I don’t watch or read MSNBC…if it’s truly 100% about calling out manufactured crises and whining about them, that is awful. I do find it hard to believe that it is, though.

(Edit: I looked, 11 top headlines for “today’s news”, 3 about Trump…of the 21 latest headlines (bottom of page) only one about Trump, none about Hunter or Giuliani.)
I think you’re confusing supplemental articles covered under one topic as “headlines”…I count 7 top of page headlines, 2 about Trump’s legal cases, 1 about Trump’s lawyers talking shit about him, 1 about the failing Hunter investigation. Too much Trump, yes, but plenty of real news too. Their format is gawd awful….tabloid at the top, news at the bottom.

Granted, Trump’s constantly expanding legal issues are the lead story everywhere. That’s hardly a pure distraction when he’s 1) an ex president facing hundreds of felonies for actions he took while in office and 2) he’s the Republican front runner facing hundreds of felonies including sedition and espionage. Giuliani is a part of that same story. I don’t see that as a manufactured story/crisis. (But it does get too much attention by far).
EDIT: That said, the disgraced ex president and rapist was indicted minutes ago on four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election"; conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding; a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted; and obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote. That’s insanely big news.


It’s also not a pure distraction to mention Hunter when the entire house is doing nothing more than “investigating” him, and his long touted public legal case just went to court for a failed plea agreement. That’s newsworthy because one party makes it so, but barely.

It is a terrible state if that’s ALL they mention, agreed. There’s lots more going on to address.

Its the same as Biden claiming that the economy is doing great firing on all cylinders. Political BS speak.


Did you see the signed letter from Stormy Danielsl from 2018..

he letter read:

“Over the past few weeks I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago,” Daniels said.

“The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence on 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018. I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened,” she said.

“I will have no further comment on this matter,” she said.

Yet another failed attempt form bought elected officials to stop an none bought elected official.


https://republicbrief.com/breaking-trump-shares-explosive-letter-from-stormy-daniels-in-2018/

It totally agree, @eric3579. Who can be trusted? It's harder to know every day.

My take....
Jones is right about the science, false negatives imply you've never been exposed when you have been, so people believe they cannot transmit the virus when they may in fact be infectious, which can lead to reckless nondistancing behavior and infections because they assume they're "safe"... also even a good (not false) positive antibody test does not mean they have meaningful immunity nor does it mean they aren't infectious as this woman claims. It only means you've developed some detectable antibodies to the virus. Period. Both misconceptions are big concerns. "Which is bigger?" seems like a silly fight.

The problem is, no matter what the test says, people think it means they're safe to be around. A negative test...."I never had it so I can't spread it, gimme a kiss"...a positive test..."I had it but beat it so I'm now immune and can't spread it, gimme a kiss". Neither is correct.

I had the chicken pox twice. If a chicken pox antibody test existed, I would have tested positive after the first round and assumed I couldn't get it or transmit it afterwards, but that would have been wrong even though the results weren't a false positive. Instead, because people suck, my parents and teachers just assumed I was "safe" and sent me to school sick and may have caused an outbreak.

Both of her claims here rely on most people completely misunderstanding what the results really mean, and people completely ignoring the possibility of false results. Sadly that's proper to assume.

Interesting how she puts it, she says Jones wasn't asked to fudge any data, just maybe present it in a way that made Florida's public covid numbers look better in the run up to the election....or another way to say that is she was asked to fudge the data....if I recall she claimed she was instructed to hide large numbers of cases in categories not included in the public presentations with the intent to create a false perception of a major downturn in cases under the "open up and unmask" plan.

Wasn't the "private data" she's accused of handing to the press the unadulterated anonymous covid numbers....not really private as it's public data collected by the government for public health reasons... and not personal data as she implied. That's what I recall the charge being....maybe there's more.

The rest is unverifiable and /or personal tabloid stuff....like did they point the gun at her kids or just menace them with the guns, did she get pregnant with her student, etc. Not germane to her claims about Florida's verified misrepresentations, and inappropriate attacks against the messenger instead of the message, imo. Distasteful to me, but besides the point.

Wow I didn't think much of msnbc lately but if they do more of this stuff and layoff the tabloid reporting more..

