12
   

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

 
 
hightor
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 08:21 am
@Bogulum,
The specific demographic of concern was young black and Hispanic males, a trend which showed up in 2016 and increased in 2020, not the black vote in general. The number was around 25%. Young white males already constitute a sizeable portion of Trump supporters and their preferences weren't considered "news" because they haven't been considered part of the Democratic coalition. You might consider how Republicans would react if their polling indicated that young evangelicals or young gun owners were trending Democratic. In a tight race, seeing parts of your coalition breaking away can be a worrying development. Most people realize that polling is inexact but can provide an indication of trends. Both campaigns use internal polling for this reason. If you're not interested in the polls, you can ignore them. BTW, do you still think Biden should have been the Democratic candidate?
hightor
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 08:27 am
@Lash,
Quote:
Newspapers shouldn’t be in the business of endorsing political candidates.


Care to explain why? How do you know what newspapers "should" and "shouldn't" do anyway? Do you think endorsing or not endorsing candidates is a "business" decision?
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 08:40 am
@Lash,
They always have, and as newspaper owners tend to be rich bastards the endorsement is always hugely in favour of the establishment.

Independent papers have a duty to point this out.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 08:50 am
@hightor,
I think that the decision in and of itself is a welcome one, even if you have to suspect cynical business reasons behind it.

The decision not to make an election recommendation is the right one from a journalistic point of view (as we don't have anything like this in Germany, my opinion here is certainly influenced by this). The job of the media should be to inform readers so that they can make informed political decisions themselves - not to campaign for elections themselves. All parties and politicians must be criticised. That is the important role of the media in a democracy.

Nevertheless, it must be viewed ambivalently at best. Because it comes at an inopportune time. Ending the practice of endorsement now of all times, when Trump and Harris are still neck and neck in the polls, when Trump's rhetoric is becoming increasingly uninhibited, dystopian and above all insane, when more and more experts are warning that a Trump victory could be the beginning of the end of US democracy, is bitter, if not fatal.

Correct journalistic practice is one thing. Saving liberal democracy, however, is quite another and must be supported by all possible means.
Because after its abolition, there will no longer be a free press.

izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 09:21 am
Quote:
Yes, I think Democrats are complicit in genocide. But Trump would be far worse
Wajahat Ali

There is simply no moral argument for allowing the former president to win in the name of opposing genocide

If you’re undecided about your vote, a reliable rule of thumb is to always side against the candidate who is a convicted criminal, admires “good things” done by Adolf Hitler, and is labeled a “fascist” by four-star generals who worked in their administration.

However, just days before the chaotic 2024 US election, many American voters are still loathe to vote for Kamala Harris due to the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. It’s hard to blame them. “How can we vote for genocidaires?” ask many Democratic voters radicalized and infuriated by Israel’s daily war crimes. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s fanatical government, populated by a rogue galley of Jewish supremacists, openly declared their desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and illegally occupy more land. Their desire for ultra-violence and carnage does not spare journalists, UN workers, doctors or even US citizens. More than 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed.

And yet Democrats couldn’t be bothered to even invite one Palestinian as a speaker at the Democratic national convention. Instead, they were replaced by hollow talking points about the need for a ceasefire, return of hostages, and Palestinian self-determination even as the Israeli prime minister’s policies make such goals an impossibility. However, Netanyahu’s humiliation and repudiation of the US, Israel’s greatest ally, is still rewarded with billions of aid and unconditional support.

Despite these tragic, deflating, and heartbreaking circumstances, progressive voters must still support the vice-president in the 2024 election. The reality is that only one of two candidates will be the next president and the most powerful person on Earth. It will be either Donald Trump, a twice-impeached vulgarian who incited a violent insurrection, or Harris. Whenever I say this to undecided friends, they accuse me of supporting genocide or believe “both sides” are the same evil.

I respectfully disagree.

