of the Rethugs, the midterms would have gone red, and her re-election prospects would have been a coin toss at best. Even if she won re-election, she’d still have a GOP-controlled Congress and a SCOTUS with a 4-3 conservative majority.
None of this would have been her fault, but that’s how her Presidency would have played out. And needless to say, the media would have been just as irrationally hard on her after she took office as they were when she was running. So no help there.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: We’d have had a deadlocked SCOTUS for a number of very important decisions, and one of those four would’ve been Kennedy instead of Kavanaugh. I would’ve taken that.
Tom Q
@Viva BrisVegas: I’d argue that the press treatment of Gore stemmed from the same source as the Hillary hazing: both were fruit of the Clinton tree, and could not be allowed to become president, because they would have retroactively made the press losers in their war with Clinton. A war that, as people here are noting, continues in the profession, even though those who fought it most loudly in the 90s are long gone from the scene. It’s an article of faith in the journalism profession that Clintonism was bad.
Why? My theory has always been that they hated Clinton because he was the first presidential candidate who didn’t obey the press demand he drop out of the race. Right at the beginning, with Gennifer Flowers and the draft controversy, the press loudly chanted that he was a doomed candidate, and urged him to drop out. Every previous candidate in such a position (George Romney, Ed Muskie, Gary Hart) had bowed to their power. Bill not only didn’t…he got the nomination, won the election, won re-election, and survived the bogus impeachment (another effort to take him out in which the press gleefully cooperated, and were shocked when the populace didn’t stand with them).
After all that, the only way for the press to gain moral victories against the Clinton legacy were to stop his would-be successor from gaining the presidency, and, later, his wife from doing the same. If Chelsea were ever to run, the same venom would rise right up again, and you’d get the same bullshit rationalizations Bump is offering today; it’d still boil down to, we don’t like your father, and anything that flows from him must be destroyed.
I don’t think it’s just the Democrat thing. Obama got standard flak, but was, in general, treated pretty well. Biden…let’s see what happens when COVID finally gets out of the headlines. The last few months (starting with the Afghan pullout) have been pretty unfair, but if his numbers start improving, I don’t think the press will stay in negative mode against him; they generally like him okay, and it’s just the circumstances right now that are bringing on the negative coverage.
Ella in New Mexico
@BlueGuitarist:
My thoughts exactly as I started to read this dude’s gargage rationalization.
Then, as I read further more and more and more dumb rationales were presented and I realized the only remedy for his idiocy would be to have him sit across the table from someone who would fisk the facts of his entire article, sentence by sentence and force him to respond on video.
So that’s not gonna happen. And therefore shitty journalism will continue get a paycheck.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Kick them all in the dick. And by dick, I mean wallet – and dick.
lowtechcyclist
@raven:
Dayum. How is it that I’m hearing that for the first time now, more than half a century later?
IOW, thanks for sharing that!
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: We really dodged a bullet there.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Thank you for your concern about my dick kickers. I’m wearing proper footwear for the sport.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin:
Maybe so, but when we get to either 2021 or 2025 when a Republican (all too possibly Trump in 2021) President gets to fill Scalia’s and RBG’s seats at a minimum to give the GOP the same 6-3 majority they have now, it just turns out to be a postponement.
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist: It’s possible it’s a postponement of the inevitable. OTOH, it’s possible the horse will sing. I’d have been willing to gamble on that. Ah, well.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Memories of childhood. Dad was a big Fish fan.
Ella in New Mexico
@Chetan Murthy: as far as your diabetes diagnosis and exercise, research says that strength training is actually more beneficial than aerobic activity for helping muscle to be more sensitive to insulin. The more muscle you build, the more glucose you’ll be able to dispense of.
You don’t have to do bodybuilding, either. Exercises using your own body weight or elastic bands can engage muscles and increase insulin sensitivity.
Not knowing your exact numbers, (HgbA1c), I’d advise checking with your doctor as to any medications that would also help you process glucose, including metformin.
I’m an NP in NM so we have a lot of diabetes and prediabetes, btw. Do not despair, you can change your numbers.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Barry Melton was a great guitar player. . .and an attorney.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Isn’t he the one in the Civil War Union uniform?
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
I guess what I’m saying is that neither timeline was going to be very good. I’m not trying to say this one’s better (I think there’s an argument, but still quite debatable either way), but it irks me when people talk as if Hillary winning in 2016 would have solved all our problems. (Somebody in one of the morning threads was saying we could have been dealing with climate change starting in 2017. No, I don’t think so.)
The bullets were coming at us, whichever way we dodged.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: My head just exploded. Tucker called this a “human rights protest.”
These are not truckers. I don’t know a single trucker who can afford to sit on their ass protesting. And I know a lot of truckers. This thing is backed by the same folks behind Jan 6. I’d bet my meager paycheck on it.
