crumbsroom wrote:

But I'm still so sick of shit journalism surrounding this. Just looked through an article published by something affiliated with the BBC, gawking at the amazing ability of Trump to choose the winners in Republican races. The first few paragraphs are all about how impressive this is. Then, when you get about half way through it offers the caveat of 'a quarter of these races were unopposed' and a another huge chunk are incumbent Republicans running in Trump country. Then, after all of this, it gets back to gawking over how impressive it is that Trump holds so much power out of office in regards to these matters.......um......and I wonder what is fucking boosting that image? Maybe the tit who lets those who only read the first few paragraphs of an article (ie most) leave with the impression that he's some supernatural prognosticator, before they have his shitball magic trick explained to them.

There's another interesting metric that spoils the narrative of Trump's success as a handicapper.  In the Venn Diagram between candidates endorsed by Trump and those candidates endoresed by the Club For Growth, an established conservative lobby and fundraiser, they support about 85% of the same candidates, and so only taking the remaining 15% where they back differing candidates, the Club For Growth actually has a more successful record.  And it's worth noting that Trump also has a habit of waiting until the last couple of weeks and endorsing a candidate who has already proven certain to prevail, which probably shouldn't count.

But the most interesting metric remains to be seen, which is success in the general elections this November.  So in cases where Trump will specifically endorse those candidates who are far-right, willing to support Trump's claims of election fraud and deep state persecution, such candidates may get ravenous support from the MAGA base in a closed primary, but it's far from certain that these voters will prevail with independent voters in a general.  And in places like Maryland and Pennsylvania, we're seeing moderate Republicans, such as the current retiring governors, strongly condemning the GOP nominees running to fill their seats, precisely because these MAGA candidates are more conspiracy-leaning radicals, or as Maryland gov. Larry Hogan called "Qanon wackjobs".  There's been a controversy over some Dem funds spending money on ads to tacitly endorse these Trump-supported extremists under the assumption that they will be easier to beat in the general than more moderate (ie, reasonable) candidates, and the ethics of this are definitely questionable.  Worth noting that the DNC was doing this for Trump when he was still an extremist far-shot in the Republican primary, and, you know, it's always fun and games until it's suddenly not.  But it's these races, where Trump-backed extremists have beaten more moderate Republicans in the primary, where the true test of Trump's political acumen will be tested on election day in November.

crumbsroom wrote:

These negligent fucks have ruined your country and, ultimately, the world. They never learn. They don't want to learn. Their journalistic priorities have climbed right up their ass. I don't know how they aren't ashamed of themselves

I hear where people are concerned about CNN turning to engage more right-wing audiences, as a possible overcompensation for their anti-Trump stances over the last four years.  I've seen similar pivots in other mainstream news.  In some cases, I think they're almost gaslit into the both-sidesism bullshit, and feel that they need to turn the heat up on Biden as some feeble attempt at fairness (such as Jake Tapper's outrage over Biden for the baby formula shortage, of all things).

The worst example of this this week is where the Washington Post published an op-ed, credited to their entire editorial board, which sought to take John Fetterman to task for refusing Dr. Oz's offer for a debate this month.  Dr. Oz, being the compassionate doctor that he is, has taken to taking potshots at Fetterman's recent stroke, saying, in an air of his professional expertise, it was due to Fetterman not eating "a single vegetable in his life".  Saying that Fetterman was hiding in his basement during the two months of his recuperation.  And in proposing the debate, Oz cattily offered to supply medical professionals to be in the front row in case of a medical emergency.  And Trump, standing next to Oz at a rally, made the rather slanderous claim that Fetterman was addicted to meth and fentanyl, suggesting this was the cause of his stroke.  (In fact, it's due to his hereditary atrial fibrillation.)

So WaPo says, "The voters have a right to know if he's fit for office", essentially playing into Oz's claims, treating them under his pretense of concern rather than what is clearly negative campaigning.  It never seems to occur to the WaPo editorial board that maybe Fetterman deferred the debate offer because he isn't interested in validating these kinds of tasteless, thinly-veiled character attacks.

And I have to wonder if the fact that Fetterman's lead makes this likely to be the safest bet among the Senate races hasn't led WaPo to the dubious calculus that they feel like they owe it to the Republicans to even out the odds a little.  It reminds me of the folk wisdom in sports circles where it's taken for granted that referees will occasionally make petty incidental calls on teams as a way of weighing out those calls that they either made against the other team or those calls which they may have missed earlier in the game.  It only muddies the justice, it doesn't settle anything.

