LongJim

I don't know. I guess it just seems beneath any media to run this type of story. I realize RS isn't a bastion of hard news, though. I won't get into the overarching point of the article, because it'll probably get the thread locked, but I think there's some meat there. Maybe for another thread. I love that chart. I don't agree with placement of some of the outlets there all the time, but it's a useful tool. The "news" outlets you mention above are jokes, in my opinion. All of them. Yeah, it's good to have spirited discussion, and I really appreciate folks that add to the conversation, though I may not agree with the point of view. I think most people actually have more common ground than differences politically, to be honest. It's just different things that get people wound up. Most people generally want the same things in the end, but don't always agree on the best path to get there.

I agree that it's poorly sourced reporting. To me, "that type of reporting" is no big deal (although really not ever acceptable) when there's a cat in a tree, or whatever. It's not excusable--in my opinion--regarding life or death stuff. That's when (at least) you can't have poor sources. Somebody mentioned irony in this thread, but gave no context. To me this standard applies regardless of who in office, or what ox is being gored. It's gotten worse over the last few years--I think generally since the major news outlets had to start competing with the internet. And as far as bias goes, as you allude, you know what you're getting with the POTUS currently and previously. You know what you're getting with Newsmax, National Review, Mother Jones and Vox. But the tendency to publish and retract later (if we're lucky) has gotten ridiculous.

Yeah, the problem I have with the topic discussed--at least the Oklahoma/Rolling Stone part of it--is that we are really on a dangerous slope when stories are either made up out of thin air, or not sourced properly to verify veracity. It's not enough to go back and get a correction, or publish and then retract due to "bad reporting". Not enough--it's not ACCEPTABLE for it to keep happening over and over again. That's horrible journalism, period, and it's the very definition of "disinformation".

Interesting opinion piece. He's pretty wound up, regardless of whether you agree with him or not. Regarding the bit on Rolling Stone--I agree that it used to be a fairly balanced place for opinion, but not so much now. Some excerpts below. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-tuesday/like-a-rolling-stone/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TUE_20210907&utm_term=Tuesday-Smart ***************************** "The venerable pop-music magazine, which not long ago had to retract a splashy story about a vicious gang rape that never happened, has now been obliged to issue a correction — this should be a prelude to retraction — for a story about how gunshot victims wheeled into hospitals in rural Oklahoma are being left to bleed and groan in agony because the emergency rooms are overrun by cases of ivermectin poisoning...There is a reason Rolling Stone has been unable to independently identify any such cases: There are no such cases. The most important word in this story is not “ivermectin” — it is “Oklahoma.” Because you know who lives in Oklahoma — Joe Rogan fans. The story turns out to have been based on the claims of one doctor — claims that Rolling Stone never checked. Why? Because the story is about (1) ivermectin, and, more important, (2) Oklahoma. Magazines such as Rolling Stone, the major newspapers, the academic establishment, and the professional-activist class are not staffed in the main by people who grew up on Indian reservations or in dysfunctional mountain villages, people who dropped out of high school, people who have been incarcerated, or other people from the margins. You may find one or two or those at any given media property, but you’ll find a lot more Oberlin and UVA graduates. Their interests, anxieties, and obsessions are those associated with their class. They don’t know — or care — what’s happening at Pine Ridge or in Owsley County. But they do know what sort of class-adjacent people they like and don’t like, they do know what sort of lifestyles and cultural affiliations they disapprove of, they do remember being snubbed or insulted (even if they only imagined it) by some frat goofus at UVA, and they do know what sort of people they resent. They don’t know much, but they know what they hate. The people who edit the Washington Post are the sort of people who care intensely about who gets into Harvard and what’s happening at Georgetown. Only a minority of Americans are college graduates, but the people who run Rolling Stone and the rest of the major media are in large part people who have powerful emotional connections to campus life. School choice for poor black kids in Philadelphia isn’t even a blip on NPR-listening Democrats’ radar – but forgiving college loans sure as hell is. Why? It is obvious enough. For progressives who see those who do not share their political priorities not as having different views but as enemies, publishing a made-up story about deranged gang-rapists at UVA pushes all the right buttons: white privilege, rich-jerk privilege, male privilege, Southern brutality, maybe even Christian hypocrisy if you can figure out a way to shoehorn it in there. The students I taught at Hillsdale were undergraduates, not professional magazine editors, but they were able to see the problems with Rolling Stone’s reporting and its agenda-driven narrative pretty easily. Which is to say: These stories don’t get published because nobody knows how to prevent that from happening — these stories get published because nobody cares, because these stories serve the purposes of a particular narrow cultural agenda and flatter the prejudices of a particular narrow set of educated and generally affluent American professionals."

Have never understood that. They have 1 vote like every other school.

I have to say--I love that uniform. That is a fantastic alternate look.