Dan B
@Brachiator: I agree that a Clinton presidency could have been a shitshow but not because of Clinton. It would have been the nuts who would have felt that going from 8 years of a “negro” to a “mean woman” was unendurable and obviously a total catastrophe. The climate deniers, the racists, the vulture capitalists, etc. In other words all the people who loathe democracy and feel morality is for ruthlessly regulating sex not for stopping exploitation of the weak.
Strength, not love.
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
Hard to say. Anyway, we’re in the timeline we’re in, so we’ve got to try to make this one work.
I still wonder about the timeline where Palm Beach County doesn’t have a butterfly ballot.
Dan B
@lowtechcyclist: Hillary was not the Witch Queen. She was like the Good Witch who, with Dorothy’s help was going to drop houses on Murdoch, Mercer, Trump, Prince, Koch, and many others. Of course she had monstrous intent!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: I’ve never found counterfactuals of this type to be either useful or entertaining.
Starboard Tack
@Chetan Murthy: While JFK & RFK were both dedicated anti-communists, JFK was a combat vet. I suspect that he would have seen continued US support for S. Vietnam differently than Johnson. His war hero status could have validated a decision to leave Vietnam to other anti-communist vets like my dad who’d never voted for another Democratic president. (Except FDR.)
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: On “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die” he’s in some kind of uniform but the epaulets make me wonder it it’s a Civil War uni. Superbird is on Electric Music for the Mind and Body. Melton’s axe on Death Sound Blues is epic!
raven
@Starboard Tack:
JFK was a combat vet
Unlike that phony motherfucker and his bullshit Silver Star.
Dan B
@Eolirin: That is huge! Retroactive!! There are hundreds of Feminazi lawyers who are going to make nasty men’s lives miserable and expensive.
I like it!!
raven
@raven: And Crystal Blues!
Starboard Tack
Omnes Omnibus
@Starboard Tack: What one is he always talking about?
piratedan
@MagdaInBlack:which is why its so incredibly important for the Jan 6th hearing and the DOJ to expose these spigots of sedition and shut those fuckers off
piratedan
@MagdaInBlack:which is why its so incredibly important for the Jan 6th hearings and the DOJ to expose these spigots of sedition and shut those fuckers off
Brachiator
@Dan B:
I see your point. And the country having to deal with a woman president would have been interesting to see.
But again, no matter how vivid the imagination of a speculator, alternate “timelines” are not real, and no one can talk about what might have happened with any certainty.
But even small things, like the idea of a Trump defeated by Clinton, might have had a very interesting impact on the national mood.
Trump might have continued to be a troublemaker, but he still would have been a loser.
And we don’t know how Clinton would have fought back. Or how other Democrats might have rallied.
But the bottom line is that we can’t know what a Clinton presidency might have been like.
Except that anything would have been better than Trump.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s worse than “fines” for commerical drivers. They’re under federal regulations with a CDL – adopted by states since 2000- and the rules apply whether they’re driving the truck or not – they can be in their personal vehicle. They can have the CDL suspended for 30, 60, 90, 120 days and their insurance jacks up immediately.
But I don’t think the US protest will be “truck drivers”. It’s antivaxxers.
The Republican Party is going to be antivaxx. It’s all but inevitable at this point. These are their people and they’re never going to be able to make a distinction between vaccines. We’re already seeing it with proposals to get rid of all vaccine mandates at schools, etc.
Good riddance. They can have them.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack:
Craig
@NotMax: up until 5 years ago there was a phone on the platform of the BART station by my house. I had the # and would call it to see who might pick up while waiting for my train.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
By 2024 Republicans politicians will have to pass a purity test on vaccines. They’ll have to be opposed.
Reap the whirlwind, assholes.
mrmoshpotato
@piratedan:
Something so important and nice, it’s worth saying it twice.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: It’s ok. Randi Rhodes had a clip. Her head exploded too.
Eta: Thank you for your concern.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
I have not seen a pay phone in decades. The last ones also had a physical phone directory book attached to it.
I cannot remember whether they are still delivering phone directories to homes and apartments. In California, some old law still on the books mandated it. They would simply pile up at the mailbox in apartment buildings.
I can no longer keep track of all the social and technology changes I’ve seen over the years.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Tom Q:
Don’t forget about inflation/gas prices; that’s killing Biden and the Dems right now too
JWR
@mrmoshpotato:
And a boot to the head! Can’t forget the boot to the head – and dick.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
So what happened to Republicans?
Well, little one, they were dumbshits who refused to take a life-saving vaccine just to make liberals mad, and enough of them died that the fascist party no longer exists as a political opponent.
Kay
Leading the US “trucker” protest- Orange County attorney and at-large crackpot (and Scientologist).
Definitely a revolt by the working classes.
No one has to pretend this is anything other than a fringe Right, planned event. They won’t stay fringe though! If we know anything about the Republican Party by now we know they’ll be including all of these people in their base. She’s already attended a Ron Johnson event.
