Mainstream Media

A good 20-part rant about the NYTimes editorial page and its “conservative” columnists. Shorter version: the “conservatism” on display there is a hothouse flower that died off in the wild long ago and is completely unrelated to actual present day conservatism; these columnists serve no useful function other than allowing the NYT editors to engage in self-delusion and self-loathing. (I would add that the same would apply to WaPo’s editorial page, which still props up the mummified forms of people like George Will.)

The key sentence is, “The truth of what’s going on on the right today is worse than virtually anyone in the political mainstream acknowledges.”

I can’t for the life of me figure out whether they’re just clueless or somehow think they’re being clever, but CNN has given Emma Gonzalez the same headline the media almost always uses for mass killers:

Occam‘s razor suggests that CNN is clueless. My time spent watching the channel backs that theory up.

And CNN will spend 3 hours a night with a panel of 6 talking about the same things over and over again as if they really are news.

A nice example of how the media will bend over backwards to find something kinda-sorta good to say about Trump:

“The insane guy with a bomb strapped to his chest hadn’t actually followed through on his threats to blow up everyone to hell. So far. This is great news! It’s good that he did that! (wipes sweat from brow.)”

We’re fucking living in ‘It’s A Good Life,’ as has been observed before by someone.

Nobody will take the President of the United States seriously in trade negotiations. Great news!

Did they forget about the damn steel tariffs already? Michigan manufacturing is already getting hit.

That’s the thing. The Trump administration hasn’t actually backed down, just opened talks with the Chinese, which could still fail. So the trade war could very well still happen. (The market has been more skeptical than Business Insider - it stopped the free-fall it was in at the end of last week, but still hasn’t fully rebounded either.)

It doesn’t matter if trade talks accomplish anything now or not at this point. China will never make the kinds of concessions necessary to appease anyone in the US. In fact, seeing how China is barely touched by the steel tariffs despite trump’s stupid shouting (comparatively, we get very little steel from China), we just stand to continue losing more and more out of this situation.

Either way steel prices are up and this hits manufacturing, the poor and middle class people. It will start costing jobs too. Canada, South Korea, Mexico and the other nations can start shipping more to China at cheaper prices (or increase their own manufacturing base) who can increase production, smothering US manufacturing.

It basically puts the outsourcing of jobs in fast forward and hits the inflation button at the same time.

Pretty sure the recent kerfuffle about the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s specific messaging was mentioned in some other thread here already. Now Don-Don had to weigh in as well, of course.

SBG, on the other hand, naturally claims that it really isn’t a political thing, you know. Suuure.

Because of course they do.

Banana. Fucking. Republic.

Reddit post detailing how this happened.

Just remember folks; this isn’t something that Sinclair decided to do on their own. This plan has been in the works since 2016, and it was setup by Ajit Pai and Kushner on behalf of Trump near the end of his campaign.

Listed below is a partial list of articles I’ve been gathering since Trump began his attack on legitimate media. These particular links just focus on the Sinclair/Trump particulars; there’s more going on than just this, but that is for another topic.

As I said; these actions by Sinclair is part & parcel of a deal made with the Trump campaign to make Sinclair stronger, as well as making it the state propaganda arm in all but name.


So there. All it takes to set the record straight is an official press release from the tippy-top of the potty.

So do these named news networks have standing and a decent case for lawsuits, either against Trump or Sinclair?

Don’t get your hopes up. It’s almost impossible to sue a sitting President, and to win a libel case you have to show actual malice, not just that it’s a false claim that caused a loss.

(On the plus side, it’s probably easier to prove actual malice with Trump than 95% of potential libel defendants; there’s basically even odds that he told a room full of witnesses, “I’m gonna put CNN out of business by spreading shit about them”)

lol - thanks, but yeah, I still won’t get my hopes up.