Donald Trump and US politics

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

("Yemen: The 'forgotten war' cloaked in the shadow of Syria")

The coverage of Syria & Yemen has been disproportionately biased in the favour of the former. Sure they will mention Yemen, once in a blue moon, else the bias would be too obvious.

The same discrepancy in reporting can be observed even inside Syria (so no excuses about "innacessibility"), where western MSM was covering the battle of Aleppo minute by minute, when the government was attacking "rebels", but ignore situations where government troops or pro-gov civilians are being beseiged by "rebels" or jihadi terrorists / ISIS.

MSM is politicized and bought. Calling them liars is too mild, I'd call them accessory to murder, in some cases.

Smiley: "I don´t like left wing media."

Well, I don´t like right wing media, not even conservative. But "enemy of the people" has a different quality. Both represent a group of "the people".

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

Smiley: "I don´t like left wing media."

Well, I don´t like right wing media, not even conservative. But "enemy of the people" has a different quality. Both represent a group of "the people".

I don't even like Fox News. It's clear they're shilling for one side while claiming to be "fair and balanced" - they're not either. ALL media in the USA is extremely politically motivated. There is no such thing as objective reporting when it comes to anything besides the weather, really.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

But first, some common sense: even saying it's a list of lies shows immediate bias. "Error" is a significantly different concept from "lie;" the latter actually has a substantially higher burden of proof, as one must prove the speaker knew their statements to be false. To simply assume this intent tells us we're reading a biased article before we even research the points.

Well, past a certain point, you can't give someone the benefit of the doubt. When someone makes a false statement, a useful heuristic is, "How likely would a person in good faith be to get this wrong?" For a few statements here? Sure, okay, maybe you could get that wrong in good faith. For many, though, that simply isn't true. There's no way in hell Trump could have been "mistaken" about Clinton having a plan on the economy. Because if he had checked, he would have found it, and if he hadn't checked, he had no basis on which to make the claim. Same with Clinton's interest in child-care policies - he either checked and lied, or he spoke completely out of his ass. That's still a lie.

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Falsely said, of Clinton’s abortion views, “a day prior to birth you can take that baby.”

"I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. I’ve met women who faced this heart-wrenching decision toward the end of a pregnancy. Of course it’s a horrible procedure. No one would argue with that. But if your life is at stake, if your health is at stake, if the potential for having any more children is at stake, this must be a woman’s choice." — Hillary Clinton, October 8, 2000
"I have met with women who have, toward the end of their pregnancy, get worst news one can get. That their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term. Or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions." — Hillary Clinton, October 19, 2016

Clinton's abortion position is consistent with, say, discovering a child has Down's Syndrome and aborting it just prior to birth.

Interestingly enough, Politifact rated a similar claim by Ted Cruz "false":

http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2016/oct/09/ted-cruz/false-ted-cruz-claim-hillary-clinton-backs-unlimit/

Similarly, CNN rated Trump's actual claim technically true, but misleading. Because Clinton has been fairly consistent in her position on this: there's no problem with banning late-term abortions, as long as there is an exemption for the health of the mother. This is where the lie is. Trump is acting like Clinton is supporting free abortion whenever. That's... not accurate. At all.

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Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton wants open borders.”

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with
open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." — Hillary Clinton, May 16, 2013

Again, context helps. Maybe calling it a lie is an overstatement, but it is a blatantly false statement. Clinton doesn't support open borders. Her platform and her position is not to open our borders. You can give Trump the benefit of the doubt if you want; I don't think I do. Not on the level of "he didn't know better". Perhaps he's talking metaphorically about open borders, but I'd be more open to that interpretation if he didn't say that he meant it literally days later.

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Falsely said, “She wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada.”

“So we’re in a learning period as we move forward with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And I’m hoping that whatever the shortfalls or the glitches have been, which in a big piece of legislation you’re going to have, those will be remedied and we can really take a hard look at what’s succeeding, fix what isn’t, and keep moving forward to get to affordable universal healthcare coverage like you have here in Canada.” — Hillary Clinton, January 1, 2015

So one snippet from one speech somehow negates her actual campaign platform? This may be a mistake. It's possible that Trump read that one excerpt, didn't read Clinton's campaign platform or listen to anything she said about Obamacare, and just went off of that.

Not likely, mind you, but possible.

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Falsely said, “And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

"This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment." — Hillary Clinton, November 15, 2012

Clinton did withdraw support for TPP during the campaign; however, the Trump narrative was that she did this disingenuously, due to pressure from the Sanders and Trump campaigns.

I have little problem giving you this one. Calling it a lie is stretching somewhat if the point being made is that her shift in position is disingenuous.