No one has to play along. Media will, but ordinary people don’t have to.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Ah. Hahaha
Dopey-o
come sit next to me. for some reason, i recall that was an anthem at many of the anti-war demonstrations. I probably saw you there.
for all the LBJ bashing, can we discuss whether Nixon was the greatest American mass-murderer of the 20th century?
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
I think he would have won in a walk.
Jay
Flu Trux Klan,
Ice Choad Truckers,
anybody got anymore?
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
Think of the grifting opportunities. They’ll have quack tetanus cures and quack measles cures and they’ll all be “doing their own research”
“Most people have a mild illness, even if they do get German measles”
“Most people don’t die of lockjaw, even if they do contract tetanus”
This “most people” thing they do applies to just about every vaccine preventable disease. Have they figured that out yet?
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed. The most important thing is always the next election.
SiubhanDuinne
@Craig:
Sounds like the setup for a “meet cute” scene in a ‘90s Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks rom-com
James E Powell
@raven:
My high school basement band did a pretty good cover of “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” without an organ. Credit to my older sister’s record collection.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Since it’s an open thread, was wondering what you all thought of this quote from the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode, “The Drumhead”:
If i had to hazard a guess, this episode was informed by the Red Scare of the 1950s and McCarthyism. It seems to me like a certain brand of liberal a few decades ago believed in some kind of limitless form of freedom of speech; that censorship of any kind, including deplatforming, was beyond the pale (even tyrannical) and that evil ideas could be defeated with reason in the “marketplace of ideas”
At least, that’s my impression from this episode and this quote. Does it seem incredibly naive in light of recent events?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
They operate on the “principle” of “as long as it’s not me or anyone I know”
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): there are still plenty of liberals who think like this! I more or less do.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Do you think Donald Trump should have his Twitter account back, then?
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: I’m still cleaning up after my head explosion over tucker calling it a ” human rights protest.” This thing infuriates me just as much as Jan 6 did. As far as I’m concerned its an insurrection because most of this is fed by folks in the U.S.
Eta: with our gd right wing media cheering it on.
JWR
@Kay: Wow. This Leigh Dundas really gets around, don’t she? I wonder where she gets the money for her world travels, because it doesn’t look like she’s doing any sort of actual legal work.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: She seems nice.
Was she all the way across the country on business, or crackpottery?
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think that’s between Donald Trump and twitter.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Shitstain Canadians That Put Shithead Ted To Shame?
Btw, come get your boy.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
Many are too dead to do any figuring.
patrick II
@Starfish:
President Obama had created a cross-agency program to prepare for the next pandemic which included CDC employees working in various potential viral hotspots around the world. One of those CDC employees was a researcher working in the Hunan lab accused by RWNJ’s of creating the virus. That program was halted in a pique because Trump reversed everyth9ing Obama did and that American CDC employee was withdrawn from Hunan. It is almost certainly true that a Clinton administration would have been informed more quickly and more accurately than the Trump administration. It is also true that, politically, it might not have made a difference. Think back to how nuts the republicans and media went over one Ebola death under a Democratic president.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
But it’s still “censorship”, isn’t it? Whether it’s done by a private company or a government. I remember Nalvany criticizing Twitter for it last year on free speech grounds.
debbie
@Kay:
What will the quack treatment be for the scarring from chicken pox? ?
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
not our problem anymore, soon to be Cancun’s.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: These days a Russkiy honeypot would pick up the phone.
Jay
@debbie:
3M ( not branded 3M) scrubbing pads infused with muriatic acid and aloe.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Twitter has the right to say what happens on their property, just like you and I do. Free association and property rights aren’t censorship.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That is a particularly American perspective on freedom of speech and the preservation of democracy. There are other traditions, like that of West Germany, informed by their experience with Nazi Germany and the power of The Big Lie.
I’m not qualified to judge, but it does seem that our “free speech fundamentalism” has its weaknesses. Ah, well.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Quite possible. Fucking Shithead Ted fled.
Another Scott
@Tom Q: I think there’s a lot to that.
But they went after Carter too, trying to find something hypocritical to hang on him. The press (FTFNYT especially) loved, loved, loved trying to find hypocrisy. Among Democrats anyway. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
Got called into the Orfice today, (Mgr).
“We” got 4 Voices of the Customer, yesterday. Normally we get maybe 6 a year.
All were about me, 3 great, one from a very PO “customer”.
Complained I wouldn’t rent him a tool.
Pointed out to the Store Mgr that the maskhole couldn’t wear a mask properly, refused the mandatory safety gear, so, having fully demonstrated his inability to operate the tool safely, I refused service.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: I’d call it anglo more than American but we definitely take it the furthest.
Subsole
@Viva BrisVegas:
And Carter.
Dukakis.
Mondale.
The last one they didn’t try it on was, what, Kennedy? (And I firmly believe that was solely because he got shot before they could.)
