STARTING TOMORROW: Red and blue Babel!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2023

Taking a good look around: Last Thursday, MSNBC announced that Mehdi Hasan's weekend show was getting canceled. 

We don't know why the show got canceled. Neither does Kevin Drum, as he noted in this post:

Why was Mehdi Hasan canceled?

MSNBC canceled Mehdi Hasan's weekly show today. Twitter is alive with accusations that this was done because Hasan is outspokenly progressive and pro-Palestinian. Or did it happen because of low ratings? You decide:

[Graphic concerning viewership of three cable programs]

Hard to say, isn't it? Hasan's ratings over the past half year have been fairly steady, although he's lost a good chunk of audience since August. Most of this decline came after October 7 and may have been due to his pro-Palestinian stance.

So...... was he canceled because he was too pro-Palestinian? Or because he lost his audience because he was too pro-Palestinian? And does it matter?

We'll start with one observation. Based on the graphic in question, it doesn't look like Hasan really had lost an enormous chunk of his (rather small) Sunday night audience.

That said, we don't know why his program got canceled. In this news report from The Hill, we learn that other MSNBC programs are being canceled or reconfigured as part of "a weekend shakeup."

Hasan will remain as an MSNBC commentator—but why was his program canceled? We have no way of knowing.  

That said, we were intrigued by several comments to Drum's post—comments about the current state of red and blue tribe cable news.

One of the comments came from a reader who spoke in support of MSNBC. Here's the text of that comment, along with a response:

COMMENT: I know it's all the rage to call out MSNBC as a left-wing propaganda site. Sure, its commentator shows lean left. But they are basically grounded in facts. They believe in climate change—that's a fact, they believe Jan. 6 was an insurrection—it was. They have broadcast any and all court proceedings having to do with Trump's 91 charges—how terrible.

RESPONSE: Yep, regarding MSNBC, you are right that "they are basically grounded in facts". Compared to Fox News, especially when listening to their commentators, MSNBC looks really good.

Does MSNBC "look really good" when compared to Fox News? If we tried to answer that question, we'd have to start with this:

On the whole, the commenter is judging MSNBC by an extremely weak standard.

(We'd also make this observation: It's possible to provide extremely unhelpful commentary which is wholly "grounded in facts.") 

On the whole—though not in every way—the performance is often extremely bad on the Fox News Channel. With that in mind, we were especially struck by an additional comment to Drum's post about Hasan. 

This commenter makes reference to Drum's graphic. The graphic shows that Mark Levin's Sunday night program on Fox has been swamping Hasan's program in the cable news ratings:

COMMENT: Mark Levin doing way better on ratings?! Wow, I used to listen him for a few minutes now and then on his AM talk radio show before he went to Fox, and the guy was just a angry nut. An extremist, angry nut. 

He fit well on AM talk radio with its right-wing nonsense stations. It's just insane that Fox News gave him a job. Now he gets to spread his craziness more broadly. 

Honestly, I have never listened to him even once on Fox News. Just can't take the idea of doing so. On the crazy-propaganda-spouting meter, I wonder how he compares to Sean Hannity?

The commenter has never listened Levin's weekend program. (We can't say we blame him.) That said, he seemed surprised to learn that Levin's program draws something like 1.5 million viewers on a regular basis.

We have occasionally watched Levin's weekend show. Millions of people disagree, but to our eye and ear, he does often seem like a bit of a nut. 

Mark Levin does strike us as an extremely angry nut. Reading the comment from Drum's reader, something occurred to us all over again:

Many people have little idea about what happens on Fox.

We've had that thought fairly often of late. The background goes like this:

Over the course of (let's say) the past year, we've come to find MSNBC more and more unwatchable. That reaction is largely based on the way MSNBC programs pound away at endless volumes of legal minutia, all built upon this pleasing theme:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

Stating the obvious, Donald J. Trump's legal problems are a real and ongoing American and global news event. 

That said, those legal problems aren't the only American / global news event. In our view, MSNBC's obsessive attention to those problems represents extremely bad corporate judgment, on a journalistic and a political basis.

Over the past year or so, we've found it harder and harder to watch these endless hours of legal trivia. It's hard to avoid the thought that this endless programming may represent a cynical, rating-based corporate financial decision.

As MSNBC has become more and more unwatchable for us, we've been flipping over to Fox on a more frequent basis. Often (though not always), what we've seen has been even worse than we would have expected.