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I could go on; I might later. But just simply Googling the claims as you read them should have established an early "actually an error" rating of below 50%, and unlikely to significantly improve. Essentially, you linked fake news.

Except that that's just not actually true. When looked into at anything beyond the surface level, it reveals at best a gross error. When given context, Trump's statements become even more false. Lies, or merely just not knowing better? I don't know. That's the most you could make a case with with those you picked out from the list. Maybe you'd like to address some others, like his claim that Clinton wants "totally unlimited immigration"? Or that "Crime is rising like never before in the inner cities"? Or his utterly bizarre lie that the birther mythos originated with the Clinton campaign, and that he was the one who put it to rest, as if he hadn't been lying about Obama's birth certificate for the past 5 years.

Or hell, why not look at his stump speeches, where he lied more than once every five minutes on average? Or the recent start of his candidacy, where he won't stop lying about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, lied about his relationship to the CIA to the CIA (while once again repeating the lie about the size of the crowd), lied about whether or not it rained at his inauguration (what the hell why would you even lie about this?!) and his press secretary excused his lies about voter fraud by saying "Trump believes it", as though that somehow made the statement less absurd.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

It's not just "republicans won't call out Trump when he lies". It's "Trump goes out of his way to attack and smear the news media".

You mean the MSM. Good. They deserve it.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

with the media out of the way, well, who's to say if what Trump said was a "lie" or not?

You cling to mainstream media fundamentalism. As I said earlier, the mainstream media isn't the entire press, but the mainstream media has a vested interest in fostering the illusion that they are. And no, the alternative press does not consist entirely of Trump supporters with taint fetishes; there are outlets like Lionel Nation more than willing to call out Trump for real things he's actually doing wrong (yes, Ray, there are some).

I accept that the mainstream media (with the noteworthy exception of FOX News and certain tabloids) holds itself to something of a standard when it comes to the accuracy of their claims. Because they have a reputation on the line, y'see. Remember Dan Rather? Remember how he spent multiple decades as a reliable and trusthworthy news anchor? And remember how he put out one poorly-researched report that turned out to be a hoax, and that effectively completely destroyed his career in journalism?

When you look at the front page of the New York Times, you're not likely to see blatantly false claims. The same cannot be said about the average Sean Spicer press conference, Kellyanne Conway interview, or Donald Trump speech. Or, indeed, the average page on The Daily Caller.

And by all means, when the mainstream media fucks up, call them on it! For example: the fact that Kellyanne Conway is still getting calls for interviews is mildly disgraceful if you think about it (how, exactly, are we served by watching someone whose job it is to lie and spin for the administration do exactly that in an interview?). And the way the Wall Street Journal covered Pewds was apparently pretty objectionable (or so I've heard; I didn't read the article because of paywalls). So by all means, call them on that.

But you seem to have gone entirely too far in the opposite direction. Instead of evaluating media claims on their merit, you seem to think we should discount the mainstream media entirely. Which is exactly what Trump is aiming for. He wants a populace who doesn't actually listen to the media, but rather to him. So again, I ask: if we cannot trust the mainstream media, how should we evaluate Trump's claims?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Surprise, surprise: Austin has a problem with the First Amendment. I'd assume the second as well. The "tolerant" left.

Um... No. I don't think she does. My guess would be that her problem with the "First Amendment Defense Act" is that it is yet another attempt to legislate protection for bigotry into the law.

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The bill provides that the federal government "shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_Defense_Act#cite_note-wapo-1

It attempts to subvert laws like the one in Oregon that prevents business-owners who are open to the public from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. However, as has been established in a large number of court cases, these laws are not in violation of the first amendment. Demanding that businesses open to the public serve the public without discrimination is not a violation of the first amendment. If it were, we wouldn't need the "First Amendment Defense Act", because these laws would already have been struck down.

The entire purpose of this law is to ensure that there is no legal backlash for discriminatory behavior in public businesses. And let's be clear here. If the issue was businesses run by religious individuals who refused to cater to interracial couples because it violated their religion, I don't think anyone would be trying to paint this as anything more than bigotry. So why is "my religion says marriage is between one man and one woman and that tenet needs to be respected by law" different from "my religion says marriage is between two people of the same race and that tenet needs to be respected by law"?

Budget_player_cadet

The only thing that long I am willing to read on a forum are the patches notes from 2.6.0 and 3.0.0

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diablofdb wrote:

Budget_player_cadet

The only thing that long I am willing to read on a forum are the patches notes from 2.6.0 and 3.0.0

Well then, here's a short post: sometimes things are hard.

Alternatively, if that's too long, try this one: "go away, moron".

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Falsely said, “She wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada.”

