US Politics, March 2024: The house of illuminati will NOT be holding any other event in the foreseeable future.

I'm coordinating the data for a candidate for Board of Supervisors in California, and because she has so many volunteers, I was actually able to expand the universe of our outreach to not just all of the Democrats, but to registered Greens, Peace and Freedom, and Working Families party voters. Which means the most progressive voters in the district are literally getting courted, and we've even had the candidate herself at their door and thus, will get to discuss the issues that matter most to them. Too bad this isn't the case everywhere!

Going to bring my ballot down right now, ahead of Super Tuesday

I did not do a protest vote with Biden... I understand the sentiment, but I think it's equally important that he unequivocally sweeps the nom

Amazingly, the New York Times profiled actual Biden supporters.

they have to run one of these every day until the election, to equal the number of "can you believe these rubes still love Trump" pieces

they have to run one of these every day until the election, to equal the number of "can you believe these rubes still love Trump" pieces

You're mischaracterizing what are actually "behold these noble, salt of the earth real Americans who await the return of their leader — we soft-handed city folk are their moral inferiors" pieces.

yes, in general they don't present the Trump articles in that kind of disparaging way at all, and meantime the Biden articles all tow the line of "Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective". the NYT must be run by republicans at the highest levels is all I can think

Sorry, I only read articles about exurban voters who are in diners

I mean the Times has been a racist warmongering birdcage liner for upper class birds for years, with the occasional good investigative report and a killer puzzles and cooking section. I recently cancelled all of my subscriptions and the cooking hurt the most, I admit.

Ms. Russell and Ms. Staller are ardent, unreserved supporters of Mr. Biden — part of a small but dedicated group of Democratic voters who think that he is not merely the party’s only option against Donald J. Trump but, in fact, a great, transformative president who clearly deserves another four years in office.

the article makes statements about proportions of voter opinion ("small but dedicated") while citing zero polling data. even the weirdos at Rasmussen have over 20% of respondents strongly approving of Biden's job performance, which would equal tens of millions of Americans

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/biden_administration/biden_approval_index_history

Gore Vidal always mocked the NYT as "The Gray Lady" and correctly saw it as hidebound and conservative at heart. The only time in my memory that the NYT went very far out on a limb to upset the establishment was when they published the Pentagon Papers in 1971. That delighted the anti-war faction of the public and won them a reputation for liberal views that was further enhanced by constant ragging on the NYT by Agnew. Very little since then has ever justified that reputation, but conservatives still love to rag on it as part of the liberal media. It's now a tradition among them.

And the Times, when they run their thinkpieces like “how many trans kids are too many” gives cover to right wingers who then hold it up and and say “even the far left New York Times thinks that trans people are gross”.

did they ever apologize for Judith Miller

They actually did, more or less — I was there when the Judy Miller stuff happened, in an office backwater. It was quite the debacle. I could tell you some things, like how her copy always came in at the last minute and only certain editors were allowed to see it ...

Anyway, this was the editors' note that ran on the front page, fwiw: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aU0.Xucu.AM4gV5FI6L9-&smid=url-share

That was also the year right after Jayson Blair. Not a great time for the Times.

not sure which thread to put this but might as well put it here

https://gizmodo.com/black-trump-supporters-are-being-ai-generated-1851305062

From Tipsy's link:

In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information.

This only works as an excuse if the reportage clearly stated that there was exactly one source for this information and its accuracy could not be independently verified by any other sources. If "the state of our knowledge at the time" was reported as factual, but it wasn't it's just another way to say "we failed in our job and ignored our own rules".

Yeah, there was no excuse for it. There were a lot of red flags there, or should have been. There was her apparent closeness with Sulzberger, whom she'd cultivated and would threaten editors with, or just go over their heads. I saw a couple of her stories while they were in the editing stages, they were ripped apart and rewritten — which was common but not generally to such an extent — but also all of that was being done at the last possible second because she would file late (the assumption was on purpose) to make it harder for editors to block her.

