385 Comments

Truth is meaningless.

"And it blows a hole in the MAGAville argument that Harris is the one getting the kid glove treatment from the fourth estate."

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Human trafficking forces many defenseless people into prostitution, and yet Brett Baier has freely chosen to turn to journalism into "the oldest profession"

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Bret's treatment of Harris was downright disrespectful and rude. I changed the channel after about 5 minutes.

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Curious if it bothered Bret Baier to relinquish his credibility as FoxNews n Infotainment's "one true hard news journalist." Yes, his questions were legitimate, but by slipping in editorials for Trump and continually talking over Harris it was clear he set aside any professional standards and was taking marching orders from above.

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founding

I’m about to pull an Elvis and shoot my TV. CNN is showing the Trump’s entire speech at the Al Smith dinner without interruption. Kamala made a mistake by not going, but to show this man droning on for close to an hour uninterrupted is absolutely unfair and disgusting.

They showed a single shot of him surrounded by a bunch of people laughing along as this Fascist stared down at his script and struggled through a bunch of lame jokes.

And then to feature one of his apologists, who explicitly excused Trumps racist statements by saying Trump has just been kidding, along with a “Republican Strategist” in the discussion afterwards. I’m blocking CNNNon my remote.

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founding

My new position is "F*%k CNN". They are truly hopeless.

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Brings tears to my eyes to read those quotes. We have to stand together. But alas, Republican Propaganda on Twitter and Fox News and so many right wing outlets have provided millions of Americans with an alternate reality that is almost impossible to combat. and the actual "FAIR" press has not figured out a way to deal with one party that tells endless lies! they still want to talk about the "horse race" instead of the fight of our lives.

If we make it through this battle, THAT is what needs to be addressed on day 1, or this will become a challenge that will eventually become insurmountable.

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Frickin' love the Thomas Paine quote. Thank you. I needed that. It's so true. We are now fighting at THAT level. We should be proud, and fight to our last breath. It's that important.

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I watched the clip where she talks about Trump saying he’d turn the military on the American people. I couldn’t help but think of JVLs “no more excuses left” piece from yesterday.

If his supporters can watch that and say they want a “strong man” for president because he’ll protect “us,” we’ll know what they really mean. Some of them don’t care that she’s tough and could hold her own against world leaders and lobbyists. What they *really* want is what Trump has said—for him to beat down their fellow Americans. It’s just a matter of how many will show up to the polls to make that clear to the rest of us.

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I truly believe that Murdoch has caused more damage to the world than any human in history.

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Without Russia there'd be no Murdoch & without Murdoch there's no Trump.

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I kept having flashbacks to the the debate with DT. Baier kept trying to talk over her, throw gotcha grenades and try to strip away her verbal command of her positions. Typical bully tactics. But just as she routed DT, she kept going, and fighting. If nothing else, her adversaries need to grudgingly admit she's got tremendous guts, after all. And cannot be thrown off her game into any kind of quiet defeat. She wouldn't be rolled. Nor is she "dumb", as some have opined. All of that sounds kind of good in a president.

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Good news everyone!. Bill is right to be positive. Harris is going to build on her 'boldness' momentum. Even the skies agree - her horoscope for this weekend as she celebrates her 60th birthday....... "You can have an easy life if you want it. Just choose not to rise to any challenges. Decide not to do anything difficult. Resolve not to desire anything that's beyond your reach, and instead, be content with what you've got. Voila! That's the recipe to follow. Notice, that we're talking about an easy life. Not a meaningful one. Or a happy one. Or a satisfying one. Since you need to feel fulfilled, you need to walk close to the edge sometimes. And take occasional risks. This weekend brings opportunities that deserve to be taken. Be bold!".... See? She's gonna keep bringin' it. She can't do more than that.

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I really liked Kamala Harris's retort to her tormentor "and you and I both know that."

Enough with "fact checking". Fact checking is for when a politician says he created 6 million jobs and we can check to see if it really was 6 million or only 4 million. MAGA is just engaging in lies as propaganda. Or you could call it the art of BSing taken to an evil extreme. As "Catlady" Vance just came out and said, eating cats and dogs has nothing to do with whether or not it is true, it is a method to drive the media to cover conflicts due to immigration. The question is not what the facts are, the question is "are you lying directly to my face or are you dangerously delusional?" I think for MAGA it is a bit of both.

