Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

As I said, some of it is aging out. So a little fall is one thing. Why has it taken a nose-dive in the last seven years?

 

I would disagree that it's taken a "nose dive."

And I would disagree that it's some measure of economic well being. The number is still higher than it ever was from 1948-1979, a pretty good period of growth for this country.

 

When Supreme Leader Ugg The Many (But Not All) Teeth held the reins in 6148 BC, times were great. I know that because the labor force participation rate was 100% ...

 

Dan Rather is PISSED now ...

Donald Trump’s disdain, mockery, and antagonism of the press, whose freedoms are enshrined in the Bill of Rights and whose presence has provided ballast to our democracy since its inception, raises very serious questions about his fitness for the presidency of the United States.

For a long while, these thoughts have been coursing through my veins with concern and disbelief, and yet my abiding loyalty to the notion of fair, accurate and unbiased journalism held me in check from saying it out loud – much as I suspect it has muzzled the true feelings of many of my colleagues. But we must remember that Donald Trump knows this and cynically plays the press corps’ deep desire for fairness to his undeserved benefit. The latest, barring the traveling press from covering an event and using them as ridicule in a speech, are but the most recent chapters in a novel full of outrageous acts. And this sentiment apparently extends to members of his own family as witnessed by his daughter Ivanka’s actions in an interview with Cosmo.

I am well aware that I will be met with bile and venom for saying this, called a communist, a liberal in bed with Hillary Clinton, a washed-up joke. To quote Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Let others attack my motives. My conscience is clean. This is not about partisan politics, about who is right on immigration or gun control. This is about the very machinery that has allowed our American experiment to persist and thrive, a machinery which is far more fragile than we would like to believe.

Trump’s relationship with the press is at the heart of so much that is troubling about his candidacy - the secrecy, the lack of transparency on something as normal as tax returns, the flaunting of the very rules by which we elect our leaders, the appeasement of hate groups. And his embrace of Roger Ailes and Breitbart, institutions who have polluted press freedoms, is a further dangerous sign of decay.

And yet when presented with this challenge, too much of the press has been cowed into inaction. This is a man who can be fact-checked into obscurity by any second grader with an Internet connection. And yet when he issues a mealy-mouth non-apology about President Obama’s obvious pedigree as an American, here we are with too many in the press not acknowledging his years of lies (check your Twitter feeds about how the New York Times initially covered this event). All of this of course sets the stage for Trump to lie again about somehow birtherism being Clinton’s fault.

I fear that this mindset will infect the debates. Trump is already setting the stage for that. If you are moderating and are not going to fact check him, you might as well just roll campaign speeches live - far too many of which have been shown on television without being subjected to journalistic context. If these debates will be debates in name only, another opportunity for Trump to flout fairness by spewing his venom and bullshine, I say cancel them.

Enough is enough. It is a reality that every reporter must come to grips with. Trump is not a normal candidate. This is not a normal election. He will set a precedent that other demagogues will study and follow. Fear, combined with the lure of ratings, views, clicks and profits, have hypnotized too much of the press into inaction and false equivalency for far too long. I am optimistic the trance is being broken. Fear not the Internet trolls. Fear instead the judgement of history.

 

Really rich, Dan Rather talking about unbiased journalism

 

His points are valid.

 

Meanwhile ...

Reporter arrested outside Trump campaign event

Alex Thompson, a reporter for VICE News, was arrested by Houston Police today while inquiring about press access to an event held for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Omni Westside Hotel. Thompson was arrested at roughly 1:30 PM EST and has been charged with trespassing. He is currently being held at Houston Central Jail.

VICE News requested access to the event earlier this week and was told by the Trump campaign that its status was "pending." Thompson entered the lobby of the Omni to ask members of Trump's communications staff whether a final decision on access had been made.

A man who identified himself as a hotel manager then asked Thompson to leave and warned that he would be arrested if he did not. Roughly two minutes later, without further warning and while Thompson was waiting for a member of Trump's staff to clarify his access to the event, he was arrested by Houston Police, handcuffed, and escorted outside. Thompson spoke with his editors while handcuffed and said that he was never given any opportunity to explain himself to police.

VICE News reporter arrested outside a Donald Trump campaign event | VICE News

 

And fact-checking, too ...

 

Hmmmm ...

 

Nice font ...

 

Last time it was this bad in the Carter years was an awful economy. Now we've had eight straight years of no GDP growth of 3% for a year (first president ever). Are you trying to tell me these are good economic times?

 

Hmmmm, what might have caused the labor participation rate to be lower from 1948 through 1979? Let me think long and hard about that one.

I'll even grant you that this cuts Carter something of a break, but the labor pool changed drastically beginning in the 1970s when more and more women went from stay-at-home moms into the workforce. So if you want to say that things are better now because of a low LPR in the 1950s, '60s (times most everyone would admit the economy was roaring along), have at it. You'll be laughed out of the conversation.

The LPR is important now because it keeps a certain administration from lying to us about how it lowered the unemployment rate.