Fox News thread of fine journalism

Well, they are honorary Aryans…

Yeah! Get your politics out of my politics!

In case you forgot Lou Dobbs is insane.

That “deal” by trump seems… uh… objectively terrible, from a raw “deal making” perspective.

I mean, don’t get me wrong… both Harvey relief and the debt ceiling are two things which are obvious to do.

But the idea of tying essential relief to raising the debt ceiling… both things which literally every Democrat would vote for, is not some kind of great deal for Trump or the GOP. It’s basically him just doing what they want.

Now, you could easily argue that the only people screwed by this are the GOP members who would oppose one of those things, and those guys are idiots… but honestly, the GOP could have likely gotten SOMETHING in exchange for the debt ceiling increase. Something that they wanted. But now… no?

Mainly because Trump doesn’t understand any of this stuff.

He seems to have little patience for actual deal-making. I also wonder if he dislikes McConnell and Ryan enough now that he’d rather deal with other people? It’s not like Trump is really a Republican. He’s a Trumpian.

Maybe Pelosi and Schumer bought golf memberships from Trump. Just kidding.

Do you suppose Trump thinks that by making this deal he will be able to deal with them on the tax cuts or some other legislation he wants? I don’t see Trump gaining anything on this but more enmity from the GOP congress.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Mind, I’m not in the room/on the phone whenever he’s made deals, but I have yet to be impressed by the results and the leaks reinforce the view of him as a complete buffoon.

Shocking, coming from the guy who couldn’t be bothered to actually write The Art of the Deal.

Perhaps we should question the notion that hurricane relief and the debt ceiling are bartering chips.

eh, it’s more the 5th grade vocabulary probably

I think this probably hits close to the mark. Here’s what Trump thinks this “deal” might do:

First and foremost (in Trump’s mind), he’s smacked Ryan and McConnell around. He came into the White House thinking that the two men were subordinates to him, and the last couple weeks have revealed to him that either they (a) are crappy subordinates that won’t stop saying bad things about him, or (b) holy crap, they don’t actually work for me, they’re peers, and so I must humiliate and debase them the same way I did with Rubio or Cruz! Dealing with Pelosi and Schumer puts Ryan and McConnell in their place, so next time they’ll play ball (again, in Trump’s mind).

Probably a distant second, Trump thinks that he needs a legislative “win” or some kind. He keeps seeing that the blonde girl with the nice legs on Fox & Friends is saying that the GOP is going to have a tough time passing the debt ceiling thing and that they might shut down the government (Trump’s government!) if they can’t come to an agreement with those mean Democrats. And Trump has some vague memory of that whole “Obamacare” thing from a few months back where the GOP guys couldn’t pass that and everyone said that it was Trump’s fault… even that guy on Fox & Friends who sometimes uses the big words!

So the Dems show up and say, hey – we can deliver 90% of the votes you need for the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution. You can then scrape up some GOP votes by checking the cushions for change. We’ll do a 90-day thing, which will put the next vote right before Christmas and everyone will want to pass that one too. PLUS, we’ve got this DACA thing that we can pass at the same time. It’s a big win for you because you can claim to be bi-partisan and the guy who keeps the lights on, AND the we promise to support the DACA thing that you say that you want. How about it big guy? We’ve got this cool novelty pen you can use to sign right here – it lights up and blinks!

As a kind of side note, I kind of have to wonder what Trump thinks dealmaking actually is. That’s what he sold himself on, for chrissakes he (ghost) wrote a book about it! So here’s how I think a Donald deal goes:

The Donald (D): OK, so here’s the deal. You’re going to give me x.
Other Party (OP): I can’t do that, Donald.
D: I don’t think you heard me. You’re going to give me x.
OP: No Donald, I really can’t do that.
D: Damn, you’re a tough nut to crack. OK, but you’re going to need to give me x.
OP: Donald, I’m serious, it’s not going to happen.
D: Jesus what are you, some kind of machine? Don’t you know who I am? Fucking give me x, you goddamned piece of shit!
OP: Donald, it can’t be done, this deal isn’t very good.
D: I give up.

https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/905851608143159296

Tracing through Lahren’s parents, then grandparents and great-grandparents, Mendelsohn found that Lahren’s great-great-grandfather Constantine — sometimes spelled “Konstantin” — Dietrich was tried before a grand jury in Bismarck, ND for the crimes of forgery of a naturalization document and “willfully, unlawfully and knowingly” giving a false affidavit in conjunction with his naturalization proceedings.

A new study in the American Economic Review (the discipline’s flagship journal), with an intriguing and persuasive methodology, finds exactly that. Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimate that watching Fox News directly causes a substantial rightward shift in viewers’ attitudes, which translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates.

They estimate that if Fox News hadn’t existed, the Republican presidential candidate’s share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008.

For context, that would’ve made John Kerry the 2004 popular vote winner, and turned Barack Obama’s 2008 victory into a landslide where he got 60 percent of the two-party vote.

“There is a non-trivial amount of uncertainty” about those estimates, Yurukoglu cautions. “I personally don’t think it’s totally implausible, but it is higher than I would have guessed prior to the research.” And even if the effect were half as large as estimated, that’d still mean that Fox News is having a very real, sizable effect on elections.

Link to the study: https://web.stanford.edu/~ayurukog/cable_news.pdf

Duh? I’m not stunned and I’ve imagined that every day for years.

Jesus, if that’s “news” to people, it’s no wonder we’re in trouble.

The Conservative Media Machine has been brainwashing people for a long time (starting with radio in the 90’s) and has been especially influential the past decade or so. The left has nothing to counter it, and if they’re seriously just now waking up to the role it has played for the past several years, then we’re fucked.

True enough. What I like about this is the fact that we now have peer-reviewed confirmation of what we already knew.

Who knew that propaganda could work???

I don’t think there’s a remotely equivalent audience of paranoid, gullible morons.