And even there they accused him of being a Vatican mole here to reduce us all to thralls of his Godless Roman Popery…
Dan B
@Brachiator: Agreed and I was just speculating. There is a good reason to believe that having good leaders improves the behavior and beliefs of a large set of the populace. Things may have balanced out or improved. There would have been much noise but it would not have come from the top.
Subsole
@JWR:
Honestly. We don’t have a free press. We have an affirmative action program for vapid, fatuous, lazy, spoiled little ivybrat richkids whose only – and I do mean ONLY marketable skill is getting squeezed out of the right set of balls by their mother.
Smart enough to operate a word processor. Too fucking stupid to process words.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: What tool was the tool trying to rent?
CaseyL
@Chetan Murthy: It seems to me that Khrushchev‘s prophecy has come true: we’re being destroyed by our own freedoms. Freedom of speech gives us no legal/political recourse against propaganda and lies. Freedom of religion means we can’t outlaw fascistic cults. The right to not self-incriminate is, SFAIK, only used by criminals to avoid testifying.
And then there’s the freedom to own as many guns as one can lay one’s hands on…
oldgold
IMO LBJ was like the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
This is the answer I was looking for. Not only is it a particularly American perspective on freedom of speech, it’s one that’s very pre-internet. Yeah, there were some Usenet groups at the time (early 90s), but the internet wasn’t as omnipresent as it is now.
As for Germany, well, they’re not quite the success story as they would seem. I remember reading a news article a few years ago about how the police, military, and intelligence agencies have a bit of a fascist problem. Plus, AfD. And really, the US and it’s allies as well as the German democrats in the wake of WW2 encouraged the clean wehrmacht myth to build up the West German state as a buffer between the Soviet sphere and Western Europe
Subsole
@BlueGuitarist:
“Democracy dies in darkness.”
Yeah. And if you fuckers knew how to do anything besides dim the lights when a Republican looks at you, that would mean something…
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Wood chipper.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t really see what the internet has to do with it.
patrick II
@Another Scott:
At the beginning of his administration, referencing the dishonesty of the Nixon administration, Carter said that “I will never lie to you”. The press spent the next four years parsing every word he said looking for a speck of untruth. And since they defined “truth” they would find some.
A lie he would have been better off telling was to never say that he sometimes looked at women with lust in his heart.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Damn. Seriously? Wow.
frosty
@Jay: Yikes! Safety gear seems kind of important for that one.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: My personal theory is that under the leadership of Pres. Hillary Clinton, Covid deaths in the US would have been kept under 300,000 … which would have been the worst disaster in US history for which she would been impeached if not prosecuted for crimes against humanity. The idea that the death toll would have been five times higher (at least) under Trump would have been dismissed as an absurd fantasy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
One could argue that given social media is such a major venue people use to make their voices heard these days, that shouldn’t be the case. Also, that private corporations unaccountable to anyone shouldn’t have that much power over what we say
Here’s a comment on Reddit I came across once that addresses this:
Subsole
@debbie: And many others besides.
And therein lies the hell of it all.
Philbert
@Kay: at this point I’m ok with them refusing any medical care at all.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): the correct remedy to such a problem would be limiting the size of said corporations, not restricting free expression. The problem, if there is a problem we want the government to address, is that they’re big, not that Joe Rogan or whoever is allowed on them.
Dan B
@Chetan Murthy: Yes. The US has not yet been through a war where our democracy was replaced by a brutal dictatorship. Not yet. If we cannot find a way to prosecute calls to lawlessness we will eventually find ourselves in an unstoppable insurrection, if we haven’t already crossed the Rubicon. There’s an idea that regulating speech that we will crush our innovation and lose our superiority in many fields. I await the experiments to prove this concept. In the meantime China is experimenting with ways to be creative in an authoritarian framework. They seem to be making progress although finding credible accounts is challenging.
Another Scott
ICYMI, STATNews today:
It’s important to be careful and understand the evidence.
And masking and vaccination (and boosters) for those eligible continue to be vital as long as we have firestorms of community spread.
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
@Tom Q:
I lack your faith in these people, because their behavior over the last 20 years have left me no hook on which to hang it.
Dan B
@Jay: A chemist got his shirt cuff pulled into a Banbury Mill – two steam heated rollers – at the lab. Because of not following safety protocols his arm was pulled in and he died. Young man.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
The argument goes that censoring Joe Rogan for whatever reason, whoever does it, government or private entity, is wrong. At least, that’s what I took the Picard quote to mean. Even if social media companies were small, it wouldn’t matter
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: Probablybecause the internet has made the spread of false information go exponential. We have moved into an era that is not like the previous but our thinking has remained in the older paradigm. There are fewer brakes on propagating lies for evil intent. There were a few more hurdles.
Subsole
@Kay:
Eh. They’ll just lie. Like they’re doing right now. I mean…the Fox anchors ain’t the ones dying – it’s the a.m. hate-jockeys and the audience members that’re dropping like flies.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
post war there was a ton of “whitewashing” of Nazi’s by the Allies to rebuild Germany post war, and to use them for their own purposes in the Cold War. Both East and West.
