Leave it to David Fahrentold, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his outstanding coverage of Donald Trump’s charitable foundation and other charity-related activities, to beautifully and succinctly describe what happened today.
New York’s attorney general filed suit against President Trump and his three eldest children Thursday, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the president’s personal charity and saying that Trump had repeatedly misused the nonprofit organization to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his golf clubs and to stage a multimillion-dollar giveaway at 2016 campaign events.
In the suit, Attorney General Barbara Underwood asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.
Underwood also asked that Trump be banned from leading any other New York nonprofit organization for 10 years — seeking to apply a penalty usually reserved for the operators of small-time charity frauds to the president of the United States.
If you don’t regularly read the Washington Post or watch cable news, particularly MSNBC, this suit by the New York attorney general might come as a surprise. But Fahrentold exposed Trump on this front with indefatigable tenacity, and each of his bombshell reports were duly covered on television. The problem was mainly that these were one-and-done stories which were immediately dropped down the memory hole when the next Trump outrage took precedence.
I’ve seen a lot of people comparing how little coverage the Trump Foundation received in comparison to the Clinton Foundation, and it’s true that there really is no comparison. But that’s largely a function of two things. One is that, although Trump received much more coverage overall than Clinton, it was dispersed over an ever-changing set of scandals, exposés, outrages, and norm breaking. And the second is that, largely driven by Trump’s message discipline, the negative coverage of Clinton stayed in a few well-traveled lanes. By far, the busiest lane was discussion of Clinton’s private email server, but speculation about improprieties with the Clinton Foundation was in second place, followed by blathering about Benghazi.
You could go back in time to any given week in the general election, and the chances are that Trump and the media would be discussing those three topics. There were times when the discussion shifted a bit, like when WikiLeaks dumped hacked DNC emails around the time of the convention or in October decided to divulge John Podesta’s pilfered emails. Clinton had a health scare in early September that sucked up a lot of focus. In general, however, she had relatively few real vulnerabilities and didn’t make a lot of glaring errors or misstatements or deliver newsworthy insults that commanded attention.
Trump, on the other hand, was the subject of near-constant condemnation by the press from the moment he made his announcement in Trump Tower and inspired nationwide boycotts with his anti-Mexican rhetoric. At first, he was so unprofessional and offensive that Huffington Post decided they’d only cover his campaign in their entertainment section. He lost the endorsement of almost every single editorial board in the country, including some papers that had never failed to endorse a Republican or hadn’t failed to do so since the 19th Century. Story after story after story was produced to expose Trump for every sin he’d committed over the last five decades.
We learned about how he and his father were sued for housing discrimination in the 1970s. We learned about how he used undocumented Polish labor to build Trump Tower out of mob-controlled concrete. We learned about his ties to the mob in Atlantic City and how he ruined a dozen or more New Jersey contractors by stiffing them on pay. We learned about his poor business decisions and bad luck that led to multiple bankruptcies and his obscene litigiousness. We learned about him impersonating fictional people in phone calls with reporters. We learned about his connections to Russian mafia figures and fraud related to his Trump SoHo complex. We learned about how his Florida properties were being used by Russian oligarchs and crime figures to launder money and avoid taxation. We learned about questionable dealings with foreign governments and shady development projects in Panama, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan.
We read about his failed effort to sell water, vodka and steaks, his failed airline, his failure as a professional football owner, his failed magazine and board game, his failed mortgage company, and his fraudulent “university.” We read about his deplorable behavior in the Central Park Five controversy.
His every stupid utterance on history, policy and basic reality was examined, dissected, and declared wrong or foolish or ignorant or hateful or simply inexplicable. His personal life was opened up and rehashed without mercy, not that he was inviting mercy on that front. His first wife’s rape allegation was aired. He was, of course, credibly accused of sexual assault and unwanted sexual behavior by dozens of women, and that was covered most heavily in October when some people were already voting.
The behavior of his surrogates was often controversial, and the behavior of his rally-going fans was an unending source of negative stories. White nationalists like David Duke continually said kind but unhelpful things about his candidacy, leading to more bad press.
In general, his performance on the stump, in television interviews, at the convention and in the debates was panned by critics. The assessment of his campaign structure was brutal, and he suffered from a lot more internal resistance and negative commentary from fellow Republicans than Clinton did from her fellow Democrats.
By contrast, Clinton mainly suffered from lack of attention. Trump seemed to be in a constant state of implosion and therefore doing most of her work for her, but he was taking her apart on the emails and succeeding in making the non-issues of the Clinton Foundation and Benghazi into real burdens through sheer repetition.
It’s often said that the press tried too hard to be balanced, but I don’t think they really succeeded in being balanced. Overall, the American media rejected Trump outright, which was seen most obviously in his failure to win almost any editorial board endorsements, including in his best political strongholds. They were correct to do so because Trump was obviously unfit to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, they were self-conscious enough about the disparity that it was very common for the latest negative Trump stories to be “balanced” with a negative Clinton story. And she didn’t really have a lot of negative stuff to work with. WikiLeaks and Russia played a major part, but much of what hurt Clinton came in the form of fake news that was disseminated primarily through non-traditional media. Things like the Seth Rich and PizzaGate conspiracies did real damage, and they were pushed into the national consciousness by partisan right-wing media outlets like hate radio, Breitbart and Fox News.
