Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

I assume folks have seen the Kelly - Gingrich exchange?  The former speaker is accusing Faux News of being a main stream media outlet giving biased reporting...  in favor of the Democrats?

But it's more about understanding the gender issues.  Gingrich wasn't quite as blatant in his sexist attitudes as Trump himself often is, but he showed Trump isn't the only tone deaf Republican.

Not entirely sure what to think of it.  I for one don't like their equivalency of consensual acts with sexual assault.  They just don't seem to get it.

[Eric the Green]

(10-26-2016, 02:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Like all other demagogues, Donald Trump is all things to all people. There's nothing liberal about him. There's nothing Christian about him. We liberals are the first to recognize him for the political fraud that he is, and he has broken with us forever. He wants us irrelevant forever. Conservative Christians will find out how un-Christian he is should he be elected, and very fast.

I would far prefer to see Mitt Romney getting a Reagan-1984 win of re-election than see Donald Trump get elected barely.

America really needs some sane, humane conservatism, the sort that recognizes that the common man needs something worthy of conserving. Like bank accounts and low-cost undergraduate education.  That sane conservatism promotes small-scale entrepreneurialism with tax laws that favor small-scale business over vertically-integrated, monopolized trusts and cartels. That sane conservatism promotes high-quality education that keeps promotes rational thought and selfless conscience that allows people to recognize demagogues like Donald Trump for the untrustworthy liars that they are instead of wish-fulfillment.

Take nothing for granted. Donald Trump tells us that the Democrats will rig the 2016 Presidential election. That should warn all of us of ho0w he intends to be elected. He will need to rig the election to become President.

I pray for the best. We are in some rough times. And I hope you're OK too

[Eric the Green]

Gentlemen, it's time. I think we could all use a debate break!





https://youtu.be/gEMWLpEf3cE?t=6m46s

[Eric the Green]

The biggest liar in US political history. A chronicle of his third debate lies.

[Odin]

(10-26-2016, 12:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-26-2016, 10:56 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It took me a second to notice how ridiculous this is:

Did he consult Rachel Dolezal to find out how to add some black people to the crowd? You know -- fake tans, cafe-au-lait to teak, and fake Afros?

Dang it, I wanted to do the Rachel Dolezal reference!

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-27-2016, 01:23 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The biggest liar in US political history. A chronicle of his third debate lies.

Gingrich in his recent "interview" with Kelly kept pushing the fact that Americans live in two different realities.  In specific, in Gingrich's reality Trump is doing pretty good in the polls.  I've been saying similar things about partisans being able to live in cocoons,  finding news outlets and support groups who will tell one only what one wants to hear.  If one wants to deceive one's self, the tools are readily available.

This does not by any means imply that all cocoons are equal in merit.  The above is a pretty good review of the validity of Trump's reality.

[The Wonkette]

(10-27-2016, 08:02 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Gingrich in his recent "interview" with Kelly kept pushing the fact that Americans live in two different realities.  In specific, in Gingrich's reality Trump is doing pretty good in the polls.  I've been saying similar things about partisans being able to live in cocoons,  finding news outlets and support groups who will tell one only what one wants to hear.  If one wants to deceive one's self, the tools are readily available.

This does not by any means imply that all cocoons are equal in merit.  The above is a pretty good review of the validity of Trump's reality.

I actually heard him speak last month; I was maybe 30 feet from him.  I attended a day-long seminar which examined welfare reform after 20 years.  It was held at the Brookings Institute and was a series of panel discussions on the impact of welfare reform on children, family formation, and work.  It concluded with a session with Newt Gingrich and Bruce Reed (Bill Clinton's domestic policy advisor) reminiscing about the politics surrounding the enactment of welfare reform.  The audience consisted of academics, researchers, and government employees who have policy-wonk type jobs (like yours truly).

In this discussion, Gingrich was very complimentary to both Clintons, and appeared to be very reasonable.  He certainly knew how to play his audience.  I was entertained and charmed.  Scumbags can be quite charming.

Here is the link to the seminar.  https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-20t...takeaways/

[pbrower2a]

Superficial charm is one of the hallmarks of a sociopath. Sociopaths need it. Good people can be honest about themselves even if such honesty is embarrassing. If I dated a woman I would have to warn her of my involuntary and permanent affair with Madame Asperger. No, that's not Ahs-pair-zhay. Newt Gingrich can put on a professorial show.

