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 reds8n wrote:
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1004076757987753984

NBC News' Peter Alexander to Sarah Sanders: "If the White House supports the [Colorado] baker's right of free speech, why doesn't the White House support the [NFL] players' right to free speech?" (via CBS)

Sanders goes on to say that Trump doesn't believe NFL players' right to protest is a matter of free speech. He believes it's a matter of "respect."



uh huh.

... you are all sure it was just Flint's water supply was dodgy right ?

At this point nobody would expect anything less. No shame of course.

Anyone want to take bets on how rude the Trump response to this is going to be
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/06/1011391

The current policy in the United States of separating “extremely young children” from their asylum-seeker or migrant parents along the country’s southern border “always constitutes a child rights violation”, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
He controls the narrative when people do this, and the media falls for it Every Single Time. Despite popular narrative, I don't think he's stupid - he's pulling the media's strings and they play right into it!

I do think the media is too busy charging after everything that happens to take stock of whether its a good idea. What I don't agree with is saying he isn't stupid, he most certainly is considering his 'policy' positions and the things he says. A smart man wouldn't wing it when it comes to NK or offend his closest allies for zero gain. Its no substance and all show, that isn't remotely smart in the position he is fulfilling. While the media might go after the more superficial part of his intellect, there really isn't much substance behind it related to the job he has now. He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

 RiTides wrote:
Regarding the cake baker case, I completely agree with the result, and have yet to see Sotomayor take a moderate stance on any ruling. I love justice Kennedy's moderate positions, and the narrow ruling in this case was absolutely the right one, imo. Hopefully, they'll take on another case to make a broader ruling to avoid discrimination, but this is Not a broad ruling - it's specific to that one case, as it should be, imo.

I think they should have made a broader ruling though. This is leaving the door open to other types of discrimination that are only going to be resolved once another case reaches the SC. How many people in the meantime will not have the willingness or the means to carry what they feel is discrimination against their sexuality to court before the broader case does?

There was no broader ruling to be made. Colorado has state laws that prohibit discrimination based upon sexuality and those laws are still valid. The ruling held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was unduly discriminatory towards the baker's claim of religious freedom. The Commission's handling of the case was inconsistent with the way it handled other cases so SCOTUS ruled in the baker's favor. States can still have sexuality as a protected class and state residents still have their freedom of religion, state governments just need to enforce anti discrimination laws in a consistent lawful manner. This ruling was about the enforcement of a valid and existing anti discrimination law not the constitutionality of the anti discrimination law itself.

Was going to post about them doxxing the plaintiffs but that was a case in Oregon, not the case in Colorado. Got confused.a bit there

“freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust.”

Was apparently the thing that the commissioner said that turned the case. Not sure when that was said either during the hearings or as part of the final decision. As part of the final decision I think it should have been allowable as to an explanation why someone's Religious freedom isn't allowed to significantly impact someone else. As part of the hearings, not so much as it shows a prejudice. Though it was a minor point. Same as the police officer that shot the kneeling guy in (I think) Texas that had a saying on his gun that made it seem like he was out looking to shoot someone.

Also was that the commission had ruled in favor of three bakeries that refused to make cakes demeaning gays. Though I could see that bakeries could have a blanket rule that they won't make cakes that are intended to demean anyone. Whether that was their policy, I don't know.

Disciple of Fate wrote:He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

Insert whatever word you like ("crafty" "intuitive" "manipulative" etc) but I don't think people in general, and especially the media, give Trump enough "credit" for this. He's absolutely playing them. And they fall for it over, and over, and over.

And I disagree, d-usa, that the choice is to either call him out, or ignore. Just like any "trolling" tactic, sticking to the facts and only addressing nonsense when necessary is the most effective.

If people / the media would recognize this (Trump's often repeated tactic), we could have a lot less useless outrage over petty things that he does, and more substantive focus on important issues...

