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

[pbrower2a]

(12-03-2020, 11:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-03-2020, 05:58 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Most of the human laws are the result of principles laid out as many as three millennia ago. Human nature has changed so little that Greek drama is still accessible. People still consult the Torah, the Buddhist sutras, or Confucius' Analects for fine points of life. I assume that you are part of the Judeo-Christian heritage, so I suggest that you consult clergy for some sound advice on how to deal with your anger.

I'm venting. I deal with my anger by venting. I'm also letting you know that this ain't over just because Trump was defeated. The Republican party has some sole searching to do because Republicans helped with his defeat.

Quote:Some victories aren't worth what goes with them or the risks that they mandate. I never did any drag racing. 

Trump's 2016 victory was poisoned. Trump showed that there are people whose support is not good for sustainable politics. He also showed why previous government service is a viable criterion for finding suitable Presidents. Success in business is not a good model for the Presidency, as little of federal government activity operates on a profit-and-loss basis. After all, we don't want the government operating many profit-and-loss entities, do we? That's how North Korea operates, and government ownership and operation of profitable enterprises has proved a horrid model. (It's called Communism as in Marxism-Leninism). Although efficiency is a good thing, service matters more because the Presidency and Congress are elected offices. The People are the check on the potential misconduct of elected  officials through free and fair elections.

Quote:Republicans can't do that if they want to win and if they don't want to win or don't seem to care if they then were going to stop supporting them and support the party that does. It should be pretty easy to beat an elephant that's down to skin and bones, a donkey could do it.

This is almost an admission that the GOP has some big problems. First is Donald Trump, who thought that troublesome people such as overt racists could help him get elected more than they could hurt him. A basic rule is to not cultivate extremists and criminals as supporters. Second, the Republican Party has committed itself to an economic model losing support as its adherents die off. Young adults (under 40) don't like to be heavily in debt, don't like being at the mercy of landlords, and don't wish to be consigned to jobs too small for their spirits. 

Donald Trump acted as if he had no responsibility for the improvement of lives of those who did not vote for him the first time. Those people voted against him a second time if they didn't vote for him the first time.   

Quote:I think the Republicans forgot what the elephant represents. I don't know if any of you actually seen Biden while he was barely campaigning. I did every time that  I tuned into Fox. He looked  horrible with  a very  light campaign schedule and it was frequent.

FoX News is highly-manipulative journalism. It selects stories to prepare people for what follows (if it wants people to feel angry it may lead with some obscure story of violent crime (armed robbery at a gas station leads to a police chase). It gave softball coverage to Trump, and it can manipulate recorded sound and the lighting or angle to the detriment of Democrats. FoX is heavily analysis, and it willingly stretches stories. In the end it tells the truth when such is unavoidable. That is how Soviet media operated. FoX News loves to call itself "Fair and Balanced", which is far from its reality.

Let me give you an assessment of FoX News from a source that checks for bias:

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Quote:Media Bias: FoX News






RIGHT BIAS
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

• Overall, we rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories that later must be retracted after being widely shared. Further, Fox News would be rated a Questionable source based on numerous failed fact checks by hosts and pundits, however, straight news reporting is generally reliable, therefore we rate them Mixed for factual reporting.
  

Analysis / Bias
According to a Pew Research Center survey “Fox News was the main source for 40% of Trump voters” during the 2016 election. Further, another Pew Survey indicates “When it comes to choosing a media source for political news, conservatives orient strongly around Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives (47%) name it as their main source for government and political news.”  

Fox News typically looks at the issues from a conservative perspective and also has a number of on-air personalities that are strong supporters of Trump, such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Tomi Lahren. FNC typically skews conservative as there is less criticism of Trump, therefore the majority of stories are pro-Trump.