In the late 60’s West Germany really made an effort at de-Nazification.
Post Soviet collapse, Germany backslid, as there were lot’s of ex-Nazi’s in East Germany, less de-Nazification, all for “German Unity”,
The German Nazi parties learned where for the most part, the “lines” are, like the Dog Whistle Rethugs,
And of course, both the Military and Policing tend to attract people with Authoritarian tendencies.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): And yet I remember being taught that yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre was most assuredly not protected speech.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Dan B:
I wouldn’t find them credible either. I’ve read that Xi has made the Chinese government far more rigid and less resilient as he’s centralized power around himself. Saw an article a few weeks ago about some housing bubble brewing in China that could be very bad news for them (and the rest of the world ofc). If the Chinese economy ever goes down the tubes, that will eliminate a big reason why the Chinese people tolerate the CCP
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I dunno man. We aren’t talking about a public square here. It’s not censorship if I don’t invite a nazi to my birthday party. But it would be if a nazi can’t get a permit to have a birthday party in the park. Web 2.0 sites feel more like public squares than most spaces that came before, but they’re still private clubhouses.
Hell, actual private clubhouses can be whites-only if they want to. It’s shitty, but it’s not censorship.
I very much doubt the quoted judge would have thought clubhouses were the same as parks.
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: I believe we need both. It does not take more than a smaller, more malign, Facebook to overthrow democracy. There are right wing websites doing that right now. The question is are we too late? Will we fix the problem after the chaos or think it through, and act, before.
Major Major Major Major
@Dan B: how small does a website have to be before Donald Trump is allowed to have an account?
piratedan
@Subsole: and that’s why the Texas power grid is under threat, n’est pas?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Dan B:
That’s precisely it. The speed and scope of the open internet has made disseminating disinfo and propaganda much easier and hence much more dangerous.
Makes you wonder what would’ve happened during the Cold War if we had Twitter and Facebook analogs. Perhaps Soviet disinfo campaigns would’ve been more effective without all the media gatekeepers and other barriers
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I honestly don’t know how true this is! It’s made it more visible but I really don’t think people are more misinformed than they were thirty years ago. The nineties were weird too! Like when was this golden age of everybody knowing which way was up?
Jay
@Dan B:
rushing on a restaurant reno. Could only work the site from 9pm to 6am. In Kamloops, restaurants make their “nut” from late May to early September. Early spring, late fall and winter are dead.
Trying to get the guy open in time, ( amazing Indian food),
got sloppy with a router with a 1/2 inch bit, ran it over the back of my left hand. Tendons and nerves gone.
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: I have a feeling that Goku and I are thinking about how to draw some lines so that Nazi’s could have a birthday party but not call for attacking or harassing people. We’ve got growing problems of groups fomenting violent disruption with few consequences and a free speech concept that has managed to make calls to blockades and attacks easier. We don’t seem to have enough lawyers, courts, sheriffs, police, etc. to deal with, or slow, the speed with which another set of right wingers spring up and call for more attacks. There is no effective means with the First Amendment as it now viewed to regulate the massive asteroid that is the right wing hate being hurled at us. This cannot be stopped with partial measures. We may go to far but it’s more likely that will be corrected quickly than a full blown fascist movement in control of this country. We need to have discussions about many solutions. One is unlikely to be enough.
Subsole
@debbie: Silly putty.
Major Major Major Major
@Dan B: I think nazis should be allowed to have websites. Do you? Not trolling, I can’t figure it out from what you wrote. Because we already have laws against inciting violence and stuff.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
there are a crapload of “sloppy” takes on China, for a bunch of “economic pundit” and “political pundit” reasons.
there was a small fishing port city north of Beijing, that China built a high speed railroad to, and 3.5 million “empty apartments”, over a decade ago.
The railroad now also hauls high speed freight, there is a housing shortage, and it’s a “bedroom” community to Beijing.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Or a horror movie thing….
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: Precisely. Smaller can be a component of the solution but it is not the only facet of the solution(s). If Donald Trump has a website that grows like crazy how large may it get. That’s not addressing the core problem. If there are three RWNJ websites that are much smaller than Facebook, as there are now, is it small enough if they only get 10,000 people with ammo and military training to D.C. or Wall Street, or it could be to the Port of Long Beach and Oakland. There are not enough police in these locations to deal with this type of assault. We have other means but can they be expedited in time?
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major:
Harrumph!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
I’m not sure what you mean. You say that there’s a housing shortage (which I would think is bad) and yet you’re saying it was some kind of success.
China’s population is going to start to shrink as well as age in about 20-30 years, putting pressure on both their economy as well as social services. This is a result of their one child policy being in place too long
Subsole
@piratedan: Heh. No. That would be due to the positively malebolgian cesspool that is the TX GOP.
I doubt he’s gonna make it, but I will flip my damn truck if Beto actually pulls it off and sends that scummy little fuck in the governor’s mansion back to Mynot…
Dan B
@Jay: It was a young guy at my father’s lab. It seemed to scar him emotionally for life.