For the most part, the traditional media stayed away from fake stories, but they kept coming back to the emails, the Clinton Foundation and Benghazi. The latter two of those stories I consider largely fake, and the Department of Justice’s inspector general’s report that was issued today shows how little merit the email story had compared to the degree of coverage it received. Yet, in the end, these three so-called scandals received far coverage than any single negative story about Trump.
It’s also true that the traditional media coverage that Clinton did manage to receive was overwhelmingly negative. If the media displayed an absolutely unprecedented hostility to the candidacy of Donald Trump, and they did, they did not give correspondingly positive coverage to Clinton. Some of this was a result of concern that they were already tipping the scales too much, but it had other causes as well. One was that both Clintons had a lot of baggage with the press that had built up over the preceding quarter century. Another was that they didn’t think she needed their help. She had a persistent and sizable polling lead from the beginning to the end of the campaign, with polling prognosticators consistently giving her huge odds of victory. In fact, the widespread view that she was a lock to win even informed James Comey’s decision to inform Congress in late October that the FBI had reopened the email investigation. He thought he was protecting her legitimacy, amazingly enough.
People underestimated the mileage Trump was getting out of the trade issue and they did not want to contemplate the idea that he was winning on immigration. He was getting a lot of help through the Russians and WikiLeaks, and much of his Facebook campaign was invisible from the outside. And he still lost the popular vote by a decent margin and needed the equivalent of an Electoral College inside straight to come out on top.
It really shouldn’t be the media’s job to picks sides in a presidential election, but this election was different because Trump was justifiably seen as unacceptable to such a huge majority of the political cognoscenti. It’s simply not true that he received favorable treatment in any sense, although he was able to dominate the media’s attention like moths to a flame.
The media were as wrong about the election as James Comey and the pollsters, and there are a lot of areas where their coverage can be rightly criticized. A desire for ratings crowded out too much substantive and policy discussion, which is a perennial problem in any case, and Clinton received some really shoddy treatment, particularly from the New York Times which made far too much of Clinton Foundation stories.
But the biggest fault lies with the electorate which was provided with all the information they needed to know that Trump was a racist and a crook and a fool who had none of the knowledge or skills or character traits needed in a president. Too many of them looked at his mob ties or what he said about Putin and Russia or how he treated a disabled reporter and a Mexican-American judge or how he incited hatred in his followers or at him boasting about his sexual assaults, and then said to themselves these things were not disqualifying. They were told over and over that his business career was littered with fraud and failure and deceitful self-promotion and they chose to believe in The Apprentice version of Donald Trump.
I have my problems with how the media performed in 2016, but there are dozens and dozens of editors and writers who busted their ass, did their jobs, and told the real story of Donald Trump. For a variety of reasons, these stories never got sustained traction. I believe the main reason is not that they didn’t get enough play, but because there were so many of them, and that Trump was making brand new news almost hourly that crowded out solid reporting that took weeks or months to compile.
As for the New York attorney general’s office, they spent a year looking into Trump’s charitable foundation. and I bet this story doesn’t last any longer than the one about him giving top secret Israeli intelligence to the Russians in the Oval Office. We’ll eventually get back to it because it’s a legal proceeding, but there isn’t much anyone can do to make things stick to Trump. The case against him was made before we voted and it has been made many times over since then. Eventually, and ultimately, it’s up to the electorate to care.
I need help.
.
Help – Slip – Frank … to be precise.
The most important — the only important — phrase in this whole post, as far as the electorate is concerned.
People don’t want to face this, because it’s too alarming, but it’s the truth. This is what mattered.
Look at the deification of Ronald Reagan, the imbecile with the catastrophic record. And he was just an actor, in movies that practically nobody voting at the time remembered; they were so old and marginal.
This is the same thing, magnified by a thousand by modern television techniques. It’s a Goebbels/Leni Riefenstahl effect, enhanced by 21st Century technology. The Apprentice was the entire ball game. People really are that malleable.
“People really are that malleable.”
The myth that the American voter has innate common sense when it comes to voting has been forever exposed as a fraud. Put it on the shelf right next to American “exceptionalism.” They go hand in hand. Both are based in foolishness.
As bad as the MSM was and still is, the voting public STILL had enough information put in front of them to know that Trump was an incompetent, lying, racist con man that could not be trusted; that he was likely a criminal and in any case unfit for the presidency. That he was a proud and open serial abuser of women. And here I’m not talking about those who voted for Trump out of pure racist animosity, and many if not most of his voters did that, consciously or not. They may have known it too but had their reasons for voting for him.
I’m talking about those former Obama voters, “independents” and others not voting out of some form of tribal or racial identity. I will call them the “malleables.” These are the voters who saw Trump as an “outsider,” or those who thought he would do, as a REPUBLICAN President, mind you, the things that the GOP worked day and night for eight years to block Obama from doing. That he would make health care “better and cheaper;” not only save but increase and expand social security, that he would reverse course from the US policy of all war all the time. Finally, these are the voters who believed in Bhengazi! and emails! and thought Hillary Clinton was corrupt relative to Trump.