In review, FNC publishes stories with emotionally loaded headlines such as “’They Wanted It to Blow Up’: Limbaugh Says Success of Trump-Kim Summit Caught Media Off Guard” and “Tucker: 2016 Russia Collusion ‘Witch Hunt’ Now Extends to Jill Stein.” When it comes to sourcing they typically utilize pro-Trump pundits such as Rush Limbaugh who has a very poor record with fact-checkers, as well as credible sources such as the Wall Street Journal. Fox News is also known to publish right-wing conspiracy theories, although after being sued they retracted the story. FNC has also been deemed the least accurate cable news source according to Politifact.

A factual search reveals several failed fact checks by news hosts.

• Says John Bolton “fundamentally was a man of the left.” – PANTS OF FIRE
  
  
• “The president said he’s going to bring in 250,000 (Syrian and Iraqi) refugees into this country.” – PANTS ON FIRE
  
  
• “Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns.” – PANTS ON FIRE
  
  
• “NASA scientists fudged the numbers to make 1998 the hottest year to overstate the extent of global warming.” – PANTS ON FIRE
  
  
• Obamacare is “one big fat VA system.” – PANTS ON FIRE
  
  
• Says Marie Yovanovitch was “dishonest” when she claimed under oath that she never personally responded to an email from a Democratic staffer. But “in fact, it turns out that she did respond.” – FALSE
  
  
  

Overall, we rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories that later must be retracted after being widely shared. Further, Fox News would be rated a Questionable source based on numerous failed fact checks by hosts and pundits, however, straight news reporting is generally reliable, therefore we rate them Mixed for factual reporting. (7/19/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 9/19/2020)
Source: https://www.foxnews.com/

FoX News does not have the excuse of a thin budget and time constraints for reporting. It has excellent resources for reporting breaking news and fact-checking stories. Fact-checking may be unglamorous, but it is one way to keep stories from being manipulated. It has good graphics for relaying information in a form that many people find more digestible. (Yes, statistics are valid news). It has the time available for doing stories in depth as does... even PBS would envy. It has reliable advertising sources. FoX News could do news very well if it so dedicated it. Regrettably it works to support one side of the political spectrum.

Factual reporting is at best 

MIXED

which, in view of FoX News' resources, is inexcusable. "Low" refers often to entities such supermarket tabloids with blaring headlines about celebrities or pseudo-scientific 'discoveries'. If someone discovers it in the house of someone well-off, "The maid reads it". 

Mixed reliability from a news source is worthless.  

Media Bias/Fact Check gives a "mixed" assessment to CNN for interpretation of the news, and sees CNN largely on the Left, largely for facile interpretations of fact. Basically, I wouldn't trust CNN as a primary solurce of news, either. Breaking news? Fine. It is about as good as one gets. Its journalists know where the stories are (and FoX is good at that, too. CNN and FoX News both have lavish resources at their disposal. What they do with those resources is a different matter. 

Here's a Media Bias/Fact Check assessment of CNN:

Quote:  In review, CNN presents straight news coverage with a left-leaning bias in story selection that is often critical of the right. For example, during the 2016 Presidential Election [url=https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pew-research/]Pew Research concluded that the majority of CNN stories covering President Donald Trump were negative. While less dramatic, Pew also determined that more stories were negative toward Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

Editorially, CNN’s programming almost exclusively favors the left. For example, a typical panel discussion will feature 4 to 8 guest commentators with one being a Republican, such as Rick Santorum. This creates a situation where left-leaning voices drown out the right. 

CNN typically utilizes loaded emotional words in sensational headlines such as this: Trump pounces on Justice Department report findings. They usually source their news properly through credible reporters/journalists and through hyperlinking to credible media sources. However, CNN has failed several fact checks from Politifact. It should be noted that these fact checks were almost exclusively from guests on their numerous talk shows and not from the reporting of actual news, which tends to be factual. TV hosts have also failed fact checks by IFCN fact-checkers. Further, CNN has retracted published stories that have been deemed as lacking evidence. Finally, CNN has published misleading information regarding GMOs that utilize loaded fear-based headlines such as this: FDA allows genetically engineered ‘Frankenfish’ salmon to be imported to US. CNN has also utilized known purveyors of pseudoscience as experts on discussion panels such as the Food Babe.