Prestor Jon wrote:
There was no broader ruling to be made. Colorado has state laws that prohibit discrimination based upon sexuality and those laws are still valid. The ruling held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was unduly discriminatory towards the baker's claim of religious freedom. The Commission's handling of the case was inconsistent with the way it handled other cases so SCOTUS ruled in the baker's favor. States can still have sexuality as a protected class and state residents still have their freedom of religion, state governments just need to enforce anti discrimination laws in a consistent lawful manner. This ruling was about the enforcement of a valid and existing anti discrimination law not the constitutionality of the anti discrimination law itself.

While you're right, it still leaves it open for more cases. The bakery winning the case is going to embolden other who might be willing to take it all the way to the SC.

Ustrello wrote:

Spoiler:

Germany’s Bayer (BAYGn.DE) will wrap up the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto (MON.N) on Thursday and also retire the U.S. seeds maker’s 117 year-old name.

The German drugmaker had received all required approvals from regulatory authorities, it said in a statement on Monday.

“Bayer will remain the company name. Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio,” it said.

Bayer launched a 6 billion euro ($7 billion) rights issue on Sunday, a cornerstone of the financing package for the deal, shortly after clearing the last major antitrust hurdle in the United States.


The deal is the first of a trio of major U.S.-German merger deals to cross the finish line at a time of harsh criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump of Germany’s trade surplus with the United State

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-closing/bayer-to-close-monsanto-takeover-to-retire-targets-name-idUSKCN1J00IZ

That feeling when a German company who had a major stake in the production of Zyklon B and used slave labor buys an American company that created another poison gas (Agent Orange) all the while the cheeto is complaining about the EU and Germany

edit: forgot source

The technical term is: synergy

RiTides wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

Insert whatever word you like ("crafty" "intuitive" "manipulative" etc) but I don't think people in general, and especially the media, give Trump enough "credit" for this. He's absolutely playing them. And they fall for it over, and over, and over.

And I disagree, d-usa, that the choice is to either call him out, or ignore. Just like any "trolling" tactic, sticking to the facts and only addressing nonsense when necessary is the most effective.

If people / the media would recognize this (Trump's often repeated tactic), we could have a lot less useless outrage over petty things that he does, and more substantive focus on important issues...

He's not playing them, the media in general is just a bit of a coward when it comes to Trump's antics and that benefits him (despite his goals and behaviour).

 RiTides wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

Insert whatever word you like ("crafty" "intuitive" "manipulative" etc) but I don't think people in general, and especially the media, give Trump enough "credit" for this. He's absolutely playing them. And they fall for it over, and over, and over.

I don't think people don't give him credit for that. Manipulating/shaping his brand is what made him appear to be successful in the first place, arguably the only part of business he is actually good at. Plenty of opponents and critics are able to name it and see through it though, while a lot of his supporters seem to genuinely believe the persona he has build. But you could say that about any run of the mill social media star in this day and age, it doesn't make them smarter then they are.

Mario wrote:

Ustrello wrote:

Spoiler:

Germany’s Bayer (BAYGn.DE) will wrap up the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto (MON.N) on Thursday and also retire the U.S. seeds maker’s 117 year-old name.

The German drugmaker had received all required approvals from regulatory authorities, it said in a statement on Monday.

“Bayer will remain the company name. Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio,” it said.

Bayer launched a 6 billion euro ($7 billion) rights issue on Sunday, a cornerstone of the financing package for the deal, shortly after clearing the last major antitrust hurdle in the United States.


The deal is the first of a trio of major U.S.-German merger deals to cross the finish line at a time of harsh criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump of Germany’s trade surplus with the United State

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-closing/bayer-to-close-monsanto-takeover-to-retire-targets-name-idUSKCN1J00IZ

That feeling when a German company who had a major stake in the production of Zyklon B and used slave labor buys an American company that created another poison gas (Agent Orange) all the while the cheeto is complaining about the EU and Germany

edit: forgot source

The technical term is: synergy

The perfect poison gas to end all of our mutual suffering?

 RiTides wrote:
Just read through the last page or so, and I have to say guys - can we just agree Trump is not the most unscrupulous person, and move on to talking about something more substantive?