Donald Trump will be genocidal and a fascist. On Gaza, Trump promised he would let Israel “finish the job”. That means fulfilling his mega-donor Miriam Adelson’s wish of annexing the West Bank and standing pat as Israel moves to occupy northern Gaza on the graveyard of Palestinians. There’s a reason why Israel’s extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wants Trump to win and says he will be better for Israel. Trump might be better for Israel, but he won’t be better for Jewish people, whom he said he would blame if he loses the 2024 election. This is an addition to his promotion of antisemitic “dual loyalty” tropes and support of the antisemitic “great replacement theory”.

Trump loathes Palestinians even more. He said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, has “become like a Palestinian” and “a proud member of Hamas” for criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump has also promised to bar Palestinian refugees and implement an “ideological test” for Muslim immigrants if re-elected. At Trump’s Nazi cosplay rally at Madison Square Garden, Rudy Giuliani said Palestinians “are taught to kill us at two years old” and added: “They may have good people, I’m sorry, [but] I don’t take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at two.” Afterward, Trump appeared on stage and declared the GOP is “the party of inclusion”. Unless you’re Palestinian, an undocumented person, Haitian, Puerto Rican, a woman, or a Jewish liberal.

Still, some jaded American voters don’t believe anything will be different when it comes to US policy in Gaza. I don’t blame them. But, if you remain unmoved on that issue, then I’d kindly ask you to turn to the domestic front where in the final month of his campaign Trump has promised to unleash the military and national guard on US citizens and invoke the Alien Sedition Act against migrants. This is the same man who said he’d be a “dictator for a day” and whose Project 2025 is like a helpful Bond villain blueprint that explicitly details the authoritarian ambitions for a white Christian nationalist utopia. The agenda includes replacing public servants with Maga brownshirts, weaponizing the justice department against his numerous enemies – which includes Liz Cheney, for whom he wants televised public military tribunals – and eliminating the Department of Education.

“Well, we already survived the first Trump administration. The system will hold. This is just scare-mongering,” I am told in response. This statement is rooted in privilege and amnesia. I’d recommend people who believe this fiction to talk to the family members of nearly half a million Americans who died during the pandemic, a disaster made infinitely worse due to Trump’s incompetence and lies to the US public. I want people to talk to low-income and middle-class families who rely on Obamacare for survival, which Trump and the GOP have promised to eliminate and replace with a “concept of a plan”. I’d like people to read the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a young Black woman who died in Georgia because she was denied access to a legal abortion thanks to Trump and his extremist, rightwing supreme court majority that overturned Roe v Wade.

There’s too much at stake and far too many communities, both in the United States and abroad, that will suffer if Trump is re-elected. The desire to “punish” Joe Biden and Harris for Gaza and vote instead for Trump or a third party vote, which just helps Trump in swing states, is like punching ourselves in the face. The entire country will end up with a bloody nose as Trump becomes a dictator and unleashes his Maga brownshirts.

With Harris and Democrats, there is an opening for Americans to organize, push, and pressure her administration to halt Israel’s genocide and pursue progressive healthcare and economic policies. Democratic allies include Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, labor organizations, and communities of color who remain committed to social justice, equity and peace. With the Republicans and Trump, no such allies exist. There’s simply a fascist and a white Christian nationalist regime in waiting.

There’s no both sides. Please vote accordingly.

Wajahat Ali is editor of The Left Hook substack, co-host of The Democracy-ish Podcast, and author of the book Go Back to Where You Came From and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/29/democrats-harris-israel-gaza-palestinians-trump<br />
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 10:19 am
@hightor,
A journalists’ job is to present the news.

Each person should make their own decision, not swayed by the bias (in either direction) of the institution where they get their news—in the same way a church shouldn’t influence congregations which way to vote.

There is a trust implied to some citizens that these institutions are rational, above bias, and have no ulterior motives (though US media has lost almost all credibility with the majority of voters).

The pen is mightier than the sword. There is far too much room for corruption.
blatham
 
  4  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 11:08 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:
Correct journalistic practice is one thing. Saving liberal democracy, however, is quite another and must be supported by all possible means.
Because after its abolition, there will no longer be a free press.

You've identified exactly the right perspective, Walter.
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 11:09 am
There is no democracy.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 11:10 am
@Lash,
We don't live in Utopia, rich people own most of the media.