The malleables found it “rational” to vote for Trump based on incorrect assumptions even a fool could have seen was wrong. They allowed their opinions to be formed for them, filtered through “The Apprentice” and other reality show “realisms” that lazy-minded people take for fact. They’re the reason why the emails keep coming from the Nigerian princess needing your help and bank account information to get her millions out the country. Blame them for the phishing links so obvious even Ray Charles could have spotted them. These malleables are reason why it still pays to run mortgage, investment and other scams. The malleables are people so shallow that you reach the bottom just skimming the surface of what’s left of their minds, eaten away by decades of “watching TV.” They are malleable and their minds are easily bent towards the most mindless nonsense. They form their “opinions” based on what they hear from the TV and not based on exercising their minds just a little to think things through. They’re “too busy,” or “life’s too short”…to think! They’re the ones that make the Kim Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boos “thought leaders” and gazillionaires.
And this is why someone made the obvious point that, even after Trump is gone from the scene, however that happens, the damage that’s been done to our credibility as a world player will remain for some time to come, if not forever because, whose to say the malleables won’t be reanimated by more bullshit in the future to join forces once again with hatred and idiocy to elect yet another equally or even worse monster than Trump, and undo all the good will that came before it, just as Trump is doing with Obama’s legacy?
Jefferson’s premise of democracy was based on people having the good sense to not do what they did in electing Trump. He was wrong.
Have you read Neil Postman’s 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
. . . the teevee’s role in what so deeply (perhaps fatally) ails us!
Thx!
The idea that television HAS to be this way because of the nature of the medium is simplistic. It sounds like warmed-over McLuhan and definitely like Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a good book, but it’s really about the kind of television we have, not that it MUST be like this.
Sure, television lends itself to this, and in a hyper-capitalistic, idiot-cratic culture like we have now it has to be this way. But I still recall programs like these:
https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Television_Theatre
https:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040051
https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_There_(series)
http://www.thegreatideas.org/mortimer_adler_videos/
https:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_in_the_World%3F_(television_show)
https:
/www.discogs.com/Arturo-Toscanini-NBC-Symphony-Orchestra-The-Television-Concerts-1948-52-Volu
me-One/release/12047371
There used to be something called the Public Interest Standard
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm
BBC television used to be excellent.
People have argued that radio is a better medium for culture and learning, and that may be true, but radio has also become extremely degenerate, probably even more so than television.
Yep. I’m old enough to remember television shows like that. They were a long, long time ago, from a time when literacy, enlightenment and education were still valued by our society. They’d never even make it to broadcast today, let alone pull in enough ratings to sustain themselves. Lowest common denominator is what rakes in the profits, and shows like this ain’t never coming back barring a sociocultural makeover so complete it’d be the stuff of science fiction. Hell, if even the BBC can’t maintain higher standards, what on Earth would do it for American media?
Entropy is a bitch, innit?
. . . some really good, biting (either intentionally satirical or not) scifi!
Sort of the flip side of Idiocracy.
Somebody should get right on that.
But confident prediction: it would be derided as elitist by all the same folks who deride as elitist pretty much all the Reality-Based Community, using apostrophes correctly, . . . you name it.
Handled right, though, that could boost ratings, even among the anti-“elitists”.
. . . may have also included that only white, male property owners would participate?
A prognostication posted here @ the Pond …it’s been downhill ever since.
Oh yeah, i remember you giving up and using the slightest excuse to rationalize your own behavior in #ratingsgate.
To the commenter who felt compelled to give a 1. If you don’t like the comment, skip it and ignore it. You and one other person on this site seem to think that your strong disapproval matters. It doesn’t matter to most of us and doesn’t matter enough to the poster to change anything.
It’s childish and beneath the quality of posts on this blog and reflects negatively on you. If you don’t see that, then you’ve got a problem much like the people who post things you don’t like or approve of do.
You know what’s childish and reflects negatively on posters? Click on Oui’s link.
You might think from the context it’s a link to the original source of the quote. You’d be wrong.
I passed it by. Why would you bother to click on it if you’ve already decided you don’t care for Oui’s posts?
I don’t have any blanket problem with Oui’s posts, and I was curious about the context of the quote.
Imagine my surprise to find that the link lead to that moderation whining toxic trolling bullshit.
. . . well in light of this admission (i.e., “I passed it by”). Which left your complaint under-informed.
Case of “fire, ready, aim”?
Jus’ sayin’.
Very much to your credit, though, that you expressed those remonstrations in a reply (which thus made them subject to correction) instead of just abusing the ratings as oui persistently does. So there’s that.
And BTW, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows you are fixated on expressing your disapproval.Over and over.
Can dish it out but can’t take it?
Meant to reply to Marduk.
On Martin Longman’s frontpage nowadays … continuing unnecessary trollratings plus a comment that deviates from the topic written [bazzz and marduk]. It’s unheard of … but what do blog ethics matter to a foursome of you. Don’t thread on me … I’m not about to budge from the Pond where I have been a resident since early 2005.
The unmitigated gall, to post that link and then whine about the rating you got for it. It’s always somebody else’s fault I guess.
. . . by bazzz in that thread you dishonestly trolled with merits beatification.
Of course, all of his good-faith attempt to actually engage ag honestly was completely in vain, as ag just bobbed, weaved, and bounced off the ropes worthy of Muhammad Ali, spewed noxious clouds of diversionary, obfuscatory smokescreen, and finally just ran away as usual, refusing to provide even a single, specific example of the alleged abuse he constantly whines and rants about here — not even one! — insisting it was bazzz’s job to do ag’s homework for him.
(“Interesting” that he didn’t just link one of my comments holding him accountable for his lies and related grotesque dishonesty and refuting them with linked factual documentation, given that he routinely portrays these exercises in accountability as unfair “attacks”. Hmm. Wonder why that could be!)