A.) What is the non-substantive thing being discussed on the last page that is problematic?

This being a day in Trump America, we have:

Trump using the White House as his personal clubhouse to disinvite the Super Bowl champion team by misrepresenting their protests

Trump claiming he can pardon himself for any crimes he may have committed

Mitch McConnell suspending a recess and lying by saying the democrats are obstructing when Trump can't be bothered to pick nominees, and the ones he picks are often clearly, abjectly unqualified


B.) Is this your personal preference or a red text moderation direction/instruction?



I would ask what we should talk about instead but that has become self apparent in the last day or so

Fair enough, Disciple of Fate

Ouze, while I agree with you about some things, using phrases like "Trump America" is eerily similar to folks on the right who were characterizing Obama as to blame for everything going on in the country. They're the president, not America!

As for major issues, I talked about one (the Supreme Court case). I just think focusing on Trump's every tweet is both maddening for moderates like me, and weakens the case the democrats have on real policy issues...

(Regarding moderation / direction, I try to make this really clear and distinct - see my post on the prior page that used colored text / etc to make it noticeable. If it ever isn't clear, just let me know!)

I don't blame Trump for everything that goes wrong in the country. The POTUS generally has very little direct control of... well, almost anything, really, outside of warfare. It's like those guys that complained about gas prices under Bush or Obama or anyone else - it's a fundamental misunderstanding of a lot of things, and the only time the POTUS should be directly influencing gas prices, things have gone horrible, horribly wrong.

I could see an exception being taken to the current issue with the Eagles; because it's really just a meaningless thing that will be over in a day. There is a bigger concern with a large social movement being falsely presented and smeared, I think, but OK.

I'm going to have to pretty firmly disagree with some of the other things that happened on the same day as being insubstantive, though. You have a president who is claiming both directly and through his sanctioned intermediaries that he has unfettered power to do essentially whatever he wants with the only check being impeachment. This is setting up some of the biggest questions of executive power and the checks on it in my lifetime.

The fact the courts are being neglected, and the ones that are picked are abjectly unqualified - not a partisan opinion, by the way, but the finding of the bar association! is something that will have ramifications on American jurisprudence for the next 50 years, probably.

 RiTides wrote:
Fair enough, Disciple of Fate

Ouze, red text tends to be red, lol. That's clearly my opinion, but your saying "Trump America" is eerily similar to folks on the right blaming Obama for everything going on in the country. They're the president, not America!

As for major issues, I talked about one (the Supreme Court case). I just think focusing on Trump's every tweet is both maddening for moderates like me, and weakens the case the democrats have on real policy issues.

Just my $0.02...

Here's the issue with your take(which, despite singling you out here is more just using it as a stepping stone to explain something I've seen expressed quite a few times):
You cannot really divorce Trump from some of these issues. It's the fact that he is in the White House emboldening some of this nonsense. It's his appointees like Pruitt doing things. I mean, did you see Betsy DeVos today? How about Mitch McConnell's nonsense?

So while focusing on his every tweet might be excessive, Trump has also now gone to court to ensure that his tweets are considered Presidential statements. It's a platform that isn't intended for important announcements that should be looked at in-depth and with much care, being used as a way for someone to throw crap out and hope it sticks.

I see what you guys are saying, but I think there's a risk of missing the forest for the trees when dealing with Trump's daily shenanigans. I also think it basically gives him power, as he can spend 30 seconds writing an inflammatory tweet, and have it amplified 1000-fold by the coverage it gets.

Some things need to be addressed / refuted / fact-checked / etc. But sometimes, and I'd say often for a while after his election, the media would almost stoop to his level. The phrase "in a mud fight everyone gets dirty" comes to mind. And it causes a lot of people to equate the two, rather than being able to see the coverage as neutral or more trustworthy.

Mario wrote:

Ustrello wrote:

Spoiler:

Germany’s Bayer (BAYGn.DE) will wrap up the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto (MON.N) on Thursday and also retire the U.S. seeds maker’s 117 year-old name.

