US Current Events December: Inflation Growing Faster than Santa's Belt Size

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Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I think reading the article isn't too high of a bar to clear.

I think posting the text or archiving it yourself isn't too high of a bar to clear, either, especially when posting hot takes on a story.

I'll bring it up in the next forums feedback thread since it seems to be such a controversial opinion all of a sudden, and causing discord.

vvv Lots of bullshit :words:

instead of posting the dang story yourself while making hot takes, goon sire!

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Dec 17, 2021

# ? Dec 17, 2021 23:13

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 18:40

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Willa Rogers posted:

I think posting the text or archiving it yourself isn't too high of a bar to clear, either, especially when posting hot takes on a story.

I'll bring it up in the next forums feedback thread since it seems to be such a controversial opinion all of a sudden, and causing discord.

Willa, nobody is trying to own you or be mean. You admitted that you knew how to read the article, but chose not to.

Then, you came in with an aggro hot take that was disproved in the second paragraph of the article and continued to get aggro and defensive about it. You spent 40 minutes defending not reading the article when reading it would take 5. You could have pasted the article and read it like you said, but even if you couldn't, then there would be many people willing to help you or link to archive for you if you asked instead of coming in hot.

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1471967917675847682

Former NYT editor and politics reporter admitted in an interview that they don't like to say one side is right in a political dispute (even if one side objectively is correct) because they are afraid of being accused of a liberal bias and want to try and build credibility with conservative readers.

Also, that they try to stick to neutrality rather than objectivity when covering politics.

quote:

When facts have a liberal bias, New York Times editors can get squirmy

Nina Bernstein was covering homelessness for the New York Times in 1999 when then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced his intention to lock homeless families out of the city�s shelters for even minor rule violations.

Bernstein wrote an article about how a similar policy was working in nearby Suffolk County, leading with the story of a family of eight reduced to sleeping on a fellow church member�s linoleum floor. She reported that some families were expelled because of bureaucratic mistakes.

Simply by describing the facts, Bernstein was making Giuliani�s plan look cruel. And that created problems for her in the newsroom.

�Getting it in the paper involved overcoming lots of editor pushback,� Bernstein recalled. She and I spoke on the phone and exchanged emails.

It was a problem she ran into with some frequency: �To write factually, up close, with what I like to call intelligent compassion about these people�s lives basically invited charges of partisanship.�

The point here is that it is nothing new for editors at the New York Times and elsewhere to be uneasy about calling too much attention to reality � when that reality has a liberal bias. (Stephen Colbert coined the phrase �reality has a well-known liberal bias� during the Bush administration.)

But that friction is particularly at issue today, at the Times and elsewhere, as political reporters and their editors struggle to accurately and sufficiently convey facts about the Republican assault on voting rights and democracy. The fear of taking sides is very obviously holding them back.

�Many reporters across the traditional news media are struggling against institutional tics and timidities that make �balance� a false idol,� Bernstein said. The result: �The inadvertent normalization of existential threats to democracy and public health by one party and its right-wing media echo chamber.�
Tough Love

�I love and respect the New York Times and that only makes its failings more painful and infuriating, which is I�m sure the way many Times reporters, present and former, feel,� Bernstein said.

�The Times is irreplaceable in scope, depth and variety of high-quality journalism. It�s also embedded in its own times, caught in its institutional contradictions.�

�Basically,� she said, �it has never been easy and it will never be easy to be ahead of the curve at the New York Times.�

Bernstein joined the Times in 1995, and after many years as an investigative reporter covering social issues, she took a buyout in 2016. She is now researching and writing a historical novel set in 11th century Andalusia.
The Weakest Link

Bernstein said that in her experience, much of the resistance to bolder reporting comes from mid-level editors. They are often the ones �who are more timid, more ready to water down or reject a story,� she said. �They�re trying to do what they think the top editors want� � even when the top editors themselves might have been more willing to push boundaries.

�It�s very hard being a mid-level editor at the New York Times. You get none of the glory and a lot of tsuris.�

Their intentions are good, she said. �I�m not talking about this caricature of editors who are trying to suppress important stories,� she said. These are �well-meaning� editors, who see a key part of their role as not losing the institutional authority that comes (or theoretically comes, or used to come) with reporters not taking sides.
The Exception That Proves the Rule

Bernstein called attention to a recent Times article that she said was �so good in the way of regular journalism� that it underscores the weakness of a lot of the routine coverage.