Did she believe it herself? I think she believed she had the inside track on a big story. Anyway, it had terrible consequences. I think Bush would have pushed to war with or without credulous establishment media, but it definitely helped him do it.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

not a lot of desire to name names...

thx for all the insight in response to my half-assed question tipsy

It was an interesting place to be a fly on some walls. (To give a sense of our little editing shop's place in the Times universe, we were the department they threatened to assign Miller to if she wouldn't resign. We had fun for a couple of days imagining her swanning in, but of course she took the severance package.)

whoa that’s interesting thx tipsy

Apparently we are having a primary today. I suppose I will vote because I have pretty much always voted when given the opportunity (since 1989), but the result seems like a foregone conclusion. I don't want to try to do something strategic or symbolic.

As it was in 2012, 2004, 1996, etc.

Those people who are anti Biden because of foreign policy matters, where do they generally stand on Ukraine?

So those anti intervention in Ukraine people are okay with *that* particular group of people being bombed into submission and murdered en masse, or capitulating to an authoritarian invading force? The parallels to another particular regional problem seem pretty apparent to me.

I thought the Nazis in Ukraine thing was a Russian talking point?

I reject the parallelism myself, but if you think Ukraine and Palestine are analogous and favor US intervention, are you saying the US should send military aid to Hamas or to Russia?

I don't have any good answers and am about to head onto a plane, but I kinda think being anti interference anywhere is consistent with being anti interference everywhere. Of course, that may not always get any of us the results we want. Russia victorious on one front, Israel victorious on the other, however that looks and wherever that ends.

Ok I must have misunderstood your post, because I thought table's friends were taking that exact position: no US military aid to anyone regardless of their cause. I don't think anyone who supports Palestine expects the US to ever back the Palestinians militarily -- they just want the US to stop helping Israel destroy and imprison them.

I have been to Ukraine, and it is a beautiful place. Personally, I tend to think of it as evidence that borders are poor indicators of what actually constitutes a country, as the very foundation of who is and isn’t Ukrainian is always contested by various factions with competing versions of history, all of which have some element of truth to them.

It seems like most people who live in the current Ukraine think they are Ukrainian and do not want to be invaded by Russia.

I guess I'm saying that US/Biden intervention in Ukraine is maybe stopping/slowing a similar situation to what is currently happening in Gaza, and a Biden loss would likely make that Ukraine situation as bad as or worse than Gaza.

dunno but when much of the region was very very radically "cleansed" and repopulated only within the last 80 yrs. sometimes i wonder how many of the people there are even related to those people, so terrible was the massacre and removal.

and starvation

JiC, frankly you don't know what you're talking about.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2023/01/ukraine-stepan-bandera-nationalist

from that article, and supporting my final point above:

As Davidzon put it to me, throughout modern Ukrainian history “the understanding of Ukraine as an ethno-nation has always lost”.

The hope among some I spoke to was that as Ukraine writes a new national story for itself in almost real time, it will both find new heroes and form a more nuanced attitude to the old ones. “I do hope that as time goes by we will see the shadow in every historical figure,” Lutsevych said. “I don’t think it’s good for Ukraine to be so hooked on the idea of glorification.”

Not all agree. Bandera will continue to be venerated in Ukraine, Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, told me. “All those who are fighting for Ukrainian freedom will be our heroes. Some of them will have controversial backgrounds. But that will not change the fact that all fighters for Ukrainian freedom will be heroes for us.”

But this is the US politics thread, so perhaps we can take this over to the Ukraine thread if we want to continue.

I feel like everything being said about Ukraine here is equally true of the United States

sinema not running

🚨🚨 SINEMA won't run for re-election in 2024.

"I will leave the Senate at the end of this year."

This clear the way for a Gallego (D) versus Lake (R) race with no Sinema independent candidacy. https://t.co/l1YAgBSclf

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 5, 2024

I was too good for you

now she can start the wine bar in tempe

being a real politician is a hard job that sinema never cared to work at

I read that people liked being on her staff because they never had to work past 5 pm

or before 5pm

wine o'clock

It is always wine o'clock

Turns out living for three years in an abandoned gas station doesn’t make you a more empathetic politician.

What a loss

NOT

(And neither is the boat guy from WVa)

voted! (uncommitted ballot)