The German drugmaker had received all required approvals from regulatory authorities, it said in a statement on Monday.

“Bayer will remain the company name. Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio,” it said.

Bayer launched a 6 billion euro ($7 billion) rights issue on Sunday, a cornerstone of the financing package for the deal, shortly after clearing the last major antitrust hurdle in the United States.


The deal is the first of a trio of major U.S.-German merger deals to cross the finish line at a time of harsh criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump of Germany’s trade surplus with the United State

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-closing/bayer-to-close-monsanto-takeover-to-retire-targets-name-idUSKCN1J00IZ

That feeling when a German company who had a major stake in the production of Zyklon B and used slave labor buys an American company that created another poison gas (Agent Orange) all the while the cheeto is complaining about the EU and Germany

edit: forgot source

The technical term is: synergy

RiTides wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

Insert whatever word you like ("crafty" "intuitive" "manipulative" etc) but I don't think people in general, and especially the media, give Trump enough "credit" for this. He's absolutely playing them. And they fall for it over, and over, and over.

And I disagree, d-usa, that the choice is to either call him out, or ignore. Just like any "trolling" tactic, sticking to the facts and only addressing nonsense when necessary is the most effective.

If people / the media would recognize this (Trump's often repeated tactic), we could have a lot less useless outrage over petty things that he does, and more substantive focus on important issues...

He's not playing them, the media in general is just a bit of a coward when it comes to Trump's antics and that benefits him (despite his goals and behaviour).

they are not being cowards. This is a business. Trump generates outrage which is good for ratings. They love it.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
There was no broader ruling to be made. Colorado has state laws that prohibit discrimination based upon sexuality and those laws are still valid. The ruling held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was unduly discriminatory towards the baker's claim of religious freedom. The Commission's handling of the case was inconsistent with the way it handled other cases so SCOTUS ruled in the baker's favor. States can still have sexuality as a protected class and state residents still have their freedom of religion, state governments just need to enforce anti discrimination laws in a consistent lawful manner. This ruling was about the enforcement of a valid and existing anti discrimination law not the constitutionality of the anti discrimination law itself.

While you're right, it still leaves it open for more cases. The bakery winning the case is going to embolden other who might be willing to take it all the way to the SC.

Agreed. The problem isn't with the SC's ruling. It was a very narrow ruling that pretty much only applies to this case. But too many people will simply take home the headline "the baker won" and use that to justify their bad actions. It's not like the SC could have done much else, but it is what it is.

Even the ruling itself said that it applied to specifics

The problem is, so few people will read the actual ruling to understand that.

Still better than deciding a specific case incorrectly for the sake of a larger principle, imo. There are so many cases to choose from, they can easily select one likely to apply to a wider range of cases, if they want to set a broad precedent.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Even the ruling itself said that it applied to specifics

Which will make absolutely no difference to the average Radical Evangelical Christian, who will dishonestly present the decision as broad and general.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Even the ruling itself said that it applied to specifics

Helpful when headlines say "bakers won their case" or "supreme court allowed shops banning cakes from gays"(pretty much straight title of one news article from local news company in Finland btw).

Misinformation spreads and facts are often taken from headlines. Forget reading about court rulings when people dont' even read news articles

As is their wont, the Democrats in California lined up in a circular firing squad, but it appears they missed. With California running jungle primaries and a crazy number of Democrats standing in a lot of competitive districts, it started to look like Democrats might split their votes, and let two of the Republican candidates finish first and second on the ballot. Despite some close scares it looks like Dems didn't manage to shut themselves out in any house seat.

On the other side, Republicans look like they'll be shut out of the senate race as Dems finished first and second, but Reps did manage to get a second place finisher in the governor's race. Having a Republican in a major state wide race will mean Republicans will still turn out in okay numbers, it avoids what might have been a catastrophe. But then, the Republican nominee John Cox is a bit of screwball candidate, I wouldn't want to be relying on his down ballot impact to get me over the line in a close race.