The Nov. 12 article was by Lisa Lerer and Astead W. Herndon, headlined: �Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream.� Its uncompromising nut graph:

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

(I loved the piece, too, writing in my Thanksgiving roundup that I was grateful the authors were allowed to write it.)

�What made it remarkable was that it was a political story that didn�t obscure or downplay the facts with both-sides boilerplate,� Bernstein said.

�I wonder how long it was in the works,� she said. �My hunch is that they had to overcome a lot of editor pushback to get in the paper.�

Or, more optimistically, perhaps it�s �a watershed of some kind,� she said. �Maybe press criticism by people like Jay Rosen and Margaret Sullivan and you has had an effect. Or maybe there�s just a cumulative recognition of how fragile democracy is right now.�
Add a Human Being

I recently started asking former news reporters what people like Rosen, Sullivan, and I can reasonably ask of today�s reporters, given the institutional strictures under which they operate.

Bernstein said that one simple � though not easy � way that reporters could improve coverage of policy is to vow, like she did early in her career, to include in every story at least one real person who would be affected by the policy.

She had high praise for a December 1 New York Times story by Reed Abelson, Sarah Kliff, Margot Sanger-Katz and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, which described the health policy provisions of the Build Back Better Act as �the biggest step toward universal coverage since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.� Each section of the article began with the story of a person who would be affected by the changes.

�Add a person to every policy story, to ground it in truth,� she said � �to show what�s actually at stake.�

It�s also the ethical thing to do: �At a time of incredibly wide inequality, to leave out the voices of people who don�t read the New York Times or don�t read the Washington Post but who are dramatically affected by these debates, is irresponsible,� she said.

�It�s not good journalism. They are parties to this. They should be parties to this.� That�s even though, as she put it, �no, they won�t call your editor.�

And leaving out real people in stories about investments in such things as health care and education is a disservice to readers who may not understand the needs.

�There clearly are a lot of people in this country who have no clue about the daily lives of the people who are hanging on to the hollowed-out middle class,� Bernstein said.
Balance is the Story-Killer

�One of the reasons I decided to become a journalist was because I wanted to bear witness to my own time, in a way that didn�t require me to tailor what I was writing based on �is this going to be good for my side or bad for my side�,� Bernstein said.

But she found the strictures of the profession also made it difficult to describe things as they really are. �It�s very hard, within the constraints of what has been mainstream journalism for decades to do that,� she said.

The obsession with balance doesn�t just enfeeble political stories, she said. It can impoverish coverage in other areas. �Less visible is that the same skewed tilt toward �balance� makes it harder to cover poverty, healthcare, welfare, education, and so on,� because exposing problems can be seen as taking sides.

�We�re in a bad place,� Bernstein said, �if it�s inherently partisan to concretely and often write about what�s at stake in the lives of people.�

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 17, 2021

# ? Dec 17, 2021 23:29

Harold Fjord: Jan 3, 2004; Can't post for 46 hours!

It's funny because that's basically also how the Democratic Party operates. They don't want to seem biased in favor of leftism or liberalism

# ? Dec 17, 2021 23:50

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

a) it's been around from the beginning of November, being recycled now as if it's new specifically to make people rage.

b) it's a work product memo that's part of a broader release, of which signficant parts are not redacted, linked in the above.

Think about why you are being targeted with misleading representations of information. Think about why you're redistributing them here.

Think about why you constantly defend this poo poo

# ? Dec 17, 2021 23:57

PeterCat: Apr 8, 2020; Believe women.

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

What? Do you just not watch the news? It was everywhere when the withdrawal started, the chickenhawks came out in droves to say "Actually we need to stay in Afghanistan MUCH longer to accomplish our goal of (mumble mumble)" and other thinly veiled excuses for war profiteering.

Hell, for some reason the UK media got involved too and did a bunch of hypocritical think pieces about how actually it's a moral imperative for America to continue the pointless war that they had given up on fighting decades ago. Behold this bit of bullshit from Bush's former toady Tony Blair: https://institute.global/tony-blair/tony-blair-why-we-must-not-abandon-people-afghanistan-their-sakes-and-ours

Why would anyone ever watch TV news? It's a horrible way of getting information.

And who cares what Tony Blair has to say. Is he in some kind of position of power?

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:05

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

*Shocked Pikachu Face*

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1471975760894251008

quote:

Trump White House made 'deliberate efforts' to undermine Covid response, report says

The White House repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance from the nation�s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials, the report found.

