monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

129 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List

Hey guys, upvotes and downvotes are perfectly acceptable; let it go.

Very selective in your outrage

If there were any shenanigans, don't you think a2k could figure it out? I do.

OUTBREAK UPDATE: Coronavirus Antibodies Detected in Nearly 25% of New York City Residents

What are you worried about?

I am totally done with you.

Ive finally come to the conclusion that Trump is unfit for office.
Totally data driven ,Ive got all the calculations here somewhere on my desk.
I know, I know, Im going waaay out on a limb here..

If the answer to any of these questions is '’yes,” then you’re in the political closet, and it’s time to come out.

Here’s the good news: If you currently reside in the United States of America, you live in the freest country in the history of the world. Beyond some basic limitations, you can do whatever you want and, with hard work, become whatever it is you want to be.

Pretty great, ain't it? So why the long face? Because you know that something is out of whack. You really don't feel free to say what you want. Or share your true thoughts on Facebook. Or even associate with those you'd like to.

And why is that?

I’ll tell you why: because there’s a mass affliction spreading throughout the Western world. It’s called “the bravery deficit.” People—good people like you—are afraid to say what they think.

And there’s little wonder.

Believe that men can't give birth? Congrats, you’re a transphobe. Want people to keep more of what they earn because they know how to spend it better than the government does? Bravo, you’re a greedy capitalist! Understand that the gender pay gap is because men and women often choose different professions and different hours, not because of rampant sexism? Hooray, you’re a misogynist!

Take the “wrong” side of any hot-button issue and your reputation, your friends, and your job can all be lost in an instant. You will likely never get a chance to confront your accusers, most of whom are anonymous. And you may feel forced to issue a faux apology to save yourself (which, by the way, it usually won’t).

The understandable temptation is to think that this politically correct madness will soon end—just die out on its own. Well, it won’t.

Activists and their mainstream media allies like the New York Times and CNN, propaganda outlets like Media Matters and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and your local university will make sure of that. Big Tech, with its control of search algorithms, its shadowbanning and deboosting, are also in on the game.

If you’re one of the people who believes that if you just remain quiet that things will get better, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re a frog in a slowly boiling pot. And it doesn’t end well for the frog.

So what can you do? Believe it or not, the solution is not that hard.

Step One: Think for yourself.

Step Two: Say it out loud.

Just because a former bartender says the world is going to end in twelve years because of climate change doesn’t mean it’s true. Doomsdayers have been saying the same thing for decades and we’re still here.

Just because a filmmaker says we should model our health care system on Cuba’s doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Would you rather have heart surgery in Houston or in Havana?

And just because a career politician is a millionaire with three houses who rails against the rich doesn’t make him a hypocrite. Oh, wait—in that case, it actually does.

The point is, perhaps your most important job as a human being is to stand up for the things you believe in. Don’t take the path of least resistance. Be better than those who would silence you, deplatform you, and mob you.

How? Just…stop…being…afraid.

The mob depends on the fact that everyone is scared to say what they think. Don’t give them that power.

All of the successes of America, and the Western values that gave birth to America, are being eroded as we speak. We can’t just blame Hollywood, the media, and the political establishment any longer. It’s time to look in the mirror.

Think of the bravery of your grandparents, and your ancestors before them, who undoubtedly had it far worse than you do today. If they were brave, then you can be brave too.

It’s time to come out of the closet—the political one.

You are the solution to the bravery deficit.

So what are you waiting for?

About a year ago, in an interview in the Oval Office, I asked President Trump if his years behind the storied Resolute desk had made him empathize with his predecessors. In the very room where most of them had called on one another in times of crisis for years — and well before the novel coronavirus pandemic changed the country, and the world — Mr. Trump was dismissive of the men who came before him.

He answered my question without hesitation: “No, no.” His attitude toward his predecessors has apparently only hardened over time. The chaos of the pandemic has shined a spotlight on his contempt for the living presidents.

He has stripped them of one of their only jobs in retirement: their unique ability to unify the country in a crisis. The relative absence of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter is more striking now than ever before.

Mr. Obama’s endorsement of Joe Biden on April 14 was as much — if not more — about calling out Mr. Trump as it was about declaring his support for his former vice president. The endorsement gave Mr. Obama the chance to speak up against not only Mr. Trump’s muddled handling of the pandemic but also his entire presidency in a video that ran nearly 12 minutes.

A former president criticizing a sitting president during a crisis of this magnitude used to be unthinkable, but now that Mr. Trump has ripped up the playbook of civility, members of the so-called Presidents Club have free rein. His decision to jettison his predecessors is highly unusual in modern times. And he knows it.

His administration, he told me, has bested them all and he was not worried about how he would eventually be received in the Presidents Club. “I don’t think I fit very well because I’m a different kind of a president,” he said. “I’ve broken up a lot of policies, a lot of things that they’ve done.” For decades, the sitting president has called upon the former presidents to provide a sense of national unity. Their familiar presence would be reassuring in a world that has become surreal.

