Slashdot Mirror
Online Journalists Launch An Onslaught Against Donald Trump (nytimes.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Online journalists at Buzzfeed are publicizing two controversial videos featuring Donald Trump. First the site "filed court motions seeking the release" of Trump's under-oath testimony in a June trial, in which the real estate mogul "says he planned his caustic remarks on immigration delivered during the launch of his presidential bid," bragging that they'd "led to my nomination in a major party in the country." And Buzzfeed is also publicizing a video clip from the 2000 softcore porn movie Playboy Video Centerfold: Bernaola Twins, in which Trump makes a cameo appearance. Playboy has even said that years earlier Trump actually pressured his second wife to pose for Playboy. ("Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee," remembered a top Playboy editor. "He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn't.")
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
Meh.
Hillary is a corrupt, lying monster who is the ultimate expression of the repressive system of the political Establishment. She shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House. I'm voting for Trump just because the establishment is trying so insanely hard to derail him. When the UN hates his guts, that just adds another sparkle to his appeal. He's the napalm solution for a time when everyone is tired of what Hillary represents.
Burn the system down. Burn it all down.
Nope, voting for Hillary just means you're going for someone with experience to be president for 4-8 years, rather than the insane guy dreaming of nuclear war with fallout for thousands.
All these attacks on Trump are only driving people to support him. He is perceived as the enemy of the media, and people hate the media more than they hate Trump.
Yes, yes...I'm sure Mr. Trump wants nuclear war...
Hillary is the candidate proposing to launch physical wars against cyber-attackers, the biggest two of which are big nuclear powers. Trump is the candidate who wants the US to stop being Team America: World Police. The candidate with then 20 years of bad political experience is the one who wants to perpetuate the current failed policies that have brought the US to the brink of bankruptcy and an internal race war. She's also accused of murdering 50 people, committing treason with state secrets, attacking several women her husband is accused of raping, and covering up health problems that may kill her during her first term, and money laundering and pay-for-play through the Clinton Foundation. The worst the DNC can dig up on Trump is that he allegedly called a beauty queen fat who violated the terms of her contract to be Miss Universe. No, the Frank and Claire Underwood award goes to... Hillary and Bill Clinton (in that order).
Why didn't that happen when the top Federal rate was 90%?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point is, that if he's filing tax returns saying he's making massive massive losses, he's clearly not a successful businessman.
Remember, Trump's >$900million loss came from running a fucking casino. And this was in the go-go 90's when people were actually making and spending money.
You've got to be a special kind of businessman to lose almost a billion dollars running a casino.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Clinton would be a fucking weak candidate on any other occasion, no arguments there. But for Pete's sake, she's running against Trump. Trump. I can't even believe there's a choice to be made here for half the population of the US.
The GOP will have no one but themselves to blame after loosing this election.
It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought, which of course is not exclusive.
Vote for the lizard, not the wizard.
Not only not mutually exclusive but also highly correlated.
It's what you get with miserable public education, corporate news media that's only in it for the ratings, and a population where most people don't have a passport and never left their country.
Don't get it, eh? Trump is not the GOP, which is why he was the winning candidate. This election is about immigration, national identity and an economy that's fscking over the middle class and making them pay for everything. The GOP as a party is dead, they just haven't stopped twitching. All you have to do is look at HRC and Trump's campaign slogans- "I'm With Her" is all about Hillary, who will continue to screw over the white middle class to bring in Democrat-voting, public assistance-using blacks, latinos and migrants and make the middle class pay to become a singled-out minority. Trump's "Make America Great Again" is about America for Americans, "To Ourselves and Our Posterity" and looking out for the American who wants an equal footing and opportunity (used or not) to be his or her own person. America is equal opportunity, not equal outcome and anyone who's tells you differently is a Democrat.
"Drop napalm on the whole F-ing thing."
That thing, the place where you live?
Play Command HQ online
I don't know if I've seen so many points expended to suppress both sides of an argument.
What's interesting is looking at the moderation levels over time.
For the first hour after the article was posted, there were a lot of pro-Trump comments.
Now it's 2.5 hours later and all those articles have been modded down. What's left is pro-Hillary, in a roundabout way.
You can tell when something's gone up and down because of the tags., If something has "Score: 2 insightful" it means someone modded it up (to gain the "insightful") and someone else modded it down.
When Whiplash took over I mentioned that this site goes to pot around 6 weeks before a presidential election, and becomes unbearable starting around 2 weeks before an election. This year I think it'll be worse than previous election years.
I can't *wait* until the election is over, so we can go back to having insightful posts.
