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They're Angry, Not Stupid! Why Trump Is Likely To Win Again

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  • Rbrt said:

    And who would call themselves a “mines engineer”? Wouldn’t the proper title be mining engineer? He scolded me for reading the [“hard right - bible loving”] Republican led Intel report instead of thinking for myself.

    Colorado School of Mines is an engineering school. Students refer to it as "Mines"
  • wxman123 said:

    So, watched the RNC convention last night flipping between FOX and MSNBC. I suggest this exercise to anyone who does not fully appreciate the division in the country or what Trump means when he says "fake news." I was blown away, for example, by the quality and vision of Tim Scott's speech. Flipped to MSNBC right afterwards expecting to see at least some praise (like Fox gave Biden after his speech) but instead saw angry commentators still trying to "correct Trump's lies" about COVID, claiming they "hated to do it" but felt the need to "protect the health of its viewers." Really? Then one MSNBC commentator noted that the fact that RNC speakers "attacked" the dems shows how desperate the party is. Did they watch the DNC? Very obvious that the dems talking point for the week will be to use the word "lie" as much as possible, but to have a panel of "news" commentators parroting that line during prime time convention coverage was disappointing to say the least. Flipped back to FOX and say what you will about the "slant" but but at least they had people expressing the other side's view. I wonder how many people watch MSNBC and think that's the "news" based on "facts" especially when they see that washed up Brian Williams trying to play journalist.

    Of course, TDS is a terrible affliction that causes self-destruction.

  • edited August 2020
    I figured Mines was from Michigan since Michigan Technological University has a mining degree program as well as two news links are from the Detroit News.
  • wxman123 said:

    I wonder how many people watch MSNBC and think that's the "news" based on "facts" especially when they see that washed up Brian Williams trying to play journalist.


    I wonder how many people watch FOX and think that's the "news" based on "facts" especially when they see Tucker/Hannity/Ingraham trying to play journalist.

    You have to watch both knowing they spin their own version of everything and then throw in NPR or some other less bias view to get the truth.
  • edited August 2020
    @royal4, @wxman123

    You’re both right. Both MSNBC and Fox are highly slanted towards their greatly polarized audiences. To me that’s reprehensible. More so when you realize networks have long used instant (sample) viewer polling / feedback which tells them which stories garner the most intense emotional reaction. So if rating numbers start to sag, they can ramp up their emotionally laden stories and vicious slant even more. CNN isn’t any better. Ignore all of them.

    And NBC’s Meet the Press is as bad nowadays as those cable outlets. Should change its name as it’s an embarrassment to the “press” as most of us understand it. Maybe “Meet the one-sided poorly prepared hack who wouldn’t recognize a good follow-up question if it smacked him in the face”.

    The only show worth watching for even-handed interviews is Chris Wallace‘s on Sunday afternoon. Re-airs Sunday evenings which is when I normally watch. Interestingly, Wallace is on Fox.

    For some semblance of balance read both the WA Post (left) and the WSJ (right).
  • There are slants at every news organization and objectivity is a myth, but there are significant difference in the size of the slant, and to say they're both equally bad is a false equivalency:

    https://politifact.com/article/2015/jan/27/msnbc-fox-cnn-move-needle-our-truth-o-meter-scorec/
    At Fox and Fox News, 10 percent of the claims we’ve rated have been True, 11 percent Mostly True, 18 percent Half True, 21 percent Mostly False, 31 percent False and nine percent Pants on Fire.

    That means about 60 percent of the claims we’ve checked have been rated Mostly False or worse. Here’s how it breaks down (as of Jan. 27, 2015):
    image
    At MSNBC and NBC, 44 percent of claims have received a rating of Mostly False or worse. The full breakdown:
    image
    And as for CNN? It has the best record among the cable networks, as 80 percent of of the claims we’ve rated are Half True or better.
    image
  • edited August 2020
    @LewisBraham,

    “Slant” is not the same as inaccurate or false reporting. I don’t doubt those stats you provided. Networks can “slant” stories in many ways without actually “lying“.

    - Selection of personalities (authorities) they “interview”

    - Those anonymous “man (woman) on the street” interviews / testimonials they weave in

    - Selection of stories covered

    - Choice of words (particularity emotionally laden ones) in presenting stories.