John F. Kennedy called on all three of his predecessors during the Cuban missile crisis, two Republicans (Herbert Hoover and Dwight D. Eisenhower) and one Democrat (Harry Truman). In 2005, George W. Bush sent his father on a trip around the world with Mr. Clinton, the elder Mr. Bush’s onetime rival, after the Indian Ocean tsunami. After Hurricane Katrina, the duo (whom Barbara Bush affectionately called the “odd couple”) raised money and their friendship became an enduring and reassuring sight.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Mr. Obama announced that George W. Bush and Mr. Clinton would lead a fund-raising effort to help Haitians rebuild. In the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama was flanked by the former presidents. “This is a model that works,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the partnership between Bush Sr. and Mr. Clinton. “As the scope of the destruction became apparent, I spoke to each of these gentlemen, and they each asked the same simple question, ‘How can I help?’”

It is difficult to imagine Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama rejecting a call for help from Mr. Trump, but it is equally difficult to imagine him calling. When asked at one of his early coronavirus press briefings whether he would reach out to his predecessors for help, Mr. Trump said dismissively: “I don’t think I’m going to learn much. And, you know, I guess you could say that there’s probably a natural inclination not to call.”

If Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Carter were to start an effort together without Mr. Trump, a former Obama aide lamented, the endeavor would be entirely eclipsed by the fact that they did it without the sitting president. Mr. Trump has clearly enjoyed humiliating his predecessors and has called Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq “the single worst decision ever made.” In a mid-March tweet, just as the nation’s economy was shutting down and schools were closing, Mr. Trump wasted no time criticizing his predecessor’s management of a previous health crisis. He railed against Mr. Obama’s response to the H1N1 swine flu and called it “a full-scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”

Mr. Bush recently wrote a note to his staff that was obtained by The Dallas Morning News. He expressed “absolute confidence in the experts who are in charge” of the nation’s coronavirus response. He said that he was “reading, painting and riding mountain bikes” and that he and his wife, the former first lady Laura Bush, were “handwashing and social-distancing to the max.”

But wouldn’t it be better if he and the other ex-presidents could put the lessons they learned in office to lift the country’s spirit during this unprecedented public health crisis?

Of course each still has unique influence: The Clintons sent hundreds of pizzas to hospital staff caring for coronavirus patients, and Jimmy Carter asked donors to “forgo” their “next gift” to the Carter Center and instead support groups working directly to combat the pandemic.

Mr. Trump has ended up with an opponent who is so much more in the mold of the presidential fraternity. Mr. Biden would not hesitate to call a predecessor or a former political rival during a crisis. Mr. Biden’s dozens of years in the Senate and two terms as vice president included many friendships with Republicans, and at least one with a former member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

Mr. Biden told me that at the beginning of the Trump presidency he had been in touch with Mike Pence, who, Mr. Biden said, is “a guy you can talk with, you can deal with, in a traditional sense. Like Clinton could talk to [Newt] Gingrich.” Mr. Biden has no trouble working with people with whom he does not always agree: He would fit in the mold of the Presidents Club perfectly.

Election Day 2020 will feature a battle between the candidate who buys into the club idea and seems ready to reignite that tradition and the incumbent who is so eager to make clear he could not care less that he won’t pick up the phone during the biggest crisis this country has faced since 9/11.

Oh, hush. You’re just mad ‘cause you didn’t know any actual funny military acronyms.

Trump’s Contempt for the Ex-Presidents Is Costing Us Right Now

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Media & WHO’s Latest Pro-Terror, Science-Denying Claim: ‘Antibodies Mean Nothing’

In their blatantly obvious quest to inflict as much COVID-19 pain as possible for as long as possible, the media and academia are today claiming that it would be a freak anomaly if having antibodies actually meant a) you already had COVID-19 and b) you are protected from getting it again.

Yes, of course, to some degree you always have to research and confirm precisely what can be expected from antibodies.

But to be very clear: when a person contracts a virus, the resulting antibodies are evidence that they did in fact have the virus and that those antibodies exist primarily to protect them from contracting the same virus again.

And that is very common.

Today however the media along with their equally corrupt, politically compromised, desperately fear-mongering friends at the WHO are pretending that it would be a freak anomaly if antibodies were actually evidence that a person had COVID-19 already, and would be in any way protected from contracting it again.

They are setting a standard, as the media often do, that is miles higher for those they oppose than those they support. If a Democrat were president right now and Resistance Jake Tapper, NeverTrump Chuck Todd and the rest hadn’t spent the last 5 years getting beaten into bloody pulps and weren’t exhausted from all of their losing, they’d be celebrating the apparent ubiquity of COVID-19 antibodies as a tremendously positive and inspiring revelation that means we can safely re-open our nation, get our country back to work, jump-start our economy and put this whole, humiliating chapter behind us.

There's this alt science blog called LoveBreedsAccountability