Showing posts with label conservatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservatives. Show all posts

Thursday, February 01, 2018

Breaking News - Major Breakthrough in Polarization as Liberals and Conservatives negotiate Peaceful Solution to an Awful Mess

Welcome to the Nation of California 


Leading mouthpieces for the radical left and radical right, along with hostage negotiators from the news media, have struck a tentative but comprehensive deal to tame the shrews and calm the blowhards in order to free the citizens of America being held hostage by the attitude of disdain and polarization that has descended upon the country.


Leaks from insiders involved in the terse and tense negotiations indicate a general consensus has been achieved that will enable law abiding Americans to continue life without provocation and will enable the news media to return to covering meaningful news rather than staged events and choreographed demonstrations.

"a sovereign nation"

The centerpiece of the massive deal, named the Save America First Treaty, is declaring California a sovereign nation, the designation of California as the first sanctuary nation in the world, and designating California as the first refugee safe zone in the world.


In one swift move, the delegates to the negotiations have achieved a single entity willing and able to provide a safe haven for illegal's and refugees, while assuring autonomy from USA laws, rules, and regulations, which could lead to a frightening "normal" state of mind.


This new sovereign nation, called the Nation of Cornucopia, will bring new promise to the downtrodden and disparaged and will feature open borders to the west welcoming all people of the world without a home.

"first sanctuary nation in the world"

Everyone knows that even though there are 38 million residents in California, the millions of new immigrants, illegal immigrants, and Syrian refugees can easily be absorbed and the massive availability of desert environment will make many new residents feel right at home.


San Francisco will be the new capitol of Cornucopia and Los Angeles will be the urban jungle as all people of the world will be assimilated into the Cornucopia culture while preserving all aspects of their current culture with a few exceptions.


Those residing in Cornucopia must disavow religious, political, dietary, environmental, sexual, racial, and other codes of conduct violating the principle of a free and open society where everything that is yours is mine and everything that is mine I keep.

"first refugee safe zone in the world"

Compensation to the remaining United States for the loss of the territory of Cornucopia will consist of the building of a wall around the new nation to protect the openness.


All leftist radicals and elitists in the remaining 49 states will receive a temporary visa in order to arrange to move to the new Shangri-La while right-leaning radicals currently in California will also receive a temporary visa to flee east.


In addition to California, the states of Oregon and Washington will hold a referendum to vote on joining the nation of Cornucopia.  Essential to the success of the new nation is completion of a bi-lateral treaty with Canada, a nation of massive geographic territory yet less population than the current state of California, to absorb any overflow of the illegals, and refugees.


The flag of the new nation of Cornucopia will consist of kisses, lips, rainbows, and moon shots featuring the diversity of the people and the love of radicalism.


Any language is acceptable if spoken by the residents.  There can be no police brutality if there are no police, no senseless killings by guns if there are no guns, no gender bias in bathrooms if uni-water closets are required, and no discrimination against races with the banning of all 5K, 10K, and marathons.


The recognized Founding Father of Cornucopia is George Soros whose investment in the liberal left is legendary.  His generous offer of paying for earthquake protection for the entire nation is just another example of his commitment to Oneness and hedging his bets.



Check your latest texts and social sites on the internet for the latest news of Cornucopia.

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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Susan Sarandom on Hillary Clinton and Life from The Guardian

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Susan Sarandon: ‘I thought Hillary was very dangerous. If she'd won, we'd be at war’

Once the bete noire of the right, now the actor finds herself even more hated by the left for refusing to support Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. She talks about Hollywood sexism, female empowerment and playing Bette Davis



Susan Sarandon at 71 is bright-eyed and airy, and perhaps shyer than she can publicly seem. When I walk into the room – a private members’ club in downtown New York, where she sits with a small dog at her feet – she doesn’t say hello or make eye-contact, giving what I suspect is a false impression of rudeness. It may also be that she is uncertain of her reception. For a long time Sarandon was despised by the right, her protests against the Vietnam war and US aggression in Nicaragua and Iraq making her the kind of target that, for progressives, is an affirmation of sorts. Her latest unpopularity, by contrast, comes exclusively from the left and is much tougher on Sarandon. “I’m not attacked from the right at all,” she will tell me. Instead, she is accused of not checking her white privilege, of throwing away her vote on a third-party candidate (the Green party nominee, Jill Stein) during the US presidential election, and of recklessly espousing a political cause that let Trump in through the backdoor. Liberals in the US, it seems, can summon more hatred for Sarandon right now than they can for Paul Ryan.

