221–230 of 596 posts
I guess you can applaud Trump for taking the high ground here, but what he should have done is fired NPR and PBS's leadership and replaced them with rightwing equivalents. Maybe then Democrats would finally understand why it's so offensive to use taxpayer money to fund political propaganda.
The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FDR's major lasting accomplishments that people praise him for were through legislation. Even things like the threat to pack the court would have happened through legislation. There are some highly visible examples of direct executive action that I hope everyone today sees as authoritarian (japanese internment being the really big one). But FDR's expansion of the executive is the opposite of what Trump is doing. Trum…
> Trump is acting in opposition to the legislation that directs the executive to have its finger in more pies. is that so true? i don't doubt that in probably 10-20% of the cases this is so, but i would bet that in the vast majority of cases the legislation as written is flexible enough that picking an amount of action that is zero is within the bounds of the law. i am watching trump carefully for the moment when he…
I watch/listen to a variety of news sources - CNN, Fox News, NPR, NYTimes, WSj, as well as a number of smaller podcasts and substacks. There are no longer "unbiased" news sources, all sources have moved to either the left or right. I used to have respect for NPR, today it is, to me, the Fox News of the left, and no different than other sources. I do not have a problem with that, it is what it is. But it should not be…
> the Fox News of the left When I watch Fox News it's usually pretty easy to spot several things that are simply made-up per day. Including entire stories. You hear much of that on NPR? [EDIT] FWIW I think NPR news is god-awful, because they focus way too much on horse-race politics crap and Monday-morning quarterbacking campaigns, I suppose because they're so scared shitless by accusations of bias that they prefer t…
The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…
> Right now I have some faith the courts in the US will stand up to this I think "the guardrails will hold" thinking is flawed when you have someone who is willing to completely side step the system and push the limits. We're not actually sure what holding someone from this administration in contempt even looks like functionally since U.S. marshals are under the DOJ.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it crazy that the supposed 'biased media' directly targets PBS who I know from watching children's shows as well as NOVA (it's been going for 51 seasons). These shows don't scream biased to me, they scream educational.
Education to the uneducated (or those who would prefer we remain uneducated in the face of power) can easily cast any education as "biased" against their purposes. Most people see through that for what it is, but an increasing population of Americans don't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say this as a firm conservative. The courts have so far been outstanding, despite all the inappropriate pressure. I have no doubt they will continue to be. I'm also quite impressed with conservative voters who are speaking out to their conservative representatives. Ultimately though, despite many many calls not to do so, Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned…
The funny thing is, that the GOP is not "conservative," in any way, whatsoever. They are extreme. The definition of "conservative" means "not-extreme." It is not just "not-liberal." It means being thoughtful, cautious, sticking with the mainstream, learning from the past, not discarding learned wisdom, etc. Things like anti-abortion, hate-brown-people, put-women-back-in-the-kitchen-or-the-bedroom etc. stuff is often…
The word that describes them the best is reactionary. As a political ideology it fell out of favour some time in the late 19th, early 20th century with the fall of the various reactionary regimes (Austria under Metternich, Imperial Russia).
But the GOP, and some other parties looking to them for inspiration, are reactionary. They are opposed to any social progress and want to go back.
The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…
I say this as a firm conservative. The courts have so far been outstanding, despite all the inappropriate pressure. I have no doubt they will continue to be. I'm also quite impressed with conservative voters who are speaking out to their conservative representatives. Ultimately though, despite many many calls not to do so, Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned…
They could have done a bit better with their voting decisions, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To wit, during the BLM riots of 2020, NPR published a piece on how looting was a legitimate form of protest. I mark that as the moment they lost both my trust and my attention. A very sad, eye opening moment for me.
Was it this? On August 27, 2020, Natalie Escobar for Code Switch interviewed Vicky Osterweil about her book In Defense Of Looting. The segment was titled "One Author's Argument 'In Defense Of Looting'", and was subsequently retitled "One Author's Controversial View: 'In Defense Of Looting'". https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178... https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vicky-osterweil/in-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's insane to me how many people argued with me that Project 2025 was democrat propaganda to smear Trump. Both online here on Hacker News and in person.
The thing is, people are expecting that campaign promises are pointless blathering. That's what led many people to believe it will be just the same this time.
Some examples on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505433
> It’s “real” in the same way as Steele Dossier was real.
> As far as I can tell it’s just a smear device along the lines of “when did you stop beating your wife”, or fake “dossier”, or “Russian collusion”
And even if you were dumb enough to think "this is just puffery, he wouldn't do things this terrible", why are you voting for the guy arguing he's going to do terrible things?!