Media Meltdown and also Media Bias 101

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Speaking of State TV aka Fox News, we have one of the biggest news dumps of the year, and this is what their website is focused on instead . . .

https://www.foxnews.com/

[chasfh]

6 hours ago, ewsieg said:

ID's are not as hard to get as the left likes to pretend.  Many cities and states already have programs to help get ID's and those certainly could be expanded.

Additionally, getting ID's into the hands of every eligible voter, would disproportionately improve the lives of people of color by improving their ability to get a job, get a bank account, give more access to social programs, and even improve the justice system as it would put more people of color on juries.  

Getting everyone an ID should be a goal if you truly want to help people.

Yeah teh Left and their stupid statistics reflecting stupid fats that are actually happening in the world.

Tell you what: any state requiring specific ID to vote had better make that ID available free of charge to everyone eligible.

 

[pfife]

Todays a good day to reconsider that nytimes subscription if you still have it.

[pfife]

Telling on yourself again 

[romad1]

Lawrence O'Donnell suggests that tomorrow will be a bigger news day than today. 

[ewsieg]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

Yeah teh Left and their stupid statistics reflecting stupid fats that are actually happening in the world.

Tell you what: any state requiring specific ID to vote had better make that ID available free of charge to everyone eligible.

I'm not arguing your statistics, I'm just debating why it got to that point.  My argument is that you see correlation, laws enforcing ID = your stats therefore laws enforcing ID are causing your stats.  

My argument is maybe a system made certain ethnicities and the poor a little suspicious against the government, which led them to bypass what the rest of us consider standard government practices and kept them from getting an ID.  While understandable, this also means these people may not have received some social programs, further hurting their ability to move up in society.  This should be addressed.  

But somehow, the "Science" party is having trouble remembering the phrase "correlation does not imply causation".  It touts to its base, which happens to be those people most affected by this, feeding into their concerns.  Then they push back against voter ID laws which would quickly ease concerns by an opposing party, while also arguing that democracy is in the balance if the other party doesn't believe the election results.  

P.S. Absolutely agree and would actually prefer a federal law requiring voter ID, but handling the cost.  Personally I'd probably try to shoehorn in some extended early voting and mail in ballot wording to solidify that stuff, but maybe let's pretend to cross one bridge at a time.

[mtutiger]

This is an email chain between Jeffrey Epstein and a former NY Times reporter (Landon Thomas Jr.) where Epstein apparently offers Thomas access to incriminating photos of Donald Trump. At which point ...... nothing happens.

Over in the POTUS thread I called this a story as much about elite impunity as it is about Donald Trump.... this is what I mean.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[chasfh]

10 hours ago, ewsieg said:

I'm not arguing your statistics, I'm just debating why it got to that point.  My argument is that you see correlation, laws enforcing ID = your stats therefore laws enforcing ID are causing your stats.  

My argument is maybe a system made certain ethnicities and the poor a little suspicious against the government, which led them to bypass what the rest of us consider standard government practices and kept them from getting an ID. 

If you knew and encountered on a regular basis any people of color and modest means, you’d understand that what they want more than anything else is to be accepted and respected as equal members of our society, not to pull one over on everyone so they can get a handout or free money from you or anyone else. They want their voice to be listened to, and they want to not always experience their race or ethnicity being taken into account whenever they talk to someone who’s white. They want to be fully equal participatory members in our society—that’s what their parents and grandparents fought for! And despite the history of their people in this country, they still believe in the basic decency of what American democracy is supposed to represent, if not how it is actually practiced, so, darn right they want to vote, and darn right they want to be able to do so without needless, pointless technical obstacles thrown into their path, such as this ID expired earlier this year so I can’t let you vote, even though you appear to be in good standing on the rolls and I can tell this is definitely you.

Besides, the people of “certain ethnicities” you characterize as checking out on being fully functioning citizens by ignoring the need for getting ID aren’t showing up to the polls, anyway. Because they, you know, checked out.

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

This is an email chain between Jeffrey Epstein and a former NY Times reporter (Landon Thomas Jr.) where Epstein apparently offers Thomas access to incriminating photos of Donald Trump. At which point ...... nothing happens.

Over in the POTUS thread I called this a story as much about elite impunity as it is about Donald Trump.... this is what I mean.

Oh, wow, this email just re-outed Celina Midelfart as being a girl in Epstein’s orbit, and there is a digital paper trail connecting her to both Epstein and Trump:

https://www.thelist.com/1825630/donald-trump-forgotten-girlfriend-reportedly-had-ties-to-epstein/

She is an heir to a cosmetics business and was a “girlfriend” of Norway’s crown prince in the early 90s. Hmm, wonder how they met?