WASHINGTON � The Trump administration engaged in �deliberate efforts� to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, a congressional report released Friday concludes.

The report, prepared by the House select subcommittee investigating the nation�s Covid response, says the White House repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance by the nation�s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials in order to promote then-President Donald Trump's political agenda.

In August of last year, for example, Trump hosted a White House meeting with people who promoted a herd immunity strategy pushed by White House special adviser Dr. Scott Atlas. The subcommittee obtained an email sent ahead of that meeting in which Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Covid response coordinator, told the vice president�s chief of staff, Marc Short, that it was �a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience.� Birx also said in the email that she could �go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover� on the day of the meeting.

A few months later in October, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins called for �a quick and devastating published take down� of the herd immunity strategy, according to emails obtained and released by the subcommittee.

In an interview with the subcommittee, Birx said when she arrived to the White House in March 2020 � more than a month after the U.S. declared a public health emergency � she learned that federal officials had not yet contacted some of the largest U.S. companies that could supply Covid testing.

Birx also told the panel that Atlas and other Trump officials �purposely weakened CDC�s coronavirus testing guidance in August 2020 to obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country,� the report said. The altered guidance recommended that asymptomatic people didn�t need to get tested, advice that was "contrary to consensus science-based recommendations," it said, adding, "Dr. Birx stated that these changes were made specifically to reduce the amount of testing being conducted.

Altas did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.

The subcommittee also found in its investigation that the Trump White House blocked requests from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct public briefings for more than three months. That move followed a late-February 2020 briefing in which a top CDC official "accurately warned the public about the risks posed by the coronavirus," it said.

Another CDC official told the panel that the agency asked to hold a briefing in April 2020 on a recommendation to wear cloth face coverings and present evidence of pediatric cases and deaths from Covid, but the Trump White House refused.

CDC officials also stated media requests to interview them were denied during that period, the subcommittee report said.

Documents obtained by the committee also show that Trump political appointees tried to pressure the Food and Drug Administration to authorize ineffective Covid treatments the president was pushing, like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma, over the objections of career scientists, the report said.

In addition, Dr. Steven Hatfill, an adviser to former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, �may have declined leads to purchase supplies like N95 masks in the spring 2020 solely because the products were not manufactured in the United States," the subcommittee said.

In a statement provided to NBC on Friday, Hatfill said that the administration began sourcing personal protective equipment in early 2020. He said "the most logical and efficient choice was to seek U.S.-based manufacturers' help."

"At the time, profiteers were peddling defective and fraudulent PPE at inflated prices directly to the public," he said. "Even states such as California and New Mexico fell prey to these schemes, but we had no time to waste at the federal level. Even the shortest delay could cost thousands of lives. That was a risk we were not willing to take. Our choice to buy American goods saved lives and the United States taxpayer's money."

Dr. Jay Butler, a senior CDC official who helped supervise the agency�s coronavirus response during the spring of 2020, told the subcommittee in an interview that the Trump administration published guidance for faith communities in May of last year that �softened some very important public health recommendations,� such as removing all references to face coverings, a suggestion to suspend choirs, and language related to virtual services. Butler told the panel that �the concerns he had about Americans getting sick and potentially dying because they relied on this watered-down guidance �will haunt me for some time,�� the report said.

The revelations in the panel's report come as Covid cases surge across the country as the U.S. battles the new omicron and the delta variants.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:22

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Think about why you constantly defend this poo poo

What are you claiming I am defending?

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:25

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

*Shocked Pikachu Face*

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1471975760894251008

'Documents obtained by the committee also show that Trump political appointees tried to pressure the Food and Drug Administration to authorize ineffective Covid treatments the president was pushing, like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma, over the objections of career scientists, the report said.'

I really hate when they treat this stuff like it was a bad treatment and not quack science with no basis whatsoever

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:46

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

the_steve posted:

Why? Are they actually passing it yet?

lol what

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:54

Tatsuta Age: Apr 21, 2005; so good at being in trouble

FlamingLiberal posted:

'Documents obtained by the committee also show that Trump political appointees tried to pressure the Food and Drug Administration to authorize ineffective Covid treatments the president was pushing, like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma, over the objections of career scientists, the report said.'

I really hate when they treat this stuff like it was a bad treatment and not quack science with no basis whatsoever

Dr oz is a doctor, are you????

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:55

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

What are you claiming I am defending?

