Pizzagate & the American Right Wing

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Dec 5, 2016.

  1. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Consider old man Flynn is just a crazy as his son but is too old to handle twitter, he is still in running to be director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. But hey if we all die because General Flynn concocted something about nazi communist hydra agents taking over russia, at least I will die laughing.

    By the way here is an example of the crazy:

     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2016
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  3. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are speaking ironically there...

    Great job! That is an excellent example of how a person can take an innocuous and uncontroversial fact and spin it into a false narrative that that supports their political bias!

    While I know that you actually understood what I was saying, for the benefit of others you may not have, below is a link describing the origin of the conspiracy theory. We wouldn't want people to miss your sarcasm and falsely conclude based on what you said that the Trump team created the story, now would we?

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    https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/fever-swamp-election?utm_term=.bpex31LWDN#.vm1dBpzjgJ

    You, of course, have evidence to support that claim, right? You didn't just make it up because it supports your bias/narrative, did you?
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
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  5. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Again, it is a clear difference that this conspiracy theory was created on a conspiracy theory website and spread through social media as opposed to generated or promulgated by a news outlet. Here's a good article from Snopes discussing the importance of distinguishing this incident from the much broader and more serious problem of just plain bad news reporting:
    http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/17/we-have-a-bad-news-problem-not-a-fake-news-problem/

    While you erred in expanding the scope to include news outlet generated bad news, that nevertheless is an important issue as well.
    I'm not interested in arguing whether it is intentional or not (again, it is broad and diverse), but all news sources post bad or false or misleading/spun news from time to time.
    Yes.
    Not sure what you are going on about, but I didn't make any such claims or even mention the Jill Stein recount issue myself. But I'm glad you read the link!
    Wait, what? You believe that CNN aired porn? Yikes.
    Read this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
    Misreading = reading comprehension problem. Stating that fact is not ad hominem. Stop trying to deflect from your mistakes.
    Well at least I succeeded in getting you to dial-back your hyperbole from "almost exclusively" to "primarily"! So I guess that's progress!
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That is the standard operating procedure, tryouts of a kind - the ones that prove effective and "deniable" (the emails, the Birther stuff, Acorn, Sherrod, Benghazi,) get picked up as stories by major news outlets from these humble beginnings. It makes little difference to the originators, btw, whether the resultant major media coverage is "positive" or "negative" - as long as it is framed as they prefer.
    We have a fake news problem as an undeniable and unspinnable diagnostic subset and primary source, indicating the nature of our bad news problem. The James O'Keefe videos, for example, were fake news that led to bad news - and showed us how and why and from where this bad news was taking over.
    Not "from time to time" - that's misleading: Fox, and increasingly other stations under the influence of Fox (such as CNN), does that all the time - every day of every week and every month for several years now. Furthermore, the bad, false, spun, and misleading "news" in the non-Fox sources is largely found in their conservative, Republican, programming, which has been expanding on all major venues - Morning Joe on MSNBC all last fall, for example, was a major source on that station from the beginning, and saw its hours greatly expanded recently.

    So it is not, as you claim, "broad and diverse". It is narrowly framed and Republican-favoring, by and large, with only sparse and much less significant occurrences outside that genre.
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    The thing is that when all is said and done, only the bigotry and bullying will remain. This is what the Trump election is about; the bullies don't want their privileges revoked.

    In Florida, meanwhile, the Department of Justice has just announced the arrest of a Tampa, Florida–area woman who—believing, like Jones, that the deaths at Sandy Hook were faked—threatened to kill one of the bereaved parents of a Sandy Hook victim. From the DOJ:

    On or about January 10, 2016, Richards made a series of death threats to a parent of a child killed in the Sandy Hook School shooting. The parent resides in South Florida. Richards' believed that the school shooting was a hoax and never happened allegedly motivated her to make the charged threats.​

    The parent in question, Len Pozner, is what New York magazine described in a September piece as "the de facto leader of the [Sandy Hook] anti-hoaxer movement"; he operates an advocacy organization for family members of mass-killing victims who've been harassed by truthers and has filed a lawsuit against one prominent Sandy Hook denier for invasion of privacy. Pozner told the magazine that he was actually once an Infowars listener himself before losing his 6-year-old son Noah in Newtown. Said Pozner: "I probably listened to an Alex Jones podcast after I dropped the kids off at school that morning."


