According to this article Michelle Obama is now the most admired woman in America, having overtaken Hillary Clinton who held that honor for the previous 16 years.
Sorry, but I have to ask if Hillary was the most admired woman in American for all that time how in the heck did she lose the election to the likes of the odious Donald Trump?
Okay, I think everybody might agree that Michael Cohen is an idiot but was he really stupid enough to travel to Prague with what must have been a fake passport to hide his identity but took along his personal cell phone and turned it on while he was there?
I suppose stranger things have happened.
But it must be true....
McClatchy reported the development based on four separate sources with independent contacts in unnamed intelligence circles.
Intercepts from an Eastern European intelligence service have reportedly established that around the same time Cohen-linked phone signals were pinging among Czech cell phone towers, a group of Russians were intercepted in a conversation noting Cohen's presence in Prague.
Now that the Democrats are in charge of things I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of it.
dualstow wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 2:18 pm
Re: Hillary- that's a fair question!
Re: Cohen- he's more than an idiot. He's a morally bankrupt piece of trash.
Re. your tagline: or a mediator.
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
I'm serious. I listen to the following: Tom Hartmann, Rush, NBC, FOX, and CBS, in general, on TV and radio.
They all have their "bias" but out and out lying and being fake?
Case in point, today:
From Fox: House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is spending the holidays vacationing in Hawaii, as a partial government shutdown grinds on with no resolution in sight.
From Wash Post: Trump retreats from public view as government shutdown continues over border wall fight
Different bias, both true. Both generate a mindset for and against.
Can you give me some examples of totally fake news from big outfits like NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX?
-----------------
Trump is his own fake news. What about the comments to the troops in Iraq, that were completely bogus:
"..you just got one of the biggest pay raises you’ve ever received ... You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years — more than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.
"They had plenty of people that came up. They said, ‘You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3 percent. We could make it 2 percent. We could make it 4 percent.’ I said, ‘No. Make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’ Because it’s been a long time. It’s been more than 10 years. It’s been more than 10 years."
Cortopassi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:19 pm
I'm serious. I listen to the following: Tom Hartmann, Rush, NBC, FOX, and CBS, in general, on TV and radio.
Why? That's like watching day to day market gyrations, trying to extrapolate the next direction and constantly changing your allocation as a result.
Go to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/, pick a couple of sources from the 'least biased' category, and take your news from there.
I will look at that. I listen to both sides to create (hopefully) my own reasonably unbiased opinion.
Well, do you really expect Trump to understand subtle nuances like the difference between an out and out fake news story, and a story that is essentially true but carefully spun and liberally sprinkled with opinion, created to support a specific agenda.
For the most part, the facts reported in written material from major news networks are true, but their stories are generally about a lot more than those facts. Sometimes you might not realize you're being manipulated, but there are plenty of examples done with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. I've come across several instances of articles from major news sources - including Fox and CNN - where the title strongly implies something that is absolutely contradicted by the facts in the article itself. Hilarious. The facts reported are true, but that doesn't matter to the people who only glanced at the title and didn't read deep enough into the article to detect the deception.
There's a Robert Heinlein novel that goes into some detail about subtle media manipulation - I think it was a novelette actually, about a religious dictatorship and a successful resistance movement. He even described it as a profession with a name attached - "psychometrician" or something like that. Scary stuff, and most prescient.
WiseOne wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 10:43 am
There's a Robert Heinlein novel that goes into some detail about subtle media manipulation - I think it was a novelette actually, about a religious dictatorship and a successful resistance movement. He even described it as a profession with a name attached - "psychometrician" or something like that. Scary stuff, and most prescient.
It may be 'Farmer in the Sky'. Haven't read it, but I'm a huge fan of JOB: A Comedy of Justice.
Apparently, this psychometrician thing is real, though.
There's no doubt I get manipulated, and I do it knowingly. I let myself get manipulated by Rush not that long ago, and I currently let myself get manipulated by This Week and Meet the Press.
But I do it willingly. I have seen enough, regardless of what good Trump accomplishes, that I hate his style. Substance might be good, style sucks.
Cortopassi wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 11:17 am
I have seen enough, regardless of what good Trump accomplishes, that I hate his style. Substance might be good, style sucks.
I’m convinced that style is all that a large portion of America wants.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure."
Thought about that quote from Lincoln in the Gettysburg address as I was reading an article about somebody who started a GoFundMe page to finance tunnels under "Trump's Border Wall".
Hopefully, with the current showdown going on between Trump and the democrats over funding for the wall we are still a long ways off from any kind of violent confrontation but who would have thought 10 or 20 years ago that the issue which could end up tearing us apart as a nation would be whether or not we are going to have open borders?