I think it's not so much not being able to tell them apart but not being willing to investigate them beyond their labels. I spend some time in other online communities with people from the US and the sense I get is Clinton is generally seen as corrupt and criminal and Trump as perhaps sexist / racist but a good businessman. I would argue both labels are to some extent misleading and false.

I don't see much discussion that goes beyond those labels. In both cases from the snippets I've seen of US TV and of some online tabloids, that's about as deep as the discussion goes. To really understand the problem with both candidates you need to read good editorial work from more reputable / long form media (weekly publications, newspapers that aren't tabloids) and frankly I think very few have been willing to do that.

Much of it comes down to politics being treated as entertainment and reading long written articles simply isn't entertaining. Unfortunately it's going the same way here in Australia. Everyone is obsessed about opinion polls. We might have short periods of formal election campaigning (unlike the epic US election process), but because of only 3 years between elections for our Prime Minister (and the fact that he or she can and does get replaced within those 3 years by Parliament, unlike the US President), we have constant personal political battles and recrimination rather than deliberation over policy.

I mean right now, we have a prime minister (Turnbull, re-elected earlier this year), who unseated a previously elected prime minister (Abbott, in the previous term) by a vote of no confidence. Abbott himself (several parliamentary terms before) had successfully unseated Turnbull as minority leader (when another party held the prime minister-ship). Now there are rumors that Abbott wants to challenge Turnbull. And that's just one of our political parties.

Ahh, so you were lying. You did have time.

From your response it's clear you don't know much about medicine.

"If you don't provide all the services required of a hospital, you don't get to call yourself a fucking hospital. "

No. You do get to call yourself a hospital. Most hospitals don't offer all medical services. Even major hospitals. You don't get to choose what is and isn't a hospital.

"There's a big bloody difference between "not equipped" and "unwilling"."

Sort of. It's a chicken and egg situation that has an order to it.

Most private hospitals are unwilling to provide non-profit services and are therefore not equipped to provide them. You won't find hospitals with the skills (i.e. doctors and nurses able to perform the procedure) and equipment (which is almost always purpose specific in medicine) and not the willingness to do the procedure. Catholic hospitals won't have either of those necessary requirements for most of the disputed procedures.

"And it's a bit fucking rich to bring up false equivalencies when you just compared unavailability of potential life-saving medical treatment to someone whinging over not getting a big mac at kfc."

No, mine was an appropriate analogy in regards to asking for a service or product that a company does not provide. In this case a Big Mac at KFC.

'"Really? They "articulate the truth"... as I said before, this is self-evidently complete and utter fucking bullshit.'

I can't say it's bullshit, but it is irrelevant.

'Yes, "inconvenient" is exactly the right word for a woman who is probably in the middle of the worst day of her life.
I mean, she might end up "inconveniently" dead, but hey, we wouldn't want to stop catholics telling other people how to live, would we?'

You're wrong. It is only an inconvenience. It sucks to be transferred to a different hospital but in general it has no adverse medical outcome on the patient. If the patient is critical the hospital will do what they can (which will be limited because they don't have the skills or equipment for that service) before transferring the patient. Just like one thousand and one other non-life-threatening and life-threatening procedures that most hospitals don't treat. Leaving the patient in place at that hospital carries a higher adverse risk than transferring them to an appropriate facility.

'And here we come to strawman of all strawmen. The problem is NOT that a woman needs a "direct abortion", it's that she may a surgical procedure that kills the child inadvertently. And this isn't theoretical, women have died from this.'

Not a strawman. You've given one example in a tabloid paper of a single woman who died from septacaemia, a week after a procedure. Unless you can show a conclusive coroner's report showing that the delay in removing the foetus (i.e. waiting until it was dead) was the cause, and not the 1000% more likely cause of infection during or after the surgery, then you don't even have that one example. And this sort of sepsis is just as likely from doing the same procedure with a live foetus. The procedure is pretty much the same. And even with one example, that's not statistically relevant. Do you have a study published in a reputable medical journal?

"The fundamental point is that religion has no place in medicine. If a patient wishes to refuse certain treatments because of their beliefs, well, they're an idiot, but it's their choice to be an idiot."

