President Biden

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

[ewerk 30234]

 

The President honestly can't tell the difference between something happening last night and something being on TV last night.

 

We're completely fucked if he ever happens to flick on the TV and Independence Day is on.

[Rayvin 5166]

[Meenzer 15373]

[Ayatollah Hermione 13784]

No, you see, he's actually a genius at work and he distracts us from the secret machinations of the 7th day Pathfinders who are sculpting world events in their image

[Happy Face 29]

Startlingly little coverage of the DNC chair vote happening this weekend.

 

The 4 political stories on the us BBC page are all about trump and include small trumps on twitter.

 

Huge decision being made as to whether the Democrats will embrace a more liberal agenda or double down on the centrist policy that led to candidate Clinton.

 

Fingers crossed for Ellison.

[Rayvin 5166]

Startlingly little coverage of the DNC chair vote happening this weekend.

 

The 4 political stories on the us BBC page are all about trump and include small trumps on twitter.

 

Huge decision being made as to whether the Democrats will embrace a more liberal agenda or double down on the centrist policy that led to candidate Clinton.

 

Fingers crossed for Ellison.

 

Missed this altogether but I think we can safely say that if they choose the former they will immediately become an unelectable laughing stock, a dismal opposition, and out of touch with everyone.

[PaddockLad 17074]

Frankie Boyle's column the guardian wouldn't print for the jokes about, of all people, Rupert Murdoch

 

Here's a wee column the Guardian wouldn't print because they didn't like the Rupert Murdoch jokes:

 

Say what you like about Donald Trump but he's already done things people said were impossible, like made Twitter worse. Looking back, the Harambe situation is the closest working model we have for a Trump presidency. Last week he gave the sort of press conference that in a movie would bring a weary superhero out of retirement. His answers were filled with pointless digressions and absurd sentence construction, like he was desperately trying to avoid the buzzer on some unfathomable new Radio 4 panel game. And yet I wonder if Trump isn't playing to his base quite effectively: grievance is a key part of his appeal, and chaos may well just look like him butting heads with Washington insiders. His approval rating among Republicans was 84%, before he started what will no doubt be a series of rallies. Even Trump isn't stupid enough to think he's still fighting an election, so the assumption has to be that he's trying to enthuse his base to create pressure for his agenda on Republicans in Congress.

 

Trump's base are people who believe that the U.S is a country run by elites enabled by mainstream media propaganda. Which, awkwardly, it is. Distorted media has been around for as long as Rupert Murdoch. By the look of him that would include telling Moses the commandments would go down much better if he took the third tablet and carved a pair of tits on it. I do feel for Rupert. Not least the arthritic tadpoles that shuffle around in his scrotum, clutching their tiny hearts every time they hear Jerry’s voice, muffled by his adult nappy. Trump isn't inventing public disillusionment with the news media, just as he hasn't invented their dissatisfaction with the fruits of globalisation. He has co-opted these grievances, and followed the pattern of his whole life by bringing a lot of disparate stuff under the Trump brand.

 

The loyalists Trump has appointed form a kind of intellectual wing of anti-intellectualism, but really they're pouring out of the gates of Mordor so fast it's hard to keep track of them all without some kind of bestiary. Steve Bannon, who has the name and face of a relegation haunted Scottish football manager, agitates for a white supremacy that already exists. Ironic, really, that one of the main things his Administration seems to have illustrated is that only black people are good at being President. Seemingly every day we have the unveiling of some new cabinet member who has stepped screaming into our dimension after being outwitted by a Princess in a cautionary folktale. If Trump nominated his horse as a consul it would be a blessed relief.

 

The modern far-right have a lot in common with Jihadis in that their sexual desperation has been used to radicalise them online. The Brexit and Trump campaigns have been their training camps: the equivalent of a few weeks in some desert barracks shooting an AK-47 into an old mattress. Imagine the adrenaline surge of feeling responsible for a huge election upset. And then they have to go back to normal life. A life where during the 10 minutes they had their picture up on Tinder it was left-swiped so many times they got whiplash due to voodoo. Where they look like Joseph Merrick carried a photograph of their face in his wallet as an appetite suppressant. Where their mail-order bride heard who she was being delivered to and chewed off her toes just so she had something to block up the air holes in her crate. And so they channel their energy back into the trenches of hate that now pass for political discourse, to where they feel safe and newly empowered. There's never been a better time to be wrong.

 

I sometimes think that the new right have arisen without warning, then I remember that there were loads of warnings but I just kept muting and blocking them all. In all the hilarity of Trump, in the all the cluelessness of Brexit; in the sheer inchoate, transparent, head shaking, WTF of it all, it's easy to forget that we are losing. We sign petitions while they sign executive orders, pass laws, remove regulation. We share pictures of them signing away our rights as caption competitions. And yes, I realise columns like this aren't any more effective. There's obviously a limit to the need for humorous metaphor when describing a society literally being run from a country club.

 

The disillusioned electorate that voted for Trump are right to feel the establishment doesn't care about them, it rarely even considers them. The Democratic Party's response to Trump has had all the zip of an adulterous journalist phoning in coverage of a conference they didn't attend, and there isn't a war he could declare that they won't back. For Republicans, Trump's unpredictability is tolerated because his ideology largely overlaps their own. These are disaster capitalists and Trump is their unnatural disaster. They look to adapt to and capitalise on the situation as they would try to find profit in any scenario from hurricane to plague. Whatever happens next, it's certainly not going to be dull. Or survivable.

 

 

[Happy Face 29]

Missed this altogether but I think we can safely say that if they choose the former they will immediately become an unelectable laughing stock, a dismal opposition, and out of touch with everyone.

 

Yeah, most people wopuld have missed it.  I think that's not accidental.  Almost everyone is purely watching Trump.