Safety is for when you are not paying attention not for when everything is good.
Does your boss know of your accident?
BTW Sorry to hear about that. My partner is missing a middle finger from age four when his Dad let him near a table saw.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Phys.org:
Remember this gizmo is at L2, about a million miles away from Earth. Just amazing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Dude, there isn’t a take on free speech that doesn’t have it own issues. My view is that, if one is going to err, it is better the err in favor more and freer speech.
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: I have a feeling that the laws against inciting violence are a bit too narrow and enforcement is underfunded, and too easily turned into a Joe Mc Carthy thought / secret police. My childhood nightmares, from the 50’s and 60’s were of being pursued by an unseen, unknown, police that were going to lock me up for no known reason. It’s a narrow thread to thread.
Gretchen
Bump admits that there were several different Clinton email stories, but doesn’t feel any culpability for failing to explain them to his readers. Clinton’s private email server for State Department business, attempts by Russia to hack the actual State Department email server, Wikileaks hacking and release of Clinton campaign staffers emails, which didn’t involve Clinton at all, Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which maybe had more emails, but turned out not to, but Jim Comey had to tell us that maybe, nope, there were more emails. And no mention at all about how Clinton did exactly the same as Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, avoiding the clunky, hackable State Department server. He admits that there was a complicated story, and they punted, just publishing MORE CLINTON EMAILS!!!! Over and over and over.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
You are aware of whence the title originates, aren’t you?
Applies to courts-martial, which are a different procedure than regular criminal or civil trials.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
the US built the Interstate Highway system back when less than 20% of Americans owned or operated a motor vehicle.
Good thing you guy’s arn’t maintaining it because it’s not really needed anymore.//
for 20 years all the so called “pundits” were chattering about China’s “ghost cities”,
Most of them are now full and are facing housing shortages.
”You build it, and they will come.”
once upon a time in the West, we built for the future, now we have a hard time paying to maintain the past.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Dan B:
I also have a feeling this is why Trump isn’t in jail for inciting a riot for his actions on January 6th
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
None of that changes the fact that the PRC is facing a demographic crisis in a few decades because of their own policies
Jay
@Dan B:
I was the “boss”,
independent contractor, now I am an employee.
it was more about “enforcing safety”. In 30 years, I got sloppy twice. The first was a nick, the second was career ending.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I fear you and Jay are talking past each other. And … you’ve moved the goalposts. Jay addressed your original issue. He might be wrong about it, but your original issue had very little to do with demographics.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
don’t count on it.
Remember all the “hot takes” about a China War, because of “surplus males, testosterone” over a decade ago, that didn’t happen because the few hundred thousand surplus males aged out and didn’t become online Male Rights Activists or Incels.
Not quite the same thing as in the US, not because of 1 child policies, or gender selection, but instead, raising assholes.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): China’s birth rate is the same as America’s nowadays, fyi.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
It’s not media pundits saying that China’s population is facing demographic decline, it’s actual experts saying so. It won’t happen overnight, but it’s going to start having an effect in a few decades. There will be too few workers supporting too many retiree
Here’s a good Guardian article on the subject
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): link borked.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Perhaps I did. My general point is that China isn’t invincible and frankly it’s not that superior to the West. They have their own problems, and on balance, far worse than many Western countries
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
so basically, the US.
you know there is this thing called “productivity”, right.
China isn’t the cheap labour market, no VA it was even 5 years ago.
Gary, a co-worker, gave notice, and is going home to China. We pay him $17.25 (CDN) in a city where $1.5 million buys a crack house and they have agreed to pay him $22.90 ( CDN, starting, plus benifits, a plus relocation costs) in a city where $150k buys a 4 bedroom, 2500 sq foot, 2 bathroom house.
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, and?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
??? I works for me when I click on it. It’s a Google AMP link, maybe that’s why?
Try this
Major Major Major Major
@Jay: and all he has to do is live in an Orwellian dictatorship!
Canada should build more housing.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Good for Gary. Hope he enjoys living in a totalitarian police state where he has no choice in his nation’s leaders. Oh, and are currently carrying out a genocide
ETA: I hope I’m not coming across as an ass, Jay. That’s not my intent just to be clear
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): OK, I skimmed the article. Nowhere in it, did I find any implications for economic growth. And on that point, I’ve read a number of posts over at Brad Delong’s place, where he points out that all the doomsaying about this depends on insufficient productivity increases, or on a refusal of the wealthy to share the pie. Sure, China might not become a sufficiently-rich country to manage taking care of its aged. But they’re doing everything they can to make sure they meet that goal.