"Around 6,000 “self-identified” Americans have left Afghanistan, Blinken said, with “under 200” Americans “who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave. We’re trying to determine exactly how many.” ************************************************* I like how the quote is "less than 200". Instead of "almost 200". We left almost 200 Americans behind enemy lines in a hostile country. Left. Them. Behind. ************************************************* https://www.nationalreview.com/news/blinken-confirms-u-s-left-hundreds-of-americans-behind-in-afghanistan/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210831&utm_term=Jolt-Smart

Not really. It's likely a biblical reference to 2 Timothy 4:7.

Can it get worse? Yes, it can. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/explosion-erupts-outside-kabul-airport-pentagon-says/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=24861201

I work with a Marine. He did two tours in Afghanistan. He said the same thing.

Hugely influential drummer. Might have been the most sneaky-cool member of the band. I read Keith's autobiography a few years ago, and IIRC, he maintained that he would not continue in the Stones if Charlie wasn't the drummer. Time will tell.

Good post, and I agree with much of it. I agree that a large proxy war is unsustainable. However, I think--unfortunately--that the US really needed to serve as a hegemon in that area with some sort of remaining force similar to what we have in South Korea and other continents. It goes against my instincts to type that, but if it's needed anywhere, I think it's in Afghanistan. We never should have attempted to build a nation there though. Pointless and impossible. It does strike me as more than odd--and suspicious--that the verbiage from all of the lackeys is essentially the same. I think Biden is a doddering fool, but I truly wish him luck in sorting this out. There are a lot of innocents in a lot of danger. I'm getting into politics now, so I'll shut my own comments down in this thread beyond excerpts from articles I feel might be of interest.

Sure sounds like CYA legalese. ******************************** https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-question-for-team-biden-which-americans-currently-in-afghanistan-want-to-stay-there/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second "I’ve noticed something curious amid the unfolding debacle that is the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The obvious and correct priority for the U.S. right now, with the decision to withdraw having been made, is to get every American out of the country as soon as possible, given the threat faced from the unstable situation and the resurgent Taliban. So why does Team Biden keep hedging on this? There has been acknowledged confusion about how long U.S. forces will remain, and how many Americans are still in the country. But what to make of the weirdness of the line of multiple administration officials, including President Joe Biden himself, that they are working to get only those Americans who “want” to leave Afghanistan out of the country? Department of State spokesman Ned Price, August 19: “We’re going to bring home all the Americans who wish to come home, but I just can’t put a firm number on it for you right now.” Joe Biden, August 20: “But let me be clear. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home.” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, August 20: “The president I think was clear that we’ll do whatever we have to do to rescue as many Americans as want to leave Afghanistan, and the secretary’s not going to rule anything in or out in terms of what the possibilities might be there.” An unnamed administration official, speaking to Fox News, today: “As the president and his team have made clear, the circumstances in Afghanistan are heartbreaking and we are bringing the Americans who want to come home, home.” Maybe there is something I am missing here. But I can only imagine that, if you are an American currently in Afghanistan, you want to leave, unless we have some truly audacious souls out there who are making their way over to Ahmad Massoud as we speak. So why on earth is it necessary to qualify this language in any way? Why not just say “all Americans?” Surely it’s not to provide some kind of wiggle room, to lay the foundation for an assumption that any American who proves unable to make it to Kabul within the full-withdrawal deadline Biden has now decided to stick to, lest he anger the Taliban, actually wanted to stay. No, that couldn’t be it. Right?"--Jack Butler

Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. It's obvious.

Well, it looks like US intelligence still can't determine the origin of the COVID outbreak. As predicted. ************************************************* https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-china-idUSKBN2FP0Q7 And Jim Garaghty's comments about it. Excerpts below. ************************************************* https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/u-s-intelligence-community-sorry-covid-19s-origin-remains-a-mystery/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210824&utm_term=Jolt-Smart "Having a proper investigation of topics when the main party involved doesn’t want to cooperate is . . . why we have an intelligence community, isn’t it? Were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan cooperative with the old OSS? Was the Soviet Union cooperative about its defense capabilities, nuclear arsenal, and long-term strategies? Were al-Qaeda and ISIS cooperative with investigations of what terror attacks each was plotting? We would have expected Beijing to respond to a potential contagious outbreak in a major city and trade hub with all of the intensity, speed, and alertness of New Yorkers responding to a report of a hijacked passenger airliner. Instead, the Chinese government spent the first three to six weeks insisting that the virus was not contagious, even as the medical counter-evidence piled higher and higher. Was this just an authoritarian regime’s reflexive psychological denial? Or was the Chinese government trying to avoid looking guilty and hoping it seemed as surprised as anyone else by the virus’s danger? To paraphrase Ebright, in the autumn of 2019, there were three institutions in the entire world that were doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats. One was in Galveston, Texas, one was in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the third was in Wuhan, China. The COVID-19 pandemic started right outside one of them. What are the odds that’s a coincidence? As of this morning, there are 213 million COVID-19 infections around the world, and more than 4.4 million deaths — and that is using the highly unreliable figures from large authoritarian countries such as China and Russia. In May, The Economist gathered all the data available — rejecting China’s numbers, deeming them unreliable — and calculated that the excess deaths during the pandemic were somewhere between 7 million and 13 million."