[Plantagenet]

.... Fox News ......

Its been interesting watching Bernie Sanders and Pete Butegieg and other Ds appearing in special "Town Hall" broadcasts on Fox News. It also makes those Ds who claim Fox News doesn't cover the Ds look like idiots, since Fox News is clearly giving a great deal of special coverage to the Ds running for President in 2020..

Cheers!

[lpetrich]

My principal-components analysis shows two main axes of variation: left-to-right and centrist appeal. The data formed two separate clusters with a gap between them as large as each individual one's scatter. This PCA result agreed with the results of a separate cluster analysis.

The longest axis was left-to-right, and the mainstream news media and left-wing outlets formed one cluster and right-wing outlets the other cluster, with the gap between them being the size of the first one's scatter.

The second longest axis was centrist appeal, and both clusters had a sizable stretch in that axis, much more than their left-to-right extent. The first one had the longest stretch, from The Economist to The Daily Kos, and the second one from Fox News to the Rush Limbaugh Show.


As to the Mueller Report, I recently downloaded it, and it's *big*. It comes with two parts, the contacts between Donald Trump's campaign organization and Russian officials, and also the attempts to cover up those contacts. It's not like Trump wanted to buy beachfront property in Siberia.

[Cog]

Mueller recommended no further indictments based on everything he listed in Volume 1 and 2 of the report. If he had anything of evidentiary value he could have. Nothingburger. But if Dems want to impeach, go for it. I'll have a Coke and laugh while this backfires spectacularly on them.

[lpetrich]

Robert Mueller himself disagrees with that conclusion. Seems like he's saying "This is as far as I can go. Congress, it's your turn."

Mueller’s 'Central Allegation' Is Being Widely Ignored - The Atlantic "The special counsel chose his opening and closing remarks with care—and they weren’t about obstruction of justice."

“Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller said, and he sketched out briefly what his investigation alleged: that Russian intelligence officers “launched a concerted attack on our political system,” and released information in a scheme “designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.” Meanwhile, “a private Russian entity engaged in a social-media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election.” He added, “The matters we investigated were of paramount importance.​​”

...
I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interference in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.

Something that Trump and his underlings have been willing to go along with, if nothing else.

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is Schooling Trump on How To Do Twitter | Opinion

Their purposes:

• AOC:
  
  • Advocating - with arguments and evidence
  • Reframing - correcting the record and calling out her critics - directly and respectfully
  • Performing - herself as thoughtful, engaged, empathetic, and fun-loving - demonstrating admirable qualities
• DT:
  
  • Dissembling - disinformation and conspiracy theories - by assertion without evidence
  • Distracting - from news that he dislikes - by creating drama where none existed
  • Discrediting - demeaning and degrading anyone who disagrees with him - from his lack of admirable qualities

Their styles:

• AOC - amicable, assertive, analytical - makes a case - reasoned, structured (like bulleted lists), situated (with pix and emojis)
• DT - angry, authoritarian, hyperbolic - rants and raves, including all-caps - simple, impulsive, uncivil

[sparky]

.
the whole Russian scare is a paper dummy to hypnotize imbeciles
the US are now gripped in some form of new MacCartism ,

[lpetrich]

A decent article on the Media’s treatment of the Afghanistan war. I can’t cut and paste selections but it’s rather brief and worth a quick read.

https://newrepublic.com/article/155977/ ... tan-papers

I read the Washington Post's articles on those papers. It's like the Vietnam War, but it has been continued for much longer. Longer than the Vietnam War itself, and longer than the Soviet Union's involvement in that nation.

A curious bit in it is not being able to tell which side to take - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

Well, we seem to have only ONE candidate who wants to be President who will extricate us from these unnecessary wars: Tulsi Gabbard.

Or at least who claims to want to do so.

That seems to be her *only* issue. She isn't interested in any other. She has also decided not to run for re-election to her House seat, something that strikes me as rather odd. Does she expect to be in some Democratic President's Cabinet? What other sort of career might she have?

[evilgenius]

A decent article on the Media’s treatment of the Afghanistan war. I can’t cut and paste selections but it’s rather brief and worth a quick read.

https://newrepublic.com/article/155977/ ... tan-papers

I read the Washington Post's articles on those papers. It's like the Vietnam War, but it has been continued for much longer. Longer than the Vietnam War itself, and longer than the Soviet Union's involvement in that nation.

A curious bit in it is not being able to tell which side to take - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

Well, we seem to have only ONE candidate who wants to be President who will extricate us from these unnecessary wars: Tulsi Gabbard.

Or at least who claims to want to do so.

That seems to be her *only* issue. She isn't interested in any other. She has also decided not to run for re-election to her House seat, something that strikes me as rather odd. Does she expect to be in some Democratic President's Cabinet? What other sort of career might she have?

For the US to succeed at its goals, it doesn't need to be on the right side. It only needs a reason to be in place in the region, should its military presence one day become important. China is about to tighten the belt. That will make the presence even more, potentially, important.

[sparky]

.

meanwhile one step toward the cliff edge ,
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-sena ... ?r=AU&IR=T