Something else: I’m not fan of authoritarians. I would never live in China. But I think it’s intresting to contrast China’s approach to Covid, with that of every other country. What China is demonstrating, is “state capacity”. That is, the power to mobilize resources across the noation in a concerted push to achieve predetermined goals. And this is in marked contrast to us and many other Western nations, where (e.g. Canada) we’re literally unable to stop terrorists from jamming-up the nation’s capital. Marked contrast. Nobody knows how this all shakes out. But I for one think that Xi is making a smart bet, that China will emerge with enormous worldwide credibility (on top of being the factory of choice for the world) for their having beaten Covid without mass death.
Sure, they’re not perfect. Sure, they might fail. But I think they’re far more formidable than you give them credit for.
Dan B
@Omnes Omnibus: I have a feeling that more free speech is about to be tested. It feels to me that free speech constrains some law enforcement but if you are a minority in this country free speech means nearly nothing for your right to peaceably assemble. Flash bangs, pepper spray, etc. It boils down to equal justice and enforcement. So I’m afraid of reduced freedom of speech and excessively free speech. But the shortfalls of regulation and enforcement is distressing. When a large number of law enforcement have been captured by propaganda saturating social media.
Where is the root that can be uprooted or at least guided away from disaster?
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: On the subject of “state capacity” I think the acoup.blog blog by Bret Deveraux about ancient military history is relevant. He’s just finished writing a series about ancient fortifications, from Roman times thru the Renaissance. And one thing he returns to again-and-again, is this concept of “state capacity”: what can a state actual mobilize to achieve ends like protecting its citizenry ?
Over at LG&M, somebody remarked
The incapacity of our state is frightening.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy:
I don’t think Xi’s COVID-zero obsession is going to go too well for them.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
In the above article I linked to, experts address China’s efforts to address the crisis as being “band-aids”, unlikely to actually address the root problems.
SCMP: China population: demographic window of opportunity ‘will shut soon’ as births drop, ageing crisis deepens
The above article is paywalled for me now for some reason, but it mentions something about the population decline affecting the economy
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
nobody is invincible, no nation is perfect.
it’s a tough choice, Uighur in China, Black in America, Indigenous in Canada.
Not anywhere close to the actual lived experience.
Marion came into the store today, “escorted” by a Cop, I was on a break, got called on the link, cut my coffee bread short. Minor traffic stop, ( maybe). She either forgot, misplaced or lost her ID. Donno yet.
Cop would not take her bank card, credit card or any other stuff as ID.
She talked him into coming to my work, as proof of ID, three blocks away.
The young associate, because of the Cop, was freaking out a little.
So, I came back.
Marion has a indigenous “Wymmen’s” handyman service, a regular customer, on file.
so I identified her, backed up her address and details, and the Cop asked me how I knew it was actually “her”,
I pointed out the fact that I see her every week, that she has an amazing Davidson Box Print tattoo on her arm that is line for line perfect compared to the one at the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
First time I ever used my White Male Privilege card, knowingly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Just wanted to say, it’s good seeing you again around these parts. Thanks for the discussion : )
@Chetan Murthy:
@Jay:
That goes for you two, too : )
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan B: Whenever speech has been limited in this country, whose speech is it that has been limited? Minorities. Unusual viewpoints. Things that are different. It is my firm belief that any restrictions on speech will always be weaponized against the downtrodden and minorities.
Also, I don’t believe free speech means that one can say what one wants without consequences. One is free to say defamatory things, but one should be prepared to pay damages. One can use the N-word but can’t be upset if others find one racist. And so on.
gene108
The media’s over coverage of her emails is simple to explain. Just try to understand most journalists are lazy.
They were being spoon fed news from Gowdy and other Republicans on that committee. All they had to do to get a scoop was wait for a Republican staffer to drop them a text on the latest dirt. The stories just wrote themselves from there.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
And that’s a valid POV. The problem comes along though with things like QAnon and foreign (and domestic) disinfo campaigns. I’m not really sure how to fix that
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, I know it is a valid point of view. The problem with freedom of speech issues is that there is no perfect way to handle things.
Soprano2
@Kay: I’ve always thought they did everything they could to tank her because the thought of having to cover President Hillary for 4 years filled them with horror.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
there are a bunch of pundits pointing out that “natural immunity + sino pharm leaves China vulnerable to a Covid explosion,
on the other hand, more people have died of Covid in BC over the past two years, even though we have 1:100th of the population.
Yeah, China can’t go all “live with Covid,BS”, with out it being an utter mess,
No different than the rest of us other than having billions of people at risk.
BC gave up on test and trace at just over 1,000. China does that every 15 minutes.
gene108
@Chetan Murthy:
The PRC has been able to martial state power and citizens’ compliance, since 1949. From the The Great Leap Forward, to the Cultural Revolution, to the One Child policy, the Chinese people have endured humanitarian disasters by the government’s ability to martial “state capacity”.
The COVID-19 response maybe the first time using their “state capacity” hasn’t led to a humanitarian disaster.
Also, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have done well limiting the spread of COVID, so democracies can do it too, if citizens buy into the idea of civic duty.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): right back atcha
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: If I were Xi, I would be keeping the zero covid strategy in place, and pushing my scientists to create an mRNA vaccine (if necessary, just reverse-engineer one of the West’s) or heck, Corbevax, whatever, and vaccinate their entire population.
