Tag: bothsiderisms

Thirstdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Paul Krugman consistently writes about the Trumpcession vibes.

Trumpcession vibes are a feeling that things are worse than hard data shows us. My wife and I feel it. Not all of it has to do with Trump. We were forced to change home insurance companies last year because our previous company said they no longer wanted to insure homes in our region because of fires. So that price increased substantially. Electricity prices have gone up. Food prices are up. Coffee prices are up. Gasoline. Some of this is related to Trump’s trade policies and tariffs, and some prices are affected by weather and climate change. The world is complicated. We can make the case that Trump isn’t doing anything about climate change except mocking anyone worried about it, so in that way he’s causing prices increases.

Our household’s Trumpcession vibes arise because we don’t trust Trump to tell the truth. By extension, we don’t trust anyone in his regime to tell the truth, nor any of his supporters. Evidence has been presented that Trump Regime members and their supporters will lie heavily and frequently to make Trump look good. Couple that distrust in them with the soft data of what’s going on, and yes, we have Trumpcession vibes. For instance, how can SNAP benefits be cut without doing damage to the economy? Can’t. The SNAP cuts affect my state, Oregon, and my state government’s ability to help the homeless and needy. The state’s inability to help locally affects our local agencies and governments’ ability to help. From our point of view, it’s all a giant snowball rolling down a steep mountain, gaining speed and momentum, and coming fast. It’s going to be a big mess when that snowball finally slams into the world. That’s how we feel in our household.

It doesn’t help anything that Trump keeps lying about prices and tariffs. Trump insists against the evidence presented that everything is cheaper and getting better. And he lies to convince everyone that he’s telling the truth. But he has a deep history of lying and cheating. Like the boy who cried wolf, we just don’t believe Trump much any longer.

Trump’s Inflation Spin Backfires as Costs Spike Again

I ‘like’ how the story gives Trump the benefit of the doubt and calls Trump’s lies ‘inflation spin’. That’s part of the problem. The media and pundits often sugarcoat the crap that Trump does. Some of that sugarcoating is because Trump, the eternal child-bully, threatens anyone who criticizes him with lawsuits or other punishment, no matter how valid the criticism is.

In other news, Stephen Miller has been speaking out of his ass.

Truth be told, Miller is just mindlessly echoing what Trump mindlessly spews.

Trump calls Democrats who told US military to refuse illegal orders ‘traitors’ who could face death penalty

I’ll be damned. Trump does sometimes tell the truth:

And for those who are always throwing bothsiderisms at the wall to see if they’ll stick, a timely reminder has arrived that the two sides are not the same.

Finally, in response to this Trump rant, we respond…

QUIET, PIGGY!

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Twosda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The FAFO moments are beginning to stack. In this corner, we have a Republican out of Nebraska calling ‘foul’ on one of Trump’s executive orders.

This would be Rep. Don Bacon. He’s upset about Trump’s executive order cutting off the money from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act.

“You just can’t determine what laws you want to execute and what you don’t,” Bacon said, adding that executive orders from presidents representing both parties have “gotten out of hand.”

How quickly Bacon bounced to bothsiderisms, right? This is emerging as a reflex. Whenever someone supported Trump and suddenly is upset by what he’s doing, they add a bothsides qualifier. Anyway, Bacon was okay with the executive order cutting off funds before it hit his project. He claimed OMB told him that his project wasn’t affected. Gosh, now that it is, he’s really upset.

I expect to see more out of this one. As communities see the monies appropriated for their local improvements cut off, they’ll begin calling out the issue to their reps. They’re keeping a close eye on it in Tennessee. Officials in West Virginia have contacted the White House to ensure their projects will still get their money.

Over in engineering and construction circles, they might be getting upset. Back in November, Brian Turmail, Associated General Contractors of America vice president of public affairs and workforce, was quoted saying, “Killing construction jobs after an election where the winner was elected thanks in large part to votes from people who do construction just doesn’t seem very likely.” 

Is that hilarious? Tragically so, IMO, since these voters clearly didn’t understand the man they were putting into office. They assigned him common sense that he completely lacks.

So yep, they FA. Now they’ll FO.