A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 44% of CNN’s audience is consistently or mostly liberal, 40% Mixed and 20% consistently or mostly conservative. This indicates that CNN is preferred by a more liberal audience.

Failed Fact Checks

• “I was able to go and buy an automatic weapon … Most people can go out and buy an automatic weapon.” – FALSE
  
  
• “1 percent of candidates that (the National Rifle Association) endorsed in 2012 won.” – FALSE
  
  
• “ISIS lures women with kittens, nutella.” – MOSTLY FALSE
  
  
• “Trump’s claim that there are 13 Democrats on Mueller’s team is also false,” – FALSE
  
  
• Coronavirus: Facial Hair Recommendations Not Shared By The CDC – FALSE
  
  
• If President Trump decides to deploy the U.S. military domestically, he would be “mobilizing U.S. military troops on American soil for the first time since 1807.” – False (Corrected)
  
  
•  “Greenland’s ice sheet has melted to a point of no return, according to new study” – Low Scientific Credibility
  
  
  

Overall, we rate CNN left biased based on editorial positions that consistently favors the left, while straight news reporting falls left-center through bias by omission. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to several failed fact checks by TV hosts. However, news reporting on the website tends to be properly sourced with minimal failed fact checks. (5/16/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 09/22/2020)
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/  

Wise people cite CNN no more readily than they cite FoX News, and for good reason.    

Here is a chart (there are several available) that assesses where the news source is, its validity, and its usefulness. 






  Toward the top are good sources of  raw news (AP and Reuters news wires) that comes without identifiable bias because of strict standards of reporting and a 'blitz' style. Should the story be about a fire that kills a large number of animals at an animal shelter the story wouldn't tell us about all the lovable puppy-dogs and kitty-cats who perished so horribly.  You can figure that out yourself, or else it is something that (should the story be taken up by Channels 4, 5, 9, or 11 in the Twin Cities, one of the news anchors might say something to that effect. ABC, CBS, and NBC News are toward the center and top of reliability and accuracy because they have copious resources (ad revenues) and mass audiences who would stray if the news reporting went too far in one direction or another. PBS and NPR go slightly to the Left, perhaps because they have more intellectually-upscale audiences... and in view of the Trump Presidency, highly-educated people who tend to despise a politician who disparages formal learning tend to sway to the Left. If the President were a left-wing populist disparaging economic elites for faring too well, then the intellectual-friendly media would be on the Right.


Most big-city newspapers, whether something decidedly Left as the Washington Post or Right such as the Dallas Morning News, are in the green rectangle of utility. News with a specialized audience (such as the Wall Street Journal) is here. Because investors, executives, and managers are the constituency of the Wall Street Journal it skews to the Right, but it is an excellent source for economic news that has more relevance to such human concerns as paychecks, such as yield curves, the money supply, and of course industry trends. Very in-depth reporting (it may be third-hand news, but it can set public policy, is here. Cite sources in this category and you will be fine. 

The yellow rectangle is heavier on analysis (and it has some overlap into the green triangle), but the less newsy it is the more likely it splays out to the Left (Slate) or Right (the Weekly Standard). Closer to the center are TIME, USA Today (not particularly biased, but not much is in it), Forbes, and Fortune. Draw your own conclusions. 

The further that one gets from raw news, the more likely one is to either end up with media that confirm one's bias (MSNBC and Daily Kos on the Left and  FoX News or One America News on the Right). You might impress people who already believe you with this material, but I would avoid discussing it with people that you don't know well. MSNBC may be better than FoX News because it fact-checks extensively, but it is obviously biased against anyone on the Right. Such was so before Trump.  It did go more toward the center as it started plugging Never-Trump types... but who knows how long that will last?

CNN isn't as extreme as FoX News, but as Media Bias put it, it is awful. I would not advise anyone to rely upon CNN as an exclusive source of news. As for citing the Washington Times or Huffington Post -- find a different source if you want credibility. 