Last edited by Jinnistan (9/14/2022 9:59 pm)

A less sobering update, in the Georgia Senate race between Raphael Warnock (who I like to call 'Rev. JB Smoove') and Herschel Walker (a man who could be outsmarted by a brightly-colored shoe), Walker is actually leading in new polls by 3-4 points.  That's within the margin of error, but it's still disheartening.  Are Georgians under the impression that Walker is actually a new brand of candy bar that they expect to win?

Just as a reminder of Herschel's shallow aptitude, he just recently likened climate change legislation to tree welfare.

Let's talk about fact-checking for a second...

Sen. Rick Scott, the copperhead of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had an interesting interview this weekend with a somewhat obscure right-wing outlet, Gray Television, and maybe the relative obscurity of the outlet has placated the more national news corps to ignore these comments despite Scott's significant leadership position of coordinating Senate candidates just before a potentially pivotal midterm election (or the fact that these comments were also carried by outlets like Yahoo).  It seems odd then that there's been little mainstream pushback against what are pretty clear bald-face lies, and, at least in one case, virtual slander.

Scott: Their position on abortion is, and it’s radical, they want to have abortion up to the moment a little baby’s born. They want to say a baby born alive, I can just sit on the side-

Jon Decker: I don’t know if that’s necessarily true.

Scott: That’s exactly how they voted. They all voted for that. They all voted to say a little baby born alive they’re just going to let starve to death over on the side.

Not only is this not "necessarily true", it's a flat-out fabrication that's been frequently debunked for years.  How is this deliberate misinformation, clearly intended to confuse voters in an election where reproductive policy is a central issue, not given the same pushback as covid misinformation?  As with other baseless lies, like the election fraud, it should not be tolerated to allow politicians to continually repeat proven and demonstrated falsehoods in a knowing attempt to demagogue in favor of own private religious prejudices.  (The "starve to death" being Rick Scott's own personal sprinkle of slander-spice.)

Scott: We lost 242,000 full-time jobs last month. Did you know that?

No, I did not know that, dude.

Quote: they can’t talk about the border...

Or perhaps they can't repeat the lies about "open borders", instead maybe pointing out that just this week, the US, for the first time in its history, recorded over 2 million arrests at the border (wide open!) while many of those allowed to cross have been legal asylum seekers.  Now, who can talk about what again?

Scott: Oh, if you’re a construction worker, you’re going to pay off the debt of somebody going to an Ivy League school.

I'm not sure how many manual laborers wouldn't qualify for the earned income tax credit instead of paying federal taxes, but the percentage of students qualifying for debt relief who attended Ivy League schools has long been debunked.  It's another 'black-is-white' attempt to portray the burden of a progressive tax system as an assault on "working people" (ala, the IRS enforcement, capital gains, windfall, and carried interest taxes, etc).

This is the Trumpian tactic of shitspewing as much distortion and falsehood as gastrointestinally possible as a pure exercise in ratfucking reality.  One party happens to be far more guilty of this kind of shameless prevarification these days, and the msm is incapable of calling this what it is out of a fear of appearing unfair or biased.  They're like bad referees who feel the need to compensate bad calls with worse calls in order to keep a shallow perception of balance (but not the substance of justice).

Urgh.  One of the things I hate most about daily news reporting, in particular political reporting, is the daily drum of poll after poll running up to an election.  It's absolutely infuriating to see the drip-drip or different polls, polling averages, enthusiasm gaps, etc.  Just tell me when the votes are counted, please.

Even more infuriating is when you're following a race where it escapes any metric of sanity as to how people are still voting for a particular candidate.  Certainly Trump comes to mind (and the projected "votes" he's expected to net in 2024 is not helping my mood).  But here we have Herschell Walker, hard-core pro-lifer, one of the few Republicans who pushes the extreme of no exceptions whatsoever.  (Even Pence allows for conditions to save the mother's life.)  Yet he's found to have paid for one of his own girlfriend's abortions, because, he says, it was just a bad time for him.  In addition to the several other secret bastards he has.  All under his auspices of being a good Christian man.  Who, as Colbert noted, happens to be running against a bonafide ordained minister and right reverend.  And it's still within the margin of error in the polls?  The response in right-wing media is telling: "Winning is more important than integrity".  I only wonder when shame will enter the mix for those voters who will never directly profit from the party power grab.  (Maybe they'll get a free T-shirt.)