    - Omission of countervailing information.

    - Amount of time spent on a particular story

    - Placement / prominence allotted particular stories

    - Visuals used to supplement stories (particularly noticeable when covering the recent protests)

    - Tone of voice, inflection, timing, gesture, etc. in how a story is presented

    I happen to think John Meacham is both brilliant and eloquent. A former close friend of GHWB. Unfortunately, he’s not counterbalanced on MSNBC by an equally gifted spokesman for the conservative side. And I suspect he’d agree that such counter-opinion would add balance and depth to the network.
  • royal4 said:

    wxman123 said:

    I wonder how many people watch MSNBC and think that's the "news" based on "facts" especially when they see that washed up Brian Williams trying to play journalist.


    I wonder how many people watch FOX and think that's the "news" based on "facts" especially when they see Tucker/Hannity/Ingraham trying to play journalist.

    You have to watch both knowing they spin their own version of everything and then throw in NPR or some other less bias view to get the truth.
    I would think very few...Hannity and Ingraham are very obviously opinion shows (at least I think so). You never see them paired with say a Brett Baier or Chris Wallace. MSNBC rarely/never has a conservative counter and pairs its shills with Brian Williams (a supposed "news guy"). Fox has counter opinions most of the time (though not on Hannity or Ingraham) but definitely and always during "straight" shows like the RNC prime time coverage. In my view MSNBC pretended to be presenting "straight" coverage (replete with alleged "fact checking") but the bias was a blatant as on Hannity.
  • Old Skeet is brave posting here knowing how ruthless you all are when he says anything.
    Some of this same crowd loves his barometer thread and here he any one leaning conservative just gets pounded. So here we are with the Dems putting up a candidate and platform that no thinking person with assets could really want, but because Trump is so bad personally, they support the left. I am resigned to support the President for lack of a better choice from any party. Years of support for true liberty got me no place as the nation moved further away from freedom and closer to socialism. So sorry for my two sons who may never have a President who can protect us, show sound judgment, limit spending and set a good example for all. Is there no one?
  • @parsig9 No, this is what ruthlessness is:https://buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/kenosha-suspect-kyle-rittenhouse-trump-rally
    The law enforcement–obsessed 17-year-old who was charged with shooting and killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests for Jacob Blake appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally in January.

    Kyle Howard Rittenhouse’s social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons, posting “Blue Lives Matter,” and supporting Trump for president. Footage from the Des Moines, Iowa, rally on Jan. 30 shows Rittenhouse feet away from the president, in the front row, to the left of the podium. He posted a TikTok video from the event.
    image
  • edited August 2020
    Check the facts out for both parties:

    https://www.factcheck.org/
  • TheShadow said:

    Check the facts out for both parties:

    https://www.factcheck.org/

    Not all "facts" can be checked and some claims are nearly impossible to debunk. After Giuliani's speech one MSNBC commentator purported to be "fact checking" his points. she said that the number of murders in NYC this year were similar to "the 90's" when when Rudy was in office (whatever she meant by "the 90's"); that in all of the protests not a single BLM member had been arrested...and that the violence that has been going on was being stoked or committed by white supremacists.
  • Oh, and to be clear...having been in NYC dozens of times during both the Rudy and de Blasio eras I can say without a doubt there is a palpable difference to say the least. Rudy may be a bit of a kook but on the substance he was mostly spot on. If the dems keep pretending that people are not seeing what they think they are seeing it's game over.
  • Not all "facts" can be checked ... MSNBC commentator ... said that the number of murders in NYC this year were similar to "the 90's" when when Rudy was in office

    You heard wrong, and some facts are incontestable:

    The number of murders per year in NYC now is a bit over half of Rudy's annual murder count in the 90s (see below). Every year he was in office, NYC had over 600 murders. Under De Blasio, NYC never reached 400 murders through 2019.

    In 2020, there have been 235 murders through July, which works out to an annualized rate of 403. That's still 1/3 lower than Rudy's best (629).

    Did I mention that the population of NYC is about 7% higher than when Rudy left office (using the 2000 figure of 8.008M and the 2020 figure of 8.550M)?
    image
  • >> not counterbalanced on MSNBC by an equally gifted spokesman for the conservative side

    @hank

    - Uh-huh. Who could that possibly be? Gerson? Rubin? Frum? Of course not, they are all blisteringly anti-GOP now (understandably, like actually all 'gifted' conservatives).