Eliding the administration's actions by quibbling over the presentation and/or timing of tweets that reference them is just really obviously a coward's defense of them and it's kind of absurd to pretend that it isn't

Why does a news item having come out earlier taint it for discussion now? Have facts come to light since that have rendered the original story invalid? Or are you just suggesting that anybody who misses a news item when it comes out only to discover it later must be barred from bringing it up, and to do anything other than keeping silent on it is to out oneself as an insidious Derailer? Just how long is the window here, exactly, too, since you pulled this exact poo poo over news that was two days old?

If anything, the age of the redacted memo story should make it look even worse now, given the excuses at the time were all about how the administration wasn't trying to obscure anything by redacting it, it was simply an intermediate step, they'd totally announce their findings later when they were ready... and now months down the line the only action the administration's taking on student loans is to end the pandemic moratorium on them

So again, why do you continually run cover for the administration's bad behavior by nitpicking the presentation details of news items here? You should ask yourself this

# ? Dec 18, 2021 00:58

Nucleic Acids: Apr 10, 2007; Can't post for 6 days!

Discendo Vox posted:

a) it's been around from the beginning of November, being recycled now as if it's new specifically to make people rage.

b) it's a work product memo that's part of a broader release, of which signficant parts are not redacted, linked in the above.

Think about why you are being targeted with misleading representations of information. Think about why you're redistributing them here.

If there anything good for the administration behind what was redacted, it never would have been squashed.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 01:10

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Herstory Begins Now posted:

lol what

Your post seemed to imply that those who thought that BBB was dead were foolish, so I believe he assumes that you must have proof to the contrary to make that assertion.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 01:35

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

... to tell them that they were right

why would i try to call them foolish when it's obvious poo poo isn't getting passed

# ? Dec 18, 2021 01:50

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Herstory Begins Now posted:

... to tell them that they were right

why would i try to call them foolish when it's obvious poo poo isn't getting passed

Ah, that's my mistake then

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:03

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Herstory Begins Now posted:

... to tell them that they were right

why would i try to call them foolish when it's obvious poo poo isn't getting passed

It's how I read it at first too and would've assumed if I didn't know your politics. Nothing to do with you, it's just that 99% of the time the context of that kind of post means it's followed by a silent "to laugh at how dumb they were"

imho the best examples are probably found in the congressional record as I'm pretty sure definitely Sinema and probably Manchin have been very clear from the start that their reason for wanting the split was specifically that they didn't support any of that other stuff and never would

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:04

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

Oh yeah it was my bad for leaving it that ambiguous, I thought that the current extreme deadlock would make the point clear enough cuz man did they ever call it. It was an incredible play 'how about you take everything I like and might vote for out of your bill, and now we'll just vote on my bill with only the stuff I like in it.'

Somehow that move worked??? outplayed by a strat as sophisticated as heads I win, tails you lose

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:08

eviltastic: Feb 8, 2004; Fan of Britches

The story about the memo was news to me, at least, so looking through the disclosures, the most interesting unredacted parts are these:

(e: note - reverse chronological order and I snipped a few)

Putting a hell of a load on the one word "countering", it does sound like they took a contrary view to the prior memo in at least some respect. The section from the one for DeVos that they're talking about is where they argue that this verbiage couldn't possibly be used as authority for mass cancellation:

quote:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, unless enacted with specific reference to this section, the Secretary of Education . . . may waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the Act [, 20 U.S.C. �1070, et seq.,] as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency to provide the waivers or modifications authorized by paragraph (2).

There's also this snippet, which is obviously a redaction fuckup. We weren't supposed to see anything highlighted.

eviltastic fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Dec 18, 2021

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:21

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Oh yeah it was my bad for leaving it that ambiguous, I thought that the current extreme deadlock would make the point clear enough cuz man did they ever call it. It was an incredible play 'how about you take everything I like and might vote for out of your bill, and now we'll just vote on my bill with only the stuff I like in it.'

Somehow that move worked??? outplayed by a strat as sophisticated as heads I win, tails you lose

"Do what I want right now in exchange for some nebulous future support i'll totally give" is a tactic that shouldn't keep working, but

I think McConnell pulled this on Schumer a couple times too.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:37

Sedisp: Jun 20, 2012

FlamingLiberal posted:

I really hate when they treat this stuff like it was a bad treatment and not quack science with no basis whatsoever

Are you implying my accai berry colon flush with a colloidal silver infusion is not scientific???

