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Cugalabanza

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Posts posted by Cugalabanza

    The Media's Portrayal of Trump and His Presidency

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted

    1 minute ago, DC Tom said:

     

    Journalism's always been like that - the people who claim a fair and impartial media exists forget that it's THE MEDIA that choose what stories are and aren't important.  Remember the Maine?

     

    They just haven't been this obvious about it in a long time.  If ever.  I'm not sure Hearst and Pulitzer were this blatant admitting they were reporting not just facts but what to think about them.

     

    Fair enough.  As a practical point, people with power in journalism have always manipulated things according to their interests.

     

    But to state that bias as what is to be understood as the ideal of journalism... that's a step further into crazy.

    • Like (+1) 2

    Are We As Adults Creating A Society Of Kittys?

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted

    I’ve met some kids who are pretty impressive in terms of personal discipline, sense of themselves, sense of the world,…

     

    I’ve also met a few where you’d make sure to put the tidepods away in a safe place.

     

    Seems to me that the proportion of dipschidtt to normal to exceptional is about the same as for my generation.   And for my parents’ generation.  And probably going back all through history.  The whole shake your fist and shout “these kids today…!” is a tired cliché.

    • Like (+1) 4

    Trump and Russia

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

    Be very careful here.  It's a slippery slope.

     

    I started as a vocal Never Trump libertarian, but after beginning to begrudgingly concede to his achievements, I was compelled, by hard evidence, to begrudgingly concede to the likelihood of a targeted conspiracy against his Administration by treasonous elements within our prior government and career holdovers still entrenched; and now here I am publicly defending him on a fringe NFL fan site.

     

     

     

    :lol:

     

    The world is so bonkers, I feel like anything is possible at this point. 

     

    • Like (+1) 2

    Trump and Russia

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

    Say what you will about the man, but his foreign policy has been nothing short of world changing for the greater good. 

     

    He is walking us back from the edge of a shooting war with Russia, which was being sought by the CIA and hawkish uni-polarist elements within our government.  He has gotten North Korea to come to the table and negotiate nuclear disarmament, he has worked to purge the bad actors in Saudi Arabia, he has defeated ISIS, he has eliminated the funding for Hezbollah which is leading to the fall of the Mullahs in Iran, and he is now working to broker peace between Israel and Palestine.

     

    So, as distasteful as you may find it, yes, Donald Trump has been the pinnacle of tremendous global leadership, and the world is a better place for it. 

     

    I begrudgingly concede much of this.

    • Like (+1) 3
    • Thank you (+1) 2

    Trump and Russia

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted · Edited by Cugalabanza

    3 minutes ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

    Well yeah, of course you do.

     

    You're siding with the folks who are looking to start World War Three, engaging the Russians in a shooting war, rather than the folks who are working to normalize relations, and press for peace.

     

    Yeah, come on guys, let's be cool-headed and non-confrontational, like Donald Trump.

     

     

    Active shooter at Florida high school

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted · Edited by Cugalabanza

    22 minutes ago, row_33 said:

    thanks Cuga, every essay and review I read about Bill C and Obama are attacking them. They are the best the Dems can honestly hope for in the real world.

     

    I didn't expect a paradise of racial reconciliation from 8 years of Obama, and even though a conservative I can consider him a decent man and his Admin a good one, but clearly behind Reagan/Nixon/Bill Clinton.

     

    I do not place all that much faith in politicians to effect change or do much of anything, unless there is true danger like the Depression or WW2 or your Civil War.

     

     

    I expected a puff-piece on behalf of Obama and Coates and went into more and more of a bemusedly surprised state with each paragraph....

    Good to get a surprise, have subscribed to the LRB for 25 years now, the TLS is just too expensive and won't add much more to my reading interests.

     

     

    My take on Obama (like anybody cares) is that he is, at heart, a good guy.  I think he understood what he was up against.  Obama is fond of the big ship analogy:  to turn around, you can't just crank the wheel--you have to do it very gradually, in degrees.  I think that's the essence of his two terms.  He made concessions to the status quo in order to make incremental improvements where he felt he could.

     

    Overall, I view Obama positively.  The one area where I can't quite reconcile is the mass surveillance.  For me, that's the worst of Obama's legacy.

     

     

    2 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

     

    In other words, a leftist publication complaining that Obama - and Coates - aren't nearly leftist enought.  

     

    What a...surprise...

     

    That's essentially it, yes.  But, you know, with flair.

     

     

    Active shooter at Florida high school

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted · Edited by Cugalabanza

    1 hour ago, row_33 said:

     

    He's a decent man.

     

    London Review of Books tears into Obama (likes he almost as bad as Trump) for a review on a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates this month, this is a major-league libleft magazine.... so Obama sucked and Bill Clinton sucked.... what more are you honestly hoping for people????

     

     

     

    I just read the article.  It is critical of Obama, although the scope of the review is much larger than that.  This quote is a good representation of the author’s (Pankaj Mishra) beef with the Obama presidency:

     

    “During his eight years in office, he expanded covert operations and air strikes deep into Africa; girding the continent with American military bases, he exposed large parts of it to violence, anarchy and tyrannical rule. He not only expanded mass surveillance and government data-mining operations at home, and ruthlessly prosecuted whistleblowers, but invested his office with the lethal power to execute anyone, even American citizens, anywhere in the world.”

     

    Also,

     

    “…mass deportations, and cravenness before the titans of finance who ruined millions of black as well as white lives.”

     

    I think these are valid criticisms.  It’s a good article.  I’m curious what some here would think of it.  The ultimate point of the article has to do with RACE and the failure of liberalism to attack the real fundamental structural problems of inequality in society.

     

    This quote I think captures the central point very well:

     

    “The widespread belief that Obama had inaugurated a ‘postracial’ age helped conceal the ways in which the barefaced cruelties of segregation’s distant past had been softening since the 1960s into subtle exclusions and injustices.”

     

    Ultimately, the author of the article is critical of Coates for not going far enough to impugn so-called progressives for their failures so far in this century.

     

    EDIT:  By the way, I don't think it would be fair at all to say they treated Obama as "almost as bad as Trump."  The article calls Trump an white supremacist at two separate points.

    • Thank you (+1) 1

    Trumpisms

    in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, GG said:

     

    I don't know about that.

     

    It may be inane, childish and beside the main point, but you always know what he's talking about.

     

    You may think for a moment that you do, but give him a minute--he'll contradict himself and we'll all wonder:  what the hell was he talking about?

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