That's how it is.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 12:59 pm
@Lash,
Quote:
A journalists’ job is to present the news.

A reporter's job is to present the news. And the big US print outlets have scores, even hundreds, of reporters and international contacts, and if you read their stories you get semi-objective accounts of what's happening in your city, state, country, and planet. (I say semi-objective because any human reporters are sure to have particular biases that affect their coverage, but once you know where they're coming from you can usually glean enough to get an accurate representation of the story being reported.) Most print media companies have opinion pages as well, often presenting positions from both sides. And then there are editorials, which reflect the beliefs of the publisher. And if someone is going to the trouble of running a newspaper why should their right to interpret the news be squelched? It's an editorial, not a news story. No, newspapers aren't compelled to write editorials but, with delicious irony, Bezos's hamfisted decision not to make an editorial endorsement actually became a news story!
hightor
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 01:07 pm
Umair Haque wrote:
(...)

There’s no point at which a society takes collapse seriously.

None.

Look at America today. There’s Kamala warning that Trump’s a fascist. That’s after his own Chief of Staff did, and that’s after his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs did. There are countless pundits and columnists and whatnot who’ve finally—a decade late—finally become aware how grave the situation is, and have begun to repeat the mantra.

And guess what? Nobody cares.

(...)

theissue

hightor
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 01:27 pm
Why Major Newspapers Won’t Endorse Kamala Harris

Democracy dies in broad daylight.

Robert Greene wrote:
In this extremely tight presidential race, the big surprise of the fall campaign has turned out to be the failure of two major newspapers to deliver expected endorsements of Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump. With voting well under way in many states, the Los Angeles Times’ owner and The Washington Post’s publisher made inexcusably late announcements that they had become suddenly disenchanted with the entire notion of endorsing presidential candidates.

Withholding support for Harris after everything that both newspapers have reported about Trump’s manifest unfitness for office looks to me like plain cowardice. Although I served on the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board for 18 years, I believe one can reasonably question the value of endorsements. Still, the timing here invites speculation that these papers are preparing for a possible Trump victory by signaling a willingness to accommodate the coming administration rather than resist it.

At each paper, the editorial board had readied a draft or outline of a Harris endorsement and was waiting (and waiting and waiting) for final approval. On Wednesday, the L.A. Times editorials editor, Mariel Garza, told her team, including me, that the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, would not permit any endorsement to run. She then resigned in protest.

As thousands of angry Times readers canceled their subscriptions, Soon-Shiong publicly claimed on X to have asked the editorial board to write an analysis of “all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate” during their respective White House tenures. But he said the board “chose to remain silent.”

Nonsense. We made no such choice. We were ready to endorse Harris, and Soon-Shiong’s post on X was the first time I or my fellow editorial writers had heard anything about a side-by-side analysis. Having been so casually thrown under the bus, I resigned Thursday. My colleague Karin Klein also announced that she would step down.

On Friday, the Post publisher and CEO, William Lewis, published a statement that his paper, too, would not endorse in the presidential race, now or ever again. A member of the Post editorial board resigned. Subscribers canceled.

Remember, this is the same news organization that, during the first Trump administration, adopted the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness.” It can also die in broad daylight. In this year’s race, a non-choice ignores Trump’s singular unfitness for office, demonstrated time and again through his dishonesty, his false claims to have won the 2020 election, his criminal convictions, his impeachable offenses, his race-baiting, his threats of retaliation against his opponents, and many other features that make him a danger to the nation.

Lewis and Soon-Shiong both explained that they wanted to let voters make their own decisions.

I hear some version of that irritating statement every four years, although it typically comes from readers who ask why editorial boards don’t just deliver the facts, the way news stories are supposed to, leaving judgment up to readers. Publishers and newspaper owners ought to know better.

Editorials express a newspaper’s institutional viewpoint, based on a clearly articulated set of values and expressed by logical (and sometimes emotional) arguments supported by evidence. In a process unique in journalism, they are shaped by daily back-and-forth discussions among editorial writers. The editorial board is separate from the newsroom, where reporters are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves.