So it has been with Mark Levin and his weekend program.

In our view, MSNBC's incessant focus on legal trivia represents bad political judgment. In our view, that's a large part of the current problem with blue tribe cable news.

That's part of the problem with blue cable. All week long, we'll tackle these questions:

What's actually happening in red tribe cable? Why doesn't it get discussed?

In our view, "cable news" has largely become a red and blue tribal Babel. Can a large modern nation survive this arrangement?

We'll guess that the answer is no. 

Tomorrow: It topped the front page of the New York Times. Who heard about it on cable?


74 comments:

  1. Both tribes media are addicted to the tax corporate breaks.

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    1. corporate tax breaks.

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    2. There is no longer anything that can be credibly labeled “mainstream media”, there’s corporate media - cable news, NYTimes etc, and independent media - YouTube etc.

      Corporate media outlets like Fox and MSNBC push a right wing neoliberal agenda; Fox is different in that it attempts to manipulate and motivate its viewers via misinformation.

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  2. "Can a large modern nation survive this arrangement?"

    Of course it can. Because fewer and fewer people care about "cable news". To the point where hardly anyone cares.

    And of course it's a perfectly normal and perfectly natural phenomenon. As a product is getting crappy and useless, fewer people will buy it, until finally no one does. In this case, it's being replaced by other products, substack.com for example.

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  3. “Tomorrow: It topped the front page of the New York Times. Who heard about it on cable?”

    Anyone who happened to be paying attention, I guess, rather than watching football:


    “NYT Reporter Ronen Bergman joins Morning Joe to discuss his latest report on how Israel knew of Hamas' attack plan more than a year ago.”

    https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/israel-knew-hamas-s-attack-plan-more-than-a-year-ago-nyt-199144005793

    “Katy Tur spoke to Alon Pinkas, Fmr. Israeli Consul General in New York, and Noga Tarnopolsky, independent journalist, about new reporting that Israel knew about Hamas' October 7th attack before it occurred”

    https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/-he-s-not-going-to-survive-this-netanyahu-in-hot-water-after-nyt-report-on-hamas-attack-199185989545

    “The New York Times reports Israeli officials obtained Hamas's battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. Former deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes joins to discuss. “

    https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-designed-to-start-a-war-israel-obtained-hamas-battle-plan-more-than-year-ago-nyt-reports-199121989757

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  4. "As MSNBC has become more and more unwatchable for us, we've been flipping over to Fox on a more frequent basis. "

    No liberal would say this (or do it).

    The programming on Fox makes it unwatchable for anyone who leans left. Watching it "more and more" makes it seem like Somerby is the one who has changed, a change that has also been obvious here on his blog.

    I can understand being uninterested in the legal minutia of Trump's trials, but that is far from all that is broadcast on MSNBC. I suspect that Somerby is sensitive to Trump's difficulties and is finding Trump's distress hard to hear about. Giving a shit about Trump is also nothing liberals waste time doing, so of course listening to Fox, where Trump still has sympathy, is going to feel better to Somerby.

    Let's not pretend that Somerby has anything to contribute to analysis of the media and American discourse any more. He is a case study in how an elderly man in cognitive decline goes down hill. The Fox audience has always skewed elderly. Somerby is showing us why.

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    1. I would feel sorry about Somerby's decline if he weren't such a mean-spirited old fart. I feel the same way about Trump. No coincidence.

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    2. "Let's not pretend that Somerby has anything to contribute to analysis of the media and American discourse any more."

      Yet you continue to read him.

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    3. How else would I know what the "Right-wing Grievance of the Day" is?

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    4. I guess I'll adopt your style of argument: No liberal would want to read the "Right-wing Grievance of the Day," so you must not be a liberal.

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    5. DG,
      What does that say about the guy who repeats them?

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    6. "No liberal would say this (or do it)."
      Why not?

      "The programming on Fox makes it unwatchable for anyone who leans left."
      Not objectively.

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    7. Somerby is clearly no liberal.

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    8. Somerby is a right winger with right wing fanboys.

      I’ve seen 50 year long marriages that couldn’t put a candle to the loyalty and unadulterated affection as fanboys like dogface have for their hero Somerby.