Most infuriating of all, to her critics, is that she won’t admit her error. Sarandon’s very physiognomy suggests defiance; she looks indignant even at rest. She also looks a lot like Bette Davis, so much so that Davis herself, in her dotage, approached Sarandon to play her. That project never happened, but in the new eight-part Ryan Murphy series Feud: Bette and Joan, about the battle for Hollywood supremacy between Davis and Joan Crawford, Sarandon gets her chance. The two leads are terrific: Jessica Lange, by turns monstrous and pathetic as Crawford; Sarandon steelier, smarter, less obviously vulnerable. She sees a lot of similarities between herself and Davis. “We’re both east coast,” she says. “I didn’t consider myself a star; I was a character actor from the very beginning and not really sold as pretty, which is probably what’s allowed me to survive as long as I have. I have this broader phase.”


Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford in Feud: Bette and Joan. Photograph: FX

Sarandon is working well beyond the age at which women in Hollywood’s golden era could expect to carry on – “besides playing witches and bitches,” she says. The interesting thing about Feud is that it tells an unavoidably feminist story about two women who would have abhorred that particular term. A few years ago, Sarandon herself said: “I think of myself as a humanist because I think it’s less alienating to people who think of feminism as being a load of strident bitches.”

“And then suddenly it became OK to say feminist,” she says now. “That’s been very recent. There was a period when that wasn’t really happening. So now there’s been an opportunity to include men as allies. And I have to say, I remember going to the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] march where there were 100,000 women and we were going around talking to senators for this vote and I got on the elevator, and the women were like: ‘We’re going to show them what the fuck we want.’ And I kept saying: ‘Calm down, that’s not the way we’re going to get things done.’”

You thought it was counterproductive to be that angry? “It was counterproductive, clearly. But that image of the shrill woman became the definition of a feminist for a long time. And women had a right to be angry, and to feel empowered. But that was just one glimpse of a fairly emotional and strident definition, and there was a period when young women didn’t want that label.”

And now? “It’s come back, and it’s gotten warped, especially with the election, where if you’re a woman you have to support Hillary Clinton.”

Now, of course, no one in Sarandon’s industry would get caught dead having a flaky opinion on sexism in Hollywood. Still, the actor is cautious. One gets the feeling that the Harvey Weinstein business simply isn’t very interesting to Sarandon, that there are other causes – the Keystone pipeline, fracking, oil and gas money in politics – that she considers more urgent. She is no apologist for the Weinsteins of this world, but she can, at times, sound positively libertarian about where the responsibilities of the women involved lie.


Sarandon listens to Bernie Sanders campaigning in Iowa, Jan 2016. Photograph: Chris Carlson/AP

“There are a lot of people who did say no,” she says. “I think the big question here is that if Harvey Weinstein exposed himself to you when you were on a yacht in Cannes and you told everybody – this is Angie Everhart’s story – and everyone said: ‘Well, that’s just Harvey’ and it wasn’t a big deal – those are the people who are perpetuating it, too. Now, I’m sure there’s a lot of men who were much smoother at seducing than-” she bursts out laughing – “James Toback and Harvey Weinstein, who a lot of women felt very flattered to be sleeping with, even if they didn’t get the job. There’s just a culture, starting in the 60s and 70s, where there was a certain amount of liberation that made it possible for those things to happen without even seeing yourself as a victim.”

One of the questions currently being asked is whether what Sarandon describes – the inability of many women even to conceptualise themselves as victims – is a function of “liberation” or internalised misogynistic denial. For Sarandon’s part, nothing post-Weinstein has made her reassess her own past. “Certainly, I experienced both having people come on to me and being told that I wasn’t interesting enough to get a part, or sexual enough, once they found out I was married,” she says. She also admits she was lucky; that, unlike many of the women coming forward today, Sarandon’s resolve was never put to the test. “In my case, I just said no, in many clumsy, stupid ways, but the people didn’t push on. They didn’t show up in my room. They didn’t corner me, or batter me, or get on top of me. It was an invitation: ‘Yeah, why don’t you spend the night now that you’re here in the middle of nowhere on location?’ And I said: ‘No, I gotta get back to my room.’ But I didn’t feel super offended, because it wasn’t a thing that became super difficult.”