 RiTides wrote:
Just read through the last page or so, and I have to say guys - can we just agree Trump is not the most unscrupulous person, and move on to talking about something more substantive? Again, as someone who did not (and will not) vote for him, I feel his opponents often fall into the trap of taking his bait. He controls the narrative when people do this, and the media falls for it Every Single Time. Despite popular narrative, I don't think he's stupid - he's pulling the media's strings and they play right into it!

He's the president, what he says and does is substantive. It can't just be ignored. But I do agree that its important not to fall in to rehashing the debates Trump wants to keep rehashing. Figuring out how to move from one to the other is the challenge.

Regarding the cake baker case, I completely agree with the result, and have yet to see Sotomayor take a moderate stance on any ruling. I love justice Kennedy's moderate positions, and the narrow ruling in this case was absolutely the right one, imo. Hopefully, they'll take on another case to make a broader ruling to avoid discrimination, but this is Not a broad ruling - it's specific to that one case, as it should be, imo.

The most amazing thing about the cake case was how Republicans were still committed to finding a cultural grievance out of the ruling, so they made one up. It was reported as a narrow finding, because it is in the context of legal precedent a narrow ruling, but a bunch of Republicans decided that was liberal media bias, that narrow was a dishonest representation of the 7-2 margin in the ruling.

When Don Jr and professional idiot Brit Hume made that claim it's not really that interesting, they're more than dumb enough to not know what 'narrow' means in legal rulings. But Sen John Cornyn of Texas made the same complaint. He's a former state AG. He knows what narrow means. But he pretended he didn't because in the modern Republican party blatant, shameless lies are just a necessary part of keeping up the culture war.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I don't think people don't give him credit for that. Manipulating/shaping his brand is what made him appear to be successful in the first place, arguably the only part of business he is actually good at. Plenty of opponents and critics are able to name it and see through it though, while a lot of his supporters seem to genuinely believe the persona he has build. But you could say that about any run of the mill social media star in this day and age, it doesn't make them smarter then they are.

Yep. I've made the comparison to a lonely bar fly a whole lot of times. Imagine a guy sitting on the edge of the bar, he's thirty pounds overweight, his face is the face of a 40 year old man who's spent way too many nights drinking hard liquor. His clothes are the clothes you end up in after you've spent all your wages on hard liquor for the last 20 years. But he's sitting there spinning tails about all the supermodels he's slept with, and claims he has a supermodel waiting for him back in his apartment right now.

When a couple of other drunks believe him, is that because the barfly is an amazing storyteller who should be heralded as a genius? Or is the barfly's story obvious nonsense, and the fact it was believed by anyone actually due to the believers completely suspending disbelief for their own strange and desperate reasons?

There are clever political campaigns. The 2000 GW Bush campaign did a masterful job of carrying the right message to each part of the Republican base, and then combining each component in to a singular message with very skillfully chosen language. Trump did nothing like that. All Trump did was win the GOP nomination against a field of idiots, then run against a weak Democrat in a cycle with an enormous Republican tail wind, and he still only limped over the line by shooting the moon in the swing states.

In office Trump only has one trick when faced with an issue - tell a blatant lie or change the subject by attacking someone. And he isn't even very good at that - he's only held one interview away from friendly media, and even on FOX News he's screwed up really badly a couple of times.

So no. We shouldn't be talking about Trump as intelligent or skillful in any way. We need to acknowledge Trump is habitual, shameless liar with little or no strategic or tactical sense. Because only then can start the really honest conversation about how well Trump's nonsense works anyway because of the major institutional failures in the US right now. Failures in the feckless mainstream media. Failures in the openly partisan, plainly dishonest right wing media. And failures in the Republican party, who have been captured so entirely by their president they won't even speak out when claims he can pardon himself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RiTides wrote:
I see what you guys are saying, but I think there's a risk of missing the forest for the trees when dealing with Trump's daily shenanigans. I also think it basically gives him power, as he can spend 30 seconds writing an inflammatory tweet, and have it amplified 1000-fold by the coverage it gets.