Teaching bazzz the same lesson everyone who has ever attempted to engage ag in good faith has learned the hard way: it is utterly pointless! The result is always ag either just running away or a non-responsive tsunami of irrelevant, diversionary blather (which is, of course, just another form of running away).
Then, having dishonestly trolled us all by linking that thread (notably unrelated to either the top-post or your blockquoted text), you — the persistent, serial ratings abuser, including in this very thread — have the astounding chutzpah* to complain about
*The classic definition of chutzpah was the child that murdered both parents, then threw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. It’s now official: that definition is now obsolete, as you have surpassed it with this example, which is the new poster-child for chutzpah.
. . . not appear to have abused the troll-ratings.
I meant to double-check that before hitting “post comment”. I didn’t. Now that I’ve gone back and done so, it appears I was wrong wrt “this very thread”. My bad. My apology to oui for the misstatement.
(See, oui, ag, voice? This is how a person of integrity reacts to having made an honest mistake in good faith. Are you paying attention?)
This was inexcusably careless of me, especially given how many actual examples of oui egregiously abusing the ratings are so readily available.
. . . sufficient, nor sufficiently emphasized.
Everyone should peruse this entire thread and note that, except for this subthread started by oui, everything in it is on-topic and relevant to boo’s top-post.
How did oui start this subthread? With a deceptive, dishonestly trolling link to a diary whose subject and raison d’être was oui’s own persistent, serial troll-ratings abuse! A link that was disguised to seem like it would link to the source of a chunk of text oui blockquoted (and thence to the identity of the quoted-but-unidentified writer [if such actually exists] — who remains anonymous), but no!
With this context, words are inadequate to capture the contemptible dishonesty (not to mention all-time-record chutzpah) of the comment this replies to:
Condemning others (falsely!) for your own sins: howling hypocrisy; astonishing dishonesty.
*Since this is a longstanding red herring by oui, may as well address it while I’m here. Quite obviously, trollratings are never “necessary”. So “unnecessary” misses the point entirely, it’s completely irrelevant. The relevant question is whether any particular trollrating is warranted, merited, deserved, valid. Which necessarily becomes the question whether the trollrated comment was, in fact, trolling, by some reasonable, broadly accepted definition of trolling (not just your personal idiosyncratic definition, or just what/whom you don’t like). Obviously, there’s some subjective judgment involved in such an assessment.
What’s ludicrous is that oui does not accept this, but instead declares by his actions his self-appointment as sole arbiter, authority, and enforcer of what constitutes trolling under his (self-serving, but still the only acceptable) definition — and thence what constitutes trollrating abuse.
Which is ludicrous enough.
But then expanding that ludicrousness exponentially, oui openly admits (and not for the first time!) that he intentionally and routinely violates his own assessment of what constitutes trolling and trollrating abuse by — admittedly! — rating comments “pre-empt[ively]” or as “retaliation” “with no regard to post content”.
Just a gobsmacking, toxic combination of chutzpah, dishonesty, unwarranted self-regard, usurpation, and hypocrisy.
. . . i.e., dishonest trolling (you have no standing to dispute this if you haven’t clicked oui’s link; and no basis to dispute it if you have).
Add in . . .
persistent
serial
ratings
abuse, . . .
. . . and it’s a hat trick of cowardly dishonesty!
Looked back through my comment history and discovered he’s gone through and indiscriminately assigned a bunch of 1 ratings.
It’s always projection…
How often do you give out 1’s?
Only when I think they’re deserved, voice.
So what’s the purpose? What do you expect to accomplish?
The purpose is to discourage toxic behaviour. I don’t actually hope to accomplish that goal but I’ll use the system as intended and cross my fingers.
Doesn’t seem to work. Just strikes me as childish and annoying. My experience is that ignoring such behavior denies the person of the attention they apparently seek. And my reaction is that those who “cross their fingers” and hope low ratings will work enjoy the attention as well.
The most recent whiners win the crown!
marduk
oaguabonita
I have been clear about my position for two years now ever since the repugnant behavior by the twosome marduk and nalbar started.
Any trollratings will be uprated by me without a second thought. Usually these two target a single poster. Quite often I will pre-empt their troll ratings by handing out a “4” with no regard to post content. Therefore in their ugly choice of bad blog behavior my “4s” are NOT an endorsement of the content.
I have never been the initiator In this bad behavior and have tried to stop this by publishing the Pond’s blog ethics. To no avail.
Most recently Don Durito made a valiant attempt to have the trollratings stop. I gave him my support. As the comments were posted, I got hit once again with a “1” rating by nalbar. This persistent behavior blocks my participation to comment further as I will not be badgered by idiots.
Hijacking a thread as was done on Martin Longman’s front page artikel is certainly another stain on this community. The first ten years here at the Pond such bad behavior would be unacceptable. We do have community guidelines as I have quite often referred to.
Don’t thread on me ….
I have never hidden the fact, been very clear about it and stated as such: troll rate me and I will return in kind at a moment and place of my choosing. So stop whining marduk and nalbar and quite honestly stop troll rating me as I will not be hindered in restricting to post diaries.
By duplicate postings as has been customery by oaguabonita, this behaviour is blog harassment, a form of stalking. When this also becomes hijacking another thread, I will regard it as trollish behavior. Most of this has been puberal behavior … please act like an adult. The community will be better off. Thank you Don Durito for your recent diary.