[ewsieg]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

If you knew and encountered on a regular basis any people of color and modest means, you’d understand that what they want more than anything else is to be accepted and respected as equal members of our society, not to pull one over on everyone so they can get a handout or free money from you or anyone else. They want their voice to be listened to, and they want to not always experience their race or ethnicity being taken into account whenever they talk to someone who’s white. They want to be fully equal participatory members in our society—that’s what their parents and grandparents fought for! And despite the history of their people in this country, they still believe in the basic decency of what American democracy is supposed to represent, if not how it is actually practiced, so, darn right they want to vote, and darn right they want to be able to do so without needless, pointless technical obstacles thrown into their path, such as this ID expired earlier this year so I can’t let you vote, even though you appear to be in good standing on the rolls and I can tell this is definitely you.

Besides, the people of “certain ethnicities” you characterize as checking out on being fully functioning citizens by ignoring the need for getting ID aren’t showing up to the polls, anyway. Because they, you know, checked out.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but seriously....**** off.  You're not the savior and everyone that disagrees with you is some stupid inbred racist from 'red' country.  Poor urban folks, just like poor rural folks, deserve social programs designed to help them.  I didn't call it a hand out, you inferred that on your own. I called it a social program and even stated that not having full access to those only burdens folks further.   I'm not as concerned about POC of modest means, because, as I said already, for anyone with modest means, getting an ID isn't that hard and my guess is your percentages go out the window if we reevaluate your statistics based on income rather than race.

As for juries, the demographic of your average jury is often not representative of the local demographic.  On this site you're aware I often state that fixing issues that affect poor urban folks would also help poor rural folks, and vice versa.  When it comes to juries, that is probably the biggest example where helping one doesn't help the other.  This disproportionally affects minorities.  I'm not going to pretend that only getting State IDs into the hands of all minorities will fix that, but its the first barrier.  Getting IDs into everyone's hands eliminates that barrier. 

 

 

[chasfh]

11 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

Please don't take this the wrong way, but seriously....**** off.  You're not the savior and everyone that disagrees with you is some stupid inbred racist from 'red' country. {snip}

OK, that's the end of that.

[ewsieg]

14 minutes ago, chasfh said:

OK, that's the end of that.

I mean, I did say please not to take it the wrong way.  😉 It was just my honest reaction to what I viewed as an extremely condescending response from you.  

No need to read the rest of my response anyway, it was spot on logically and there would be no legitimate argument against it anyway.

[RatkoVarda]

 

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, ewsieg said:

I mean, I did say please not to take it the wrong way.  😉 It was just my honest reaction to what I viewed as an extremely condescending response from you.  

No need to read the rest of my response anyway, it was spot on logically and there would be no legitimate argument against it anyway.

lol, if you say so! Although you gotta admit it's hard to not take something seriously when someone prefaces it with "but seriously".

I wasn't trying the condescend to you or insult you. I'm sorry you took it that way, honestly. I'm not taking it back, of course, because I meant what I said. I'm just saying the intention was simply to put across my idea, not to insult you. If my intention was to insult you, you would definitely know it. 😁

I meant it because if you encountered actual people of color with modest means on a regular basis, you would not have used the sweeping generalization that entire ethnic groups bypass what the rest of us (?) consider standard government practices such as obtaining an ID. I'm just here to tell you from firsthand experience that most of the people I see on a regular basis take a lot of pride in the way they are navigating their lives despite the lack of resources and the apparent apathy of various systems seemingly designed to thwart them (as well as actual antipathy from the federal government). All they really want is for the system to recognize and respect them as citizens so they can participate in it fully. Yes, a few of my clients have checked out as you implied. They are a tiny minority of the people, barely double digit percent if that, and 100% of my clients are all in dire need of pantry assistance, especially since SNAP is being simultaneously dangled in front of them and then snatched away. No matter how hard things get, people still have faith.

Ever hear the James Brown song, "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself)"? That's it. That's the whole ball of wax right there.

And yet: so many of them still believe things can change, for the better, with different leaders. I can only admire the tenacity of that belief considering the centuries of evidence piled up against it. 

[ewsieg]

I was not trying to give a sweeping generalization of an entire group, but felt the only way I could reply to your stats which was specific to entire ethnic groups was to speak to some of the reasons that affect them.  

I have no doubt that the vast majority of people you talk to are good people.  Most people I've met, regardless of their ethnicity, are good people. Even poor rural people i've met...good people.  

I like the James Brown lyric you quoted and I would add that it is very DNC'ish of him.  "These people don't need my help at all, but obviously they need me to open the door for them, that's too difficult for them to do (but not difficult in a way that makes it a sweeping generalization that they can't do it themselves)."