Did anyone think that honest-to-Quasimodo ogres do the real harm to us? No. The con artist must use some glib talent to convince us that his absurd business deal is a wise course of action. The child molester typically shows his victim some attention ("Oh, tell me about your Little League team!" -- real adults don't care about such when they can watch professional sports) and show him a little fun at first instead of telling the child that he is going to experience unimaginable pain and shame that no children should ever know. We dread the ogre but not the slimy character with a theatrical semblance of unreal goodness.

We know about Newt Gingrich and his questionable loyalty to women. When he tires of her he will ditch her as I might trade in a nine-year-old used car. But cars have no feelings; people do.

[Eric the Green]

Donald Trumpkin

[Eric the Green]

Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/...uth-o-met/

[Eric the Green]

Woman accusing Trump of raping her at 13 cancels her plan to go public

The woman known as Jane Doe pulled out of a Los Angeles press conference where she was expected to reveal her identity, citing death threats

The anticlimax is the latest twist in an explosive, and so far unsubstantiated, claim that the Republican nominee raped Doe in 1994.

Thursday 3 November 2016 05.08 EDT Last modified on Thursday 3 November 2016 11.25 EDT

A woman who is suing Donald Trump for allegedly raping her as a child abandoned a plan to speak publicly on Wednesday, citing death threats.

The woman, known by the pseudonym Jane Doe, hid from media who were invited to her lawyer’s Los Angeles office for a press conference in which she was expected to reveal her identity.

Instead, her attorney, Lisa Bloom, cancelled the event in a brief, apologetic statement to a phalanx of cameras.

“Jane Doe has received numerous threats today as have all the Trump accusers that I have represented. She has decided she is too afraid to show her face. She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear. We’re going to have to reschedule. I apologize to all of you who came. I have nothing further.”

Hours earlier Bloom, a prominent attorney, stoked such anticipation with the announced press conference that her firm’s website crashed. With just six days to the election and polls showing a tightening race the stakes could scarcely be higher.

The anticlimax was the latest twist to the explosive and so far unsubstantiated claim that the Republican presidential nominee raped Doe in 1994 when she was 13 years old.

Doe has alleged the casino owner assaulted her on four occasions at parties in New York hosted by the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a friend of Trump whom she also accused of rape. A civil lawsuit is slated for an initial status conference in a New York district court on 16 December.

Trump has vehemently denied the accusations, calling them fabrications designed to smear him in the run-up to the 8 November election.

Doe filed a lawsuit in April which was dismissed for technical filing errors. She filed fresh lawsuits in June in New York and California.

The allegations have received less media attention than other claims of sexual assaults by Trump partly because they appeared to have been orchestrated by an eccentric anti-Trump campaigner with a record of making outlandish claims about celebrities.

A Guardian investigation this summer found that Norm Lubow, a former producer on the Jerry Springer TV show, has been associated in the past with a range of disputed claims involving the likes of OJ Simpson and Kurt Cobain.

The federal lawsuit alleged Trump sexually assaulted Doe in 1994 at Epstein’s Manhattan home and at other parties Epstein hosted on the Upper East Side. Epstein, an associate of the UK’s Prince Andrew, and who was convicted of underage sex crimes in Florida in 2008, has denied the allegations.

Thomas Meagher, a patent and intellectual property attorney, filed the lawsuit for Doe even though he said he had never been involved in a case of this kind before.

With Bloom coming on board Doe appeared – until the press conference fiasco – to have acquired considerable additional legal and media firepower.

The founder and owner of The Bloom Firm, which handles family, civil and criminal cases in California and New York, has in the past sued the Boy Scouts of America and the Los Angeles police department. Bloom hosts a Court TV talkshow and is a legal analyst for NBC News.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...blic-event

[Eric the Green]

The Lady and the Trump

"what a pussy" he calls Donald, not knowing how prescient he was.

[Eric the Green]

Remember the debates, America? Remember how you were going to vote after this?

[Bob Butler 54]

There is hope.  It's almost over.

[pbrower2a]

In case anyone has any residual doubt about whether to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

1. Deceit
2. Exploitative behavior
3. Lack of empathy
4. Exaggerated self-importance
5. Lack of remorse about wrong-doing
6. Recklessness
7. Superficial charm
8. Sexual predation
9. Extreme hypocrisy
10. Weakness of bonds with others

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

[pbrower2a]

Music that I will be playing after a Trump win:





Really, the whole Requiem mass.... as something very precious will have died 240 years after its appearance.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-04-2016, 11:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:



In case anyone has any residual  doubt about whether to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

1. Deceit
2. Exploitative behavior
3. Lack of empathy
4. Exaggerated self-importance
5. Lack of remorse about wrong-doing
6. Recklessness
7. Superficial charm
8. Sexual predation
9. Extreme hypocrisy
10. Weakness of bonds with others

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Good to see a few serious videos among the many late night comedian replays...

