The Frankish Reich

Covfefe

So says master prognosticator Scott Adams, who somehow didn't see his 3rd wife's divorce filing coming ...

Immune to parody: In the Chicago thread, a poster points out the absurdity of the City of Chicago suing Hyundai and Kia for making cars easier to steal, leading to destruction. In this thread, the same poster says "but you didn't deploy the National Guard to stop me from breaking the law! How can you blame me?"

I never thought of Scrooge as a liberal

Certainly a good habit. But what are your regular go-to sources? Which twitter accounts? YouTube or other video commentaries/new sources? Where do you start? What you are talking about is fine in theory. But what I often see here is ass backwards. People read a commentary critical of (or even mocking) the MSM or the official (government) account. Then they don't go back and read the official story. They just rely on the commentary on Twitter or whatever. Better to read the official or MSM account first, then keep an open mind and look for reasoned criticism of it. But that's not what I usually see. Instead it's just a snarky dismissal (or angry and embittered one if you are a sex-starved Tarheel) of the MSM or government account without any kind of analysis other than "you are sheeple" or "they always lie."

Certainly a good habit. But what are your regular go-to sources? Which twitter accounts? YouTube or other video commentaries/new sources? Where do you start?

Not a terrible plan. My go-to news sources: WSJ and NYT digital subscriber. There's your center-right and center-left. Memeorandum as the best news aggregator to quickly browse. No Twitter account. No Facebook. No Tik-Tok. I just don't like getting inundated with stuff they think I'd like. Some blogs that point me to interesting stuff: marginalrevolution (right-libertarian leaning economists), themoneyillusion (Scott Sumner, economist, similar but also a good film critic on the side), astralcodexten ("Scott Alexander," very libertarian, just an interesting thinker about lots of things) TV: not an everday regular of any program, but I often check out CNBC (umm, waiting for Deirdre Bosa to appear while I get my financial news; I'm a fan of Rick Santelli too for very different reasons). I will watch the opening 10 minutes of a Morning Show (they all irritate me, but it's a quick news review); BBC America half hour evening news sometimes - much, much better international news coverage. Same with the CNN World coverage late at night if I'm up. MSNBC/Morning Joe last hour only sometimes (the hour aimed a DC newsmakers, not Joe's annoying rants with nodding head Mika). I also record Fareed Zakaria's GPS show. Pretty much avoid the other Sunday morning public affairs shows now.

@B-Man Used to be a Fox Grandpa, now majority MAGA Mind-Melder @BillStime Liberal warrior @Tiberius Liberal warrior, with a healthy dose of Elite Power Consumer @Joe Ferguson forever Elite Power Consumer with a healthy dose of Financier @Tommy Callahan 80% Musk-eteer, 20% MAGA Mind-Melder @L Ron Burgundy see Tiberius @ComradeKayAdams Liberal Warrior with a pinch of Elite Power Consumer I think we call this The Misanthrope.

Tell me you're a MAGA Mind-Melder without telling me you're a MAGA Mind-Melder. Allow me to help: Musk-eteer.

I get that, and it's why I find it so disappointing that most news programming these days preaches to the choir of their own demographic/followers. Most of that is really, really boring unless you're interested in having your existing biases confirmed. Rachel Maddow is no doubt smart and prepared, but very long-winded and boring in her presentation. She took over Keith Olbermann's old slot - he was a blowhard, but an entertainer. Same with Fox: O'Reilly did what Hannity does but with some entertainment value. I watched both of those guys semi-regularly at one time, but you'll never turn me into a regular Maddow/Hannity watcher. The "narrow-casting" has reached a new level, and of course that's even more pronounced when it comes to social media.

I think we're all Nichers here to some extent. After all, we get a lot of football niche news by coming to a football fan forum ...