Some things need to be addressed / refuted / fact-checked / etc. But sometimes, and I'd say often for a while after his election, the media would almost stoop to his level. The phrase "in a mud fight everyone gets dirty" comes to mind. And it causes a lot of people to equate the two, rather than being able to see the coverage as neutral or more trustworthy.

The media has bent over backwards to avoid calling Trump on his lies. Like a football team committing to infringe on every play expecting the ref will eventually blink and stop making calls to avoid seeming biased, Trump has committed to lying over and over again, and the media has responded by ignoring many of his lies, or using nonsense like 'mistatement' to avoid the perception of bias.

Trump still attacks the media anyway, because of course he will. So the lesson should be that in a mud fight you're going to get dirty, even if you try to stand passively on the sidelines. So you're better off sticking to your guns, saying what you know to be true and accepting that you'll get covered in mud no matter what.

Are Democrats really going to elect Blagoyivich level sleazebag Newsom as Governor? What a gak show. They really are no different than Republicans.

 Frazzled wrote:
Are Democrats really going to elect Blagoyivich level sleazebag Newsom as Governor? What a gak show. They really are no different than Republicans.

Is this a joke or do you have a source for him being convicted of corruption, because wikipedia has no mention of it?

Is it time for equally bad already? Time really flies.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Are Democrats really going to elect Blagoyivich level sleazebag Newsom as Governor? What a shitshow. They really are no different than Republicans.

Is this a joke or do you have a source for him being convicted of corruption, because wikipedia has no mention of it?

You're asking if Blagoyivich was convicted?

Aren't both he and Martha Stewart about to be pardoned ?

.. both appeared on the USa version of "The Apprentice " too IIRC.



sure there's no interest in setting a precedent with people being pardoned for corruption and/or financial irregularities eh ?

 RiTides wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:He might be good at playing the media, but that doesn't make him smart.

Insert whatever word you like ("crafty" "intuitive" "manipulative" etc) but I don't think people in general, and especially the media, give Trump enough "credit" for this. He's absolutely playing them. And they fall for it over, and over, and over.

And I disagree, d-usa, that the choice is to either call him out, or ignore. Just like any "trolling" tactic, sticking to the facts and only addressing nonsense when necessary is the most effective.

If people / the media would recognize this (Trump's often repeated tactic), we could have a lot less useless outrage over petty things that he does, and more substantive focus on important issues...

Well, I'd say that the media understands and is complict. CNN has done very, very well in the age of Trump, and it seems like half the articles on any given day are the usual outrage piece over whatever Trump has said or done lately. Cha-ching. Fox News has also obviously benefited for its own reasons.

Having a president willing to treat the office like a reality TV show has lifted all boats in the media. Sure, there are serious journalists disgusted by the current state of affairs. But serious journalism doesn't get you PAID, baby! OTOH, the clickbait outrage machine is a like printing press for making money.

The disappointing part is that the citizenry does indeed fall for the same gak over and over again, no matter how obvious and artificial it is. Perhaps it's time to stop pushing as much math as possible down our kids' gullets over worries about competing in STEM arenas, and start doing a better job with civics education and critical thinking so that our republic doesn't crumble in the meantime?

I'm using machine learning to train an AI to be a clickbait headline and article generator. I bet I can get way higher productvity than humans.

Gorgon, that's exactly what I was trying to say - thank you!

I have been impressed how NPR has shifted some of their coverage away from sensationalism, but they're publicly funded and not as beholden to generating pure listening/watching numbers...

The BBC also does a great job, imo, but I find most other US media outlets are caught in the "Trump outrage hamster wheel", and unable to give the kind of coverage/journalism the above two organizations (in general) do.

You can educate people on civics and critical thinking, but the bottom line is that most people just throw that overboard for what they believe in. We have intelligent people promoting the stupidest ideas because they desperately want to believe they are true. With some being ridiculously easy to discredit with even the most brief of google searches. The issue isn't that the citizens keep falling for it, its that they want to fall for it.