. . . and deliberate, abusing the ratings to both uprate and trollrate “with no regard to post content”.
This is not news. It is reprehensible. It should be unacceptable.
This is true!
Indeed it is! So why did you do it, by dishonestly trolling the thread with a comment linking to a diary thread about your persistent ratings abuse, which had nothing to do with either booman’s top-post or the blockquoted text that you seemed to be sourcing via the link? Yes, that thread-jacking by you was most definitely a stain on this community — specifically the part of this community that is you — no question about that!
It’s beyond bizarre that you seem to think that linking to “the pond’s blog ethics” somehow should inoculate or absolve you for being the worst violator of them by far with your persistent, serial ratings abuse, which you openly admit to doing consciously and deliberately, as “retaliation” and “with no regard to post content”!
This is a lie:
No, it isn’t. It’s accountability, as already explained:
So the whiners are complaining?
Not in archive are 48 posts. Of these there are 23 troll ratings, mostly by nalbar (big whiner) and seconded by marduk. They have been kept in standing by the company of a few.
This has been going on for two years now!
Source: Comics, Milkshakes, And (Failing To Fight) Internet Trolls
The harassment campaign targeting a few as others watch and do nothing.
. . . are. Ridiculously. Hypocritically. *Spuriously. Dishonestly. Incoherently (“Not in archive are 48 posts”, “They have been kept in standing by the company of a few” — hunh?).
*Repeating, since you studiously ignored it previously:
Since you continue (and have for years) to self-servingly, studiously ignore that point and the critical distinction it contains, I’ll expand on it (you’re welcome!):
Compare and contrast:
nalbar and marduk trollrate comments that, in their subjective judgment, qualify as trolling. I believe they’ve each said so on several occasions, and I’m aware of no evidence to the contrary. I don’t always agree with their judgment (you want an example? ok, sure, here ya go). What I would never even imagine considering doing (but you do consistently!) is to conclude that this disagreement means my judgment in that case was “correct”, and marduk’s was “wrong”, therefore marduk’s trollrating was invalid, undeserved, and thus an abuse of the ratings. Ratings are inherently and inevitably subjective. Marduk, if he chose, would have to be the one to defend the validity of that particular rating. But the point is, a trollrating is not automatically, inherently invalid and thus an abuse of the ratings, as this whining of yours above and elsewhere implies. (Except of course — hypocritically — when the victim of invalid, abusive trollrating is on your enemies list, and including when the trollrater abusing the ratings is you.) This is obvious from the fact that booman built the ratings system, including the trollrating options, into the site when he started it.
You, by your own admission, consciously, intentionally and routinely violate your own assessment of what constitutes trolling and trollrating abuse by — admittedly! — rating comments “pre-empt[ively]” or as “retaliation” “with no regard to post content“.
Is this critical distinction (essentially, good faith vs. bad faith) — and your position on the losing end of it — starting to sink in yet? At all?
May as well also pop the balloon you frequently parade around, i.e., the appeal to your (asserted) greater longevity here with the presumption it somehow confers on you superior wisdom and/or authority. It doesn’t. Duh. Obvious from your persistent, hypocritical, admittedly conscious and deliberate violations of “blog ethics” and abuses of the ratings system.
Then, of course, there remains the fact that, after thread-jacking booman’s top-post with your dishonestly trolling, deceptive link, you tried to pin the blame for your thread-jacking on bazzz and marduk for their perfectly reasonable responses to that dishonestly trolling, deceptive, thread-jacking link. Wow. Just wow.
The thing that Oui and AG share is the complete refusal to accept that it is possible to legitimately disapprove of their behavior.
Troll Ratings in their view are an unjust attack, by definition. Their behavior cannot be trolling, therefore troll ratings are abusive, stalking, a conspiracy even.
They respond to criticism of their posts in the exact same manner, which is why it’s so pointless to engage. Disagreement is a conspiracy (maybe paid for by nefarious forces!!!) to suppress their vitally important opinion.
It really reminds me of free-speech trolls like Milo Yapadopealis. Be maximally rude and offensive and then cry censorship when you predictably piss everybody off.
. . . succinct distillation of the core of my argument. The illustration is perfect, too.
Realized I didn’t include a link to the source, it’s from the excellent xkcd.
. . . to start browsing from the top of this thread (though this might depend on options settings?). For a good, long way, it’s all on-topic, responsive to booman’s top-post, thoughtful, civil, with many good insights and well-deserved uprates.
Then oui enters . . .
“.. nalbar and marduk trollrate comments that, in their subjective judgment, qualify as trolling.”
Then read the basic rules of Martin’s blog …
Disagreement is NOT at all acceptable for a troll rating. No one else but these two idiots have trollrated me in these two years. Before that, no one else has EVER trollrated me here at the Pond.
What’s honesty oaguabonita? Defending the indefensible, where progressive Democrats have become masters in on this blog.
From the BooMan blog guidelines which refers to Pastor Dan’s community norms.
Besides the clear outline of the ratings system and blog ethics … stop the bullying and harassment.
.
Disagreement is also NOT at all the reason you get troll rated. But as I posted immediately above, you appear incapable of understanding the difference.
. . . to begin?