The stretch of the above video that gathered my interest was the lengthy shot of the picket line where Trump supporters were sincerely repeating why they were voting for Trump.  One of the more common reasons is that he "doesn't lie". 

Which is a joke.  The old yet applicable line is the question, "How do you know if Trump is lying?"

"His lips are moving."

One of my most oft repeated points about world views and values is how groups of people can live in alternate realities.  They can be thoroughly invested in entirely different ways of perceiving the world, quite sincerely, and be incapable of questioning their own beliefs or accepting facts that conflict with their beliefs.  I have favorite examples... conservatives encountering climate science and fundamentalists encountering evolution.  Whole branches of science are thrown out or disparaged.  The notion that Trump is a speaker of truth seems a more extreme example.

To a great extent you have to say this is human.  Humans have cultures, they buy into their cultures, and it is hard for anyone to honestly evaluate or cast aside deeply held beliefs.  The Establishment Right and Establishment Republican Media have been selling a good size part of the population on small government, low taxes and the southern strategy for decades.  At this point, the Establishment Right has failed to deliver on their policies and promises for decades.  Bush 43 was an utter failure.  Still, the deplorable wing of the Republican Base would rather blame the Establishment Republican politicians for Bush 43's failures and would rather not blame the policies that led to the failures.  Thus, the door has been left open for Trump to make the same old promises only more so to the same old base.

While a lot of bluer folk trust neither the promises nor the man who would perhaps implement them.

But I'm starting to look at the Republican media echo chamber as a grave problem.  They allow and encourage the alternate right echo chamber.  They make it possible for those into the Red world view to totally immerse themselves in the Red world view, to view everything Trump says as True, and everything that conflicts with their beliefs as the result of a corrupt right wing fixed rigged media establishment.  That picket line of sincerity is the essence of the divided and dysfunctional America.

In the days of Morrow and Cronkite there was a sense of duty and responsibility in reporting the news.  This seems to have been lost, replaced by a notion that ratings can be boosted by telling a certain targeted audience what they want to hear.  Faux News and the Alt Right media outlets are clearly visible as biased sources, assuming one has a Blue world view, assuming one isn't living inside of said alternate reality.

There are a lot of fact checking organizations around, and fact checking articles are regular features of many media outlets.  I believe one thing we have to do to break America out of its divided dysfunctional funk is to encourage and demand a lot more reality from our news media.  

It is far too easy for humans to live in distorted alternate realities created to manipulate the sheeple for power, profit and ratings.  I have been railing against partisan thinking by all sorts of partisans on this forum.  I'm equally dubious about red, blue, green, fundamentalist, marxist and restorationist partisans.  Heck, I was even angry at Virgil Saari for wanting to bring back the Stuart dynasty.  All will repeat their doctrines and refuse to listen and refuse to admit that they are not listening.  In this we fans of turning theory are little different from the sheeple of the Republican base. 

Just not sure what can be done with it.  Technology has given us many cable channels and more web pages.  All the editors and writers want a market share.  The easiest way go get such a share is to tell some group what they want to hear.  At some point the spin becomes propaganda, and the propaganda becomes full of lies.  This isn't entirely new.  It can't all be blamed on many cable TV channels and the Internet.  Still, the problem is getting worse.

I used to trust Walter Cronkite.  Everybody used to trust Walter Cronkite.  He's gone.  Everything he stood for is gone.

[pbrower2a]

(11-04-2016, 06:32 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-04-2016, 06:15 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-04-2016, 11:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In case anyone has any residual  doubt about whether to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

1. Deceit
2. Exploitative behavior
3. Lack of empathy
4. Exaggerated self-importance
5. Lack of remorse about wrong-doing
6. Recklessness
7. Superficial charm
8. Sexual predation
9. Extreme hypocrisy
10. Weakness of bonds with others

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

One of my most oft repeated points about world views and values is how groups of people can live in alternate realities.  They can be thoroughly invested in entirely different ways of perceiving the world, quite sincerely, and be incapable of questioning their own beliefs or accepting facts that conflict with their beliefs.  I have favorite examples... conservatives encountering climate science and fundamentalists encountering evolution.  Whole branches of science are thrown out or disparaged.  The notion that Trump is a speaker of truth seems a more extreme example.