      Cute as your Somerby simping is, Dogface, it’s been repeatedly explained to you why we read and criticize TDH, not only are your notions on this issue disingenuous, but they’re also, frankly, unpersuasive.

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  5. Somerby somehow missed Drum's graph showing that the decline of discourse and the deepening of the political red/blue divide is directly correlated with the rise of Fox News.

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    1. Also correlated to a decline in lead, interesting enough.

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  6. If he is pro Palestininan, that is his right. However, it is also the right of people who know that Israel did not attack itself on Oct 7 not to watch him.

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  7. Babel refers to a clash of languages that interfere with communication. In this red/blue split we have a clash of values that interferes with agreement.

    There was an interesting article in the NY Times this weekend about Silverton, a town of around 800 people who were bitterly divided along partisan lines, to the point of sending death threats to the mayor. The article describes how they became a cohesive community again by hiring a development company to devise a 10-year plan. The process of doing that brought people together by reminding them of their shared goals, value and concerns, working with groups of 3-4 people at a time. Now they are able to tolerate each other's differences of opinion and work together for the good of their small town.

    That is a great story, but there are some reasons why this approach isn't scalable. First, they spent $40,000 to accomplish this. Second, a team of people visiting with 3-4 people at a time wouldn't be able to reconcile much of the nation unless greatly expanded (becoming much more expensive in the process). Third, this community had a lot of shared goals and wanted the same things for their town. If that isn't true, will any amount of talking reconcile our differences? Fourth, Silverton had a recent memory of having been the kind of place where neighbors help each other and where people all know and like one another. It seems to me that many places in the US never had the feeling and many others would not want to be united with neighbors who are different from themselves and who they dislike intensely.

    But this article did represent an implementation of the kind of kumbaya approach that Somerby has been advocating, and it worked for Silverton (according to the article). I think it also illustrates why Somerby's suggestions would not work for our nation as a whole, or even in places where no one wants to spend large sums on development to attract tourists.

    Somerby has never concerned himself about the details of his preaching. Maybe he should think about it more before trying to blame liberals for lacking any interest in talking more with those who find themselves watching more and more Fox News?

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    1. Interesting stuff. Humans are inherently communal.

      There are indications - polls, surveys, behavioral science research, that it’s not so much that the red and blue tribes differ in values, there’s something else going on…

      Not directly related, but way back, Marvin Gaye asked “What’s Going On” and Sly Stone responded by saying “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”; the former being a very popular record, the latter being one of the better pieces of music ever produced.

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  8. Has Somerby been finding his own pro-Paletinian views well represented on Fox News?

    Why would Somerby continue watching more and more Fox News when it is people like Hasan on MSNBC who DO represent his views?

    Why is Somerby so completely apathetic about the cancellation of Hasan's show, given that Hasan is one of the few people on cable news who supports Somerby's own viewpoint?

    Somerby's description today just makes no sense at all, given the reasons why people watch cable news shows and what they look for on cable. Based on Somerby's reactions, one would expect all those red tribe members to drift over to MSNBC and watch it more and more, because it neither represents their viewpoints nor gives them the cultures wars 24/7 that they may be getting sick of seeing on Fox. You'd expect them to be seeking out the judicial trivia since it all concerns their guy, Trump, and they must deeply care what happens to him in the courts.

    But this isn't what has been happening, has it? So Somerthing is wrong with Somerby's presentation today. I can't help but suspect the trouble lies with Somerby's ideas and not those hundreds of thousands of red cable viewers who just don't seem to be watching for the same reasons that Somerby's gives today.

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  9. If we look a little beyond Bob being very
    stupid ( would someone who rejected the Jan 6th report because the Republican side of the story was not represented be trusted to accurately appraise MSNBC?) it’s also interesting to view his boredom with “legal trivia.”
    Trump’s legal problems are an awful thing, for him and for all Americans. It also takes one industrial strength dullard not to find them interesting. Trump’s self inflected legal woes reflect badly on the County, they are also one hell of a news story.
    We must conclude Bob is an idiot, but a very proud one. Just within the last week, more rulings and reporting make hash out of Bob’s foolish contention that since Trump believed the election was fixed or some other horseshit that he cannot be held responsible for his actions.
    If events constantly make your previous dubious positions look downright inane, you are unlikely to find the reporting very good.

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    1. "Bob’s foolish contention that [Trump] cannot be held responsible for his actions."