 

I read this a fortnight ago and thought it was very good at the time

 

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/tom-perez-apologizes-for-telling-the-truth-showing-why-democrats-flaws-urgently-need-attention/

 

The focus on Trump seems to me to only have sharpened since though.  

 

Thought it particualrly informative in relation to that article that today Trump's Sweden faux pas, his persecution complex, the tiny Trump meme and Trump poetry are given more significance than the entire direction of the Democratic party and how it will position itself in opposition.

 

We're still repeating the same mistakes of the election by giving Trump blanket coverage.  As if he is the only show in town.

[Park Life 71]

“The Obama years have created a Democratic Party that’s essentially a smoking pile of rubble,”

[Rayvin 5166]

Yeah, most people wopuld have missed it.  I think that's not accidental.  Almost everyone is purely watching Trump.

 

I read this a fortnight ago and thought it was very good at the time

 

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/tom-perez-apologizes-for-telling-the-truth-showing-why-democrats-flaws-urgently-need-attention/

 

The focus on Trump seems to me to only have sharpened since though.  

 

Thought it particualrly informative in relation to that article that today Trump's Sweden faux pas, his persecution complex, the tiny Trump meme and Trump poetry are given more significance than the entire direction of the Democratic party and how it will position itself in opposition.

 

We're still repeating the same mistakes of the election by giving Trump blanket coverage.  As if he is the only show in town.

 

Personally, I think this is because Trump is correct when he labels the media as the opposition party. He's not saying that just cos he wants it to be true, he saying it because it's exactly how they're acting. Because Trump's victory wasn't over the democrats, it was over the status quo.

 

If the democrats choose the left wing change option, it'll be interesting to see what the media does. I suspect they'll throw their lot in behind it because they can't do anything else. I suspect they'd overwhelmingly prefer the centrist option though.

 

EDIT - if they give the Corbyn treatment to a more left wing Democratic party, then we'll know which option they'd have preferred, I guess.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Rayvin

[Dr Gloom 21804]

Right, because the press are to blame for corbyn too.

[Rayvin 5166]

Right, because the press are to blame for corbyn too.

 

They're definitely to blame for the 'received wisdom' of his unelectability. In your world, are the press an entirely passive, non-partisan force or something?

[Dr Gloom 21804]

in my world, the press is not a collective entity that can be blamed for the world's ills, as it appears to be in yours. 

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

Given the limited information available, neurosyphilis belongs in the differential diagnosis. We know Trump was potentially exposed to syphilis based on his own statements that he was sexually promiscuous in the 1980s, a period when syphilis cases were rapidly increasing in the U.S. “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world,” he told Howard Stern in 1997, referring to his dating life the decade prior. “It is a dangerous world out there—it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider.”

Edited February 20, 2017 by Anorthernsoul

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3809]

in my world, the press is not a collective entity that can be blamed for the world's ills, as it appears to be in yours. 

 

 

https://leftfootforward.org/2013/06/everyone-should-know-who-owns-the-press-for-the-sake-of-our-democracy/ 

[Rayvin 5166]

in my world, the press is not a collective entity that can be blamed for the world's ills, as it appears to be in yours. 

 

I don't blame them for all the world's ills, I blame them for ignoring them. But yes, the press is not always a collective entity. On some issues it is though. Corbyn was one. Trump is another fwiw. Russia seems to be as well.

[PaddockLad 17074]

Ooh good, it's lets stick pins into the "gloom/MSM voodoo doll" time again

 

The media form opinion among the general public, how we to choose to interpret the information of their agendas depends on the prejudices we've formed due to our upbringing, age,environment,temperament and income. So they're a factor, but it just depends if you're a cunt or gnot as to how much notice you take of their propaganda.

Edited February 20, 2017 by PaddockLad

[Rayvin 5166]

Ooh good, it's lets stick pins into the "gloom/MSM voodoo doll" time again

 

The media form opinion among the general public, how we to choose to interpret the information of their agendas depends on the prejudices we've formed due to your upbringing, age,environment,temperament and income. So they're a factor, but it just depends if you're a cunt or not as to how much notice you take of their propaganda.

 

What happens when the media all take the same side on an issue?

[Happy Face 29]

The press have been ridiculous to Corbyn.  

 

That said, on the day of his election the majority view was that he was a liability to the party. Labour stalwarts were walking away, tories were celebrating etc.  I don't think they needed the press to sway their heads, they knew that Corbyn (high on idealogy, poor on leadership and compromise) would be a poor choice.  Partially, this view was informed by the precognition that the press would lambast him, not eventually reached only after the bad press he got.

 

You didn't need Rupert Murdoch to tell you whether it was worth a tenner on Labour winning an election under Corbyn.

 

In Britain, you aren't operating in reality if your agenda can only be advanced if there are no privately owned media corporations promoting the interests of other privately owned corporations.

[Rayvin 5166]

 

 

In Britain, you aren't operating in reality if your agenda can only be advanced if there are no privately owned media corporations promoting the interests of other privately owned corporations.

 

I notice that you can't say the same about the US

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

[Rayvin 5166]

 

 

That said, on the day of his election the majority view was that he was a liability to the party.

 

Also curious about this - clearly not the majority who voted for him, so who else are you talking about?

[Happy Face 29]

Also curious about this - clearly not the majority who voted for him, so who else are you talking about?

 

Only a quarter of a million people voted Corbyn into his position.  Among the other 64.75m his support is nothing like as fervent.

 

Read the Corbyn thread on here from September 2015.  Almost exclsively a centre/left board but no-one would say that Corbyn had any hope, even if we hoped he could  prove everyone wrong.

[Renton 21246]

Also curious about this - clearly not the majority who voted for him, so who else are you talking about?

Pretty much EVERYBODY else.