    (Mathis-Lilley, "Sandy Hook"↱)

    And, well, you know. It only goes downhill:

    The bizarre "Pizzagate" online hoax theory that Hillary Clinton operates a satanic pedophilia ring out of Comet pizza in Washington, D.C., has now expanded to encompass pizzerias in at least three other cities, local outlets report:

    • In Austin, Texas, according to the Austin American-Statesman, the East Side Pies mini-chain has been the subject of online and phone harassment (and one incident of IRL vandalism) by individuals who have "interpreted the restaurant’s logo as a symbol of the 'illuminati,' questioned the meaning of photos of pizza-eating children on East Side Pies’ Facebook account, inferred that a picture of staffers with former Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell was proof of nefarious political ties and claimed co-owner Michael Freid, an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of America, had 'connections to the CIA.' "

    • DNAInfo writes that an employee of the Brooklyn pizza restaurant Roberta's received a telephoned death threat after it was identified as a hub of satanic activity in a YouTube video posted by an individual who made similar claims about a restaurant in Amherst, New York, which is near Buffalo.​

    As Slate’s Christina Cauterucci and Jonathan Fischer wrote Tuesday↱, part of what seems to have made Comet pizza a target of the far-right white nationalist crowd is that it has long been a welcoming environment for "eccentrics, queers, outsiders, and their art," hosting punk shows and art installations. East Side Pies and Roberta's are both also located in predominately liberal areas with thriving music and arts scenes.


    (Mathis-Lilley, "Pizzerias"↱)

    Still, though, what the hell? Edgar "Maddison" Welch explained that he "just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way."

    What was his original plan?

    Mr. Welch, the father of two daughters, said he woke up Sunday morning and told his family he had some things to do. He left “Smallsbury,” a nickname for his hometown, for the 350-mile drive to Washington with the intention of giving the restaurant a “closer look” and then returning home. He wanted to “shine some light on it.” As he made his way to Washington, he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering.” Once he got to the pizzeria, there was an abrupt change of plans. Mr. Welch would not say why he took a military-style assault rifle inside the restaurant and fired it. According to court documents, Mr. Welch said he had come armed to help rescue the children.

    What did he think when he discovered there were no children at the pizzeria?

    “The intel on this wasn't 100 percent,” he said. However, he refused to dismiss outright the claims in the online articles, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling.” He also said that child slavery was a worldwide phenomenon.

    Where did he learn about the fake news involving Comet?

    He said it was through word of mouth. After recently having internet service installed at his house, he was “really able to look into it.” He said that substantial evidence from a combination of sources had left him with the “impression something nefarious was happening.” He said one article on the subject led to another and then another. He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust. He also said he was not political. While once a registered Republican, he did not vote for Donald J. Trump. He also did not vote for Mrs. Clinton. But he is praying that Mr. Trump takes the country in the “right direction.”


    (Goldman↱)

    Mr. Welch added, "I regret how I handled the situation."

    This is the sort of thing we just can't make up. As fiction, this is genuinely unbelievable. Indeed, even conceding that truth is stranger than fiction, belief―acceptance that reality is real―seems something more suited, on this occasion, to asking Alice↱°.

    So here's our looking glass:

    On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Over the next several weeks, it would be tweeted and retweeted hundreds or thousands of times each day.

    An oddly disproportionate share of the tweets about Pizzagate appear to have come from, of all places, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, said Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University in North Carolina. In some cases, the most avid retweeters appeared to be bots, programs designed to amplify certain news and information.

    “What bots are doing is really getting this thing trending on Twitter,” Albright said. “These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy.”


    (Fisher, Cox, and Hermann↱)

    To the one, sure, if it brings some thin comfort, there is the popular vote.

    To the other, more and more all these self-assured, smarter-than-thou tinfoils who just helped elect a president are apparently getting played by international jokers, swindlers, and psyops. And, you know, that's the thing about the whole, "We're #1 USA!" jingoism. There was this hilariously creepy moment―and if you weren't old enough during the eighties I simply cannot convey the wrecking ball to the tender places the line actually was―Betty White's character in Golden Girls had this line about her sex life with her husband that floored pretty much everybody, which resulted in Rue McClanahan, the house "slut" as eighties societal mores went, expressing her surprise that the prim and proper character had a vibrant (or, by the societal mores of the day went, dirty) sex life. Betty White responded that she always figured you didn't need to talk about it if you were busy doing it, which of course was a scandalous burn on Rue McClanahan's character.