Am I enjoying this a little too much? Probably! They are fellow Americans. Fellow humans. But they ignored everything we warned them. Laughed at us and dismissed what they were being told. So, yes, I’m bitterly jubilant that Trump is showing them that we were right.

So yes, I will keep posting FAFO. Those in the Trumpissphere will never acknowledge how he’s screwing them. Most will probably never know. Many who do realize they’re being screwed will rationalize it. They will also pull out the bothsides card. Blame the Dems for not being there for them.

They’ll say and do everything except take responsibility for their own narrow, shallow thinking. Just like their glorious leader.

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The Editorial

First, I know I’m always hard on the NYTimes. But they frequently give me cause. For example, a reporter this week wrote about how diverse Iowa is, and how well it represents America. Iowa, with its about 86% white population. (Yes, that’s just one aspect of diversity, but it’s a pretty striking one.) I know it sent progressives like me flocking to the net to check that declaration about Iowa’s diversity.

Of course, sites like MediaBiasFactCheck lists the NYTimes as left-biased. That amuses me; I think it highlights just how much to the right the United States actually leans. Compare it to Europe and what I read in newspapers based in Europe, and I see far less of a leftist bias.

That aside, the NYTimes has an editorial up this week titled, “The Responsibility of Republican Voters“.

Editorials like these are like shouting into a snowy hurricane; MAGA and the Republicans who keep supporting Trump or giving him cover aren’t interested in his failings. They simply want to stay in power, perhaps to correct wrongs they perceive after being fed a diet of lies by Trump and the GOP to validate their impressions, or to stick it to the libs — a comment I often see — without realizing that Trump is a beast beyond their control. As he’s done several times, if someone does something he doesn’t like, he turns on them and attacks. Besides all of that, he doesn’t keep any promises and is a vain, shallow person who’s thinking rarely advances past what is good for himself.

The Editorial Board points all this out and more in their editorial, highlighting Trump’s disrespect and disregard of the powers and rule of law spelled out by the Constitution and court rulings, and how this is so different from most other lawmakers.

‘When the Supreme Court delivered a sharp setback to President George W. Bush in 2008, ruling that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Bush administration accepted the ruling. Senator John McCain, then the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, said he disagreed with the court, “but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made, and now we need to move forward.”

‘By contrast, as president, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the integrity of other government officials — including members of Congress, Federal Reserve governors, public health authorities and federal judges — and disregarded their authority. When the court ruled that the Trump administration could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, for example, Mr. Trump announced that he intended to ignore the court’s ruling. After leaving the White House, Mr. Trump refused repeated demands, including a grand jury subpoena, to return classified materials to the government. As the government investigated, he called on Congress to defund the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice “until they come to their senses.”’

Nice to see the NYTimes step out of their bothsiderism cocoon. It would have helped if their reportage and commentary was sharper and more on point in the past. Instead, they worked hard to project themselves as balanced and neutral. Despite that, the modern right mocks mass media and publications like the NYTimes as fake news, left-leaning, or progressive. Trump himself escalated those attacks since he entered politics.

From the NYTimes of Feb 20, 2019:

‘Even by his standards, President Trump’s biting attacks on the press this week stand out.

‘He has praised a libel lawsuit against The Washington Post, called for “retribution” against NBC for satirizing him on “Saturday Night Live” and, on Wednesday, issued his sharpest words yet against The New York Times, calling the newspaper “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”’

In reading the article from 2019 again, it was nice to see that they didn’t say anything about the other side doing the same.

I don’t know about you, but reading posts, comments, and articles about Trump supporters doesn’t lead me to believe they’re open-minded, critical thinking individuals. I think that those people who the editorial addresses are not likely to read it. Those few who do will most likely defend Trump and jump into the bothsiderism which plagues the NYTimes and many other mass media outlets, accusing Democrats and President Biden of being worse than Trump.

Just read the comments on the editorial and you’ll see.

Despite my criticisms of the NYTimes, I am happy to see the editorial, as it validates my impressions of Trump as lawless, and not the primary enforcer of the law which this nation needs. Though it addresses people who will disregard their advice, the rest of agree, it needed to be said.

Yes, it’s all complex, isn’t it?

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