“So we’re in a learning period as we move forward with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And I’m hoping that whatever the shortfalls or the glitches have been, which in a big piece of legislation you’re going to have, those will be remedied and we can really take a hard look at what’s succeeding, fix what isn’t, and keep moving forward to get to affordable universal healthcare coverage like you have here in Canada.” — Hillary Clinton, January 1, 2015

So one snippet from one speech somehow negates her actual campaign platform? This may be a mistake. It's possible that Trump read that one excerpt, didn't read Clinton's campaign platform or listen to anything she said about Obamacare, and just went off of that.

Man, you really like PolitiFact. Is dealing with primary texts so bothersome that you need your priesthood to interpret it for you?

"Defend and expand the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million people. Hillary will stand up to Republican-led attacks on this landmark law—and build on its success to bring the promise of affordable health care to more people and make a 'public option' possible." — Clinton campaign platform, amazingly quoted in full on the very page you linked (emphasis mine)

Is that public option not a "single-payer plan?" Is it impossible for that plan to become a "disaster?" Is it not "somewhat similar to Canada?" By what mental gymnastics is PolitiFact calling that a lie, and you swallowing that claim?

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

So again, I ask: if we cannot trust the mainstream media, how should we evaluate Trump's claims?

Stop blindly trusting anyone who interprets the news. Go to primary documents and read them yourself. Research. You shouldn't casually trust anyone with something as important as the truth.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Man, you really like PolitiFact. Is dealing with primary texts so bothersome that you need your priesthood to interpret it for you?

Well, I could dig through the primary sources and reformulate it all to come up with pretty much the same conclusion... Or I could go to a highly-reputable fact-checking organization which, for all intents and purposes, has already done the work for me.

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"Defend and expand the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million people. Hillary will stand up to Republican-led attacks on this landmark law—and build on its success to bring the promise of affordable health care to more people and make a 'public option' possible." — Clinton campaign platform, amazingly quoted in full on the very page you linked (emphasis mine)

Is that public option not a "single-payer plan?"

From what I understand, there's a difference. Single payer implies that there is one, single payer. The medicare system, in other words, where everyone pays into a government-run healthcare system and everyone can get healthcare from there. The public option is, essentially, the government opening its own insurance company to compete with other insurance companies. In doing so it essentially sets a "baseline" for the insurance industry, where you have to be competitive not just compared to other insurance companies, but also compared to the conditions of the public option.

As far as I understand it (and I probably should figure it out sooner rather than later, given that I'm going to be kicked off my family's health care plan in a few years), Germany has something along these lines. People are automatically enrolled in a public health insurance company (for example, I'm insured under the AOK Freising, and the german analogue of my payroll taxes go in part towards covering these costs). If I made above a certain threshhold, I could opt out of that system and instead get health care from a private insurer, which necessarily competes with the (many) public options when it comes to price and value. There's a substantial difference. Maybe Trump just didn't know the difference?

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Is it impossible for that plan to become a "disaster?" Is it not "somewhat similar to Canada?" By what mental gymnastics is PolitiFact calling that a lie, and you swallowing that claim?

It's not really similar to Canada. Canada has a single-payer system, which is substantially different from a public option. Whether it's impossible to become a disaster... Man, I wouldn't trust the US political system to pass a law that makes it illegal to dump coal waste into municipal reservoirs, and it is entirely possible to fuck this up, particularly when you have one party dead-set against its existence and then dead-set against any fix that might help make it work better once it exists... Yeah, it could easily go badly.

But Politifact doesn't call it a lie. They just rate it as false. Which it is. The Toronto Star also doesn't refer to them as lies, merely false statements. A lot of them are lies. But they aren't true. If you want to be somewhat pedantic about it, then okay, he's still absurdly dishonest, given how many of these you can't give him the benefit of the doubt, but comparing to how many statements other politicians have made that are just unambiguously wrong*, it's not a whole lot better - he's either really dishonest, or constantly opining on subjects he hasn't done any research on.


*Unambiguous being the difference between "Putin is a great leader" and "California is on the east coast".

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

So again, I ask: if we cannot trust the mainstream media, how should we evaluate Trump's claims?

Stop blindly trusting anyone who interprets the news. Go to primary documents and read them yourself. Research. You shouldn't casually trust anyone with something as important as the truth.

Well, okay. That's an entirely reasonable position and one I will gladly cosign. I just get the impression that a lot of people go from here a few steps further. It's like my friend Yosarian, who insists that all peer-reviewed literature is inherently tainted because it's attached to the "mainstream". This is increasingly common on the right, people who will immediately disregard any report from the MSM out of hand, and it's increasingly worrying. To me, Trump seems to be running a fairly straightforward propaganda outfit out of the playbook of Órban or Putin. And it's working.

These trump threads really amaze me, they pack so many replies in no time and just keep stacking.