There were other hard things. “I remember another really famous actress saying to me: ‘Well, don’t have children because that’ll really change the parts that you’ll be available for. And you won’t work past 40 anyway.’ And a lot of that has changed. And a lot of women are assessing how they feel; were they victimised or did they feel that it was their own choice?”

There is no question, she believes, that there are more choices today and that this is slowly correcting the imbalance of power. “More and more women are able to greenlight their own projects. My last few films have had women directors – they’re not the big blockbusters, but I’m not sure those big blockbusters are very interesting to direct. But there is definitely more power in the hands of women than there was – the Reese Witherspoons, who are getting books, putting together projects, telling women’s stories. I think that’s where the difference is. The culture itself is ... it’s a tricky thing because you are selling yourself using sex, and your looks, for the most part. And I think that when you have these men in positions of power, they assume that [sex] goes along with it. And until you get women to have an economic power base – I mean, look at Brit Marling’s article [in the Atlantic], where she talks about being able to walk out of an uncomfortable situation with Harvey even though she hated herself for going in the first place, because she knew she could write and produce and direct. So when people see themselves as having their own power base, it becomes imaginable that you could turn somebody down and still survive.”


With Geena Davis in Thelma And Louise, 1991. Photograph: c.MGM/Everett/REX

It is often overlooked that in 2001, Sarandon supported Hillary Clinton’s run for the Senate. There are photos of them posing chummily together, grinning. Then Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and it all went downhill. During the last election, Sarandon supported Bernie Sanders, then wouldn’t support Clinton after she won the nomination, and now all the moderates hate her, to the extent, she says, that she had to change her phone number because people she identifies as Hillary trolls sent her threatening messages. “I got from Hillary people ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed’, ‘I hope you’re raped’. Misogynistic attacks. Recently, I said ‘I stand with Dreamers’ [children brought illegally to the US, whose path to legal citizenship – an Obama-era provision – Trump has threatened to revoke] and that started another wave.”

Wait, from the right?

“No, from the left! ‘How dare you! You who are responsible for this!’”
I ask if she’s aware that Katha Pollitt recently called her an idiot in the New York Review of Books and she looks momentarily taken aback. “I’m flattered,” she says. These people are furious with you, I say.

“Well, that’s why we’re going to lose again if we depend on the DNC [the Democratic National Committee]. Because the amount of denial ... I mean it’s very flattering to think that I, on my own, cost the election. That my little voice was the deciding factor.”

Is it upsetting to be attacked?

“It’s upsetting to me more from the point of view of thinking they haven’t learned. I don’t need to be vindicated.”

But it’s upsetting that they’re still feeding the same misinformation to people. When Obama got the nomination, 25% of [Hillary’s] people didn’t vote for him. 
Only 12% of Bernie’s people didn’t vote for her.”

But she didn’t advocate voting for Hillary! Come on.

“Hmm?”

Didn’t she advocate voting for Jill Stein?

“I didn’t advocate people voting for anything. I said get your information, I’m going to vote for change, because I was hoping that Stein was going to get whatever percentage she needed – but I knew she wasn’t going to make the difference in the election.”


Sarandon with Cher and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick, 1987. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS

Does she have any sympathy with the critique that casting a protest vote is the luxury of those insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency? “It wasn’t a protest vote. Following Bernie wasn’t a protest.” Voting for Jill Stein was, by any definition, a protest vote. “Well, I knew that New York was going to go [for Hillary]. It was probably the easiest place to vote for Stein. Bringing attention to working-class issues is not a luxury. People are really hurting; that’s how this guy got in. What we should be discussing is not the election, but how we got to the point where Trump was the answer.” (We should also, she says, inching towards the space where the extreme right meets the left, be discussing how “you can’t judge by the mainstream media what’s going on in the country. How did we lose all our journalists and media?”)

Has she lost friends over all this? “No. My friends have a right to their opinions. It’s disappointing but that’s their business. It’s like in the lead-up to Vietnam, and then later they say: ‘You were right.’ Or strangely, some of my gay friends were like: ‘Oh, I just feel bad for [Clinton]. And I said: ‘She’s not authentic. She’s been terrible to gay people for the longest time. She’s an opportunist.’ And then I’m like: ‘OK, let’s not talk about it any more.’”