Endorsements and other editorials are a lot like a lawyer’s closing argument to a jury after a long trial with numerous witnesses and exhibits. They remind readers of everything they’ve read, seen, and heard, and then they assemble it all in a persuasive presentation. They make a case. And then readers decide.

The Times editorial board went more than three decades without endorsing in presidential races, largely because readers and the newsroom were so outraged by the endorsement of Richard Nixon for reelection in 1972 that publishers were too cautious (or rather, too chicken) to again take a stand. But soon after I arrived at the Times, the editorial board promised to start endorsing for president again in the 2008 primary. We argued—in an editorial, of course—that if we purported to support transparency, voter engagement, and civic participation, then we had an obligation to make a decision and vigorously defend our choice.

In a pre-endorsement series of editorials, we invited readers to examine a set of foundational ideas such as “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness,” and to question how those and other principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applied to current challenges. Then we measured the primary candidates against those values, and made our case for the relatively unknown Barack Obama.

Some critics argue that editorials don’t change anyone’s vote, but that’s not the point. Even voters who already have made up their mind often look for a well-reasoned explanation of why their choice is the right one. And let’s not be so certain that a strong argument on an editorial page, even one from California or the District of Columbia, won’t affect the outcome of a close race that could be won or lost by just a few votes in one precinct in Pennsylvania.

Soon-Shiong’s alternative, a non-choice pro-and-con matrix, wouldn’t be an editorial. It would be as if an attorney decided not to bother with a closing argument and said instead, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, here are some reasons you should rule for my client, and also a bunch of reasons to rule against him.” Nor does the proposed side-by-side analysis of Trump’s and Harris’s policies make much sense on its own terms. Trump as president was the top policy maker during his time in office. Harris, as vice president, has not been a policy maker at all, so the comparison would be inapt. An editorial board would identify that flaw immediately. Soon-Shiong may have missed it, but I find myself wondering whether he wanted to direct the outcome of the endorsement.

In short-circuiting the Times editorial board, Soon-Shiong’s message has become only more incoherent. He said Thursday that his goal was to avoid political division. But his adult daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, said in a series of X posts and in a Saturday New York Times story that the family met and collectively decided against endorsing Harris to protest the vice president’s support for Israel. Not true, Patrick Soon-Shiong told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday.

“Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion,” but not for the Times, he said.

Instead of a forthright, well-argued editorial, readers are left with an indecipherable message and journalistic failure. Someone ought to write about it. It might make a good editorial.

atlantic
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 01:39 pm
@hightor,
In Germany a journalist is (according to the German Journalists Association) a person engaged in the collection, preparation and dissemination of news and related commentaries and articles; the term also extends to the dissemination and publication of opinions and entertainment as well as to employees of the press offices of public authorities and companies.

Journalists here work in a variety of jobs and functions such as investigative journalist, correspondent, editor, reporter, chief of service, picture editor, columnist, feature writer, editorial writer, photojournalist, video journalist, fashion journalist or presenter.

(At a nearby university, you can get BAs, MAs and doctorates in General Journalism, Science Journalism, Economic Policy Journalism and Music Journalism.)
hightor
 
  1  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 01:52 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
I think it's pretty much the same here. But a journalist acting as a reporter performs a different function than does one acting as an editorial writer, fashion commentator, or theater critic.
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 02:02 pm
@hightor,
Sure, I completely agree (this was part of my intermediate exam at university Wink )
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  3  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 02:09 pm
@hightor,
hightor wrote:

Umair Haque wrote:
(...)

There’s no point at which a society takes collapse seriously.

None.

Look at America today. There’s Kamala warning that Trump’s a fascist. That’s after his own Chief of Staff did, and that’s after his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs did. There are countless pundits and columnists and whatnot who’ve finally—a decade late—finally become aware how grave the situation is, and have begun to repeat the mantra.

And guess what? Nobody cares.

(...)

theissue




Some care...and some care a lot.

But way, way too many people not only do not care...some actually are aiding the gravity of the situation.

It is my guess that there will come a day where historians will talk about how this generation of Americans gave up on the experiment started by the Founding Fathers. They will probably treat the continuing Trump supporters with the same amazement they treat the continuing Hitler supporters of mid-20th century Germany.