And IIRC, China is the only country where the economy actually grew during the first pandemic year.
I *get* that they can’t keep this up forever with the Sinopharm vaxx (it’s just not very good, and zippo against Omicron). But they don’t have to, if they can manufacture a new one. And there are certainly enough candidates all around the world to choose from.
Chetan Murthy
@gene108: I agree with everything you wrote, esp. the last part. Two thoughts:
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
in China, it’s an upper middle class wage, one income, buy a house, raise a family, like it was here in until the late 70’s,
here in YVR, it covers at the most, rent and food, for 2.
Gary speaks 6 different Chinese dialects, which of course, we don’t pay him for.
His parents and siblings are here, but he also has family there.
YVR is a “global city”, which results in housing issues. The 1bdr I live in, is owned by a guy in Hunan, because for him, it’s a “good investment”. $15k down, mortgage payments that rent easily covers, 15% a year investment growth.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Well, you know, property is theft.
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Other countries are going to experience population declines sooner or later over the next 100 years. Declining population will be a new normal society will have to adjust to one of these days. The post WW2 era of rapidly expanding population has largely been reversed.
Outside of some countries in Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a couple of countries in South and Central America, most countries in the world are approaching birth rates closer to replacement,, 2.1 births per woman, or below.
The global fertility rate is 2.4 births per woman.
World Bank Data from 2019
Major Major Major Major
@Jay:
Tokyo manages. I’m sure there are plenty of others. Housing shortages are often a choice. Especially in North America.
Why is Montreal so cheap, actually? Do whatever they do.
Omnes Omnibus
Put mayo on hamburgers?
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: yum!
gene108
@Jay:
The average Chinese person’s purchasing power, how much he/she can buy in goods, services, etc., is higher than an average Americans.
Chinese don’t earn as much, on average, but the cost of living is lower, so it works in their favor.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t think any serious person thinks China is invincible or superior to democratic countries, which include non-Western nations.
China has become more powerful and wealthier over the last 40 years. A remarkable turnaround.
The problem with assessing China, like other authoritarian governments, is they do not allow a free press, unlike democratic countries. We see the dirty laundry piling up in democratic countries daily.
China keeps theirs out of sight as much as possible, which leads to the impression there’s nothing wrong there. It’s hard to figure out what problems may lie ahead looking in from the outside.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, ffs.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
$1,350 in Montreal, with much “older stock”, 1 bedroom.
$1,500 in YVR with most rentals 20 years newer and a minimum wage, sick time, benefits amounting to roughly $15k more a year.
Montreal ain’t “cheap”.
Jay
@gene108:
we get a ton of “dirt” on China,
a crapload are “wrong”, written by our “trickle down” press.
over the past 20 years, I have yet to see a punditocracy “take” on China come “true”,
On the bright side, I can now, (YVR not really winter), buy salt in 50kilo bags,…
Jay
@gene108:
yeah, Gary’s wage plus PP disparity in China, equals a Store Managers job in YVR, and he’s just a junior tool tech.
Did the math. For me, it would be equivalent to $343,298 a year. With profit sharing and all other benefits , I make less than $50k a year.
Dan B
@Jay: Very discouraging that there would be moral filters, however inadequate, when the next step is nothing.
No one benefits. Even though the chaos, like Putin/Trump istitists, believe there will be paradise.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
My point is, people have these fantastical notions of how much better things would have worked out if Hillary had won. That counterfactual frequently gets expressed in this space. I agree that it’s not useful or entertaining, but I think it needs rebutting, and that’s what I’m doing.
So I’m glad we’re on the same page here.
raven
@Starboard Tack: LBJ
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kay: Yup I have former friends who informed me in2016 that they just couldn’t vote for That Bitch. They could not tell me one reason why beyond, Well she only stayed with Bill because she wanted to run for the Senate. Jesus Christ I hate people some days…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@lowtechcyclist: there was always a small part of me that was happy for Hillary the she lost- if she had won the Trumpists would have done everything possible to invalidate the election, while the media would have spent four years printing shit about her and her administration. We would have be better off by a lot during the pandemic, But they would have done their best to torpedo any mandates she put in place because of course they would…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@gene108: yes birth rates are declining. And some countries response is to encourage their citizens to have more childre, instead of changing their policies on immigration and instead of helping their poorest citizens have a better quality of life…
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): but that is what is starting to happen to the US NOW. Our baby boom is retiring. It’s been predicted my whole life. I don’t know why it’s not being brought up as a partial cause of the current worker shortage. I speculate that a disaster predicted too long in the future is never actually expected. The experts were crying wolf too soon. So we are going to have the problem before China. Also Japan already did. China will have time maybe to figure it out.
Kathleen
@Subsole: I love this! I know I’m uber late to thread but I just had to post my reaction!