Maybe I'm being melodramatic but I'm really starting to wonder what America is going to look like in what's left of the rest of my life - about 20-30 years if I live to be 90-100 years old. I do hope the SS checks keep coming but thanks to the PP I have some gold coins stored away.
That's a sketchy piece of fake news, having to change Christmastime to on or before Christmas, but I'll give it to you. I think you can hopefully/probably find something more substantial to make your case.
I would say their bias caused them to run the story 7 hours before Christmas was officially over, assuming it would be true. I don't think it was intentionally fake news, but the trigger was pulled too early.
dualstow wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:48 pm
I want to hear Libertarian666 say something he doesn't like about Trump, and it can't be something tricky like 'he's not Trumpy enough'.
Sure, that's easy.
I don't like his support for asset forfeiture.
I don't like the fact that he hasn't told the FDA to deschedule pot.
I don't like how many generals he has appointed to his cabinet.
Other than that, I can't think of much else offhand, but I could easily be overlooking something. Do you have anything specific you want to ask about?
I don't like the fact that he hasn't told the FDA to deschedule pot.
I don't like how many generals he has appointed to his cabinet.
Other than that, I can't think of much else offhand, but I could easily be overlooking something. Do you have anything specific you want to ask about?
That’s good, thank you!
Those are specific.
Tech,
As an anarchist, you have no adverse-to-Trump position on...
- Beyond asset forfeiture, his serious anti-civil-libertarian stance on most issues (outside of being spied on himself, of course)?
- his position on free trade?
- his anti-immigration stance?
To me, Trump seems like a died-in-the-wool statist. I'm surprised any anarchist would like him unless they're extremely partial to tax cuts. "Librul tears" can only taste so good. Right?
As an anarchist, you have no adverse-to-Trump position on...
- Beyond asset forfeiture, his serious anti-civil-libertarian stance on most issues (outside of being spied on himself, of course)?
- his position on free trade?
- his anti-immigration stance?
To me, Trump seems like a died-in-the-wool statist. I'm surprised any anarchist would like him unless they're extremely partial to tax cuts. "Librul tears" can only taste so good. Right?
Please be more specific about his anti civil libertarian positions.
As for free trade, he seems to be doing a pretty good job getting other countries to lower trade barriers.
And as for immigration, it’s well known among libertarians that a welfare state and open borders are incompatible.
Some so-called "libertarian" statists make a compromise on the immigration topic because they care more about the economic freedom of their class than the freedom of certain groups to travel and work as they please.
Anarchists usually reject any authority by the state. Even if a statist is promising them more desirable outcomes by using the state. If some freedom is incompatible with some statist policy, then that doesn't mean the freedom needs to be sacrificed via state force, if you're a principled anarchist.
I'll have to get back to you on more specifics on the civil lin issues in a bit.
And it's by no means clear to me that he's causing progress on trade as all I've heard argue that is partisan conservative boobs. But maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
Trump reminds me of my Dad. He was a Republican and mostly conservative but you really couldn't nail him down to any consistent political philosophy based on the things he said. He just didn't think things through that way. Probably a lot like most of us.
boglerdude wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 12:34 am
> get rid of the welfare state
Let people die?
Is this question meant sincerely?
People will always die. There will never be enough of "other peoples' money (or labor)" to provide food, shelter, healthcare, etc, for every human in the world. So where do you draw the line?
Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 30, 2018 1:09 pm
The best solution to immigration, but one that no one is even proposing, is to get rid of the welfare state.
You do realize the welfare state is a very minor cause at best of immigration, right? Far and away the largest causes of immigration are large scale violence and catastrophic environmental failure. The former is the usual cause starting in the 20th century and both have been a consistent theme of recorded human history with the latter being a simple thing like drought, crop failure etc.
So what's the relevance now...most illegal immigrants south of the border are flowing from Central American countries whose states are no longer states that operate at any level other than violence and corruption.
P.S. Anarchism is a really, really, really stupid philosophy normally espoused by people surrounded and protected by a state who haven't taken the time to check out history or understand how humans in groups actually operate and behave normally. This is not the same as saying all states are good and an "evil" state can't wreak immense havoc on other states and the state's citizens. However, the vast majority of humanity prefers to be in a state with the physical safety they provide. Any benefits above safety are a nice bonus. The political literature of the late 1600s to the early 1800s is absolutely phenomenal on this point. Some great minds have hashed this topic over thoroughly.
There is no possible way you can make a good case for anarchism without also assuming utopianism...and most people intuitively understand the problem with that assumption.