Still, I think while there was vast political error on both sides, the inability of Sarandon and her ilk to embrace the lesser of two evils permitted the greater of the two evils to rise. And yet I like Sarandon. It takes real courage to go against the mob. Her inconsistencies are a little wild, but in the age of social-media enforced conformity, I have never met anyone so uninterested in toeing the line.
Did she really say that Hillary was more dangerous than Trump?

“Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote,” she says. “I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”

It seems absurd to argue that healthcare, childcare, taxation for the non-rich wouldn’t be better now under President Clinton, and that’s before we get to the threat of deportation hanging over millions of immigrants. “She would’ve done it the way Obama did it,” says Sarandon, “which was sneakily. He deported more people than have been deported now. How he got the Nobel peace prize I don’t know. I think it was very important to have a black family in the White House and I think some of the stuff he did was good. He tried really hard about healthcare. But he didn’t go all the way because of big pharma.”

It’s tempting to read some of Sarandon’s fervour as a reaction against her own family’s Republicanism – during the Bush years, her now 94-year old-mother was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly, and encouraged to speculate on where she went wrong with her daughter. (Sarandon’s mother would probably have voted for Trump, she says, but “I don’t think she got out to vote.” She smiles. “We didn’t facilitate that.”)

All of which makes the actor’s position on feminism more puzzling. Sarandon is close to her three children – Eva Amurri, whom she had with the Italian film-maker Franco Amurri, and Miles and Jack, her two sons with her former partner of 23 years, Tim Robbins, with whom she is reportedly on good terms. It was her daughter, Eva, who as a teenager didn’t like the word feminism, says Sarandon, because “it seemed redundant to have to say you were a feminist”.

But it wasn’t.

“No, but she grew up in a house where she had a mother who earned her own money and was powerful and she’s in a progressive city, with other progressive kids – she wasn’t even exposed to the more Republican part of Manhattan. So she was in a progressive bubble. I think the secret is maybe now we have to just say no one is going to fix it for you. It’s up to you to fix it. You have the strength. You shouldn’t turn to be validated by anyone, male or female. You carry your power within you, and if you surround yourself with people who respect you, that will happen, be they male or female.” It is a strange statement from someone who believes that structural inequality requires political solutions. Earlier, she makes the point that Clinton’s refusal to back the $15 minimum wage, “tells you she’s not a feminist, when 50% of the households in America are headed by women.” Clinton espoused a $12 minimum wage, with scope to raise it to $15 in metropolitan centres, but that’s not the point. The point is self-validation doesn’t pay the rent.)

After the interview, we leave the club and walk towards the subway. “What was her name?” she says. “In the magazine?”

“Katha Pollitt,” I say. We part at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Sarandon disappears up the street, dog under one arm, hat pulled low, assistant at her elbow. “Will I get a load more hatred when this article comes out?” she shouts, looking back over her shoulder.

“Probably,” I say. I have a hunch she can take it.

Feud: Bette and Joan starts on BBC Two on Saturday 16 December at 9pm. The full series will be available on BBC iPlayer from 10.45pm that evening. 
  • This article was amended on 27 November 2017. Jill Stein was the Green party presidential nominee, not an independent.

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If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $1, you can support the Guardian – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.


Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Who can you trust in the News Media? or Can you trust anyone in the News Media?

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Since facts, truth, and honesty all seem to be absent in the news media of today the question becomes who can you trust?  The answer was already provided by real Americans in polls undertaken by the news media.


With a variety of polls this past year showing trust in the news media has fallen to 7%, the lowest ratings ever, one must conclude you do not go to the media for truth.


First their is the obvious political bias with The New York Times leading the anti-Trump media establishment along with fellow progressive advocates NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Washington Post, Politico, and on and on.


So why would you want to rely on any of these blatantly biased Trump haters?  Take The New York Times for example.


On February 13, 2017 they ran the following story based on a column by 2 psychiatry professionals.