1. The Musk-eteers: This is a fast-growing, mostly male group who feed off Twitter, podcasts (especially "All-In" and Joe Rogan), and follow independent reporters, led by Bari Weiss, through social media or newsletters. *** 3. TikTok kids: This is where most kids get most of their information about the world and hot news topics. They scroll, fast and furious, through pictures and microbursts of information — and trust people most parents have never heard of. Think MrBeast, Addison Rae and Zach King. *** 5. Right-wing grandpas: Senior citizens, especially men, still flock to Fox News — especially in prime time, and especially around popular personalities. They would have been big Rush Limbaugh fans back in the '90s. 6. MAGA mind melders: The new conservative news ecosystem would seem like a distant planet to anyone whose habits were formed pre-Trump. People like Charlie Kirk (massive because he's multiplatform), Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich are dominant voices. Then there are folks who are taken seriously only in Trumpworld (Laura Loomer, Alex Bruesewitz), but can really move the needle there. No one rivals Tucker Carlson with the base, even without his Fox News platform. Don Jr. is second, with his massive X, Facebook and Instagram engagement. "He's the meme lord of the right," a MAGA insider told us. Steve Bannon's WarRoom remains a juggernaut. Breitbart's Matt Boyle is a go-to newsbreaker on the right. Plus there's a potent crew of video clip guys. 7. Liberal warriors: Think of Rachel Maddow as patron saint of this bloc. Hence her sky-high ratings. This crowd feeds daily off The New York Times (especially opinion pieces) and prestige magazines (especially The Atlantic and The New Yorker). They once were addicted to Twitter but left, or lessened their dependency, after Musk turned it into X. Elite power-consumers: This is the Axios base. These are mainly college-educated, ambitious professionals — we estimate 25 million-45 million nationally — who seek out news near-daily, partly for passion and partly for professional enhancement. This group is most likely to overlap with other bubbles and lap up "Morning Joe." These power-users are huge fans of newsletters, which in some respects mimic in shrunken form newspapers: a beginning and end, punctuated with pictures and visuals. LinkedIn is a hot, if still small, pipeline for content. 8. Elite power-consumers: This is the Axios base. These are mainly college-educated, ambitious professionals — we estimate 25 million-45 million nationally — who seek out news near-daily, partly for passion and partly for professional enhancement. This group is most likely to overlap with other bubbles and lap up "Morning Joe." These power-users are huge fans of newsletters, which in some respects mimic in shrunken form newspapers: a beginning and end, punctuated with pictures and visuals. LinkedIn is a hot, if still small, pipeline for content. 9. The financiers: This is the base of The Wall Street Journal, CNBC (especially "Squawk Box") and DealBook, the newsletter by New York Times and "Squawk" star Andrew Ross Sorkin. Lots of rich, white, older East Coast or big-city professionals live here. https://www.axios.com/2024/03/25/news-media-filter-bubble-different-realities (I didn't paste certain categories that seem pretty rare around here) Do you recognize yourself here? I think I'm a mix of the about 50% category 8, 30% category 9, 20% category 7. I do get more than my fair share of MAGA Mind Melders, Fox Grandpas, and Musk-eteers second hand, by reading posts here, but I read those more like an Anthropologist on Mars.

My oh my, how things change when the shoe is on the other foot, Tarheel friend. Trump signed an order banning Tik Tok as a security threat. Obviously he thought the President had the power to do that. Now? "Please don't give the power I already thought I already had lest a different President uses it ..." Meanwhile, The WSJ nails it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/honey-we-shrunk-the-gop-majority-house-republicans-55506c32?mod=opinion_lead_pos3 Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion Friday to oust Mr. Johnson as Speaker exposes the deception behind the coup against Mr. McCarthy. After we criticized that October coup as destructive and self-serving, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz wrote us a letter saying that in electing Mr. Johnson the GOP now had a real conservative as leader. So what’s wrong with Mr. Johnson now? Apparently because he’s not willing to indulge kamikaze acts like shutting down the government, Mr. Johnson is a sellout too. Conservatives have long had a strong anti-Washington impulse, which is useful given the federal government’s relentless drive to expand its own power. But breaking that drive, and rolling back that power, requires calculation and often incremental gains. All the more so in a divided government. The posers of the House GOP remind us of a comment by former Sen. Jim DeMint that he’d rather have 30 Senators who agreed with him than a Republican majority. Congratulations to Mr. DeMint. The current House GOP is close to realizing his ambition.

The gist. Not the jest. Gotta love when morons post moronic things in which they accuse others of behaving moronically.

I think we just found QAnon again ^^^

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Funny ... he's never at a loss for words. I mean, even Jimmy Kimmel's performance at the Oscars got a scathing, real-time review. Is Truth Social having connectivity issues? The silence is deafening: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-silent-biden-signs-1-2-trillion-spending-bill-gop-infighting

You mean Russia invading Ukraine is how World War III might have started? Imagine this (lack of) logic being applied to the other prominent conflict: Gaza/Hamas vs. Israel. The comment would be "Israel bombing Gaza ... is this how World War III starts?"

Said by someone of such fragile sexuality and gender identity that the poorly-timed exhibition of a rainbow flag in his youth might very well have turned him gay (if he isn't already; no judgements!), gender neutral, trans, or who knows what else.

If this kind of thing had been in place in Buffalo schools in the 1960s, I have no doubt NC Bills would be a trans woman today.

Irv exhibiting a new-found patience that will no doubt serve him well in his senior years.

Godless Trumpunist, spending Palm Sunday like some kind of Roman Centurion policing allegiance to his Orange Caesar ...

⬆️ Another Paranoid Man, no doubt also in a Cheap Sh!t Suit. It's Palm Sunday. Shouldn't he be in church playing Pilate, instead of posting a barrage of inane comments in every single thread?

Paranoid Man in a Cheap-Sh!t Suit.

Somewhere way back in the double digits of these pages you'll find my long-winded, carbon dioxide-emitting (but only when read allowed) but nevertheless genteel take on climate change and the impact of carbon emissions. You'll find it remarkably open-minded and balanced but still somehow unconvincing to this audience. Hey, just ask and I'll recreate it for you! (that's o.k., I'll wait)