    What you wish for does not exist, and has not for very many years. The conservative side too.

    - Your premise appears to be that today's dominant rightwingnut world has something, anything to do with true conservatism, whatever it was or fancied to be, of the past. There are many many dozens of analyses in recent articles showing that this is a preposterous thought. I will let you find them. What might you mean here? Individual responsibility? Small gov? Moral principles? Wise deregulation? Historically informed jurisprudence? Personal freedoms? Ethical behavior? Economic prudence? Bootstrap encouragement and reduced spending? What was it you were thinking of, exactly?

    This made me laugh out loud:
    https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/

    Okay, here is just one of the many dozens of articles:

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/19/interview-stuart-stevens-republican-case-against-trump-397918
  • wxman123 said:

    Oh, and to be clear...having been in NYC dozens of times during both the Rudy and de Blasio eras I can say without a doubt there is a palpable difference to say the least. Rudy may be a bit of a kook but on the substance he was mostly spot on. If the dems keep pretending that people are not seeing what they think they are seeing it's game over.

    please go on
  • Facts are a wonderful thing aren't they. They often make the kool-aid people have been drinking not so tasty.
  • msf said:

    Not all "facts" can be checked ... MSNBC commentator ... said that the number of murders in NYC this year were similar to "the 90's" when when Rudy was in office

    You heard wrong, and some facts are incontestable:

    The number of murders per year in NYC now is a bit over half of Rudy's annual murder count in the 90s (see below). Every year he was in office, NYC had over 600 murders. Under De Blasio, NYC never reached 400 murders through 2019.

    In 2020, there have been 235 murders through July, which works out to an annualized rate of 403. That's still 1/3 lower than Rudy's best (629).

    Did I mention that the population of NYC is about 7% higher than when Rudy left office (using the 2000 figure of 8.008M and the 2020 figure of 8.550M)?
    image


    You misunderstood my comment. I assumed the comments on MSNBC were factually correct...like in the sense that when someone is arrested I doubt they fill out a form proclaiming their affiliation with BLM hence no proof of any arrest of a BLM member. Anyone with a set of eyes can tell you that crime in NYC has not gotten better under de Blasio and in the wake of George Floyd is materially worse. It is true that de Blasio did not immediately mess with the success that Rudy and Bloomberg had in bringing down crime and perhaps the number of murders is less now than under the Republicans. That said, every single Trump hater I know (and I know plenty) agree that the crime/riots/lack of respect for law and order in dem-controlled cities is out of control and no statistics are going to provide comfort that what people think they are seeing isn't real. I think going down that road is just what the Donald needs.
  • edited August 2020
    Anyone with a set of eyes can tell you that crime in NYC has not gotten better under de Blasio
    Sure, because your anecdotal individual experience of what your “gut” tells you matters more than scientifically collected data just like if there’s a snowstorm on your block there’s no such thing as climate change. You don’t care about the truth. You care about whatever confirms the prejudices you already have. In investing, that’s called confirmation bias.
  • edited August 2020
    Turning back to the headline for this post. This poll lends support to that potential outcome:
    Republican and independent voters are twice as likely to not reveal their true preference for president in a telephone poll, a study found.

    CloudResearch, an online market research and data collection company, found that 11.7% of Republicans and 10.5% of independents said they wouldn't share their true opinion, while only 5.4% of Democrats said the same.

    "That raises the possibility that polls understate support for President Donald Trump," Bloomberg reported Friday.

    CloudResearch explained to Bloomberg that political party affiliation was the sole characteristic that correlated consistently with reluctance to divulge true presidential preference. There were reportedly no correlations with age, race, education or income.
    https://foxnews.com/politics/study-suggests-polls-could-be-missing-shy-trump-voters
  • edited August 2020

    >> not counterbalanced on MSNBC by an equally gifted spokesman for the conservative side

    @hank

    - Uh-huh. Who could that possibly be? Gerson? Rubin? Frum? Of course not, they are all blisteringly anti-GOP now (understandably, like actually all 'gifted' conservatives).

    What you wish for does not exist, and has not for very many years. The conservative side too.