These hospitals have a mission statement based on their beliefs but they are practicing state of the art medicine. Based on their beliefs they don't offer all services , but this is no different than any other small hospital who limits their services. There are no statistically relevant adverse medical outcomes for anyone from this situation.

"But a hospital doesn't get to refuse treatment based on some bronze-age belief. If the treatment is legal in its jurisdiction and they have the capability to provide it, they must provide it. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds ("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")"

You're confusing you're belief of "shouldn't" with "doesn't". They can and should limit their services to what they want to offer as a hospital. The same as every public hospital does. And no, if the procedure is legal they do not have to provide it. This is true for public and private hospitals.

You seem to be sorely missing this basic vital understanding that all hospitals are limited in capacity and don't offer all services. If you go to the largest hospital near me (one of two major hospitals near me) and need emergency obstetrics, you will be shipped off to the other major hospital. That's how it works. If you go to one of many dozens of smaller private hospitals and ask for a,b, or c and they only offer x, y or z, then you're going to end up going to a different hospital.

The catholic hospital is practicing conscientious objection and passively practicing this (yes, passively, they're happy for you to go elsewhere). You want to force (that's the best word) all medical personal to bend to your will and don't accept worldviews that don't coincide with yours. Bigotry at it's finest.

'("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")'
FFS: Evidence of hospitals doing this please. Not an individual doctor. Hospitals.

'As you said yourself "If you don't like it, go work somewhere else".'

You're saying "if you don't like my personal rules, then go find a different industry". Democracies a bitch when you don't get what you want. You're going to have to live with the fact that your way is just your opinion and nothing else.

You're getting pretty boring pretty quickly. I doubt I'll bother anymore with you, it's readily apparent that you're not going to learn any time soon.

Thing about jizm tsunamis is that the people at the bottom get the worst of it.

Also, "nothing" is a hyperbole. They most certainly have more to lose, and they'll feel every loss that much more keenly than the better off.

I think there is more to this than just the disillusioned working class sticking two fingers up to the EU elite and taking a gamble on prosperity - frankly I think that is an ugly characterization - it suggests a rash and vindictive people when really I think (or hope?) the bulk had the best intentions for themselves and this country. Desperate for change perhaps, but I don't think they saw it as a gamble.

As for blame...hmm. Can't say I'm particularly sad to see Cameron go, but you do get a feeling of "better the devil you know" when you see the other contenders. This referendum would have been up for play at the next election regardless too. Boris and Gove were the greater opportunists by far. You want rash and reckless? Look no further - Power at any cost. I think the greatest blame is with the media. Not just the tabloids either, even the BBC gave disproportionate coverage to Farage - its the classic chicken-egg thing of them simultaneously wanting to cover what is popular whilst also having massive influence over what is popular.

Anyway, I do think he is dead right about engaging with the leave crowd. What would Jo Cox do, innit. We must answer the bigotry and xenophobia not in kind, but with kindness and compassion.

This writing annoys the hell out of me. I even bothered to read the written article, and it was actually worse.
I'm glad this kind of thing is getting more exposure, but the presentation has the quality of tabloid-material; it actually caused me to question the validity of the whole thing.

Um... *promote the cause, I guess?

See, I agreed with everything you said up until that last statement (that I quoted below).

All organized religions brutally and mindlessly suppress individual freedom. But lately the target de jour seems to be Islam. People like Sam Harris got off track when they forgot that the real target is the dismantling of all organized religion and focused almost exclusively on denouncing Islam--usually with obnoxious overgeneralizations and a complete lack of understanding how diverse Islam actually is.

And that's the major problem with the whole argument Dawkins and Maher are proposing (i.e. that you can't criticize Islam anymore). You can't criticise Christianity or Judaism or any other major religion without hugely overgeneralizing, either. Instead you need to target specific denominations within specific communities and how they practice the religion.

For example, are you upset about how "Christianity" has helped spread AIDS or protected pedophiles? Well then really you're really looking to criticize the Catholic church and it's stance on contraception and handling illegal activities within the church, not Christianity as a whole.

Upset with how gay people are viewed? Again, you're probably not looking to criticize the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and many other Christian denominations who have reformed in recent times to be accepting of LGBT members and clergy. It's not a Christianity problem so much as it is a problem of how specific people in specific places for specific cultural reasons interpret the texts of their religion.