# ? Dec 18, 2021 02:41

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Sedisp posted:

Are you implying my accai berry colon flush with a colloidal silver infusion is not scientific???

All I can say is that if you vape colloidal silver, you definitely will not die of COVID

# ? Dec 18, 2021 03:01

HonorableTB: Dec 22, 2006

I believe that memo says Biden can cancel student loans and the reason I believe that is because he redacted the memo and buried it instead of blaring it from every media outlet that he'd love to do that but he just isn't allowed!

# ? Dec 18, 2021 03:45

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Eliding the administration's actions by quibbling over the presentation and/or timing of tweets that reference them is just really obviously a coward's defense of them and it's kind of absurd to pretend that it isn't

So, I'm not, but you want me to so I can be your posting enemy. Leon Trotsky 2012's framing of the subject is much better

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Why does a news item having come out earlier taint it for discussion now?

Because it misrepresents it as new and inaccurately describes the subject.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Have facts come to light since that have rendered the original story invalid? Or are you just suggesting that anybody who misses a news item when it comes out only to discover it later must be barred from bringing it up, and to do anything other than keeping silent on it is to out oneself as an insidious Derailer? Just how long is the window here, exactly, too, since you pulled this exact poo poo over news that was two days old?

No, because both the twitter account and the original citing post don't acknowledge that it's old. Hell, the post acknowledges the source is lovely but still runs with it because it gives them ammo.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

If anything, the age of the redacted memo story should make it look even worse now, given the excuses at the time were all about how the administration wasn't trying to obscure anything by redacting it, it was simply an intermediate step, they'd totally announce their findings later when they were ready... and now months down the line the only action the administration's taking on student loans is to end the pandemic moratorium on them

So again, why do you continually run cover for the administration's bad behavior by nitpicking the presentation details of news items here? You should ask yourself this

I am not. I'm addressing misrepresentations that keep happening because people keep posting tweets without context and misrepresenting them.

Epic High Five posted:

All I can say is that if you vape colloidal silver, you definitely will not die of COVID

FDA actually just put out a press release a few days ago because companies have started selling essential oil and vitamin vapes.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 04:24

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

So, I'm not, but you want me to so I can be your posting enemy. Leon Trotsky 2012's framing of the subject is much better

Because it misrepresents it as new and inaccurately describes the subject.

No, because both the twitter account and the original citing post don't acknowledge that it's old. Hell, the post acknowledges the source is lovely but still runs with it because it gives them ammo.

I am not. I'm addressing misrepresentations that keep happening because people keep posting tweets without context and misrepresenting them.

FDA actually just put out a press release a few days ago because companies have started selling essential oil and vitamin vapes.

What material difference does it make to the content that it's old? Spell it out for me

Even in your response, you apparently feel unwilling to outline that yourself for the person who originally posted it. Instead you're just retreating to "hmm think about what you're doing here, really think about it" and it's nonsense. You're presenting yourself as being Socratic but what you're really doing is arguing by innuendo. It's just chickenshit

You're doing way more to misrepresent the subject and mislead other people with these stupid tweet crit posts by implying the actual content is false based on presentational details than the tweets and articles with which you've taken issue have been themselves

TheIncredulousHulk fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Dec 18, 2021

# ? Dec 18, 2021 04:39

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

What material difference does it make to the content that it's old? Spell it out for me

Even in your response, you apparently feel unwilling to outline that yourself for the person who originally posted it. Instead you're just retreating to "hmm think about what you're doing here, really think about it" and it's nonsense. You're presenting yourself as being Socratic but what you're really doing is arguing by innuendo. It's just chickenshit

You're doing way more to misrepresent the subject and mislead other people with these stupid tweet crit posts by implying the actual content is false based on presentational details than the tweets and articles with which you've taken issue have been themselves

The mediating tweet is in fact misrepresenting the source, because it presents one memo from a larger, not entirely censored FOIA release as if it were an immediately recent, publicly issued "report" . The point is to treat what was old as new to justify new rage, a new response (and to act as if the administration just issued the censored report, when as Leon Trotsky 2012 noted, was not the case and is of significance for how the situation should be interpreted).

