Waitin’ to start debatin’

27/6/24 bryanlsplinter 34

Well, I am having fun. My Internet has been out for over five hours now, so I’m using my hotspot. Do bear with me.

No, I do not think the Tangerine Traitor will show up for the debate. But if he does, boy, this should be good.

This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. And I live in Florida.

‘They’re cloning people now’: QAnon prepares for first presidential debate

Alito argues for letting women die.

Read the leaked Supreme Court emergency abortion decision

Well, it’s worth a … no, let’s not go there. It’s worth a try.

House Democrats try bypassing GOP to force gun vote

Thoughts and prayers.

Cadet Bone Spurs? Flee in fear? NEVER

Will Trump chicken out of the presidential debate? Probably. He’s a Grade-A coward.

Progress.

LGBTQ+ officeholders nearly triple since 2017, report finds

Sprots.

Now 99, the oldest living Negro leaguer ‘never thought they would recognize me’

Turtle news. Even DeSantis gets something right occasionally.

Florida’s Balloon Ban Will Protect Sea Turtles, Birds and Other Marine Life

There you have it, friends. What’s on your mind? Are you going to be glued to the television tonight? Will I get my Internet back? What burning issues concern you today? Let’s hear it.

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34 Comments

    • Good question. I dug around there a bit. Overall, audiences are simply dropping across all media. I suspect many are just going to social media rather than news sites, and that’s pretty siloed. But:

      YOY Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Right Wing News Websites for May 2024

      (by unique visitor percentage increase/decrease from year ago)

      Winners

      –The Gateway Pundit (+103%)

      –Hannity.com (+66%)

      –RedState (+14%)

      Losers

      –Daily Signal (-80%)

      –The Federalist (-79%)

      –Washington Examiner (-72%)

    • As someone in the media and obliged to pay some attention to this, a few things to keep in mind that I’m not saying are or aren’t the reason, but are worth considering with all these numbers:

      • lots of people read a few headlines on social media rather than check on actual media and call it a day
      • Google very explicitly (and social media as well, but to a slightly lesser degree) have depressed news and “news” and even news-adjacent propaganda for a bunch of reasons that may or may not make sense
      • increasing numbers of people are too busy, too overwhelmed or too disinterested to spend time on news sites
      • historically the number of people who read news is actually closer to how things look now than how they looked in 2020 (or in the 90s and 00s)
      • paywalls are a major barrier to bring in new readers
      • the media has gone through years of cuts and cutbacks and people can recognize a diminished product and treat it as such
      • media ownership is a giant shitshow of billionaires, private equity and failsons

      In short, I don’t think there’s A problem — I think ownership is the biggest but it’s not the only one — but there are a lot of things that go into it and without some sort of major reset, it’s going to keep trending this way.

      • Facebook and Google have done the same thing to the news business that they’ve done to all kinds of online outlets. They decided their best interests are now in directing traffic to, who knows, dog videos instead of disagreements on Capitol Hill, just like they once decided collegehumor.com shouldn’t keep getting boosted.

        News execs didn’t anticipate this was possible, though, because getting to your last point they’re rich guys with incredibly blinkered and entitled points of view.

  4. I’ve always appreciated the right’s capacity for cognitive dissonance: Biden’s a sunsetting idiot incapable of saying a full sentence or tying his shoes BUT is also an all-powerful dictator single-handedly reshaping America and a cunning, unstoppable orator in a debate setting. Just tell me which one I should be afraid of!

    • That’s covered in the QAnon thread. There are at least three Bidens at any given time. This is accomplished through a. cloning b. lifelike masks or c. body doubles (for the less fanciful). Each one shows a different personality — so you can get smart Biden, sleepy Biden (no, I don’t know why they’d trot out that one) or goofy Biden. I think. I kinda lost track.

      Anyway, all of them are a. hopped up on performance enhancing drugs, some using insulin pumps. They are also equipped with cyborg technology and head’s up contact lenses to feed them answers in public settings.

      Oh, yeah, and Trump is still the real president and he’s engineered this Biden takeover so he can rule from behind the scenes for … reasons. Twelfth dimensional chess reasons.

      It’s all fake, sheeple!

      Read the thread. I should not be the only one whose IQ dropped 30 points today.

  5. This is insane framing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/trump-poll-hush-money-conviction.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2k0.0kEv.0vd9UsoJs57E&smid=url-share

    If polls are important — and the NYT believes this even if I don’t — then how does a poll showing **20%** of independents are much less likely to vote for Trump post-conviction in a race that they keep telling me is a razor-thin toss-up not merit even a mention within the headline/subhead/first 10 paragraphs of the story?

    If Trump loses like 2% of those independents, he’s in big trouble. If he loses 20%? He’s losing North Carolina and Alaska and Florida, and Texas is completely in play.

    (And as always: If there was a poll showing Biden down 20% next week with independents, it would be on the front page for 6 straight weeks.)

  6. The earpiece thing at debates has been going on for a long time.  The only one I have taken seriously was the time George Bush actually answered his handlers during a debate & everyone was trying to figure out who he was talking to…

    https://www.truthorfiction.com/bush-wired/

    Do you think he knew something we didn’t?

    https://www.rawstory.com/south-korea-administrative-robot-defunct-after-apparent/

    This is a VERY big thing!

    https://www.the-express.com/news/health/141391/bird-flu-finland-vaccinations-humans

     

  9. My wild guess is that Trump shows up, stays awake, doesn’t poke himself in the eye, and says a few vaguely coherent things. Biden stays in presidential mode and makes a straightforward pitch. The pundit spin will be this is the day Trump won the election.

    A week or so later the evidence will be that Trump’s support continued to soften because Biden shored up a bit more of his base and Trump’s base is still finding it hard to care. But the press will pivot to saying Trump was the winner because something something expectations game.

    • That’s basically it. Biden has to deliver detailed explanations with aplomb and decorum, just to get the press to grudgingly say he did okay. Trump can sputter stupidly about windmills and battery-powered shark attacks and as long as he manages to put subjects and verbs together, the press will hail him as a orator that would eclipse Lincoln.

    • I think I’m going to win the debate because tonight I’m going to grill some chicken and make a vaguely Greek-ish cucumber salad. Then, I’m trotting out the mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dinner over, we will retreat to the bed and watch BritBox.

  10. welp…we now has a three legged candy cat….and mildly put shes not a very happy kitty at mo….she did just climb on to the windowsill tho (the neighbours probably heard her do it,…but she got there)

    asides from obviously still being in pain….she mostly seems really really pissed off at the cone of shame

    welp……as i was typing that…she sprinted across the room…which shes really not supposed to be doing……but i guess that missing leg isnt gonna slow her down much…

    now i need to figure out how to get her to just go to fucking sleep for an hour or 8

    • Those cones stink. I have clear memories of dogs who just couldn’t figure out how much more clearance they needed, and kept catching the edges on door frames and things they wanted to jump on.

      • yeah….candy doesnt seem to quite grasp needing more room than her whiskers whidth now…

         

        she doing the old computer game ai thing of getting stuck on corners

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