Basically, I don't think it is a problem if people want to criticize how Islam is practiced in a specific context (say, for example, the use of female genital mutilation in some subsets of Islam in Africa). But I do think it is a problem when the speaker is simply set on demonizing the religion as whole rather than making a rational argument, for example overgeneralizing female gential mutilation (which actually pre-dates Islam and was incorporated into it later after Islam's rise of influence in the region) as an example of why Islam is evil.

Certainly people have the legal right to make such an argument (in the U.S. at least). However, I'm guessing most universities don't want to come across as looking in support of such ill-structured arguments that are more akin to tabloid magazine hit pieces than an actual intellectual argument which is grounded in facts and reason.

All that said, I have no inside information about the real administrative reasons why certain speakers have been declined/uninvited at specific college campuses.

I think the lady makes a very good point about damage being done to sex relations, and often times it seems the internet-generation feminist is actually not interested whatsoever in equality and is more accurately described a misandrist.

Very recently in my own country we had a number of famous feminists fighting to get rid of "page 3 girls" - semi nude models in tabloid newspapers. It never happened, but even as it was happening there were page 3 models complaining because it meant they'd be out of a job they enjoyed and got paid well for. No woman OR man should feel forced to take their clothes off in public for any reason, and in fact that is the case as these people are not slaves but career models by choice. What was actually happening was a prudish approach to human sexuality had been disguised as an equality thing; and the language was always of course referring to the little girls - because if you disagree with little girls having to grow up to go topless you're a certified monster and pervert.

That kind of shit really detracts from the things that are seriously unfair such as, most obviously, the pay gap. No woman should get paid less for the same job. There's no "rape culture" that i've ever heard of if your sample size includes greater than 1000 people in the west, and terms like that detract from the argument again - if you want to talk rape culture then look to India, where there is (and needs to be more) attention on changing the attitudes of the male community towards females because of horrific acts taking place.. almost commonplace. And to India's credit there was a big campaign tied into their favourite sport, with social media involvement and obviously most men proudly wearing symbols and stuff. There are parts of that society that has issues that could do with feminism.

But this is the profession of being offended. You have to drum up publicity, it has to be viral, or you don't get paid. You don't get a column in the newspaper or the mag, you don't get enough hits on your youtube to make enough money. Not if you talk about the pay gap or the gender inequality in less "civilised?" societies.. no, you do that by talking about the tits on page 3. Or espousing something unfair and incendiary; something someone will want to argue with. Nothing that fits with common sense. These people are self publicists - they will make a spelling error on a tweet to encourage others to call them stupid, correct them, essentially RETWEET AND REPLY AND FOLLOW AND LIKE!

Whether or not Sarkeesian(?) should have commented, there is a point well made in this video. I've been on the receiving end of something disguised as feminism in the past, and all it did was make me wary of anyone under 30 that calls themselves a feminist. Before i can establish whether that means misandrist, i have to establish common ground, because i'm a feminist too. What we need is more decorum and less extremism. You can't change the world without the help of both sexes, why alienate each other?

It would be nice if the press were to make a collective statement by putting the work of those who were killed front and center tomorrow. Instead, I can already smell the blood dripping out of the tabloids -- they're going to have a field day.

Taxing has no negative effects on the economy. Proven. Same with minimum wages increases.
Yes the UK needs to tax the shit out of London and the city.
The UKs problem with UKIP is due to an ageing population of racist tabloid reading dumbfucks who cry about 'their' Britain changing whilst quite enjoying cuts on hospitals, schools and jobs so long as it doesn't effect them or their lifelong pensions.

"The rich keep you fed enough that you bark at the intruders." - Some youtuber.

Yes he's a little out of his depth and he's so desperate to try and get people to understand that he's hurrying and nervous. Well, he's a comedian, he isn't used to public speaking, he knows how to make people laugh not convince them in an argument. But he's out there, putting his neck on the line when he doesn't even NEED to - because as the tabloids (controlled by who?) enjoy pointing out he's rich. At least he got rich through his ability to make people laugh, rather than tricking people into voting for him because he'd act in their best interests then selling their decisions to the highest bidder.