    Oh, right. Something about patriotism goes here. Dunning–Kruger in living application.

    No, really. Maddison Welch claims to not be a Trump voter, but his sad tale is wrapped up in the same phenomenon, and David Dunning↱ himself looks beyond Trump voters: "The problem," he wrote earlier this year, "isn't that voters are too uninformed. It is that they don't know just how uninformed they are."

    Thus #PizzaTruthers and other such patriots are nothing more than fodder for international twittery. Unwitting assets is one thing, but they don't seem to mind; any excuse for a shitshow, and all.
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Notes for #25↑ Above

    ° And to each their own in understanding just what she said↱.​

    Cauterucci, Christina and Jonathan L. Fischer. "Comet Is D.C.’s Weirdo Pizza Place. Maybe That’s Why It’s a Target." Slate. 6 December 2016. Slate.com. 7 December 2016. http://slate.me/2gmCVXJ

    Dunning, David. "The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump". Politico. 25 May 2016. Politico.com. 7 December 2016. http://politi.co/2hmiDeM

    Fisher, Marc, John Woodrow Cox, and Peter Hermann. "Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C.". The Washington Post. 6 December 2016. WashingtonPost.com. 7 December 2016. http://wapo.st/2gd61KE

    Goldman, Adam. "The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions". The New York Times. 7 December 2016. NYTimes.com. 7 December 2016. http://nyti.ms/2gEazWI

    Mathis-Lilley, Ben. "Pizzerias in Austin and New York Are Now Also Being Accused of Abetting Satanic Pedophilia". Slate. 7 December 2016. Slate.com. 7 December 2016. http://slate.me/2gda7mf

    —————. "Sandy Hook Truther Arrested for Threatening to Kill Parent of Murdered Child". Slate. 7 December 2016. Slate.com. 7 December 2016. http://slate.me/2gd7m4i
     
  10. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    While I'm sure all you lefties are just pretending to think the left is immune to fake news, I'm sure you all remember the good pre-social media parallel to Pizzagate which is, of course, Rathergate. It has similar fake news/hoax origins and parallels in that it was intended to influence a Presidential election, but unlike Pizzagate, Rathergate was fed directly to a mainstream media source, which then reported it without checking it out while simultaneously lying about checking it out. The participants in Rathergate all had their eyes open: the CBS employees knew they were dealing with a liberal, anti-Bush crackpot, but didn't care because they were also liberal, anti-Bush crackpots. Many liberals fell for it, but it was nevertheless quickly exposed by less biased internet denizens.
     
  11. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps America needs a dedicated news channel & website combo with lots of flashy graphics, greasy hairdos and silver-haired old white men advertising electric stairlifts and centenarian health insurance (with no medical questions asked), but all it does 24/7 is expose outrageous BS in the mainstream media and perform detailed, well-sourced and cited fact checking.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    So you believed the Fox version of Rathergate? Seriously?

    That's not "liberals" falling for fake news - that's you, falling for a transparently arranged hit job on the news media. You and the rest of the wingnuts got played for suckers, and partly in consequence elected the worst President the US has ever had - so far. But the rich guys got their tax cuts, hoo-rah.

    Rathergate was not fake news about Bush, but a punking of Dan Rather - bad, rigged news about Rather. He got scammed, and his career destroyed, to prevent him and the rest of the fact-based media (known as "liberal", in Fox-fool circles) from damaging W's candidacy. And you were led along by the nose, hypnotized like a chicken.

    Check back: In hindsight, after the dust settled, all the news about Bush Rather delivered was accurate, factual reporting - perhaps played up, a sensationalized account of the misdeeds of a wealthy young man in his early twenties, but in no sense fictional, invented, or otherwise "fake". The information on the fraudulent document, for example, was checked out - verified by multiple primary sources including the secretary who recorded it at the time. So was the rest of the reporting on W's irresponsible and dubious neglect of his National Guard obligations, which were irresponsible and fraudulent draft dodging maneuvers in the first place.

    How did you miss that part of the story? And that's not a rhetorical question: how, in fact, did that part of the story go missing from the rightwing world?
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Lefty and liberal media don't attract ad buys like that - their audiences are not good markets for those kinds of cons.
     