To a great extent you have to say this is human.  Humans have cultures, they buy into their cultures, and it is hard for anyone to honestly evaluate or cast aside deeply held beliefs.  The Establishment Right and Establishment Republican Media have been selling a good size part of the population on small government, low taxes and the southern strategy for decades.  At this point, the Establishment Right has failed to deliver on their policies and promises for decades.  Bush 43 was an utter failure.  Still, the deplorable wing of the Republican Base would rather blame the Establishment Republican politicians for Bush 43's failures and would rather not blame the policies that led to the failures.  Thus, the door has been left open for Trump to make the same old promises only more so to the same old base.

While a lot of bluer folk trust neither the promises nor the man who would perhaps implement them.

But I'm starting to look at the Republican media echo chamber as a grave problem.  They allow and encourage the alternate right echo chamber.  They make it possible for those into the Red world view to totally immerse themselves in the Red world view, to view everything Trump says as True, and everything that conflicts with their beliefs as the result of a corrupt right wing fixed rigged media establishment.  That picket line of sincerity is the essence of the divided and dysfunctional America.

In the days of Morrow and Cronkite there was a sense of duty and responsibility in reporting the news.  This seems to have been lost, replaced by a notion that ratings can be boosted by telling a certain targeted audience what they want to hear.  Faux News and the Alt Right media outlets are clearly visible as biased sources, assuming one has a Blue world view, assuming one isn't living inside of said alternate reality.

There are a lot of fact checking organizations around, and fact checking articles are regular features of many media outlets.  I believe one thing we have to do to break America out of its divided dysfunctional funk is to encourage and demand a lot more reality from our news media.  

It is far too easy for humans to live in distorted alternate realities created to manipulate the sheeple for power, profit and ratings.  I have been railing against partisan thinking by all sorts of partisans on this forum.  I'm equally dubious about red, blue, green, fundamentalist, marxist and restorationist partisans.  Heck, I was even angry at Virgil Saari for wanting to bring back the Stuart dynasty.  All will repeat their doctrines and refuse to listen and refuse to admit that they are not listening.  In this we fans of turning theory are little different from the sheeple of the Republican base. 

Just not sure what can be done with it.  Technology has given us many cable channels and more web pages.  All the editors and writers want a market share.  The easiest way go get such a share is to tell some group what they want to hear.  At some point the spin becomes propaganda, and the propaganda becomes full of lies.  This isn't entirely new.  It can't all be blamed on many cable TV channels and the Internet.  Still, the problem is getting worse.

I used to trust Walter Cronkite.  Everybody used to trust Walter Cronkite.  He's gone.  Everything he stood for is gone.

I wholeheartedly agree. You know I never had to even think about it till I was warned that media warps the truth in America. It came as a shock to me. Media here just reports on the news and does not make everything political.

People are selecting their own realities in America. It is not surprising that people who have a surfeit of choices in entertainment and can choose what they consume as such with little discretion about the quality can do much the same withttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74oHhU5MDkh news. People can select a fascistic bent in the news if they so desire, and FoX News is there for them. America does not have much of a radical Left, so a Marxist bias in the news (and Marxism is heavily splintered on divides between Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. often at odds with each other) would have too tiny an audience for a cable channel.

Since you live in New Zealand you may be unaware of what fascistic propaganda sounds like in the English language.  Here is a documentary called "Outfoxed":





Note at the end the scathing review of FoX News by the great late television journalist Walter Cronkite.

FoX News is as slick journalism as anything else... but it is about as blatant propaganda as Pravda was in its heyday.

A study some years ago attempted to correlate what news sources Americans relied upon to whether they got an objective view of the Second Gulf War. All three of these questions are objectively answered "No!"

1. Did Saddam Hussein have an active program of acquiring or building weapons of mass destruction contrary to the sanctions of the United Nations at the time of the full American invasion of Iraq in 2003?

2. Was Saddam Hussein harboring terrorists?

3. Did most of the world approve of the American invasion of Iraq?

People who relied upon radio (especially National Public Radio), the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS, The Daily Show (paradoxically a comedic treatment of the news -- but comedy can be excellent analysis), or newspapers or their websites were highly likely to get it right. Regular viewers of CNN were about as good. Those who relied on the half-hour nightly news on the three major networks (which offer only about twenty minutes of news and about ten minutes of advertising) did worse. The 30-minute half-hour news program does not offer much in-depth news as does the full hour news on PBS which can telescope the length of a newscast to fit a relevant story.