Trump doesn't see these as negatives. Many of his supporters on here don't either, and even think these stories might help him. These guys know essentially zero about politics.
Play Command HQ online
Reporting the facts. All of them. Leave the editorializing to the readers.
I was wondering how he was going to try to recover from his recent string of bad news. Looks like his method is to pretend it's a conspiracy by the left-wing media to ruin him with an "onslaught" of bad press. Which implies that the stories are false or exaggerated, without actually making that claim. Clever, in case he ever needs to admit that the reports are true.
Truth has no sides. Reality has no bias. If these things are true, and I have seen no indications that they are not, then the news is making Donald Trump look bad because Donald Trump is actually bad. If he steals money from charity to bribe investigators to turn a blind eye to his fraudulent businesses, the blame for the bad press afterward lies purely at the hands of Trump, not on the media and press.
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought
Trump is not "right-wing". He is a populist, with an eclectic and shifting mix of the worst of both left and right.
"Right-wing" means fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, free trade, and cutting entitlements, ... like Bill Clinton.
Tend to doubt there's much of interest in Trump's tax returns. Otherwise the clintondrones at the IRS would have already leaked them.
Here is real research by real academics who have actual PhD degrees and study the media. They are at one of the best universities on the planet: Harvard. This is the definitive definition of a qualified professional. They don't make shit up like Fox not-really-News.
This research covers 2015, but things didn't change much up to the national political party conventions. The most explosive material wasn't reported until after the first debate, and much of it is coming from online upstarts like Buzzfeed.
The mainstream news organizations have been completely missing until very recently. The information about Trump's income tax claim could have been uncovered by the NY Times at any time in the last two years, but it wasn't. He was getting a free ride from the entire mainstream press until a few weeks ago.
I know that Republicans have an extreme aversion to facts and departed reality many years ago, but the real world doesn't care what you think. It has a nasty habit of showing up when least expected and wreaking havoc on fools who ignore it. With any luck real world facts will finally catch up with Trump and pound him into dust. If that doesn't happen then the whole world is going on an extremely terrible ride.
Why is Snark Required?
People don't vote candidates, in general. They vote if they are happy about how things are, or if they are not. Usually, is the incumbent (I'm happy about how things are in MY life), or the challenger (I'm not happy, let's change something).
In this particular case the incumbent cannot run, so the proxy is the candidate of the same party. Also, people suspect that the usual challengers are not really a change at all. But in this case it is, or at least it appears to be. So the excitement about it.
Voting or defending Trump has nothing to do with Trump, really, and all to do with a desire for profound change. The people express that desire in the only way that the election game allows them, and that's not a good way, that's for sure, but it's the only one.
You are surprised of intelligent people defending Trump, and I am surprised of how this blatant fact, the desire, of so many people, for many current politics to change or reverse course, is completely bypassed by the media, that chooses to center in the, admittedly rather pathetic, personification of that desire. That's an ad-hominem fallacy if I ever saw one, and you fall into that trap and try to keep the discussion there (the person), instead of on the politics.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Alternatively, you're not as smart as you think you are.
Typical hatchet job - the MSM is devoted to Hillary, so they do things like this, while doing their best to ignore her games with the Clinton Foundation. Notes on the items in TFS:
- Of course Trump planned his remarks. What, you think he made them up randomly? Read the columns that Scott Adams has been writing - at this level of the game, there are very few accidents. According to Adams, Trump is using a technique called "pacing", where you make an extreme statement and follow it up by a moderate position. As with anyone running for a higher political office: what he says during his campaign has essentially nothing to do with his personal beliefs. It's all tactics to get elected. This is, sadly, how politics works.
- Trump appeared in Playboy? He wanted his wife to pose, but she refused. Um...so what?
- Trump lost money on some of his ventures. This is not news. Look at the number of ventures he owns, then tell you really expect all of them to be successful? He wrote off his losses on one of his ventures, wow, what a surprise. Hillary takes a different approach, by shielding most of her assets inside the Clinton Foundation. Frankly, that's a lot worse, because the Clinton Foundation is pretending to be a non-profit organization.
tl;dr: The MSM is in the tank for Hillary. Hatchet jobs on Trump are no surprise.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
People well and truly vote for candidates in the USA, and in general they seem to be confused at situations like Australia or the UK where we vote for parties.
Sorry to disagree, but that doesn't check with the fact that, in the USA, only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency. If people really voted for candidates, then an independent candidate would have an even chance of winning, and that's absolutely not the case. Even in this election, with two deeply flawed candidates, independents cannot even make it to the TV live debate.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Because Trump is a "friend" of Big Media. He knows all the stakeholders by first name. They've all been to his "resorts" for free, they are all bought and paid for by Trump, Inc. Trump is no Republican. He's a White National fascist who used popularity to force the Republican party into a nomination. He's using the same playbook the Communists did after the death of Lenin...fear, confusion, obfuscation of reality to the point the only thing people know to be "real" is Trump himself.
