The New York Times must have been pretty desperate to find a few fact checks on Kamala Harris:
It wasn't $1 trillion, it was $700 billion. Seriously? This is misleading?
Another fact check dings Harris for saying they've created 800,000 manufacturing jobs when the real number is 739,000. Another upbraids her for saying correctly that US oil production is at an all-time high because, um, she shouldn't take credit for it. Yet another disputed her careful statement that there are no Americans in active duty in a war zone—which is true—because there are still US soldiers on station in dangerous places.
I guess you have to find something to balance the fire hose of Trump lies. Gotta stay objective, after all.
obviously she really needs to do an interview with these cretins
Yeah, this post seems to answer his question from his previous post:
“It’s a little mysterious to me why Harris continues to avoid interviews.”
No kidding. The vultures want TFG back so bad. Kamala would be crazy to give them chances to attack.
current nytimes editors teleported back to 1938:
"Let it be clearly stated that while Herr Hitler employs no kind words in his descriptions of the Jews, Jewish leaders in return have nothing but vitriol for the duly elected leader of the great German nation. It is therefore incumbent upon both parties to soften their rhetoric and arrive at a genial rapprochement."
In that case the Times hasn't fallen, it has failed to raise itself when needed.
Here is what they *actually said* about Hitler:
He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism....The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism...But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait...
"But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded..."
Who, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring?
minor fact-check niggle...
during the debate trump claimed he took a bullet in the head
just like to point out that gabby giffords took a bullet to the head; trump, not so much
talk about stolen valor
He didn't take a bullet to the head; he *borrowed* a bullet to the head.
But seriously, he was shot at with lethal intent, so that's a whopper I can excuse.
But it is another case of typical Trump hyperbole. Why say "I was shot at; it nicked my ear" when you can say "I took a bullet to the head"?
Did the mainstream “liberal” media fact check that statement?
Trump is competitive mainly because the media has refused for months on end to report on the fact that the US economy has been amazing, despite serious global inflation. Time and again I saw prominently placed stories about inflation which clearly implied was caused by Biden’s spending programs. Stories about the gdp growth and low unemployment rarely if ever got prominent coverage.
NY Times CEO Sulzberger justified that extremely misleading coverage with the bizarre excuse that polls showed the public was focused on inflation. Why bother telling them that the US economy is the strongest and our inflation no higher than in most other advanced countries when you can give them a negatively skewed picture of the economy? After all it’s not cool to look too positive.
Absolutely right. I don't read the Times, but I do watch the evening TV news, and they parrot what they get from the wire services and big papers like the Times. I couldn't count the number of times they led their broadcast with lamentations about "skyrocketing" inflation, followed by a quick video with someone filling up their pickup truck at a gas station, complaining how they can't make ends meet.
He had his ear pierced.
Of all the valor Trump has stolen, this is one I will grant him.
I noticed that he only mentioned that Harris was going to take away people's gun rights a couple of times; and his heart wasn't in it.
So I'm gonna be generous and grant Trump this one, I've had a gun pointed at me, and it is never not scary and weird. It is an abnormal experience, and one gun owners need to be held a lot more responsible for committing. This may be an opening to negotiate that deal.
Striking description from Mueller She Wrote of how being prepared pays off,
For me, one of the biggest moments of the debate happened when the cameras were turned off,
https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/the-debate
Thank you for this very very much. Especially the sidebar about how her staff is “ discomfited” by a style that is celebrated in men. During my years in newspaper newsrooms (1970s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s) I saw female reporters and the few female bosses I had tie themselves into knots trying to overcome this kind of attitude. They worked twice as hard )at least) and took on more assignments than the men and never quuuuuuiiiiite got as much respect. (1 or 2 exceptions.) So, nice to know how so much has improved!
I’ve commented before about how so many of the media people I knew in 2008 (when I could speak more freely to “rivals” across the country once I had left the business) had serious doubts about whether Americans would vote for a black guy. I was (and remain) rather Pollyanna-ish and asserted that of course America was ready to elect a black guy who was the best man. It was past time to do so, I sez.
Now, I’m starting to get the vibe that getting past the biases to elect a woman, even if Harris was white, is going to be tougher for a lot of Americans to do than electing a black guy. (Not that I have been perfect in my dealings with blacks or women, for sure —I’m a Hispanic guy - but I’ve no problem with them as the boss.)
I still think Harris wins this.
In the short term it's always easier to be selfish like Trump, and in the long term it's always easier to be selfless like Harris.