Viewers of FoX News fared worst. FoX News is deadly-serious in its presentation of news, but it fits the news to its agenda. Its viewers watch much of it, but those viewers get very little objective news. They might as well be watching televised sports because at least they are not getting deceived by what they see.

[Galen]

(11-05-2016, 12:28 AM)taramarie Wrote: Has news in America always been like this? Always biased one way or another I mean.

It has always been biased, including the during the days of Cronkite back when I was very young.  There were only three major TV networks and they all pretty much sounded the same.  The newspapers, while more decentralized in many respects, got most of their national and international stories from UP or AP wire services just as they do now.  This is why the US probably had about as unified of a culture as it ever would through most of the last century.  That consensus started breaking down in the nineties and that trend has accelerated with the recession of 2008 and the lack of a real recovery, particularly in what is known as flyover country.

The situation with the advent of the internet is more like that of the nineteenth century and its many regional cultures.  I really don't see the US surviving in its current form due to this and the continuing economic stress due to the government living beyond its means.   In an effort to maintain the status quo it looks as if both wings of the same party, known to most people as Democrats and Republicans, have decided that war is necessary.  This is why much of the rhetoric about Russia sounds so much the like Cold War that I remember and prefer not to live through again.

To get a feel for the mood and the absurdity of it I would recommend watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.  I would also spend some time and get familiar with Russian history because Putin's behavior in response to the US driving NATO right up to their border will make much more sense.

[Galen]

(11-05-2016, 01:47 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-05-2016, 01:31 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-05-2016, 12:28 AM)taramarie Wrote: Has news in America always been like this? Always biased one way or another I mean.

It has always been biased, including the during the days of Cronkite back when I was very young.  There were only three major TV networks and they all pretty much sounded the same.  The newspapers, while more decentralized in many respects, got most of their national and international stories from UP or AP wire services just as they do now.  This is why the US probably had about as unified of a culture as it ever would through most of the last century.  That consensus started breaking down in the nineties and that trend has accelerated with the recession of 2008 and the lack of a real recovery, particularly in what is known as flyover country.

The situation with the advent of the internet is more like that of the nineteenth century and its many regional cultures.  I really don't see the US surviving in its current form due to this and the continuing economic stress due to the government living beyond its means.   In an effort to maintain the status quo it looks as if both wings of the same party, known to most people as Democrats and Republicans, have decided that war is necessary.  This is why much of the rhetoric about Russia sounds so much the like Cold War that I remember and prefer not to live through again.

To get a feel for the mood and the absurdity of it I would recommend watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.  I would also spend some time and get familiar with Russian history because Putin's behavior in response to the US driving NATO right up to their border will make much more sense.

That makes sense regarding consensus breaking apart in the 90s given what I am watching atm about fox news pushing a right wing agenda starting late 80s thanks to a Murdoch spokesperson. I would love it if there was a video on the evolution of this unraveling on the left side too. Would be the same story I imagine but I wonder who are the people who own the left wing propaganda media? Anyway this is all fascinating given I have never felt this here in my own country. I know what the left wing/right wing stand for and also those sort of in the middle like NZ First and I have never felt that they actually influence the media. Certainly not in the idealistic way that America does. I would say they comment on what goes on and are more down to earth here. Different culture. I have to wonder what makes America more prone to propaganda when compared to some places. Note I say some because propaganda is a global epidemic. It is just more in your face in America. Thanks for the recommendations. I will look it up.

With the exception of Fox and much of talk radio most media in the US has a bias towards the left and thus tends to support the Democrats.  Look at the Podesta e-mails from Wikileaks to get an idea of how much collusion there is currently between the media and the Clinton campaign.  The joke here in the US is that CNN stands for Clinton News Network.  Keep in mind that I have as little use for Fox for similar reasons.

I would also remind you that if Americans were that vulnerable to propaganda Trump would never have got this far because the establishment of both the Democrat and Republican parties hate him.  I would also recommend that you check out the Podesta e-mails regarding polling because I think you will find them revealing.  What I find remarkable is the level of media bias against Trump.  I have never seen the mainstream media ever this openly biased against a candidate before and I think that it is pissing people off.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is working in favor of Trump.