    - Your premise appears to be that today's dominant rightwingnut world has something, anything to do with true conservatism, whatever it was or fancied to be, of the past. There are many many dozens of analyses in recent articles showing that this is a preposterous thought. I will let you find them. What might you mean here? Individual responsibility? Small gov? Moral principles? Wise deregulation? Historically informed jurisprudence? Personal freedoms? Ethical behavior? Economic prudence? Bootstrap encouragement and reduced spending? What was it you were thinking of, exactly?

    This made me laugh out loud:
    https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/

    Okay, here is just one of the many dozens of articles:

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/19/interview-stuart-stevens-republican-case-against-trump-397918

    Haven’t read your links (terrible internet), but point well taken. The former republican party as we knew it 15 or more years ago has been supplanted largely by what would have been considered a “fringe” element most of my 70+ year lifetime. Eisenhower, Goldwater, GWB? All seem badly out of place in this claptrap assemblage. What’s a bit odd is the fringe has grown in influence rather than being swept aside as usually happens. I can’t explain it. Maybe in 25 years the historians will better be able to. A guess is they will hone-in on the advent of largely unregulated cableTV and the increasing influence of the internet.

    Yep - in terms of having balanced media (as far as cable stuff goes) we’re on shaky ground. Any journalist worth his salt is going to identify false narratives rather than presenting them as fact. For a look at how that works, check out the opening 5 minutes of the PBS news hour Friday. Woodruff and team did a beautiful job dissecting Trump’s Thursday night speech from the White House (the “Peoples’ House”, as Ronald Regan called it).

    There are moderate voices in the republican party - but darned few willing to speak up. Senator Mitt Romney’s one, Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski likely fits the bill as well. And there’s Retired General Adam Clayton Powell (possibly no longer a Republican). Journalistically, political commentators David Gergen, David Brooks, Paul Gigot are conservatives. But at least two of the three find Trumpism anathema. Not sure about the third (Gigot).

    So how can we make sense of all this? Feels like watching a movie unwind in slow-motion with a known possible very bad ending - emotionally, a situation reminiscent of Ralph’s desperate plea for adult intervention in Chapter 5 of Golding’s Lord of the Flies: “If only they could get a message to us, ... If only they could send us something grownup....a sign or something." - Of course, the “adult” sign that soon arrives is a perverse one.

  • You misunderstood my comment.   No, you overreached.

    You even made it clear what your comment was about, literally, with a followup shortly thereafter:
    Oh, and to be clear...having been in NYC dozens of times during both the Rudy and de Blasio eras I can say without a doubt there is a palpable difference to say the least

    So I compared the two eras to see what factual, numeric differences there were between the eras.

    no statistics are going to provide comfort that what people think they are seeing isn't real.

    Your post demonstrates that. For you, a city with half the crime felt worse than a city under a mayor out to ticket jaywalkers. It was palpable to you, but not real. People react in accordance with what they think they see, prejudices and all, and that's the point of BLM.
  • IMHO, the GOP fringe element has achieved ascendancy due to the rise of political talk radio. The Fairness Act was repealed in 1987, paving the way in 1988 for Rush Limbaugh to emerge, first in Sacramento and eventually nationwide. His toxic brew of wit, satire, humor ,superior recall, glibness and shamelessness led to the rise of right-wing populism/nationalism in the GOP and the election of Trump.
  • @carew388 I do believe you've nailed it, there!
  • has anyone ever listened at length (or even briefly) to levin or savage?? forget beck and limbaugh, talk about destructive evil
  • msf said:

    You misunderstood my comment.   No, you overreached.

    You even made it clear what your comment was about, literally, with a followup shortly thereafter:
    Oh, and to be clear...having been in NYC dozens of times during both the Rudy and de Blasio eras I can say without a doubt there is a palpable difference to say the least

    So I compared the two eras to see what factual, numeric differences there were between the eras.

    no statistics are going to provide comfort that what people think they are seeing isn't real.

    Your post demonstrates that. For you, a city with half the crime felt worse than a city under a mayor out to ticket jaywalkers. It was palpable to you, but not real. People react in accordance with what they think they see, prejudices and all, and that's the point of BLM.