Well, why not with the most trivial, but still interesting:
But of course your appeal to “Pastor Dan” fails on every level anyway:
Very obviously, your attempt to hide behind this guideline by throwing it in critics’ faces is a misapplication of it. (Sticking to #2 above) my criticisms of your gross, repetitive, intentional violations of blog ethics and the guidelines that you invalidly and self-servingly throw in others’ faces are a) NOT from a “newbie”; and b) NOT “without some strong justification”. I’ve consistently provided extremely strong justification for them. Just as I’m doing here.
Summary conclusion from all the above:
You don’t give a flying fuck about “blog ethics” or guidelines except as you can self-servingly cherry-pick from them to deploy as a shield for yourself (or ag, for some bizarre reason I’ve never been able to fathom) against valid criticism; or as a weapon to attack those who validly criticize you.
fin
The public case against Trump was not good enough. No strategy how to order his news whatsoever, and too much comfortable complacency among Dem activists. So little wonder that voters chose to be complacent as well.
Consequently, just being good in nonverbal communication was enough for Trump. He still works on that:
Nothing will ever stick because his base is absolutely impervious to logic, morality, common sense and its own self-interest.
But it doesn’t matter. Trying to convince a single Trump voter is pointless and futile. Turnout is everything. It’s all about pissing off the left-leaners who seldom or never vote. At least 30% of the total potential voters are: eligible to vote; don’t vote or rarely vote; would vote left if pissed off enough to pay attention.
It’s the only silver lining in this whole disaster. We have an overwhelming majority if and only if turnout is drastically increased. I don’t know how to get them to vote, but I don’t understand why anyone is bothering to think about anything other than figuring it out.
I mean, I’m following the Russia scandal because I love long-run drama – it’s like Breaking Bad or The Wire. But in terms of actually accomplishing anything, all that matters is finding some stroke of genius that will produce the magic bullet that will wake the slumbering giant of the non-voting electorate.
That sounds like hard work. How about instead we break into roughly two camps:
Sinclair Lewis was writing about this a hundred years ago. Babbitt and Elmer Gantry were only superficially works of fiction.
Great post, Booman, but shaky headline. Something’s sticking to Trump, and it’s slowly dragging him down.
Morning Consult just came out with its state-by-state poll of Trump’s approval ratings. He’s down in all 50 states. He’s down by at least 10 points in all but 4 states. He’s down by at least 20 points in 14 states, including Montana and Oklahoma. https:/fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-trumps-popularity-is-holding-up-by-state
And that’s before getting to the “throw the bums out” voting bloc so neatly described in your previous post.
Trump’s numbers in IA, OH, MI, PA and WI have all flipped negative. In effect, Democrats have rebuilt the “blue wall” across the upper Midwest over the past 18 months.
Defeating Trump/tearing apart his governing coalition was never going to be “blitzkrieg” political warfare. It is, as it always was going to be, political trench warfare—door to door, one conversation at a time, one organizing campaign after another.
Living in MT, I c&p-ed the url and read that before I even finished reading your comment when I saw the statement about us.
Seeing that Trump still has +3 net approval here did take some of the shine off the fact it has fallen 21 points, though.
I did have to object to 538 referring to us as a “ruby-red state”. We have a Dem Governor and Senator ferchrissakes! Grr.
The sad fact is that there is no fairy tale ending. This is a nightmare for decent people who truly respect democracy and government by and for the people. Trump has changed how presidents function and not for the better..
Because there is no one thing that will take Trump down, I think a lot of us despairing citizens keep hoping that there will be a breaking point where private investigations, civil and criminal suits take hold, and Mueller’s team produces irrefutable proof that Trump and his allies have committed crimes that can be prosecuted. He’ll never lose his base voters, who see everything he does as a huge win for their party. And the Republicans and big corporations aren’t going to slay their orange golden goose, who has already enriched them beyond their wildest dreams. They’ll do whatever they can to keep him in office.
I want to believe that we as a country can put an end to Trump’s power. I want to believe that the media will speak with new courage and call him a liar, a cheat, and a deadbeat, because that’s what he is. And I believe that we can pull out all the stops to vote these criminals out.
I recently read Driftglass’ old post about the history/loss of The Fairness Doctrine, Limbaugh and Gingrich etc. and fear trump is the beginning rather than the ‘high water mark’. It was an instructive read.
A Fairness Doctrine revived wouldn’t touch Fox News Network, CNN, or any other channel carried by cable.
Because the electromagnetic spectrum is a finite resource treated as a commons, the FCC has the ability to require its broadcast licensees to employ it it in the public interest, in exchange for a monopoly grant of a frequency.
This is the only reason why the limited policing of content that actually took place under the Fairness Doctrine took place.
Cable channels are as bullet-proof against content regulation as print. There’s no commons to manage in the public interest, there’s no monopoly grant to the content channels.
Interesting point. Thank you.
This — restoring the Fairness Doctrine — is unfortunately a progressive shibboleth, and needs constant stomping-on.
Gotta ask these people, “In a deeply, deeply capitalist system, just whom do you think will wind up on the end of any regulation of political content? Even if it’s in the name of imposing ‘balance’?”
Did anyone say that the Fairness Doctrine should be revived? I don’t even think Driftglass contends the point in his blog. It was highlighted merely as a notable event along with the advent of Limbaugh and Limbaugh impersonators in sketching the decline of political discourse. Chill out.
I don’t know about that. I do know that the Canadian version the Fairness Doctrine managed to keep Fox News and it’s reactionary hatefilled malignant agit-prop out of the Canadian media market. According to driftglass, it was the scrapping of the doctrine they opened the door to Fox and Limbaugh. Personally I don’t know much about it.
