ok, get a 2.3T stimulus and break up Amazon and Facebook. Boom. Done. Biden top 7.
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Interesting what fox left out when they cribbed this for their article
Another explanation left him speechless: “The patient couldn’t understand why they were given this for free, because humanity in and of itself is not nice and people aren’t nice and nobody would give anything away. So there’s no such thing as inherent good nature of man. And I had no comeback from that.”
…
Dr. Ryan Stanton recently had a patient who began their conversation by saying, “I’m not afraid of any China virus.” From that point on, he knew what he was up against in dealing with the patient’s politics and misguided beliefs about the virus.
Stanton blamed people like far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for spreading some of the misinformation that has taken root among his patients. Among them is that the vaccine contains fetal cells. Another said it “is a simple fact that the vaccine has killed millions.”
“In fact," he said, “that couldn’t be more wrong.”
…
“Really it amazes me the number of people who have this huge fear, conspiracy theory about vaccines and will honest to God try anything, including a veterinary medicine, to get better,” said Stanton.
…
Example No. 5 was a patient who said he’d rather die than take the vaccine. Trunsky’s response: “You may get your wish.”
…
Some of the misinformation is delivered from the pulpit, he said. People have sent him sermons of preachers saying the vaccine is “ungodly or there’s something in it that will mark you," a reference to a verse in Revelation about the “mark of the beast” that some Christians cite in not getting vaccinated.
“There’s a mixture of like almost fear … and saying, “Hey, if you do this, maybe you’re not as faithful as you should be as, say, a Christian.'"
…
Also frustrating is the idea among some patients that there is a “secret agenda” behind getting vaccinated.
“‘There must be something wrong if everyone is forcing us to do this or everyone wants us to do this,’” patients tell her. “And my response to that is, ‘They are urging you to do it because we are in an emergency. This is a pandemic. It is a national and international crisis. That is why we are pushing it.’”
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Standard fare stuff but just terrible framing on NBC Nightly News. “…Now President Biden is trying to convince influential House progressives to compromise and agree to a lower total spending number” [/end of segment]
Umm, they already did?
Hi guys, this seems the best thread for this question.
A young relative has asked me for some pointers on good US political commentators / reporters. She’s already of the more obvious TV ones like Maddow and John Oliver, and is looking more for op-ed stuff in newspapers (but open to podcasts etc). I’ve given her the following:
Pod Save America
Preet
Mehdi Hassan
Chris Hayes
538 (for stats at least)
… but I’m not really up to date on US stuff and don’t read WaPo etc. Any suggestions?
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On the Media
What is the news value of stuff like this? How is anyone informed?
After being by their sides for almost six years, I knew Donald and Melania Trump about as well as anyone, or so I thought. And they knew me. A hungry gossip, the president showed an ongoing interest in my relationship with my boyfriend, a fellow White House staffer, and asked intimate questions about our relationship.
He and the first lady invited us as a couple to events, with Trump conferring on us his stock compliment, “right out of central casting.” They knew when we got a dog for my birthday. They knew when we broke up.
They also knew when the relationship turned abusive — and they didn’t seem to care.
One day, while meeting with Mrs. Trump alone, she asked how I was holding up after our breakup. My eyes started to well up. I had been holding in the fact that the end of our relationship had become violent, reaching its worst point on the day I left. I told the first lady that he got physical with me.
She asked me if I had called the police and I said no, explaining that this close to the election, it wouldn’t be good to have yet another domestic abuse scandal hanging over the administration. I also had no proof. She nodded and did not push the matter further. As far as I know, she told no one.
A few weeks later, after the first presidential debate, I was with President Trump on Air Force One. Noting that my ex was also in our entourage, the president asked me if it was tough to have seen him at the debate. He then began to tell me how broken up my ex had been about the split and expressed sympathy for him.
I couldn’t sit there and listen to that. Although I had not intended to, I confided the same story about the physical abuse that I had told Mrs. Trump. I told the president that this “great guy” had anger issues and a violent streak. I was not some stranger making a wild accusation. I hoped that he would take me seriously, that he would do something.
After I finished, the president crossed his arms and just said, “That surprises me. He was really broken up over things.” After we got off the helicopter, Mrs. Trump said she was glad I told him.
We never spoke about it again.
i’m a privileged white man, so i consciously try taking these stories seriously and believe the victims, because i am biased by never having experienced that situation myself. but here’s a perfect example, in my mind, of a paraphrased adage. “why do bad things happen around bad people?”
you worked for a serial sexual assaulter and dated one who had been an abusive husband, and you didn’t call the police to help one of them by NOT creating yet another domestic abuse story. what did you expect to happen? do you wish you did anything different there?
let’s keep reading.
I felt that Mrs. Trump believed my story. I suspected the president, long invested in the view that women usually make up allegations of assault, didn’t want to believe it.
Whether they believed me or not, however, isn’t really the point. My ex has denied my allegations and engaging in any such behavior, but his denials aren’t really the point either.