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"Fact checking is for when a politician says he created 6 million jobs and we can check to see if it really was 6 million or only 4 million. MAGA is just engaging in lies as propaganda. "

THIS! Our media have no idea how to deal with the fire hose of sh*t.

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founding
Oct 17·edited Oct 17

Great, abso-fucking-lutely great "Cheap Shots" today. The expressions on the questioner's face and on those in the audience as the camera panned the room are priceless. But the salient question is: After this, are they voting for Trump or not?

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"(Though we continue to maintain it would have been smart for Harris to do this all along!)"

Sounds a lot like something Trump would say.

Just saying

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Oct 17·edited Oct 17

A few random thoughts on polling.

People need to have more realistic views on what polls are showing. Much of the problem is that the media constantly misrepresents what the margin of error represents. The MOE represents how far each number can be off. It represents a range. If the poll is Trump 50, Harris 45, with a 3 point MOE, that means Trump's range is 53-47 and Harris' is 48-42. Harris could actually be ahead 48-47 (though it's unlikely). The media though will WRONGLY say the 5 point Trump lead is outside the MOE. If you're going to use the MOE for the difference between the candidate's numbers, you pretty much have to double it.

Second, pollsters are constantly making adjustments to their methodology to be more accurate. In 2016 and 2020, they underestimated the Trump vote. So, this election cycle most pollsters have adopted a controversial approach called "weighted recall vote." When they conduct the poll, they also ask who they recall voting for in 2020. People who say they are 2020 Trump voters have their 2024 opinion weighted more heavily. So, let's say you have 100 Harris supporters in the poll, but only 95 Trump supporters. The pollster using "weighted recall vote" might weight the Trump supporters enough so that Trump and Harris are even in the polls.

My guess is that Harris' numbers are going to be a bit better than they are in the polls. But that's barely more than a guess. The truth is nobody knows what's going to happen.

The number one difficulty pollsters have is knowing who is going to show up to vote. They screen to try to determine those likely voters, but they have only modest success doing so. There are elections in which one side shows up and the other side doesn't, producing a landslide when a close election was expected. You just don't know. I do know though that this election is all about turnout...who is best at identifying their people and getting them to the polls. I am a bit surprised this function (called get out the vote or GOTV) was farmed out by Trump to groups like Turning Point USA. The one thing political people are good at is GOTV.

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my guess, we lose a squeaker, or we win in a blow out.

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I normally think well of Bret Baier. But I gotta say that this was not one of his better performances. He asked questions, that Fox viewers would think are straight forward "yes or No", but actually require some context to give a meaningful answer. Whether or not she may have been trying to evade the early immigration questions, or to give an answer with context, we will never know as he cut her off before we could find out. He should have let her give her answer, then if she evaded, he could then push back.

He constantly said that "critics say", however, rather then give valid critical concerns, he often gave a righting BS talking point. Instead, he could have said that many of our viewers have questions for you based upon assertions of republican politicians. He can then state some of these questions/assertions and then ask if she wants to respond to some of those assertions that she may feel are not accurate.

His question about the deaths of the women from undocumented was a horrible question, or at least framed in a horrible way, for a journalist to ask. I say this because journalists should ask questions seeking to get information, this question isn't designed to get information.

The clip he showed on Trump's comment, was a very poor journalistic way to get into a discussion about his 'enemy within' comments. Something she could have said is "What you just saw there is how Trump turns everything into a self centered 'woe, is me' pity party. The get into the response that she gave.

I'm not sure just what Bret's goal was, because he did a bad job if his goal was to have a meaningful and informative discussion of some issues. A journalist should strive to extract information. Creating an adversarial situation won't achieve this. You can be dogged in holding an interviewee's feet to the fire, without being unnecessarily confrontational. I give Harris a B, and Bret a D.

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" Something she could have said is "What you just saw there is how Trump turns everything into a self centered 'woe, is me' pity party." This is actually quite good and something I hope she can have on automatic for similar occasions. Although I'm amazed how well she did in real time.

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founding

Baier is a sleazeball. Remember when all the dirt came out in the Dominion lawsuit about how Baier was trying to slow down announcing Biden as the winner of the election because it would negatively impact Fox viewership: https://www.mediamatters.org/bret-baier/bret-baier-wants-move-past-dominion-revelations-they-should-follow-him-rest-his-career

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Oct 17·edited Oct 17

Moi aussi. Bret did not distinguish himself.

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