Progressives (Liberals)

My view is that, in their intemperate and even irrational hatred of a very disruptive, but popular, President Trump...

Instead they have conducted endless (and sometimes illegal ) investigations, impeachment efforts based on obviously flimsy grounds...

The result of this has been the continued growth and ascent of the 2016 Sanders movement, now aided by ambitious but sympathetic new far left Representatives...

somewhat tortured points

At CPAC, Glenn Beck says the Bernie Sanders “revolution” will lead to “another Holocaust”

...Make no mistake, we are at war. And may it forever remain a cold war. But it is a war that has been going on for a long time and the next enemy wave is right here at our gates, they are inside of our gates. And no matter how the media spins this, they’re not harmless grumpy grandpas. They’re not. They’re armed with pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and guns.

I am no more obliged than are you and Snood in your many unsupported assertions on these threads.

Are you suggesting that "Retrumplicans" was not intended to be pejorative ???

I believe the analysis I offered above of the dilemma likely facing the Democrat Congressional leadership and other Super Delegates at the forthcoming convention...

@JuddLegum
On CNN this morning, Mike Pence, who is now in charge of the coronavirus response said it is "understandable" that Donald Trump Jr. said Democrats want millions of people to die from coronavirus

Judd Legum
Replying to
@JuddLegum
Pence said that everyone is putting politics aside with the exception of "some of the predictable voices in the public debate on the left."

Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious” for refusing to ban travel from nations battling Ebola (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this would make it harder, not easier, to contain and combat the outbreak).

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said “political correctness” was hindering the U.S. response to Ebola and that Obama was putting U.S. troops at risk by sending them to countries battling Ebola.

"We have ISIS. We have Ebola. We have to secure the border,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said at the time, even though there was no evidence or eventual Ebola cases linked to the southern border.

Then-Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst accused Obama of “failed leadership” on Ebola.

“Gosh, can you imagine if Mitt [Romney] was the president right now?” former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said. ” … I guarantee you we would not be worrying about Ebola right now.”

Scalise himself accused the Obama administration of incompetence in its Ebola response.

“This president in general, all across his agencies, has not shown the ability to run a competent administration,” Scalise said, one day before Obama appointed Ronald A. Klain as Ebola czar.

Some of these same Republicans have since praised the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, despite new reporting of a faulty government-created test that has delayed monitoring of the disease.

In 2014, Donald Trump slammed Obama’s appointment of Klain, tweeting, “Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!”

Quote:

Are you suggesting that "Retrumplicans" was not intended to be pejorative ???

Yes. Originally I'd written "Trump Republicans". I think it's accurate to label the party in a way which reflects Trump's complete domination of the organization; the party is nothing like it was in 2015. Do you think that the use of Trump's name is automatically to be seen in a negative light? As you yourself are a Retrumplican, I would hope not.

Peace.

Walter. You were just advised to "wake up" and here you go with stuff like that again.

Trump is pushing a dangerous, false spin on coronavirus — and the media is helping him spread it

Among the many outlandish statements President Trump has made since taking office, one in particular stands out for me.

Speaking in Kansas City, Mo., in the summer of 2018, he urged the attendees of the VFW annual convention to ignore the journalism of the mainstream media.

“Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he said. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

In other words, if you didn’t hear from me or my minions, it isn’t true.

Chico Marx memorably expressed a similar idea in the 1933 comedy “Duck Soup”: “Who ya gonna believe — me or your own eyes?”

It’s a dumbfounding notion, especially given Trump’s proven propensity for lies and falsehoods. But now as a deadly disease, the coronavirus, threatens to turn into a full-blown pandemic, it’s not simply bizarre in a way that can be easily shrugged off. It’s not just Trump being Trump.

And it’s definitely not funny. It’s dangerous.

Trump and his chosen spokespeople are attempting to dramatically play down the seriousness of the coronavirus and to blame the legitimate news media for doing their jobs of informing the public.

In reporting what Trump has to say, the news media has a huge responsibility not to repeat and amplify his misleading spin — a spin that may serve his political interests but is not in the public interest.