Is it fair and balanced reporting if you have to put your thumb on the scale to make it so?
I'm stealing this.
This is such an apt description of political journalism of the last 20 years.
Laura Loomer, real, or other?
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fxqreserenn7d1.jpeg
How to decide?
Republicans fear Laura Loomer is influencing Donald Trump,
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/11/2024/republicans-fear-laura-loomer-is-influencing-donald-trump
Laura Loomer is the go to person for when a Stepford wife isn't creepy and disturbing enough.
Aiiieeeeeee!!!! That first link is disturbing. You need a trigger warning for that photo.
You think Loomer's a crazed banshee, have you seen Kimberly Guilfoyle recently?
Mother of God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbM72qoBWh8
What does MAGA do to these people?
That guy is dying for her to tell him to kill somebody.
What the heck did she do to her face???
Is that really her in the first photo? Because it looks like someone wearing a mask. I'm not sure who's worse, her or the person next to her. I can't tell if he's a short man or a kid with a fake mustache. Egads people are weird.
This mainstream media obsession with trying so hard to pretend that all sides are equally good/bad/sane has driven me insane for decades. I once represented my publication at a Newspaper Ethics conference. (I mention in another post on this thread that I’ve always been Pollyanna-ish so I assume my bosses thought “We gotta send someone to an ethics conference. Let’s send goodie-two-shoes.”) And while I was quiet at the presentations (I think I was youngest attendee except for 2 women from npr.), I spent the rest of my time arguing in the hallways with mid-level execs from the big papers about how their “unbiased” reporting didn’t serve the people they are supposed to serve. ((“You mean big business?” I kid)
…. You can see how far I got. Decades later, I still have the overwhelming urge to raise my voice in the face of the few newspaper execs left. Maybe I can make up the difference in numbers by adding broadcast bosses.
Being Pollyanna-ish is being naively optimistic is being cynically pessimistic. Being pragmatically optimistic is the opposite of being Pollyanna-ish.
"You can't fool the children of the revolution." ==T. Rex
Treating every election in exactly the same formulaic way makes their jobs easier. In fact, it's like a vacation for political media because they can just plug in the new names into the old copy. Making the effort to contextualize people and events into a new reality would be a lot more work for the same paycheck. As for the health of our democracy? -- fuck that, it's not MY job.
The NYT has a problem reporting on Harris because as VP, she doesn't have any official duties other than to break ties in the Senate and there haven't been any lately though she has cast 33 of them. That's not controversial though as she just voted with her party. If only she would commit some incredibly heinous crime like using a gmail account to send an official, not classified, email. That would give them something to write about instead of booooorrrring stuff like health care, jobs, foreign policy, social security, abortion, paid leave, the minimum wage, affordable housing, drug and alcohol addiction treatment, etc.
All Harris gives them are some rounding errors.
The real problem is that Harris spent much of her time early in the Biden term 1., as you pointed out, breaking Senate ties, and 2. doing voter outreach to women and minority groups, whom the political press don't consider Real Americans™, so they more or less ignored her. Then when she was catapulted to the top of the ticket, they had to suddenly play catch up and try to figure out what to say about her, and then instead of doing their homework, demanded that she come to *them* and pay proper homage.
The Times is broken.
Jeff Jarvis, What’s become of The Times & Co.?:
He goes on to examine some theories.
For most of the people at the top, it makes no difference who is elected. Their fine lives will continue undisturbed. They, and nobody they know, will suffer. They can afford to be disinterested. In fact, it's in their interest--they can preserve "access".
Take Bob Woodward. Trump all but confessed to him that he was more worried about the economy and his election chances than he was about COVID. Instead of breaking that the very next day, Woodward saved it for his book months later.
No conscience. None.
Through science, relatively stable institutions, and a prolonged period of climate and disease stability, we have built a resilient society. Many elites act as if this must be the way things will continue. COVID killed about 1.3% of the population and ground our society to a halt. Trump's "leadership" at the time was pretty much what you would expect from a stupid and delusional narcissist. What if COVID had killed 10% or more like the Spanish flu? Or had been concentrated in children rather than the elderly? Our society would still be breaking rather than recovering. There is no reason why a worse case scenario won't happen tomorrow, or the day after. Especially as portions of our society cultivates an impenetrable ignorance. The improbable is always possible and to be honest, we do not really even know how improbable things are. But we do know that stupid people who lie constantly will make everything worse. So when I watch the Times play these idiotic games (I think they do it for 'clicks' FWIW), I think about the world my kids might live in if Trump is not defeated. And I wonder if the NYTIMES staff and editors ever think about their kids or grandkids in this context. I want to scream at them "STOP FUCKING AROUND!!!!!"