This is not about me being a defender of the administration (however much you want me to be an ideologically clear enemy). I want people to stop posting misleading twitter ragebait in USNews (right down to the "how is this real lmao" intensifier, christ). Eviltastic and Leon Trotsky are able to identify and engage with the actual source material on its own terms.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 05:31

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

The mediating tweet is in fact misrepresenting the source, because it presents one memo from a larger, not entirely censored FOIA release as if it were an immediately recent, publicly issued "report" . The point is to treat what was old as new to justify new rage, a new response (and to act as if the administration just issued the censored report, when as Leon Trotsky 2012 noted, was not the case and is of significance for how the situation should be interpreted).

This is not about me being a defender of the administration (however much you want me to be an ideologically clear enemy). I want people to stop posting misleading twitter ragebait in USNews (right down to the "how is this real lmao" intensifier, christ). Eviltastic and Leon Trotsky are able to identify and engage with the actual source material on its own terms.

The constant refrain of "this is old information!!!" is meaningless and you deploy it entirely to insinuate that "old" equates to something that has either been resolved or has been contradicted and in this case it's neither. In what way has the redacted memo become irrelevant since its release? Has the administration's policy on student loans stopped mattering? The contents of this memo have been hidden even longer now than when they first hit the news. It is actually less defensible now than it was a month ago, and knowing that they did this is useful information for understanding why they're doing something as harmful as ending the loan moratorium. If you're going to cry "old news" all the time, you should explain why its age makes it irrelevant for discussion(especially if we're talking about a press conference that was two days old). If you're going to claim something is misleading, you should explain what aspect of the story it's obscuring besides timing, which in these cases hasn't meaningfully distorted the content. Otherwise it's just innuendo

You can claim you're not defending the administration but yet you're constantly trying to police whether people are allowed to be mad at them over still-extant policy. Ask yourself why you feel the need to play anger cop towards others in response to policy that harms them

# ? Dec 18, 2021 07:00

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

The constant refrain of "this is old information!!!" is meaningless and you deploy it entirely to insinuate that "old" equates to something that has either been resolved or has been contradicted and in this case it's neither. In what way has the redacted memo become irrelevant since its release? Has the administration's policy on student loans stopped mattering? The contents of this memo have been hidden even longer now than when they first hit the news. It is actually less defensible now than it was a month ago, and knowing that they did this is useful information for understanding why they're doing something as harmful as ending the loan moratorium. If you're going to cry "old news" all the time, you should explain why its age makes it irrelevant for discussion(especially if we're talking about a press conference that was two days old). If you're going to claim something is misleading, you should explain what aspect of the story it's obscuring besides timing, which in these cases hasn't meaningfully distorted the content. Otherwise it's just innuendo

You can claim you're not defending the administration but yet you're constantly trying to police whether people are allowed to be mad at them over still-extant policy. Ask yourself why you feel the need to play anger cop towards others in response to policy that harms them

You appear to be ignoring the part where I point out the other ways the tweet was dishonest, and you appear to be ignoring the part where I talk about how other people angry about the policy are engaging with the subject honestly, unlike the tweet, all so you can continue to remake me into a posting enemy.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 07:36

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

HonorableTB posted:

I believe that memo says Biden can cancel student loans and the reason I believe that is because he redacted the memo and buried it instead of blaring it from every media outlet that he'd love to do that but he just isn't allowed!

I mean, is there literally any other interpretation? The Democrats obviously want every possible excuse to say 'Aw jeez, we'd love to, but we gotta follow the rules'.

The BBB was made to be hung above Joe Manchin's door as a stuffed and mounted trophy.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 08:38

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

You appear to be ignoring the part where I point out the other ways the tweet was dishonest, and you appear to be ignoring the part where I talk about how other people angry about the policy are engaging with the subject honestly, unlike the tweet, all so you can continue to remake me into a posting enemy.

You seem weirdly obsessed with posting enemies. People can just think your posting is lovely and argue with you over it. Saying "oh look I approved these posts made by others, and therefore I must be maintaining a fair and reasonable standard for what constitutes honest engagement" is dumb because the former doesn't necessitate the latter in any way, and the sum total of your argument against it was "old and not the whole memo." Neither of the posters you cited even expressed anger, so it strikes me as pretty dishonest to claim that they did. Leon largely appeared to express confusion, and eviltastic 1) didn't express any personal reaction at all, and 2) opened their post on the subject by noting that they'd missed the story when it dropped originally and said that the post/tweet and its subsequent discussion ITT alerted them to the story in the first place, which to me suggests that the rush to declare news as "old" and disregard the reactions of those to whom it is new as, for some reason, self-evidently insincere and therefore misleading is a dumb and self-serving conclusion

# ? Dec 18, 2021 09:38

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

that memo has literally come up at 4 or 5 points just since this thread was rebooted and it's been popping up for like 6 weeks before even this iteration of this thread

honestly it's a good example of something getting framed in a dozen different ways depending on who is reposting/tweeting it

# ? Dec 18, 2021 11:20

Space Cadet Omoly: Jan 15, 2014; ~Groovy~

HonorableTB posted:

I believe that memo says Biden can cancel student loans and the reason I believe that is because he redacted the memo and buried it instead of blaring it from every media outlet that he'd love to do that but he just isn't allowed!

