The Right Side of the News

This is, I think, the important bit. People keep talking about Trump withholding aid unless Ukraine launched politically-motivated investigations. But that does not seem to be quite the right interpretation from the testimony. It was less about doing any actual investigation, it was about announcing an investigation on English-language TV. This was all clearly for US-domestic consumption.

Indeed. All Trumpty needed/wanted was the announcement on tv to be able to use that in his campaigns.

Enjoy

Current attacks/insults score: Trump: 48; Democrats: 1

Faith and Marc: If you're not even going to make a pretense of trying to find the Democrat/news-media attacks and insults that you claim Trump is responding to (rather than initiating unprovoked) then I think you have to concede the point. Trump issues many, many gratuitous insults and attacks on an almost continuous basis user Twitter, his rallies, and speeches.

--Percy

And I wonder what percentage of the base reads anything beyond the tweets themselves and a favorite Right Wing News source? Any wise constituent of either political persuasion would do well to watch the media that is the ideological opposite of their core beliefs if only to gain somewhat of a perspective.

Finally, I doubt whether Donald trump even compiles his own tweets these days. He likely has a propaganda minister doing it for him. Not that a Democrat wouldnt do the same thing. Politics can be stressful.

Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

His tweets are his. He doesn't have the self-control to let someone else do them. Often they are related to something true but he lies just because he always lies. He has no concept of truth. He thinks reality adapts to what he wants it to be.

I look at right-wing news sometimes. It's irritating because the lies are so transparently obvious to anyone who follows other sources (and detects an occasional lie in them). Faith and her ilk absolutely refuse to look outside the big bubble o' lies.

I'm not sure why you're asking the question. Whenever Trump says anything self-serving it is almost always without exception self-evidently false. Some things he says contain a kernel of truth or are based upon something true, but the parts that represent his own contributions are invariably false.

What is surprising, even shocking, is the extremely few number of Republicans who cannot see the lies, or who if they can see them see it in their own best interests to deny them while somehow still being able to live with themselves and sleep at night.

But the political costs of backing a liar and criminal appear to be small to non-existent. Can you name a Nixon supporter in Congress who paid a price in terms of the judgment of history?

And while Ford lost to Democrat Carter in the next election after Nixon's resignation, Republicans won the presidency in the election after that and held the presidency for the next 12 years. Had Bush Sr. not raised taxes heading into a recession while facing a third party candidacy in Ross Perot it would have been 16 years and perhaps even more after that (though if the candidate had been Dan Quayle it would never have happened).

People rarely seek out facts that contradict their beliefs. And if this forum has taught us anything it's that facts don't convince people. People are not so much rational as rationalizers.

So if facts are not how people are convinced then how do you convince people, especially those who are indisputably wrong, like flat-earthers, geocentrists and moon-landing deniers? I don't know.

This contains a hint of treating the media as a source of what opinion to hold. They aren't. They're a source of facts, of information. For example, it is a fact that the White House transcript has Zelensky requesting more Javelins and Trump responding, "I would like you to do us a favor, though." Trump wants favors in return for the Javelins. To any Republicans who claim that's not what Trump meant, just tell them that when the Libyans asked for help against Islamic militant groups that Obama responded, "I would like you to do us a favor, though," and see if suddenly the meaning of those words becomes very clear.

First, the tweets contain too many simple spelling errors for that to be true, "Donald Ttump", "hamberders" and "lasting peach" for a few glaring examples. Second, how can you be unaware of the high degree of consternation within the Trump administration in their inability to stop him from tweeting?

--Percy

Chick-fil-A faces rightwing backlash after cutting ties to Christian groups

This hasn't been recent news except that it's ongoing.

Some years ago, Chick-fil-A made news when it became involved with several conservative Christian organizations, especially anti-same sex marriage activities.

Now there seems to be a change in heart. And conservatives aren't happy.

(The Christian groups mentioned are the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.)

Conservative Christians are now in a search for a new Jesus friendly fast food.

I honestly think that conservatives believe that not everybody is gonna make it in the future. They know that in order for them to make it, some will have to be sacrificed, likely many. They see the handwriting on the wall economically. They are as a consequence willfully ignorant.

It would take a lot of effort to go back to 2015 and 2016, to see how the news media / Democrats started out with their war against Trump. To say that they started it would of course be an understatement. Hours of research would only result in one or two sentences from you handwaving it away.

BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. Trump speaks from the position of president - U.S. presidents have always been considered the most powerful man in the world, and for generations, U.S. presidents are obviously the most hated man in the world. Anything any president says is always carefully scrutinized, and is often immediately, automatically discarded by a sizeable part of the U.S. population, and the world. What immediate, serious harm do you think Trump's insults do to the lives of ordinary citizens?

With the news media, it's another story. Though they're quite powerful, they're not as powerful as the president. But they're not nearly as hated either. They pretend to be "journalists" - people who simply report information. When they lie, when they twist and distort to help one political party, they're betraying a public trust, they're doing something that's not their job. While the public is increasingly getting wise to them, there are still a lot of people who blindly trust them, without bothering to fact check them near as much as they do one president. That does a lot more harm to the country than Trump's tweets.

As you may or may not know, (I don't think it's been in the news much) Trump made an unannounced visit to troops in Afghanistan over the Thanksgiving holiday. Newsweek's quote went like this;

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which the mag said would include “tweeting, golfing and more” — before he ended up making a surprise visit to US troops in Afghanistan.

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Trump blasts Newsweek over story on his Thanksgiving plans

But it wasn't a lie!!!!! The "more" that was in this description could have included that! Amazingly, Newsweek says they fired this reporter. What probably inspired them to do that was the fact that his trip couldn't be completely covered up, as couldn't the pictures and videos that so obviously show Trump's admiration and respect for low level U.S. soldiers. But a lot of Newsweek skimmers don't know a thing about that firing, or that trip for that matter, so they were successfully fooled. This is only one of countless examples of how the news media can twist and distort without actually lying. It does far more damage to society than Trump's tweets.

Here's another link for you and RAZD to enjoy.

Fake News Craps All Over Trump’s Thanksgiving Afghanistan Visit With The Troops

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If Trump did it, the fake news is going to crap on it. The President made a surprise Thanksgiving visit with the troops in Afghanistan and the liberal media found a way to make it negative. At this point the temper tantrum known as Trump Derangement Syndrome is less about being personally offended by the results of an election and more about liberals being unhappy with themselves. These are self-loathing people who are trying desperately to make everyone as miserable as they are.

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Maybe you misunderstood, because that wasn't the challenge. There's no need for you "to go back to 2015 and 2016."

You and Faith have repeatedly claimed that Trump's constant insults and attacks are responses to insults and attacks on him, so in Message 3273 I asked you to back that up by matching me one for one. You cite a *current* Democrat or mainstream news media attack or insult, and I'll cite a *current* Trump or Fox News attack or insult, and we'll see who runs out first. If you follow the chain of posts back you'll see that all the tweets and news reports I've cited were from the prior 24 hours or so.

So far you and Faith are losing 48 to 1, and you only got the 1 because you made reference to an old Ilhan Omar tweet.

You use the word "hated," and if we can equate that with approval ratings then you are wrong. Trump's approval rating is currently 41.7%, while the most recent figure I could find for the media is around 30% (Is trust in the media lower than trust in Congress?).

Yes, Newsweek did fire Jessica Kwong, which makes no sense. The story had to be filed Wednesday, and Kwong could only report on what the White House was making public at that time. The president's trip to Afghanistan was being kept secret for security reasons. Trump did tweet, and he did golf, just like the story said. The story said nothing about the highly confidential Afghanistan trip because no one knew about it. Even if Kwong somehow became aware of the trip she should have written nothing about it out of concern for the president's safety and security. Her firing is a mystery to me.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Krugman's column is brief and undetailed, but here are the few reasons he mentioned:

• Blue states expanded Medicaid.
  
• Blue states reduced the number of people without health insurance.
  
• Blue states had better education.
  
• Red states had higher suicide rates.

He said that the longevity was generally the same in 1990, but now people living in a blue state can expect to live 4 years longer than in a red state:

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(article you linked)I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population. In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.

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That's a pretty significant change.

and other deaths of despair -- alcoholism and drug overdoses.

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(article you linked) ... And even within America these evils are concentrated in states that voted for Trump, and have largely bypassed the more secular blue states. ...

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and then there is obesity (ibid):

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Is this all about deaths of despair in the eastern heartland? No. Consider our four most populous states. In 1990, Texas and Florida had higher life expectancy than New York and almost matched California; today, they’re far behind.

Beyond that, there has been a striking divergence in behavior and lifestyle that must be affecting mortality. For example, the prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.

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Looks like they need some progressive policies ... or make true the claim that they would rather be dead than democrat.

Enjoy