The point is that the president and first lady seemed totally unfazed about whether there was an abuser — another abuser — in their workplace. There was no follow-up from either of them to see if I needed help or protection. There was no investigation ordered. No effort to get to the bottom of this.
A White House staffer accused of assault by a woman whom the president knew and trusted? It didn’t even seem to register on the president’s radar screen as a concern. To the contrary, knowing what he knows, Trump has endorsed my ex’s bid for Congress. The takeaway: Dealing with abuse claims is not in his interest, but having someone in office who will be a rubber stamp for his agenda is.
I was violently awakened to the Trumps when the Capitol came under attack on Jan. 6 — an attack the president encouraged and the first lady casually ignored at the time. Their “base” was, and remains, only a means to an end, just like I was. For me, the spell had been broken. In my mind, they wouldn’t care what fate befell anyone involved in the violence at the Capitol. I was the first senior official to resign that day. And I have never regretted the long-delayed choice to break free.
oh come on, nice turn of phrase doing a lot of work there. did you regret waiting so long to do it?
I was immediately ostracized from the majority of Trumpworld. I still haven’t spoken to many of the people I worked alongside for years. The usual rumors are being spread that I was a leaker, a liar, mentally unstable and things too painful for me to even recount.
There will be an effort to destroy me — I know because I did the same thing to others who saw the Trumps up close and came forward with books or interviews or op-eds to tell the truth.
It’s poetic justice, I guess, that I was once a destroyer myself.
ahh i see. you want sympathy for what is happening since your ostracism, rather than for anything before.
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Translation:
I put in my two weeks notice two weeks before my job as the only press secretary to never give a press conference was going to end anyway.
Oh good another white people in the Midwest story
Guess who!
Lying to get out of a war is the most heinous thing a person can do right Bret? Lying to get into a war that kills millions of innocent people and destroys an entire region for a generation or more? Now that’s a living.
we’re going to be seeing these for the next 50 years
bret stephens is literally the wint “I will never log off” tweet
At least when you lie into a war your lobbyists from Raytheon will buy you lunch. What do you get for lying your way out of a war? NOTHING!
In which the Washington Post decides that Bernie Sanders is doing too much complaining about Cinemanchin destroying the Democrats’ bill.
But one talking point Sanders has invoked repeatedly continues to be a bit of a head-scratcher. It goes like this: Those two shouldn’t be able to thwart what 48 of 50 Democratic and independent senators support.
This is certainly a way of characterizing the state of play in the Senate. Another very accurate way would be that it’s not just two senators standing in the way, but in fact 52 — a majority that includes those two Democrats and all 50 Republicans. Bills passed via reconciliation require a majority (in this case, 50 votes plus a tiebreaker from Vice President Harris), and a majority of the Senate does not presently support this one. Even the 210 House members Sanders cited do not represent a majority of that chamber.
Oh, OK. So it is actually Republicans’ fault? By God, I bet that hasn’t even occurred to Bernie. Thank you for pointing it out.
There is more nuance to what Sanders is saying than some of his critics let on. On Wednesday and in his CNN appearance, he made clear that his point wasn’t that bills should be able to pass with 48 votes, but rather that these senators shouldn’t demand the moon, given how much this bill unites the party. He has repeatedly acknowledged they have the right to pursue some concessions but suggested they are holding things up too much.
I assume by “some of his critics” this guy means “me and every other hack writing about this bullshit.”
“I can go to [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer tomorrow and say, ‘Chuck, I’m not voting for that bill unless you have Medicare-for-all,’ but that’s not what the caucus wants,” Sanders has said. “That would be irresponsible.”
That parallel is a little less apples-to-apples than Sanders suggests, though. Manchin’s and Sinema’s objections aren’t that the bill doesn’t include some big, extra add-on that they want, but rather that it simply spends too much. Passing the bill without Medicare-for-all means Sanders still gets the things he wants, just not more of them; passing it in its present form for Manchin and Sinema means the government spends significantly more than they argue is prudent — i.e. they get something they really don’t want.
Right, got it. Bitching about vague notions of spending too much = a-OK. Demanding that they get more specific about what they want to cut, since it is a bill made up of many different things = Bernie being radical again. But you see, Bernie shouldn’t complain, because he is still getting some crumbs even if they pass a bill for one single dollar! (And of course we’re centering this around “what Bernie wants” rather than “what the American people want (or need)”).
In a 52-48 GOP Senate in 2017, three Republicans effectively killed the GOP’s Obamacare replacement, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) providing the final, climactic thumbs down. In that case, 49 of 52 GOP senators supported the bill. Was it wrong for three members to thwart something that 49 GOP senators supported? (A notable difference here: The bill was unpopular overall.)
See, Republicans do it too! Oh, that notable difference? No need to expand further on that, let’s continue to center this on Bernie, while uncritically quoting Manchin’s bullshit to close the article:
“Respectfully, Senator Sanders and I share very different policy and political beliefs,” Manchin said. “As he and I have discussed, Senator Sanders believes America should be moving towards an entitlement society while I believe we should have a compassionate and rewarding society.”
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We just all live in different worlds at this point. We don’t share a reality.
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