It’s not always easy, though, for mainstream journalists to put his claims in the proper context.

After all, it had always been normal to let a president have his say — to let his statements top the news while letting the fact checks follow.

That has changed somewhat during the lie-ridden Trump administration, but not nearly enough. The reflexive media urge, deep in our DNA, is still to quote the president without offering an immediate challenge.
[Let me add here the recent example of Jeb Bush expressing dismay regarding how Brit reporters challenge their politicos. He said "“Every time I visit London, I am amazed how biased UK political coverage is by the BBC,” wrote Bush on Twitter. “Plus, they are incredibly rude to Conservative MPs.” Of course, BBC and other Brit reporters are rude to everyone, as is the case here in Canada. His dismay seems to hinge on reporters refusing to automatically treat politicians as sacrosanct or as somehow akin to courtiers at Versailles or a priest class]

That’s why we continue to see headlines and chyrons that parrot his words directly, no matter how misleading: That the virus will disappear, that it’s not inevitable that the disease will spread, that a vaccine is coming along “rapidly,” that the United States is “very, very ready” to deal with whatever happens.

When journalists do push back with fact checks or with dissenting sources from the worlds of science and medicine, Trump and the administration attack the messengers. Sometimes that takes the form of disparaging tweets such as one from Wednesday in which he charged cable networks MSNBC and CNN of “panicking markets” and in which he bragged “USA in great shape!”

His most dependable allies are right there with him — accusing the mainstream news media of using virus coverage to try to take down the president.

Their logic seems to be that the drastic stock market declines in recent days are the result of media overkill, not legitimate business concerns. [tough to explain market declines outside of the US with that formulation. But it isn't meant to be truthful. It's merely political defense, a marketing/propaganda device] “What I might do to calm the markets is turn the television off for 24 hours,” was acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s advice Friday to the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Some months ago, I wrote about the linguist George Lakoff’s prescription for handling the president’s false statements and lies, an approach that’s become known as the “truth sandwich.”

Rather than lead with the falsehood and then try to debunk it, Lakoff — an expert on how propaganda works — suggested flipping that formula: Lead with the truth, air the falsehood, and then follow with the fact check.

Avoid giving prominence to lies, he advises. Don’t put them in headlines, leads or tweets. It is that very amplification that gives them power, even if they are proclaimed false in the next beat.

Of course, that recommendation runs in direct opposition to how news usually works. Traditionally, we have emphasized the words of top officials, and only then tempered them with fact checks.

Too often, Lakoff told me, the media “has become complicit with Trump by allowing itself to be used as an amplifier for his falsehoods and frames.” And that’s true even when journalists make lists of lies. It’s the repetition and the prominence that does the harm.

Trump’s tendency to spin out assertions untethered from reality becomes a recipe for disaster when combined with his disdain for scientists, medical experts, intelligence officials, journalists and others who deal in fact-based reality.

Add in the dangers of a disease rapidly approaching pandemic proportions, and it becomes more important than ever to emphasize truthful information over false spin.

I’m convinced that we in the media, with all our obvious faults, have learned some things about covering Trump over the past four years. Now would be an excellent time to put it into practice.

Do you see why people worry about the government in complete control of their lives? I don't think you do.

"Rise, rise, wake up, get your hammock ready"

“What I might do to calm the markets is turn the television off for 24 hours,”

Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesias
Let’s have high taxes & a big welfare state.

That’s socialism!

OK, I’m a socialist.

Like Stalin?

No like Denmark.

Nordics aren’t socialist they’re market economies with high taxes & a big welfare state.

OK let’s have high taxes & a big welfare state.

Socialist!

blatham wrote:

Walter. You were just advised to "wake up" and here you go with stuff like that again.

I'm used to this "Rise, rise, wake up, get your hammock ready" (Reise, reise, aufstehen, überall zurrt Hängematten).

In the USNavy, the response would be:
Some day I'm going to murder the bugler
Some day they're going to find him dead;
I'll amputate his reveille and step upon it heavily,
And spend the rest of my life in bed.