Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 579

Politics is dumb.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/republican-yancey-picked-in-random-lottery-declared-winner-of-pivotal-va-house-race/2018/01/04/9c9caa5a-f0a1-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?utm_term=.79609adb5a5a

A Virginia elections official reached into an artsy stoneware bowl, pulled out a name and declared Republican David Yancey the winner of a House of Delegates race that could determine which political party controls the chamber.

Virginia staged a dramatic, rare election lottery, livestreamed across the country, to settle a tie between Yancey, an incumbent from Newport News, and Democrat Shelly Simonds.

The spectacle drew national attention as an odd way to decide a highly consequential contest. But it might not be the last word in a saga that’s taken more turns than the clay that went into that wheel-thrown bowl, borrowed for the occasion from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts .

TV’s Frink said:

Politics is dumb.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/republican-yancey-picked-in-random-lottery-declared-winner-of-pivotal-va-house-race/2018/01/04/9c9caa5a-f0a1-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?utm_term=.79609adb5a5a

A Virginia elections official reached into an artsy stoneware bowl, pulled out a name and declared Republican David Yancey the winner of a House of Delegates race that could determine which political party controls the chamber.

Virginia staged a dramatic, rare election lottery, livestreamed across the country, to settle a tie between Yancey, an incumbent from Newport News, and Democrat Shelly Simonds.

The spectacle drew national attention as an odd way to decide a highly consequential contest. But it might not be the last word in a saga that’s taken more turns than the clay that went into that wheel-thrown bowl, borrowed for the occasion from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts .

when the election ends in a tie, I am not sure what they should do. But I agree, this seems to be an odd way of dealing with it.

Pistol duel!

hmm, I don’t think so.

Warbler said:

hmm, I don’t think so.

Ooh, a disagreement. Let’s have a pistol duel to solve it.

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

hmm, I don’t think so.

Ooh, a disagreement. Let’s have a pistol duel to solve it.

ALLOL

Filed under “it worked because it’s plausible.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/05/trump-gorilla-channel-parody-326374?lo=ap_d1

Amid the cascade of revelations from Michael Wolff’s incendiary book about the Trump administration, one Twitter user posted a screenshot Thursday night of what looked like an especially stunning excerpt. It described how the president, on his first night in office, had complained that White House televisions did not carry “the gorilla channel” and that Trump spent hours a day watching gorilla programming his staff subsequently produced to satisfy his simian appetite.

The excerpt, of course, was satire. But that was not clear to the countless people who spread it like wildfire across the internet, where the gag commingled with actual claims from the book, including that Trump prefers McDonald’s because he fears being poisoned and that he once failed to recognize former House Speaker John Boehner.

So many Twitter users took seriously the gag excerpt, which included the claim that Trump spends 17 hours a day watching videos of gorillas fighting, that its author subsequently tweeted a clarification and even switched to a highly literal new twitter username — "the gorilla channel thing is a joke” — to underscore the point.

I think that is very illustrative of the news culture today. Don’t get me wrong, I think Trump is a slimy, dangerous schmuck who has hijacked the GOP and exposed a number of its adherents for the gullible fools that they are. However, there is no real news anymore. Either there is Fox News, which always puts a positive spin on every idiotic thing the president does, or there is CNN and MSNBC, who will probably come out with articles in the near future alleging that Trump can’t fart right or brushes with toothpaste made in a North Korean sweat shop. There is virtually no objectivity any longer.

Well you can read the Mormon thread if you want his thoughts on the NYT. 😉

darth_ender said:

I think that is very illustrative of the news culture today. Don’t get me wrong, I think Trump is a slimy, dangerous schmuck who has hijacked the GOP and exposed a number of its adherents for the gullible fools that they are. However, there is no real news anymore. Either there is Fox News, which always puts a positive spin on every idiotic thing the president does, or there is CNN and MSNBC, who will probably come out with articles in the near future alleging that Trump can’t fart right or brushes with toothpaste made in a North Korean sweat shop. There is virtually no objectivity any longer.

What about CBS and ABC? What about PBS news?

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

I think that is very illustrative of the news culture today. Don’t get me wrong, I think Trump is a slimy, dangerous schmuck who has hijacked the GOP and exposed a number of its adherents for the gullible fools that they are. However, there is no real news anymore. Either there is Fox News, which always puts a positive spin on every idiotic thing the president does, or there is CNN and MSNBC, who will probably come out with articles in the near future alleging that Trump can’t fart right or brushes with toothpaste made in a North Korean sweat shop. There is virtually no objectivity any longer.

What about CBS and ABC? What about PBS news?

PBS? I thought Mitt Romney outed that big yellow bird as a giant liberal.

I don’t think the newspapers or national networks are much more objective than cable programs, but I did deliberately choose polarized examples.