  14. Bells Staff Member

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    Sarcasm is not your strong point.

    At no time did I even suggest that Trump's team created the story. What I clearly pointed out, with evidence, is that at least one member of Trump's team (well two if you consider Flynn's son has since been fired) helped push this story by tweeting about it. Mike Flynn, the incoming national security adviser to Trump, has tweeted many false and fake stories and conspiracies. "Pizza-gate" being just one of them. His son, attempted to keep the conspiracy alive, even after the gunman had been arrested, Flynn Jnr tweeted:

    Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it.


    It led Jake Tapper to confront him about it.. And it didn't end well for Flynn Jnr. It showed a deeper malady. Remember, this man was working in Trump's transition team and had access to them through his father, so much so that they were attempting to get him national security clearance until they were forced to fire him when the media started to question his role in the whole issue - while leaving aside the many other conspiracy theories he spouted:

    That’s when Tapper apparently began to direct message Flynn Jr. on the app, asking for one piece of evidence proving that the pizza shop was “the site of a satanic pedophilia cult.” Those direct messages were posted by another user.

    “Michael — the police called pizza gate a fictitious conspiracy theory tonight,” Tapper wrote. “Does someone have to die before you take this s— seriously. Spreading this nonsense is dangerous.”

    “I want it to be false,” Flynn Jr. responded.

    “It is not the site of a satanic pedophilia cult,” Tapper shot back. “It is a f—— pizzeria. Show me what you’re talking about that proves a satanic pedophilia cult. Your tweet is wildly irresponsible. Listen to me. You are going to get someone killed. Maybe an innocent child. For what??????”

    Flynn Jr. later posted another screenshot of a DM thread with Tapper with the caption, “Want evidence??? I must’ve really hit a nerve.”

    Flynn Jr. has a government transition email, as CNN reported. Flynn also shared a similar conspiracy theory on Twitter days before the November election that claimed Clinton was involved in sex crimes with children.


    Mike Flynn, Trump's pick for national security adviser, also tweeted this conspiracy and others. In short, he helped peddle the same crap.

    How influential do you think Flynn is?

    How popular and well known as being connected to Trump do you think he is?

    It stands to reason that when he and his son start tweeting these conspiracies, that it would help gain traction. Flynn and his son were not obscure figures. Flynn has been connected to Trump for a long time, has helped influence his policy. Spoke at the GOP convention for Trump. Has been very visible and vocal about and with Trump.
     
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  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Passing coincidence: We have here on this forum an example of the Russian focus on false pedophilia accusations as an attack option - the subject keeps coming up in the context of people involved with Russians and propaganda. It's a live option, apparently, in those circles.

    If we see it again - ever again - directed at a Trump enemy like this, the conspiracy needle will move to yellow alert.
     
  16. river

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    17,307
    It does .

    Apparently the dumbing down of the populace works ; unfortunately
     
  17. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    I've never even heard of a Fox version of Rathergate, so no.
    While that's possible (though I doubt it), it does not absolve him of his responsibility. CBS themsevles acknowledged that, and given that they would have had something to gain by shifting blame to a 3rd party, the fact that they didn't is telling.
    [shrug] I don't know what to tell you, ice. I'm not reading from a Fox News report, I'm reading CBS's own report on the subject after the dust settled. They admitted they erred. They admitted the documents were probably (but not certainly) fake and as such should not have been reported to be authentic. This is CBS's own words describing their failure:
    http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf

    You seem to be spinning your own fantasy here. I'd love to see if you have any sources for your version of the story. Both for:
    1. Whatever this "Fox" version is supposed to be.
    2. Sources showing that despite CBS's admission the documents were real and that CBS did all the appropriate due dilligence prior to reporting it.
    Where I got my story is straightforward: the wiki article and its linked-through CBS report describing their own admitted failings. Where did you get your version?
     
  18. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Wait, so when you said "Right, 4Chan" you were agreeing with me? Oh, well that fixes it then! Not sure why you posted the rest of your post then, since it seems to disagree!