My lyric would not be as smooth as Brown's, but I would say "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing, just tell me how to get a key card so I can open that door and any other door I come across myself"

 

[pfife]

Another good day to reconsider that nytimes subscription, unless you support covering up for pedos and other sick ****s

 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[LaceyLou]

Lately this country has more twists than a soap opera. I wish it would at least most resemble the show Soap, but no such luck.

[romad1]

14 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

 

This reminds me of in 30 Rock when Jenna says very obviously that she's going to use her sexuality to get something and Liz tries to warn her off because its usually something very trivial and it usually ends up going badly because the maitre d is unimpressed or something.  

[chasfh]

On 11/13/2025 at 4:38 PM, ewsieg said:

I like the James Brown lyric you quoted and I would add that it is very DNC'ish of him.  "These people don't need my help at all, but obviously they need me to open the door for them, that's too difficult for them to do (but not difficult in a way that makes it a sweeping generalization that they can't do it themselves)."

My lyric would not be as smooth as Brown's, but I would say "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing, just tell me how to get a key card so I can open that door and any other door I come across myself"

 

You have a basic misunderstand of what James Brown is trying to get across with this lyric.

He is not saying black people are too lazy or too entitled to open up the door themselves —because, I guess, it’s a stupid door, how easy is it to just open one, for cry eye?—and so they refuse to try to better themselves because they insist white people open up the door and formally invite them to participate in American society.

What he is getting across is that nearly four centuries of obstacles had made it practically impossible for black people to simply do the same things white people do to succeed. White people think it’s just hard work and gumption that makes them successful—black people know there have strong institutional advantages built into the societal system that prevent them on balance from basic levels of success since America’s time immemorial. It was a lot more explicit when James wrote the song fifty-plus years ago, but it is still strongly implicit today.

You might be inclined here to point to affirmative action policies as leveling the playing field between black and white people. But benefiting from AA has always been akin to hitting the lottery. It was designed to be a quota type system rather than universal policy, apparently intended less to lift up an entire people than it was to assuage racial guilt over the historical oppression of that people by the people who literally put themselves in charge of them.

It’s not that white people are obliged to literally open a door and formally invite black people to be basic citizens. It’s that the institutions need to continue to remove the obstacles that are still in the way of black people (and other people of color, particularly those indigenous to the Americas) that prevent them from being accepted as true equals by the white people still firmly in control of society.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

You might be inclined here to point to affirmative action policies as leveling the playing field between black and white people. But benefiting from AA has always been akin to hitting the lottery.

Indeed. And further, observing this from within a University setting, I believe it is also true at AA tends to helps those who least need the help. For instance, If you are a minority that gained admission to UM, you very likely already had the advantages of a more stable family and a level of social capital there that simply isn't available to too many minority youth, and once there, any additional boost you get is largely superfluous. AA has been effective at normalizing the presence of minorities at higher success level in society, and that absolutely has value, but it has not done much to change conditions for the majority of the black underclass, because they still can't access the first rung. 

And before the rebuttal comes back that this is basically a class and not a race problem - while there is truth to that, it is also true that as a class, no white American cohort has had to bear the repeated concerted efforts to destroy their social capital that black Americans have. From Jim Crow, to Wilson destroying black civil service opportunities, to the interstate hwy system preferentially destroying stable black neighborhoods, to mortgage red lining, to the "War on Drugs" (read: "young black males"), to the misguided efforts to 'ensure' minority legislative legislative 'representation' that in reality effectively neuters minority voting influence, to the national abandonment of central cities in after 1970.  It's a long and dismal list.

It's actually cruel irony that as white Americans have as a general rule become less personally racist, they have become ever more blind to  how institutionally racist their society has been and in too many places continues to be structured, and of course segregation is as deep as ever.

In fact what you get today is the white reactionary who just gets mad when the whole issue is raised because they say "Don't accuse me, I'm nice to black people" as they go vote MAGA.

Edited 8 hours ago by gehringer_2

[oblong]

For a lot of people they simply can’t get past the idea that a minority got something they felt entitled to.  I have plenty of white friends o acquaintances still bitter because their 3.5 GPA wasn’t good enough for Ann Arbor and they assume a minority took their place .  It’s the same lesson I mentioned before avout the “unfairness” of trans athletes for females.  Sometimes in life there are obstacles beyond your control and you will think it’s unfair.  Deal with it. It’s not a travesty you got stuck with another school or lost a volleyball game.  My friends in middle school had to play basketball against Chris Webber who was the size of a grown man in 7th grade while we all had chubby baby fat.  It happens.