I think you got it backwards.
EVERYTHING sticks. We’re at the point that no matter how rediculous the charge, D’s and Progressives will believer it of Trump … R’s, deplorables and RWFacistoids won’t care.
. . . example(s, though even a single one would be nice) of the “rediculous [sic] . . . charge[s] . . . D’s and Progressives” believe of Trump.
Why in the world would we need to go looking for “rediculous [sic] . . . charge[s]” to believe about Trump when imminently plausible, very well documented (with more to come), non-ridiculous ones seem to come along every 5 minutes or so?
More the reverse (as you of course elaborated so well), the press had a lot of built up baggage with both Clintons, for no good reason I can think of. At this point, bare minimum, I’d like an apology.
If the FNYFT alone could have kept it in their pants for a month or so prior to the election we most likely wouldn’t be in this mess. As Atrios repeatedly says, cancel your subscription – they’re part of the problem posing as the good guys.
Ironic that in one day, that just happened to be the President’s birthday, we see the fruits of Fahrentold’s labor arrive in a well resourced suit that carries on the gifting by referring this to the IRS so the civil suit asks for criminal investigations.
Then we have the IG report that does not absolve Trump of anything, probably because that wasn’t its task.
Next it’s revealed that Comey used his private gmail account for FBI business whilst he was publicly tut tutting Clinton for her folly of not using govt equipment. She gets the vindication of a tweet, ‘but my emails’.
Then there was Sarah & Jeff trying to say the bible made them do it when asked about separating children and caging them. And the Evangelicals do a double take.
Watching these chickens come home to roost is truly remarkable.
Don’t forget this:
A desire for ratings crowded out too much substantive and policy discussion
Yes, but unfortunately Americans would rather be entertained than educated, and if Trump knows one thing, it’s how to manufacture drama and monetize it. He is also good at exploiting the cult of celebrity we have in America, and he is well aware of how it works- i.e. you are famous by getting on TV, and you get on TV. by being famous. In the end, it’s not important how a “celebrity” got there, just that everyone knows who they are, and everyone certainly knows who Donald Trump is. Once you are on TV, by definition you are “important”
I like to call Trump the idiot savant of the Republican party because he is really ignorant of government and how “traditional” politics works, but he is acutely cognizant of the media environment that we exist in today and can exploit the hell out of it. Because, like unfortunately just about the entire Republican party, he lives in the right wing media bubble, he knows that the audience there just wants to hear things that reinforce their per-existing beliefs (i.e. propaganda) His whole claim to fame in politics was the birther issue, which in itself was so much bullshit, but it was incredibly effective propaganda among the core GOP audience (i.e. the racists, zealots, and grifters). In a normal society the wild and false claims about Obama’s birth certificate would have ostracized him forever, but in the bizarro-land of the cloistered right wing media, it made him a hero. Trump took that notoriety and ran with it.
Now we have a situation where the reality show skills that Trump used to win the presidency look more and more like what a demagogue or a dictator would use to retain power. It is immensely scary stuff, given that Trump has retained the support of 90% of the GOP. The sad news is that I think much of America still really isn’t paying much attention to what is going on. Liberals are always thinking that once we get the facts out there, opinions will change. Sometimes that happens, but it seems like an increasingly large portion of our population has isolated itself from realty. I’m not sure what breaks through that.
It does seem Trump is very sensitive to what images are shown on TV- For example, they are really trying hard to make sure no pictures of crying, screaming kids separated from their parents make it on to the networks. Perhaps pictures of Manafort in handcuffs being thrown in jail might help. Hopefully, we will see soon.
. . . and so you can “grab ’em by the pussy” with impunity.
I will never forgive the large minority of my fellow citizens who proved him right about that by exploiting anti-democratic flaws in our constitutional system to elevate him to Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief. With special condemnation of the so-called “evangelicals” who had to so hypocritically violate their endlessly declared “family values” to do so — and did.
My view is that the regular rules don’t apply to Trump, or at least haven’t to date, because there’s a substantial portion of the electorate who are cynical about everything. They saw Clinton and all established politicians as hopelessly corrupt and Trump as, if nothing else, no worse and at least novel. He was making all sorts of wonderful promises that they wanted to believe. And they’re not wedded in any way to the status quo so, as my three year old would say, what-of-the-heck?
Trump’s lost some of those folks. He’s down to around 40% now. Probably not enough to win another term, but still enough to roil the Republican party. By the time he’s done, may there be nothing but a crater of depravity where a political party once stood. If nothing else, he’s unmasking the Republicans. That helps with the base because they’re dying to say the things he says. But it alienates enough folks that we should see a significant shift.
One more thing. Democrats are atrocious messengers. They make things too complex and fail to stay on point. Our messages need to be distilled down to the length of a bumper sticker. Every time Trump’s name is mentioned, the word traitor should be linked to it. Every time the Republican party is mentioned, the same word needs to be applied. It will undercut them if done in a focused, consistent way.
My view is that the regular rules don’t apply to Trump, or at least haven’t to date, because there’s a substantial portion of the electorate who are cynical about everything. They saw Clinton and all established politicians as hopelessly corrupt and Trump as, if nothing else, no worse and at least novel. He was making all sorts of wonderful promises that they wanted to believe. And they’re not wedded in any way to the status quo so, as my three year old would say, what-of-the-heck?