    C'mon, Bells, you have to be better than that: you are a moderator. When I described this as "a 4chan conspiracy theory" I meant nothing more or less than that it was created on 4chan - which is a straightforward fact that I wasn't even the first to post here. It is not controversial. If you don't disagree with that statement, then you should not be disagreeing with me. If you do disagree with that statement, then you had an issue with recognizing and understanding facts there.
    Since I made no claims otherwise, this doesn't add or subtract anything from what I said. It isn't a basis for you to have disagreed with me. However, now that you have highlighted it and claimed it to be an important fact, I asked for substantiation of just how much influence it had:
    That's what I thought: none. Sorry, Bells, but your "reason" isn't good enough for me. I need 3rd party, relevant, verifiable facts. Specifically::
    Show me that that is a fact. In a thread on fake/bad news, no less, your basing what to you is an important aspect of the story on your own speculation is quite telling.
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    LOL...well, keep deluding yourself. I guess it makes you feel better. But it won't change reality. It won't change the truth. Why is it right wingers are so dependent upon deception and dishonesty?
     
  20. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Gee, joe, why don't you go back to complaining about me doing ad hominem some more?

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    Jumping the shark to total non-responsiveness is evidence that you recognize your position has failed. I graciously accept your concession.

    [Edit] Though I guess since you trapped yourself it makes sense: in order to discuss the issue, you would have to admit you understand it. An you can't do that now that you've staked your position of misunderstanding. He'll, I bet when it comes down to it, you actually agree with me, which must be too traumatic a thought to bear!
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
  21. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    LOL....feel better now? Denial isn't a river in Egypt. You can keep deluding yourself as you are wont to do. But unfortunately for you and your right wing cohorts, fact and reason still matter outside the right wing echo chamber.

    The fact is the American right wing thrives on and is heavily dependent upon fake news, e.g. Fox News. Pizzagate is only one of the many recent examples. But this stuff isn't new. It's been around since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of the right wing entertainment industry where right wingers like you never need to be confronted with an inconvenient fact and reason.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/stud...-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5
     
  22. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    What a simplistic and contrived world view. I would love for the horror of trump to be just that, but it is far more, please do listen to that lecture sometime to get an idea.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    You just posted it. And you swallowed it - hook, line, and sinker.
    His responsibility is nothing like what you presented, however. He was amiss in not properly vetting every item of the mutually confirming pieces of evidence he had, especially one he planned to feature, but he was either obviously conned by quite sophisticated people, people who could bury the evidence of forgery where he would be almost certain to miss it but could never deny it, or extraordinarily careless in typing up a false document using the accurate information he otherwise possessed (Including the format of the document, btw. How'd he know that? The key fact being that every fact in the document seems to have been completely accurate - the dates, the people, the circumstances recorded, the whole shot).

    You presented him as being responsible for fake news dishonestly invented according to a crackpot liberal agenda.
    CBS did not present themselves as having aired fake news, fictional in content, invented to further a crackpot liberal agenda. That was the Fox version. You made a big deal out of that, and you didn't get it from CBS.
    The CBS version is that the one document Rather unfortunately chose to make the centerpiece of his report was forged and fraudulent despite the apparent accuracy of its content, and therefore obviously not vetted well. And on a non-Fox news station of the time, that was a serious matter. Even getting the facts about W right was no defense for Rather. It wasn't like it is now, after the Rathers of the media were banished but the O'Reillys have jobs for life, , when airing complete bullshit is fine as long as somebody sincerely believes it and it has a rightwing bias.

    Rather got fired even when he got the story right. Nobody gets fired from the Republican bullshit machines even when they get caught spreading falsehoods.

    Top drawer, big money honchos get fired from legit news and punditry purveyors ("liberal") for being too enthusiastic in their delivery of rightwing-disparaging actual facts (Olbermann, Maher) or telling exaggerated and self-romanitcizing versions of events they were actually present at (Williams). Top drawer honchos on rightwing venues don't get fired for airing James O'Keefe videos, or lying about their presence at events they were never within a thousand miles of.

    That's how it came to be that the fake news and bad news problem is a Republican, rightwing, billionaire wingnut funded, narrow and not diverse, media problem.
    From the verbatim publication of interviews with the secretary who typed the original documents, biographies of W written by various people, dozens of reports of W's behavior and doings as remembered by people who knew him, and so forth. Rather's account of W's life and times seems to have been accurate. If he invented it, he was extraordinarily lucky to have invented something that agreed with the facts so well.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016

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