We are seeing politicians scrambling for ANYTHING they can to hold power and keep making money for a little longer. That anything is immigration and they're quite happy to let people convince themselves its the immigrants. Even if we are slightly overcrowded for our infrastructure in Britain, we wouldn't be if the money in the system was active and being used to build and be productive instead of sitting in the pockets of people who have everything they want and 8 figure bank balances. These people in charge keep telling us they're going to tackle all these problems, but they never do anything to close the loopholes being used by all the huge corporations who have been paying NO TAX WHATSOEVER during the times of extreme wealth and growth. Is it any wonder our countries are in a dire condition? Our tax system has been starved of hundreds of billions, possibly trillions, who really knows!? And why weren't they closed? Just look at the links between big business and and politics, the only reason we aren't all saying "what the fuck is going on?" is because they can distract people through their control over the media and their convincing oratory skill into going "it's your neighbour.. it's his fault. was he born here? why is he using your hospital?", meanwhile we lose out of BILLIONS because the post office was sold off on the sly! Only to be told next election THAT WE ARE SHORT ON OUR FUCKING BUDGET. You're ok with that happening?! Why is it ok for them to keep coming back having lost our money and asking for more, but if it was a man who came directly to our door to collect our money in exchange for services, we'd tell him to piss off? It's EASIER to blame someone who looks and speaks differently rather than the clever bastard with a gleam in his eye sitting in the pub silver tonguing his constituents.

We are not fucking short on productivity - how many people do you know that think they have a lot of spare time and freedom from work? But that productivity is not being directed appropriately, and if you don't believe that then you need to get outside and talk to people who are less fortunate than you... benefit of the doubt, maybe you just haven't had to see it. But all the money that went on bonuses could be going into improving schools, police, hospitals, public transport and roads and god knows what else. A bunch of people would go without a brand new range rover sport or yacht or champagne holiday for 30... in contrast, thousands less people would die - think of the old people dying in the cold each winter? or hospital beds and treatments for those with cancer or anything that the NHS can't afford to treat? All the freshly educated nurses and doctors thanks to our universities being given cash to improve their facilities and training.

The theory behind all this was trickle-down-wealth, the money will be distributed through society by paying those at the top a lot of money. It CLEARLY does not work, and anyone who suggests otherwise would surely be considered insane. It's not working, we see it not working, so why aren't we fixing it or getting angry and making those in charge fix it?

If Brand is advocating anarchy (and i'd like to know your argument for saying that, i could stand to be convinced), it's because he's exasperated at our inaction and wants to try and stir people to act. We're currently at the other extreme - watching it happen. People are criticising the crowd for being too into brand, too "leftist" or some nonsense. But those are the people that are having their lives drained by these leeches at the top, of course they're only going to come and cheer if someone is going to say what needs to be said. Any other night, it's just drones debating different ways to stack the odds against everyone.

Edited: Tried to make it nicer, more readable, sorry for the long post but he's really really got a great point and i can't understand why we are all ignoring what's going on. We seem to accept that big business WILL get away with not paying billions in tax like that's fine.. but it's not, we can change it, we just have to stop fucking ignoring it and hold these twats to account like Brand is trying to do. It's not like he's suggesting some wild and risky change, he's just saying STOP LETTING AND HELPING PEOPLE STEAL MONEY FROM US. They won't, and watch Farage go bright red when brand talks about his scandals and rich business partners. If they won't, we need to get rid of them. You may not like his demeanour but he is expressing democratic and egalitarian points.

I've also been bullied about my weight/body shape. Mainly by girls and women but that doesn't matter and I know I'm not the on w̶o̶m̶a̶n̶ person who this has happened to.

Anyway, I don't see the need to constantly bring up weight when it's not relevant. Our tabloid-like culture does it too much and it's just annoying and redundant.

I'm done sidetracking this thread. Sorry @brycewi19

I assumed during those 30 years you took the Pure-Speculation-Based-On-Tabloid-Evidence-Without-Any-Involvement-In-The-Case course?

Law enforcement are MEANT to be suspicious, that's why all juries aren't made up of old policemen. That'd be stupid, because they'd all be biased towards the police and they'd all be extremely suspicious of everything; rightly so, in the way in which they'd been trained.

Your qualifier is tantamount to saying "I'm extremely biased; here's my guess at what happened."