+1.
"There is no reason why a worse case scenario won't happen tomorrow, or the day after."
Monkey Pox
It's like being able to watch a hurricane or a huge forest fire from a satellite where you can't see the screaming humans or dead bodies or destroyed towns and marvel at how "hauntingly beautiful" the "deadly clouds" are from that distance.
That's how the DC media see Trump. He's a terrifying, destructive storm that they can observe like some kind of horror show that they know they have no part in and that won't really affect them or their cocktail party circuit in any significant way. Like war, he inspires great prose.
I stopped reading the NYT back in '04. It was horseshit 20 years ago.
I quit after all those Judith Miller articles about WMDs, all of which were bullshit but which gave Bush II the cover he needed to attack Iraq.
For the life of me, I can't understand why no one has created a publicly-available, searchable database of every Trump lie indicating the first time he said it (where and when), debunking the lie, the origins, and the number of times he's repeated the lie publicly, serialized, ex. T2024-74.
It'd make everyone's (punditry, media, etc) lives a lot easier to track and point to a serialized catalog of each lie, rather than have to dredge the internet for the history of his lies, and a retort. The starting point would be the day he descended via escalator and into the loving pages of Maggie's publisher.
Call it EveryTrumpLie.com
Toronto Star gave up after 5,276. https://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/
It's close but not exactly what we need. Dale documented each time he lied rather than the number of times Trump lied on the same subject. Even if a lie is slightly different than a prior one, it does not need to be separately documented as a new lie; count it as a repeated lie and add an addendum to explain the variation.
Documenting Trumps lies would be a monumental task for any
one. He lies without thinking for the most part. It's a natural reflex, something he probably can't control.
Yeah, that's why I think it should be a crowdsourced effort. But first, someone needs to be the Wikipedia creator of the EveryTrumpLie.com database.
But the NYT has the resources to do it, and should do it, IF it cared at all.
"... I can't understand why no one has created a publicly-available, searchable database of every Trump lie ..."
Yes, it is surprising.
WaPo published this three years ago:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
Seem unlinkely they will do it again.
It's probably been tried, but the servers kept crashing...
I think the answer is in the sheer number of lies. Even with the best of computer assistance, the project you seek would take MANY person-hours to put together, and if the persons doing the job are paid the resulting data base would be expensive, with little prospect of a return on the investment. The only organization that might benefit enough to make the project worthwhile is the Democratic Party, and they have other things occupying their attention.
The best strategy would be to dismiss, not document or respond to. At this point there are few people outside his cult that believe anything he says anyway.
Given that his "cult" consists of 40-45% of US voters, I think paying attention to him is still worthwhile.
True, but they won't believe any fact check. You're never going to convince his base that he's been lying to them. Dismissing the lies out of hand is the best strategy. I think it worked well for Harris during the debate. The best thing is it hammer him on his policies and the lack there of. Her surrogates and supporters should though. They have more free time to waste on the endeavor.
For what it’s worth, pollster Frank Luntz tells Piers Morgan this about Trump:
“I’m trying to decide if I want to go on record and the answer is yes,” he told Piers Morgan on Wednesday. “I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frank-luntz-trump-debate_n_66e28d10e4b055a0b2a515ad
Does trump really want another chance to do better?
Not sure if he does want one or not. His campaign staff probably fears another one. She showed him she's not afraid of him from the start. He's not used to having an interaction with people he can't dominate in some way. I think that's what threw him off at first, that handshake. The things she did to trigger him after completed the job.
Comedian Taylor Tomlinson, whom I like a little more every time I see her, on the media and “undecided voters” after the debate. (Paraphrase) “If Kamala had said let’s give everyone a hundred dollars and then Trump responded I’m gonna fill every American home with locust, the headlines would be like “Candidates present different visions for the future.” ….. I do feel bad for all the undecided voters watching this debate, because, how embarrassing for you. … When is lunchtime? Are you, like, hmmmm, I could eat a sandwich, or I could just chew on some broken glass. I’m undecided. Let’s hear both sides. “
“Candidates present different visions for the future.” best i've heard yet. yes he is still naked.
John Cole at Balloon Juice famously made a similar analogy some years ago about how Congressional Democrats and Republicans could "work together" to find compromise: you and your date are talking about where to go for dinner. You suggest a little Italian place and she insists on tire rims and anthrax.