Hold on, if the president can cancel student loans can they also cancel other debts? Like, can the president just make mortgages null and void?

# ? Dec 18, 2021 12:51

Srice: Sep 11, 2011

It doesn't matter how old the news the tweet is about as long as there isn't any new information that renders it obsolete. It's good to have a consistent reminder of something that's related to what Biden campaigned on; sure, he didn't say he'd forgive all of it but he said he'd forgive $10,000 and he can't even be assed to do that!

# ? Dec 18, 2021 13:44

Lib and let die: Aug 26, 2004

Reminding people of the "good" things Biden has done since 1/20 is good and fair.

Reminding people of the bad things Biden has done (by action or inaction) is bad and disingenuous.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 13:45

LGD: Sep 25, 2004

Lib and let die posted:

Reminding people of the "good" things Biden has done since 1/20 is good and fair.

Reminding people of the bad things Biden has done (by action or inaction) is bad and disingenuous.

Still, seems like there are potential ambiguities though.

Let�s take an official tweet like this:

https://twitter.com/SecMartyWalsh/status/1471529554917269510?s=20

Is reposting it good and fair, but only so long as we don�t do basic math or think beyond the surface presentation, at which point it would become bad and disingenuous? Or was it bad and disingenuous material all along? But it was also posted by the Biden administration itself, so is it possible for it to be anything other than good and fair?

Makes u think

LGD fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Dec 18, 2021

# ? Dec 18, 2021 14:27

FizFashizzle: Mar 30, 2005

As far as I�m concerned, every loan payment I have to make starting in 2022 is a relevant time to bring up that there�s some giant block of pink text over a document pertaining to the presidents ability to fulfill a campaign promise.

But that�s just me.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 14:48

the_steve: Nov 9, 2005; We're always hiring!

FizFashizzle posted:

As far as I’m concerned, every loan payment I have to make starting in 2022 is a relevant time to bring up that there’s some giant block of pink text over a document pertaining to the presidents ability to fulfill a campaign promise.

But that’s just me.

Well gosh darn it, he said that he really wanted to do something about that, gee willikers he sure did. Isn't that enough, that he said it?
What more do you want? For him to actually DO something? Why not add a unicorn to the list while you're demanding fantasies.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 15:01

BRJurgis: Aug 15, 2007; Well I hear the thunder roll, I feel the cold winds blowing...
But you won't find me there, 'cause I won't go back again...
While you're on smoky roads, I'll be out in the sun...
Where the trees still grow, where they count by one...

As much as I want a transformational eco revolution megathread I think it makes sense to moderate what's actually being discussed in this current news thread. It's difficult to differentiate between what's relevant though, our present being a tragic convoluted tapestry of misinformation, manipulation, and exploitation. I at least understand DV's point, even if I suspect he hangs out with Alan Chartok.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 15:06

Space Cadet Omoly: Jan 15, 2014; ~Groovy~

I mostly just want to know if the president's power to cancel student loans extends to medical depts as well. Like, cancel 50,000 worth of medical dept right now if that's an option.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 15:46

Kalit: Nov 6, 2006; The great thing about the thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children is that they can't pull away when you fondle them or sniff their hair.

That's a Biden success story.

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

I mostly just want to know if the president's power to cancel student loans extends to medical depts as well. Like, cancel 50,000 worth of medical dept right now if that's an option.

This is specifically for public student loan debt held by the Dept of Education, not private companies. So, no, the government paying off private debt is not what�s being looked at

# ? Dec 18, 2021 15:59

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 18:40

Space Cadet Omoly: Jan 15, 2014; ~Groovy~

Kalit posted:

This is specifically for public student loan debt held by the Dept of Education, not private companies. So, no, the government paying off private debt is not what�s being looked at

Well, that sucks.

# ? Dec 18, 2021 16:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Current Events December: Inflation Growing Faster than Santa's Belt Size

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