Trump’s lost some of those folks. He’s down to around 40% now. Probably not enough to win another term, but still enough to roil the Republican party. By the time he’s done, may there be nothing but a crater of depravity where a political party once stood. If nothing else, he’s unmasking the Republicans. That helps with the base because they’re dying to say the things he says. But it alienates enough folks that we should see a significant shift.
One more thing. Democrats are atrocious messengers. They make things too complex and fail to stay on point. Our messages need to be distilled down to the length of a bumper sticker. Every time Trump’s name is mentioned, the word traitor should be linked to it. Every time the Republican party is mentioned, the same word needs to be applied. It will undercut them if done in a focused, consistent way.
Booman writes:
Half right.
In a (supposed) two party system?
Here’s the missing part
The Dems failed to do that in 2016. In fact, the DNC quite actively (and possibly illegally) conspired against the one viable candidate who had a snowball’s chance in hell of successfully doing that.
Further…as I have been pointing out in post after post here…the DNC is doing the same thing right now.
Is this evidence of a leaden, bureaucratic organization simply going about its usual ways? Or is it something deeper? Part of the total takeover of both parties by the corporate-owned state.
I do not really know. Probably a great deal of both. But here is something that I do know. If this situation continues and Trump (or another Trump-like figure) maintains the Republican hold on Congress and the presidency in 2020, the U.S. as we know it is through. A new system will be permanently in place. Call it Democratic Fascism if you wish…”free” elections that are totally predetermined by the ruling oligarchy.
Like Russia.
We have about 2 years to stop this.
Will it happen?
I am not sanguine about the chances, myself.
You?
AG
I think cable news running long shots of empty podiums while the pundits breathlessly yacked about what the Donald will say while whole sale ignoring everyone else puts some holes in your argument.
When you narrow the scope to the most popular consumed media, sure the covered what you said, but they SCREAMED about Hillary and whispered about Trump.
Trump committed a dozen Howard Dean Screams a week during the primaries and these outlets didn’t bury Trump like they buried Dean. Joe and Mika alone should lose their jobs for how they kept rehabilitating Trump’s campaign.
This section of the media was also the ones who built the Economically-Anxious-Working-Class-Abandoned-By-Democrats get away car for Republican voters.
We also have to remember Trump won a technical victory built from voter suppression, disinformation campaigns, almost 30+ years of anti-Clinton propaganda, and a divided opposition. It would have likely been the ONLY type of win any of the 16 GOP candidates could have achieved.
. . . a workout for this one. Simply listing everything you included is a prodigious feat, all by itself. And I think your analysis and conclusions from those enumerated facts make good sense, too, for the most part.
One causal factor you touched on needs more emphasis, though, imo. By way of intro,
In one sense, that is completely accurate, as you support with evidence very well.
In another sense, it’s not true for roughly 25-45% (varying across subject items) who have rejected Reality and fully embraced Reality-Denial. We could discuss all day to what degree this is the result of passive gullibility for propaganda/brainwashing versus active, conscious rejection of all non-conforming facts — seems obvious to me it’s some of both. Then, of course, there’s the greedy, selfish elite who are more or less aware of Reality, but find promoting its denial more personally profitable.
But the end result is 25-45% of the electorate being mentally incapacitated, disabled — functionally incapable of receiving, processing, and drawing rational conclusions from all that reporting you correctly describe. (I certainly agree that at least some of the fault for this incapacitation lies with the incapacitated, i.e., most/all are willing participants to some degree in their own brainwashing. Blaming and berating them for this can make me feel a tiny bit better briefly, but I don’t think it gets us anywhere we need to go, including any closer to the incapacitated recognizing their incapacitation and willing to do anything to heal themselves.)
This is a problem. In my view, an existential threat to the nation (and beyond). And I’m not aware of any program/proposal/initiative with any promise of effectively addressing it, nor do I have any to offer, alas. (Hell, Media Matters has been at it for, what, a decade or so, with near-zero impact, I’d say because they’re almost entirely preaching to the choir. But that seems to illustrate the nature of the problem: the Reality filters built up by living in the bubble of Rush/Fox/Breitbart, et al. while rejecting all conflicting Reality for years/decades are now for all practical purposes near-100% effective, impenetrable.)
Because he moves too fast, is why.
No “advisors,” no mainstream pundits…just the ghost of Roy Cohn.
In many respects, Donald Trump resembles the fabulously successful boxer, Floyd Mayweather. Another pussy-grabbing motherfucker, gangster-affiliated punk and the richest boxer in history, he is so free of preconceptions that by the time a more “normal” boxer tries to hit him, he simply ain’t there anymore!!!
Trump to a T!!!
Watch.
AG
I shoulda added “Move, move, move!!!” to Trump’s Roy Cohn legacy.
Like I said…when opponents try to hit him, he simply ain’t there anymore!!!
Just exactly like Mayweather.
Example?
Sure.
You think you got Manafort?
Cohen?
Trump’s already in and back from North Korea!!!
Trump:
Like dat.
Tump’s career? So far?
For decades!!!???
This approach has worked pretty damned well for him.
You question that statement?
Hmmmm…
Have you noticed his position at the very top of the rancid DC heap?
It isn’t an “accident.”
It’s…sadly…a vindication of Roy Cohn’s twisted view of the world.
Believe in Satan?
I’m beginning to.
Bet on it.
ASG