    You're still not getting it. I totally stand by my comments. I'm guessing you have not been to the city in quite a while. The violence/homelessness/lack of respect for the law has gotten out of control. You can argue that that Covid is a confounding variable...but to say that NYC feels safer now than in the Rudy era is uniformed by reality on the ground regardless of "statistics." Broken store windows, bricks thrown at cops...who stand down and do not make arrests may make it seem like "there's nothing to see here" on paper, but it is not truth. As to "the point" of BLM being to combat racial prejudice you're certainly entitled to your opinion.

  • I don’t get it. How can someone who does not live in NYC, but has visited it a few times, write about lawlessness, etc? I guess if you watch and read biased media, then you could have a skewed view of a city - any city. However, I’ve lived and worked in NYC for the last 43 years, and the hyperbolic description from a valued poster at MFO comparing a then and now scenario of my city is bizarre. There are issues in every city due to poverty, redlining, bigotry, and intolerance. When the issues come to national attention, and solutions are discussed, the term “socialism” is floated as a pejorative.

    Here’s an article on how neighborhoods that were redlined as “hazardous” in the 1930s because they were African-American neighborhoods and eliminated the possibility of investment. This one policy had a horrific effect on city neighborhoods and continues to have repressive consequences to this day.

    How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering

    Redlining helped reshape the urban landscape of U.S. cities. It also left communities of color far more vulnerable to rising heat.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html?smid=em-share

    Lets look beyond the media bias which does not contextualize events, but captures one moment and magnifies it for their point of view.

    By the way, my experience of NYC of late has been the presumably non-newsworthy moments of a courageously caring community in the midst of a pandemic, and loss of lives and livelihood.
  • What do you think the object of BLM is?
    In the years since [forming], we’ve committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive.
    https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

    I'm guessing you have not been to the city in quite a while.
    The last time I went to the city I drove in on June 16th (driving because of Covid-19). Before that, I went to the city by public transit on March 12th. When were the "dozens of times" you've been to the city? Did you personally witness "bricks thrown at cops"?

    You put the word "statistics" in quotes, implying that the figures are not accurate. Do you not trust the NYC police, whose union recently endorsed Trump?
    Police Department City of New York
    Report Covering the Week 8/17/2020 Through 8/23/2020
    Crime Complaints

    Total: 2020 YTD 58,290; 2019 YTD 59,744; % Chg -2.43%
    https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf

    According to the NYPD, murders are up, but that's always been a small part of crime, and total crime is down. It was crime, not murder, that you wrote about: "Anyone with a set of eyes can tell you that crime in NYC has not gotten better under de Blasio".

    To paraphrase Marx, who are you going to believe, the NYPD or your own eyes?

    Impressions are funny things. I worked for someone (major backer of our company, board member) who was later convicted for 1st degree murder. A big real estate investor. So am I concerned about real estate people in positions of power? Okay, you've got me there:-)
  • edited August 2020
    Just an occasional visitor - mostly Manhattan area. I’d say there’s a much greater danger of getting mowed-down by somebody walking and glaring at their cell phone than of getting mugged. Of course, you always need to be aware of surroundings no matter where you are. I also have a lot of respect for the men and women of the NYPD. From what I can see they bend over backwards to establish rapport with the citizens.

    Crime is relative to total number of people inhabiting an area. So rate of incidents may appear higher than actually is in a crowded area like NYC. I think statistics would bear out my own long-time contention that the majority of violent crime / assaults are committed by someone who is acquainted with their victim (family members, employees, neighbors, rival gang members, folks engaged in illicit drug dealing, etc.)

    Media thrives on this crime stuff because it grabs eyeballs. Heck, you’d be afraid to take a walk in the woods in Michigan if all your perceptions came from the local newscasts.
  • msf
    edited August 2020
    @Level5 - nice post. The lack of green space is obvious to anyone who has eyes and walks around less privileged neighborhoods. But it's good to have studies and statistics to not only substantiate this, but to quantify the effects.

    The NY Times had a piece a few years ago on How Redlining's Racist Effects Lasted for Decades
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-racist-effects-lasted-for-decades.html

    Not just racist, but discriminating against anyone who was different, including "Jews and Irish".
    Level5 said:

    By the way, my experience of NYC of late has been the presumably non-newsworthy moments of a courageously caring community in the midst of a pandemic, and loss of lives and livelihood.

    That's worth repeating, and one would hope that this is universal.

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