The mainstream media/infotainment industry has gotten off relatively easy. But the promotion of false equivalencies and the penchant for treating all statements as equally valid opinions (refusing to label facts as facts and falsehoods as falsehoods) in the name of some warped sense of what constitutes fairness (or simply to boost ratings) deserves to be mentioned right alongside Russian interference, Comey's last-minute announcement, and voter suppression.

as a nice metaphor for it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ryan-wash-dishes-2012-10

He is guilty of conspiracy and cut a deal. Part of the deal is he is going to have to protect Mueller when the shit hits the fan.

I think he will whip the house to impeach once all is exposed.

I have moderate friends who think he's wonderful.

not that he's wonderful, but he's not that bad. i reminded her that not as bad as trump is about as faint praise you could give. ryan is slime.

goes to the corporate, billionaire-owned, right or right-leaning media that lets these fakirs spout their nonsense with no or minimal context or rebuttal.

The unsuspecting casual news consumer who just tunes in and listens to lil paulie rattle off some focus group-tested, carefully crafted bit of propaganda has no idea of his overarching philosophy or the forces that drive him.

she's liberal but not nearly as much as I am. but we can talk about it at least. it is distressing to watch the shows on cnn and elsewhere or listen to NPR when they have republicans on who sound sane and reasonable and the moderator or host just lets them spew endlessly.
i actually had to point out to her that Dylan Roof is a white domestic terrorist; she was ready to write him off as a disturbed young man. I said his stated goal was to start a race war. He was photographed with his confederate flag and guns. I said you never blame islamic terrorism on the disturbance of the actors. but check it out. how crazy do you have to be to turn your own body into a bomb.
there's this sort of tacit understanding, which when you think hard about it defies reason, that when a white american does it, it's mental illness, but when a brown muslim does it, it's religion and ideology.
this is fed by the media day in and day out. and just as with guns inside the country, the refusal to give shelter to refugees fleeing wars is not protecting us, it's just creating more and more and more terrorists. for what? in both cases it's for the same reason: to feed the arms dealers's gravy trains.
sorry, went on a tangent. which i kind of did to her too and we parted with her saying I don't want to think that's true, but seeing the logic of it at least.

They've turned right wing extremists into "moderates" in the eyes of millions. While mainstream Democrats are nothing more than European centrists. This is why charts showing such-and-such network as having a "left-leaning" bias are simply laughable.

Nixon and even Reagan Republicans (not to mention Eisenhower Republicans) have nothing on the likes of Ryan and McConnell. Yet I personally know an Eisenhower Republican who is a Trump Republican (in between, he was a Reagan Republican and a Bush Republican), who would deny that his party of choice has undergone a massive shift.

And a shift for Democrats as well. But that would be a shift not what I'd define as "European centrists". Socialized medicare is not a given for a controlling faction in the Democratic party. If fact its the opposite direction ever since the Third Way was begun.

Which only moves the needle where the media also then feels forced to move right in order to remain in the middle. (And keep the false equivalency going) And still they are defined as left-leaning! The right get to have their cake and eat it too.

The paradox of the information age is that more of it actually makes us collectively more ignorant. Any voice of reason is quickly muffled by a chorus of bullshit bullhorns. Mark my words it's only going to get worse, because it was only a matter of time before the forces of corruption learned how to weaponize bullshit and there's just no going back. Trump isn't a problem, he's merely a symptom of a problem. Dog help us all.

There's a real danger in thinking all will be well if we simply remove Trump from power. The pre-Trump status quo was not good. And the third of the adult population that is supportive of Trump, even after all that he's said and done, will not go away after Trump leaves office. They constitute a large incurable population with whom we must live. And then there's another large percentage that is completely uninvolved in civic life. I haven't even mentioned those Republicans who don't support Trump. All of those groups combined probably constitute 70-80% of the adult population.

To go along with a corporate media that promotes false equivalencies and the notion that all statements are equally valid opinions (there are no facts, there are no falsehoods).

So, yeah, dog help us all.

... that Paul Ryan was a serious policy wonk whose budget numbers made sense mathematically or fiscally.