The free world seems to suddenly want to be under the heavy hand of dictators...and no one is talking about philosopher kings.

Too bad for us all...not only Americans, but for ALL.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  4  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 02:17 pm
@Lash,
There is no such this as a perfect democracy, but if Trump gets in there will be even less democracy.

He's already packed the supreme court with fascist lackeys.
0 Replies
 
bobsal u1553115
 
  1  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 04:18 pm
@Lash,
It's a reporter's job to report the news, a journalist's to provide a take on the reported news.

Jeebers.
0 Replies
 
bobsal u1553115
 
  1  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 04:23 pm
@Lash,
Lash wrote:

Newspapers shouldn’t be in the business of endorsing political candidates.


Most newspapers were established exactly to endorse a candidate or party.

Arizona Republic, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, etc.

I'm glad you don't teach journalism.
0 Replies
 
bobsal u1553115
 
  2  
Reply Tue 29 Oct, 2024 04:30 pm
Philadelphia District Attorney Sues Musk Over $1 Million Voter Giveaways

Larry Krasner, the top prosecutor in Philadelphia, sued Elon Musk and his Trump-supporting super PAC, saying the giveaways amounted to an “unlawful lottery.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/us/politics/elon-musk-giveaway-philadelphia-lawsuit.html

By Kate Christobek

Oct. 28, 2024

District Attorney Larry Krasner of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit on Monday to stop Elon Musk and his Trump-supporting organization, America PAC, from continuing their $1 million daily giveaway in Pennsylvania, calling it an illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in the presidential election.

Mr. Musk’s giveaway, which had already prompted the Justice Department to warn that it might violate federal law, purports to “randomly” reward registered voters in seven battleground states who signed a conservative petition by America PAC, which is mobilizing voters to support Mr. Trump.

“America PAC and Musk are lulling Philadelphia citizens — and others in the Commonwealth (and other swing states in the upcoming election) — to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1 million,” the lawsuit said. “That is a lottery. And it is indisputably an unlawful lottery.”

The civil suit, which names Mr. Musk and America PAC as defendants, requests that a state court halt further operation of the sweepstakes in Pennsylvania.

The suit also accuses Mr. Musk and America PAC of violating state consumer protection laws by deploying deceptive or misleading statements. As one example, Mr. Krasner argues that winners are not, in fact, random because “multiple winners that have been selected are individuals who have shown up at Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.”

America PAC responded to a request for comment on Monday by sending a post on X about a recent $1 million winner of the sweepstakes in Michigan. Allies of Mr. Musk have previously argued that the giveaway awards people only for signing a petition, rather than paying them to register.

Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world and the head of X, Tesla and SpaceX, has aggressively thrown his support behind Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania in recent weeks. In addition to appearing at rallies and town halls in support of the Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Musk has also poured at least $119 million into his pro-Trump super PAC.

Mr. Musk introduced the petition, which pledges support for the First and Second Amendments, earlier this month and gradually increased the incentives for signing it over time. Initially those who referred signers received $47 per referral, which raised eyebrows among some election-law experts.

The amount was then increased to $100 and Mr. Musk said he would pay both the signatory and the referrer. But Mr. Musk soon raised the stakes to $1 million, prompting significantly increased scrutiny.

The Justice Department’s letter last week to America PAC warned that the giveaway may violate federal laws against paying voters. While such warning letters typically do not outline the next steps if violations continue, they are intended to suggest that further activity could result in a criminal investigation.

The petition and the sweepstakes show no sign of slowing down. The petition has reached its stated goal of collecting more than 1 million signatories. And so far, 10 $1 million payments have been awarded.

On Oct. 19, Mr. Musk awarded the first $1 million prize — complete with an oversized check — to a voter at a town hall in Harrisburg, Pa. According to the petition site, prizes were awarded over the next week in three other Pennsylvania locales: Pittsburgh, McKees Rocks and Lancaster.

Kate Christobek is a reporter covering the civil and criminal cases against former president Donald J. Trump for The Times. More about Kate Christobek
0 Replies
 
 

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