In an age when we are inundated with information from all sides with little time to carefully digest all of it, it should not be a surprise to find that people often read just the headline and the opening sentences of an article before deciding that they agree with the contents and forward it to others. Twitter is making an attempt to discourage this practice.
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Every election cycle, the media fixates on two demographic groups that they claim are central to the success of either political party and towards whom they should pitch their messages. One is white working class men and the other is white middle-class women. Why these two groups are singled out for special attention is a mystery to me but seems to be based on the assumption that they are the most persuadable to switch from one party to another and hence worth targeting. I am not fully convinced that they are more persuadable than other groups since such analyses are usually based on historical data and may not be currently applicable.
For example, the conventional wisdom is that white working class men used to be a strong Democratic constituency that switched to the Republicans following the civil rights era of the 1960ss while white middle-class women used to be strongly Republican but now are peeling away from them. But the key fact is that both targeted groups are white and not poor, which explains why the concerns of the poor and minorities tend to get put on the backburner during election time, which in the US is pretty much all the time.
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According to the polls as of today, Donald Trump would lose handily to Joe Biden. But Michael Moore warns that Democrats may be getting suckered into complacency like they were in 2016, and that there is a real risk of them losing again.
The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.
“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.
Moore, who was one of few political observers to predict Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, said that “enthusiasm for Trump is off the charts” in key areas compared with the Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden.
“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore posted on Facebook late on Friday.
Moore identified opinion polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan to make a case that the sitting president is running alongside or ahead of his rival.
“The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?” Moore wrote, presumably indicating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race when she made the error of avoiding some states that then swung to Trump.
During the Obama administration, the US was one of the six signatories to the deal signed with Iran regarding its nuclear program. Once Trump came into office, his goal seemed to be to repeal everything that his predecessor had done and so the US walked away from the deal. But now the US wants to invoke one of the provisions of the deal that requires the UN to re-impose sanctions on Iran after they expire on October 30 that would be obligatory on all member states.
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He talks about what is going on right now as Trump and his lackeys stoke fear and racism during the RNC convention. He shows how the Kenosha police department was in league with the heavily armed white militia that went to Kenosha. The murderer who killed two people and injured a third was one of those people and the police just ignored him as he walked towards them, even though people were yelling that he had just killed a man.
So to sum up: an unarmed black man who has not committed any crime can be shot multiple times in the back and killed by the police as he walks away, but a heavily armed white man who has just killed someone will be ignored by the police even as he walks towards them.
This is Trump’s America.
Here is Colbert letting loose.
I said in an earlier post three weeks ago, after Jerry Falwell posted a photograph of him holding a drink with his pants unzipped and his arm around the waist of a woman who also had her pants unzipped, that I suspected that such reckless behavior by someone who publicly professed a highly puritanical code and demanded that students at Liberty University live by it under threat of strict punishment, may be a sign that he and his wife were secretly ‘swingers’, people who lived a libertine sexual lifestyle.
That indeed turns out that is the case as Falwell’s wife Becki’s lover reveals more and more details that what went on was more than your run-of-the-mill clandestine affair.
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I think that it has become very clear that Facebook is the source of much of the dangerous disinformation that is spreading rapidly across the world. And this can result in real harm. One example is that of Erin Hitchens, a 46-year old woman who died from complications of covid-19 because she and her husband thought the virus was a hoax and so they disregarded all the recommended precautions. Her husband now regrets their foolishness.
A Florida taxi driver, who believed false claims that coronavirus was a hoax, has lost his wife to Covid-19.
Brian Lee Hitchens and his wife, Erin, had read claims online that the virus was fabricated, linked to 5G or similar to the flu.
The couple didn’t follow health guidance or seek help when they fell ill in early May. Brian recovered but his 46-year-old wife became critically ill and died this month from heart problems linked to the virus.
…Erin, a pastor in Florida, had existing health problems – she suffered from asthma and a sleeping disorder.
Her husband explained that the couple did not follow health guidance at the start of the pandemic because of the false claims they had seen online.
Brian continued to work as a taxi driver and to collect his wife’s medicine without observing social distancing rules or wearing a mask.
They had also failed to seek help as soon as possible when they fell ill in May and were both subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19.
…Brian said he and his wife didn’t have one firm belief about Covid-19. Instead, they switched between thinking the virus was a hoax, linked to 5G technology, or a real, but mild ailment. They came across these theories on Facebook.
It was four years ago yesterday that Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. At that time, he was pretty much a lone voice and because of that act of peaceful protest, he lost his career and was vilified by many, including Trump. But the events of the past year, especially since the killing of George Floyd, have changed things. Now more and more professional athletes are not just speaking out or kneeling but taking action.
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