Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone (Post 522682)

It's crazy town out here in recreational land. Weed is as cheap or cheaper than it was when I was in high school, and instead of "you holding?", I can choose from a candy store's variety of high-quality flower. Plus concentrates, edibles, etc. And I can get high at our holiday party with partners, staff, and my COO. Good times!

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 522674)

As Madeleine Albright said, there is always room in the world for mediocre white men.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 522678)

You should read more carefully, without assuming I'm writing from a party-supporter perspective.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 522681)

I'm going to pull the William A. Henry card here (certain views, even though evidence can be adduced to support them, are simply not allowed to compete with others... See: Climate Change debate). We cannot debate whether the media was significantly anti-Trump. There must be a laddering of conclusions on this subject in which the argument that the media is not largely biased against Trump is thrown into or near the sphere of deviancy, many rungs below the obvious reality that, yes, the media is biased against Trump, and most other Republicans, and the only valid issue to debate is to what degree.

And no, that the media helped Trump by giving him free press is not a rebuttal to that issue. The media did assist him, while also detesting him. He was and remains their greatest pinata. Hoist him up, whip him, all roll in the ratings!



Ah, but I didn't say that. Thus your argument that follows is in your head. Decide on that as you like. I'm not pro hac'd in the jurisdiction



Vox is very much major media. It's widely read and widely cited in all sorts of media, both major and small.



Agreed. That's not major media. But like Vox, to a lesser extent, however, it is widely cited.



I'll refer you back to my opening statement here. If you argue that WaPo and NYTimes are not biased against Trump (and NYTimes biased against Republicans generally) you're in the sphere of deviancy. Taibbi is not making this argument up out of whole cloth. It's admitted even among the media itself that WaPo is in a cold war with Trump. And the NYTimes punishes Trump in both its OpEd pages and the slant of its news stories almost daily. As it punished Bush II almost daily. (Krugman is a celebrity because he decided to leave economics and bash Bush for eight straight years.) Taibbi does not have the burden of proof. His argument, obvious as it is, holds a position five or six rungs above yours. Using Henry's measurement - that ideas must be scored from elite to lunatic - Taibbi's is within the lower end of the elite category. Yours is in the "we could do just as well to ignore this as humor it" zone.

Taibbi is blunt because he can afford to be, because anyone reading his assessment is aware of the obvious volumes of evidence supporting it. He needn't repeat the obvious. You've had to parse considerably to find a way to attack it.

But I will credit you this criticism of Taibbi. He steps too far when he asserts that Russiagate was a hoax from the start. That's not true. I disagree with him there. The evidence shows Museller's investigation was initiated based on valid concerns. Where Taibbi is unassailable is in stating that the press took this investigation and hyperbolized it more than any other story in recent memory. Which is the same point I've made elsewhere, several times.

Trump will be found in all things he does to be a bungling villain of sorts. He cannot help but be so. It's his essential character. And he is so here. But if we let the press off the hook for pumping this into something it never was, for cynically whipping the easily persuaded into thinking this was Worse than Watergate, we're letting a far more diabolical villain off the hook.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 522688)

The media tilts left and is more critical of Republicans. It's also more critical of hawks. Hillary got criticism as a perceived hawk.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 522693)

I know this is popular mythology on the right, and god knows you have the critical capacity of an ant when it comes to right-wing mythologies, but the traditional print media has always been hard-core centrist, tending to the center-right or center-left depending on local political preferences (see the Dallas News versus the Boston Globe) and who is in charge at a given time. This is because traditional print media is all about access.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 522640)

I have no doubt they're dying, I just hope they don't take too many of us down with them.

They're the party of the robber barrons and of the part of our economy that doesn't work. They may just take down the part that does out of envy and bitterness.

But Shanghai is nice.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 522686)

Am I the only one alive who doesn't watch this show?

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 522694)

It's also because of the fundamental economics of print. Printing presses are expensive. Print media is a business with relatively high fixed costs and relatively low marginal costs. Most newspaper markets tend to be highly concentrated, often with only one or two newspapers. Most people buy newspapers for local news. For example, for decades San Francisco had the Chronicle and the Examiner, and then the Examiner couldn't keep up and there is now only one paper in town. If you are running a newspaper in this context, then the journalistic imperative is centrist -- try to appeal to everybody, so as not to lose any readers and sell as many advertisements as you can. If you win that space, no one will threaten your franchise. So the news coverage is centrist and inoffensive. Most publishers are wealthy and skew conservative, so the editorial pages of most newspapers skew conservative, but usually not so much as might lose readers and advertisers. We have very few national newspapers, because people buy paper's for local news. The NYT is one, because it's the country's biggest city and can support better coverage. The WSJ is another, because it caters to business news. The WaPo has become one recently, but it has always been primarily the local newspaper for the capital -- no one subscribed to it outside DC until the internet made that possible. Traditional print journalism evolved within this paradigm.



Traditional TV news was much like traditional print, for similar reasons. It's expensive to run TV stations and the profit is high on the margins. Traditional TV networks all wanted mass audiences. Cable started changing this in TV before the internet changed it for newspapers.



There is an interesting conversation to be had about the way the press covers politics. And then there's right-wing grievance and cynical working off the refs.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 522684)

For some reason the med places are centered on 8 Mile Road. The other day driving about 10 miles I saw a dozen. One was out of business. A guy selling cannabis went out of business?

We are working with oil extraction machine manufacturers. There's the dollars.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 522746)

A friend of mine hasn't slept in two years because he runs a company that testing lab in Colorado, and he is one of the only ones that does it. He's called as an expert all the time. On the side, he's extracting oil and breaking down all of the cannabinoids (it's not just TCH and CBD in there).

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 522746)

A friend of mine hasn't slept in two years because he runs a company that testing lab in Colorado,

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 522749)

WaPo,