You need to look at the media coverage of all Republican candidates together to understand what happened. The candidates thought to be the strongest opponents against Hillary received the harshest treatment (Christy, Romney, Rubio, and Cruz).
Trump was considered a non-threat, him getting the nomination was supposed to ensure an easy victory for Clinton. The long knives didn't really come out until poll numbers showed Trump actually having a chance to win. Now that he's ahead you see the hysteria.
.
only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency
That's because the other parties tend to run:
1) Avowed communists or other loons
2) Supposed doctors who believe in homeopathy
3) Would-be presidents who can't name a single leader of another country.
Why would such people every gain any traction with a majority of the people in the US? The certainly can't get together enough people to support their campaign operations at a level that makes them strongly visible in a country of hundreds of millions of people - because would-be supporters look at them, weigh their absurd positions against reality, and walk away.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
TFA is not a Trump or Hillary issue, it's an issue of truth and the complete loss of Journalism in the USA. I don't read or watch any "news" intentionally today because it has become pure propaganda. The same shit that we used to make fun of the Pravda for when I was a kid is on open display in the US today. Instead of being pissed off about being openly manipulated, plenty of people support the propaganda.
Looking at the majority of posts here, very few are suggesting that media has become a drastic issue. Media has been an issue, if you want an eye opener go read some Ann Coulter ("Guilty" is a good one) and validate the references and sources she lists in her books. Dollars to donuts trolls will probably comment negatively about Ann Coulter in response instead of addressing points she lays out factually in her books.
Thankfully, enough people have been exposed to the game that propaganda is having the opposite effect. It may not be enough people, and it may not have been soon enough, but I have hope. Many people I know have done the same thing I did and started ignoring "media" and reading sources and listening to speakers directly. Media trustworthiness is rightly at an all time low in the US, lower than either Presidential candidate. Issues are not discussed, it's all personal attack all the time. It is so obviously one sided that you should immediately see which side the media is favoring. That more than anything should be considered in your selection of a Candidate.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
We were told it was wrong, not that it was "against the rules". Where's the outrage about Buzzfeed intentionally doing wrong?
If the rules change back and Buzzfeed does this again, you want people at Buzzfeed arrested for it, right?
Where were you the last decade? The US has been quite good at destabilizing itself without outside help. Increasing inequality between the 0.01% and everyone else, jobs that become more precarious with time, hyper-partisan media, deteriorating value of an education, etc. Trump vs Hillary is just a symptom.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
For God's sake, have you ever been to Cuba? I have. Twice. Last time i visited i had several offers to trade for my combs, shampoo and ibuprofen.
There's a good reason people still try to flee the island to Miami in makeshift rafts and not the other way around.
Obama had a Democrat controlled congress and he used it to ram a shitty health care bill down everyone's throat.
You didn't elaborate on what made it so shitty, so I'll suggest why (don't blame Obama): The only way this (health care for the masses) was ever going to come to reality was if those who stood the most to lose (insurers and providers of healthcare and medicine) had a say in its conceptual design. IOW, those who had the most to lose from changing the status quo limited the degree to which the status quo changed- naturally by lobbying the democrats as not a single republican voted for passage- they continue to this day to undermine the basic right of healthcare. As it turns out, this lead to insurance policies that are still too expensive for the intended recipients and insurers who resent having to cover those who most need it because it makes it hard for them to profit. The right thing to do was create a single payer system and congress (not Obama) totally half-assed the entire thing. Half a solution in this case was not a solution IMHO. OTOH, a few good things did come of it: coverage of preventive medicine, age increase of dependents, medicare improvements, pre-existing coverage, and more.
He got what he wanted but pissed off enough people to destroy the Democrats majority in both houses.
By that I take it you mean he drove state district gerrymandering to a new level of absurd. The resulting ideological makeup of congress is in no way reflective of the populations they purport to represent, nor the country as a whole.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
His entire world view is based on either pure fantasy, or on making productive people slaves to non-productive people and calling that a virtue.
There is not a single policy that Bernie has advocated that isn't being put to good use in Northern Europe - he's really a Democratic socialist after the Scandinavian style. So are you saying that Finland is an imaginary place?
On your second point: Too true, I hate it when productive people (like contractors, who actually build useful things) are unpaid slaves to non-productive people (like freeloading Trump and his ilk).