Some of the races are panning out well enough.  Mark Kelly appears to be safely ahead against Kushner's cloned lover in Arizona.  Fetterman, despite getting a lot of msm pushback lately, which may or may not be due to the US Chamber of Commerce coming out for Oz, (corporate news is still a business, after all), but it remains comfortable for the time being.  Still others are just depressing, with the Walker/Warnock being the most inexplicable.  Paper thin races in Wisconsin (Barnes/Johnson) even though another scoop this week shows Johnson was even more complicit in Jan. 6 than we thought.  Beasley/Budd in North Carolina is neck and neck, as is Masto/Laxalt (which sounds like a diarhea medication) in Nevada.  And Rubio and Vance hold slim leads in Florida/Ohio respectively, against Demings and Ryan.  Anyone else?  Oh, and Rand Paul is trouncing Charles Booker by 16 points.  Booker, a black man, thought it was a good move to do an ad where he's taking off a noose from around his neck.  He's running in Kentucky, where the state still has an obelisk for its Jefferson Davis Monument that has received, oh, absolutely zero petitions to be renamed during our current "reckoning".  Poor guy had no idea that an ad like that is just ringing the dinner bell for folks in Rand Paul country.

Anyway, in that southern spirit, I'll emulate the great Sheriff Bufurd T. Justice and go home and slap every single one of their honky mothers in the mouth.
 

For a second there, I was under the impression that Wes Moore, the new governor of Maryland, was the film critic Wesley Morris, because I've seen Moore described as a "journalist" (because he's written books about his tours in Iraq).  I swear to you all, it is not because both of them happen to be black men.

Now that it is clear that even having your voters struggling financially under unbearable inflation is not enough for them to fully support a Trump dominated Republican party, do the higher ups have the sense to finally flee this sinking ship he has them all tied to the mast of?

There is obviously no moral issue they have with him as long as he can lead them to victory. But the fact that he seems like one of the only members of their party that might heartily struggle in an election with Biden, do they turn?

I say no. I think they will grumble a bit before daddy scolds them back into subservience. But if they do finally cut out the tumour, I think it's going to have to be right now or never.
 

Concerning my lack of love for the polls, I find, once again, that I can best express myself through my ventriloquest doll, Jon Stewart.  Or rather we've had an uncanny ability to share strikingly similar sentiments regarding modern media failures.  The news media's obsession with polling may be one of the symptoms of the larger trend of treating political coverage as a sporting event ("We need numbers!  Stats!  Scores!"), but, as Jon says, we should look at how these polls can "bend the narrative", basically giving people like Chuck Todd the benefit of talking about whatever they want to talk about instead of what's important to talk about, using polls as a self-reinforcing feedback loop to justify their narrow coverage and tilted editorial decisions.  Polls are more effective at shaping and influencing public opinion than they are at reflecting it, and this has been known for decades.  (The otherwise tepid Cold War drama, The Fearmakers, laid this out clearly back in 1958.)  Inflation, for example, has been a big issue worth discussing, but yet very little mainstream coverage has focused on what has been described in bussiness media jargon as "profit margins exceeding wage growth", or in other words, "corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation".  Considering how inflation was consistently polled as the number one issue on the minds of voters during this election, I wonder why this seemingly significant aspect of the issue was so absent from news media coverage?  And, my favorite part of the whole thing, now that the mid-terms are over, in the last couple of days there's been quite a few mainstream articles saying that, oh by the way, the economy's not too shabby after all.  Which isn't exactly true either, it just means the inflation narrative has outlived its usefulness in influencing voters.







And a longer clip with Katie Porter that goes a bit deeper into coverage of the economy and other issues, including crime which (I toot) includes a point I had made on Kateland recently about how the coverage of the recent uptick in homicides never mentions the 'iron pipeline', the market of untraceable guns that's being trafficked into cities.  That would only upset the preferred narrative that the real cause in the crime wave is lax Democratic policies on policing/bail reform/what one of Jon's guests already said above about "black people"/etc etc.




 

Oh, hey.  Looks like George Santos just resigned this evening.

Behold the power I wield....