The New York Times

 

The Opinion Pages | LETTER

Mental Health Professionals Warn About Trump

To the Editor:
Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.
Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.
LANCE DODES
JOSEPH SCHACHTER
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Dr. Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Schachter is a former chairman of the Committee on Research Proposals, International Psychoanalytic Association. The letter was also signed by 33 other psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.
Correction: February 14, 2017 

An earlier version of this letter misstated the number of co-signers in addition to the two lead signers. There were 33, not 35.
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Hard core progressives seem to forget the credibility issues of our news media when they agree with the story.  Even the article shown ends with an acknowledgement the facts are inaccurate, note the correction at the end.


But they fail to tell the truth when they imply the opinion of two people means there is a national consensus among professionals, a conclusion nothing short of journalistic hypocrisy. At last count there were 50,000 psychiatrists, 170,200 psychologists, and 642,000 social workers in America.  This story represents the opinions of just two of the 862,200 professionals in the fields.


Follow the folly of fools and become a fool yourself.


Here are recent headlines about the integrity of The New York Times.


Hillary Clinton campaign blasts 'egregious' errors by The New York Times




Clinton campaign complains of 'egregious' New York Times reporting errors

By Dylan Byers


The F.B.I. Criticizes the News Media After Several Mistaken Reports of an Arrest

Citing 13 Erroneous Statements, Issa Demands NY Times Retract Error-Ridden Front Page Story

Issa's office

August 19, 2011


August 8, 2014 11:20 am
The New York Times’s Erroneous and Shameful Defense of Hamas

by Debra Feuer / JNS.org



NYT Finally Corrects Erroneous Planned Parenthood Stories


How the False Story of Kitty Genovese’s Murder Went Viral


Winston Moseley, the man who killed Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in 1964, died last week in prison, the New York Times reported yesterday.


Erroneous New York Times Article on Mercury

·                                 Document Type: DOC
·                                 Language: English
·                                 Tags: Mercury, mercury elimination, Mercury Device Phase Out
Erroneous article on the New York times which covers Mercury-containing devices.

MEDIA WATCH: New York Times corrects error in quote from Sarah Chambers in front page article about Rahm Emanuel's problems...
  

Glaring Front Page Error by David Sanger, New York Times as Iran Nuclear Negotiations Near Deadline

/17 Comments/in Foreign Policy, Science /by Jim White



New York Times Forced to Correct Erroneous Abortion Story

Opinion  
David Schmidt   Aug 29, 2011   |   7:12PM    Washington, DC



New York Times Rewrites Iraq War History
To Bush—and Times—WMDs were not just a 'possibility'


Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Alessandra Stanley’s troubling history of error

July 24, 2009 1000 words

Alessandra Stanley has fallen back into old habits. This week, the New York Times television critic was responsible for a long, embarrassing correction:


Experts Slam New York Times Hack Job On GMOs

CNBC Moderator Harwood Admits Premise of His Question on Rubio's Tax Plan is Erroneous

Earlier tonight moderator John Harwood, of CNBC and the New York Times, attacked Senator Marco Rubio's tax plan on the grounds that it disproportionately benefited the top one percent of earners. Rubio insisted the premise of his question was wrong, but Harwood stuck to his guns. Here's the exchange:
HARWOOD: Senator Rubio, 30 seconds to you.
8:52 PM, Oct 28, 2015 | By Mark Hemingway
Earlier tonight moderator John Harwood, of CNBC and the New York Times, attacked Senator Marco Rubio's tax plan on the grounds that it disproportionately benefited the top one percent of earners.

Erroneous Study Of Advanced Prostate Cancer Criticized By Experts


This week, bad news for adult men has plagued the internet in the United States. Experts found that a study from Northwestern University was based on false information reporting that the cases of advanced, aggressive prostate cancer had risen sharply from 2004- 2013.
A report from The New York Times claimed that there are several organizations that covered the study including Newsweek, NBC, CBS, Fox News and United Press Internationals. Their reports revealed that recent medical advice against routine screening may be the one to blame for the supposed rise in advanced cases because it causes diagnosis to be delayed until the cancer is already too late to be treated. Another factor that was pointed was the possibility that prostate cancer were more aggressive than it originally was.
However, on Wednesday, the American Cancer Society disputed the validity of the Northwestern researchers' findings. According to Dr. Otis Brawley, the society's chief medical officer, said the methodology used by the researchers was defective, leading to the study's false conclusions, upi.com reported.

Seven Errors in Today's New York Times Editorial

Sunday, July 17, 2011, 2:07 PM
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