The media, of course, would be insisting that these were two equally serious parties discussing culinary tastes and that the botulism carbonara might be a good workaround.
a lot of media people can't see the forest for the trees. One of these candidates is not like the other. Seems important.
“Kamala should totally do more interviews with people who go out of their way to disprove or discredit anything she says.”
“Why is Kevin Drum not a political campaign manager?”
“Correct for $100! The judges also would’ve accepted ‘What is a fool’s errand?’”
All this reminds me how Joe Biden had good reason to not agree to the interview that the NYT editor wanted - even though it cost him dearly when Clooney shamelessly used the Times to publicly embarrass Biden.
I have little more respect for that publication than for any of the Murdoch trash.
"when Clooney shamelessly used the Times to publicly embarrass Biden"
Clooney clearly pushed for the right thing and helped get us to the right place. I mean, does the "just shut up and support Joe" crowd still think that would have been better?
This is why I hit the Pitchbot before the Times. It's like a digest of inanity, and so close it's eerie.
https://nitter.poast.org/DougJBalloon
Reminds me (iirc) of Glenn Kessler's "fact check" of Biden earlier this year claiming that Trump suggested people inject bleach into their bodies or insert uv light into themselves somehow to cure Covid. It was something along the lines of Three Pinocchios: "Trump never said to inject bleach; he mused that if people could somehow get bleach inside their body, it would help get rid of the Covid." Trump was, technically, completely open to alternate methods of introducing bleach into the body, I suppose. Such as orally.
Must. Bothsides everything. At. All.... Costs.
Democrat: "Trump is the leader of a cult. You heard him yourself. He said he could kill someone on 5th Avenue and his followers would still vote for him."
NYT/WaPo Fact Check: "Mostly False. Donald Trump once said he could 'shoot somebody' on 5th Avenue and not lose voters. He did not say he could 'kill' them. He may have intended only to wound them. He also didn't specify what he would use to shoot them, a gun or a camera. Taking photos on 5th Avenue outside Trump Tower is a popular pastime for his followers, and he may just wanted them to have a few good memories to take home from their visit to New York."
God I hate the NY Times. Fox News at least I get it, you’re peddling resentment and race-hatred so this is your time and this is your guy, but the Times is so goddam full of priggish virtue as it ignores the obvious idiocy of one candidate while treating a misconfigured email server as the scoop of the decade. It terrifies me that these blinkered idiots have so much power.
Yes, these are trivial in comparison to Trump's whopping disrepresentations, but consider the Times' alternatives.
Can the Times simply say, "We found candidate Harris made no significant misstatements"?
That would leave the Times open to conservatives digging up any one of this niggling misstatements and waving it around to prove that the Times is in the tank for Harris.
Can the Times point to a few disputed claims and find totally in Harris's favor? Well, yes, I suppose that's possible. But then they'd be pressed to find some kernel of truth somewhere in Trump's statements.
Yeah. I know. Treating Trump as a normal candidate is a mook's games. Whatcha gonna do?
As Trump would not be fact checked if he said today the moon was made of green cheese and that the Chinese were making the cheese and therefore on day one he will impose a "moon tariff" so that good old American Cheese has a fighting chance.
And as Harris gets called on the difference between 800 million or whatever and 1 billion (and by the way, I bet the 1 billion is already authorized).
I cannot see why she should worry, at all about interviews, as the game being played gives her no advantage since her opponent has literally a zero standard for any statement made. I tried to come up with the most ridiculous one I could think of for Trump and its just barely more crazy than Hatians eating pet cats.
Hah!
Here's a chart of who got the last word on every topic in the debate,
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ff3qfr/oc_visualization_of_which_presidential_candidate/
Just as you fucking thought.
You could make a chart like this for every presidential debate of the last thirty years and it be almost identical.
And the shit-stained monkey population are complaining it's all rigged against them.
Read the NYT every day, not sure what you guys read but it is a an incredibly informative paper. Most opp Ed’s are liberal with occasional GOP creeps…Guess I generally ignore political coverage or I’m just used to it. It probably is the single most educational thing I have ever read and been reading since it since I was 10 years old. I don’t agree with everything but it is well worth the price. My thoughts anyway…
Harris said 1 trillion over the last 4 years and the fact checker dings her since its only been 700 billion over last 32 months. Apparently the reporter was too stupid to notice the difference between 4 years and 2 and 2/3rds year.