In the red category are fecal media -- sleazy publications such as the London Daily Mail (not news) and of course such tabloid rags as The Globe and the National Enquirer   

Quote:I think he's done within two years. I'm  going by my mom but she wasn't the President of the United States. You know, if I had a lot riding on or reliant upon who won, I wouldn't vote for an elderly old man loses it (loses train  of thoughts, forgets where he's at and then bumbles way through whatever it was he was trying to talk about or answer.

I have my misgivings about the durability of any politician already older than life expectancy when born. See also Chuck Grassley, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. Joe Biden has a problem with stuttering, and once he gets through it he is fine. But a 78-year-old Joe Biden is far preferable to a 73-year-old Donald Trump who never grew up and who has some hideous health habits. I see a rigidity of mind that one associates with the senile, fanatics, and extreme narcissists  (Trump is all three) or people on the autistic spectrum (I have been told of my rigid behavior).

I regret that you cannot see what I see in Donald Trump; if you did, you would have never voted for him. I can as easily hit him from a traditionalist viewpoint in his connections to mobsters, his contempt for people who have endured some misfortune, his misogyny, his serial fornication, and his disdain for objective science and legal precedent. To this I contrast the President that he most derided, Barack Obama, who was a model of a fine conservative President except for one thing: not being a conservative. Otherwise the next successful conservative President will be much more like Barack Obama than like Donald Trump. I found myself using conservative arguments against Trump, one of which was that Joe Biden is a devout Christian with a conservative lifestyle and a respect for American armed service personnel, past (veterans) and present (active duty). Ordinarily the more conservative Republican gets an edge on that... not this time!

Do you not believe me? Obama may be unique as a President, but someone has to be most similar to him in temperament, overall competence, and political strengths and weaknesses. Neither he nor Eisenhower was much of a populist; they both had much respect for legal precedent and diplomatic formality; they didn't get into squabbles with the Armed Services and intelligence services; they had very conventional lives; they appealed to the educated people of the times. Both are Reactives, and among Reactive types they are the only ones worth trusting: the mature ones who have no desire to use their power and influence to settle scores. (The ones who use their power to settle scores are very bad figures, whether Ferenc Szalasi on the Right or Matyas Rakosi on the Left. One was a fascist pig culpable as a Nazi puppet for delivering Hungarian Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz and other Nazi murder camps, and the other was "Stalin's finest Hungarian pupil" who butchered plenty of Hungarians on Stalin's behest and his personal fears of potential rivals). Yuck!  

Quote:When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS. 

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.


 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once 

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. 

Much changed in the sixty years between the elections of 1952 and 2012 or the fifty-two years between the elections of 1956 and 2018, depending on your taste. In general the states that voted for Obama also voted for Eisenhower. Indeed, Obama in 2012 won only one State (Hawaii, which wasn't voting in the 1950's) and Dee Cee (ditto) that Eisenhower did not win twice. The matchup to any electoral winner is typically to blowout landslides, but Obama's wins match more closely those of Ike in the 1950's than to anyone else, including FDR in 1936, Nixon in 1972, and Reagan in 1984. This says something about the states (Maine and Vermont, the only states that voted against FDR in 1936 are now reliably Democratic, as are the single states that Nixon {Massachusetts] and Reagan [Minnesota]) than about Obama, but it is remarkable that Ike won Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the two states not in the South that Herbert Hoover did not win in his 1928 blowout and Minnesota, Reagan's only loss in 1984... twice. Ike must have been the best Republican fit ever to Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island over nearly a century beginning in 1928.  

Ike did badly in the South, where segregationist attitudes were still strong except (oddly) Tennessee, which was then probably the most progressive state in the South. Both won Virginia for the first time for their respective Parties in their first elections. After Ike, Virginia went for the Democratic nominee for President only once (1964, the LBJ blowout) until 2008... and after 2008 Virginia seems to be spiraling out of reach for Republicans.