      Fact check: Somerby has never made this contention.

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    2. He constantly pushes this contention by letting Trump off the hook due to insanity.

      Try and keep up.

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    3. "Try and keep up."

      Try and provide any support for your false assertion that Somerby has ever said, even once, that "Trump cannot be held responsible for his actions."

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    4. You are a waste of time here Doggyface. Look it up yourself.

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    5. Lordy, Somerby has been pushing that notion for years now, give me a break.

      Waste of time indeed.

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    6. Sorry Doggie, you are really reaching this time. The entire tilt of Bob’s take has been to argue Trump not only CANNOt be held responsible for his actions but (insanity defense) but SHOULD not be held responsible for his actions. When Trump is utterly defeated ( Jan 6 commission ) he claims it wasn’t a fair fight.
      All you have demonstrated Doggie, as you on almost a daily basis, is that you are as intellectually dishonest as he is. You should keep out of the comment section until you find a way to back up your bullshit.

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    7. Oh oh, is that our liar in residence accusing someone of dishonesty? How rich. And you're lying again of course, since Somerby never said Trump can't or shouldn't be held accountable. You fein outrage at Fox News and the like because they distort the truth, and yet day after day that's what you do in this comments section. You drive people away from the left with your dishonest, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. It's a good thing you'll never a big enough platform to do any real damage.

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    8. Mike I, my dim non friend, you throw a lot of vapid bullshit and insults around, but cannot counter my obviously true contention in any fashion. Bob insists Trump escape responsibility in any form. Has not Bob, for instance, reacted to the “legal trivia” Trump is facing, by saying he does not like sending people to jail, implying that those who want to see Trump face justice are a mob who want to? Of course he had written that, MANY times, you creepy bullshit artist. That’s one example I all but dare you to counter. But I warn you if you make a fool of yourself by trying, there are many, many more.

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    9. no need, you won’t accept anything

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  10. In the words of Jeff Foxworthy:

    You just might be a conservative if: Mark Levin seems watchable to you while MSNBC does not.

    You just might be a liberal if: Nothing on Fox News seems watchable but Mehdi Hasan deserves a show, whether you agree with him or not.

    You just might be a conservative if: An article found in The Hill seems like an objective source of information.

    You just might be a conservative if: You occasionally watch Mark Levin and he only "often" seems like a bit of a nut.

    Somerby says: "We have occasionally watched Levin's weekend show. Millions of people disagree, but to our eye and ear, he does often seem like a bit of a nut. "

    How does one seem like "a bit of" a nut? That strikes me as being a bit pregnant. But my overall question is how on earth Somerby could stand to watch even a few minutes of anything on Fox, much less watching it more and more, after having watched Levin's nuttiness? And for the record, I find Levin evil, mean-spirited, nasty in the extreme, intent on hurting people and not the least bit crazy. He is a bad man who profits by expressing the anger that too many Fox viewers turn to him for vicarious gratification. And this is why our society has become so divided. You cannot express such anger toward other people and live in a tight-knit, cohesive, community in which people help each other because they know and like each other. Imagine Levin's place in Silverton and you'll get the idea of why Fox News has been pernicious to our democracy. But Somerby has been watching Fox more and more.

    Maybe that is why Somerby is OK with what Hamas did and thinks the Palestinians have a point in their hatred of Israel. All the times that Somerby talks about people being good and decent, notice that he never uses the word "kind." But that kindness is exactly what is missing everywhere Trump has spread his vicious infection.

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    1. anon 11:08. first you excoriate TDH because h is too mild in his criticism of Levin - by his opining that Levin "does often seem like a bit of a nut." Not harsh enough for 11:08. Then 11:08 claims that TDH "is OK with what Hamas did and thinks the Palestinians have a point in their hatred of Israel" [albeit without any evidence that TDH said anything of the kind). Does anon 11:07 realize that Fox news is 100% not in the least sympathetic with the Palestinians. Seems 11:07 is all on board with Fox on this issue, and you are attacking TDH for taking the liberal position, that there are 2 sides to the story.

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    2. Hamas is an anti-colonial resistance movement, with a political and military wings. Designated as a terrorist organization by some countries.

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    3. As I said, Hamas is scum. It doesn't matter what it says on their letterhead. What matters is their actions and they have shown themselves to be scum.

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    4. anon 6:39, some would say that the Israelis are "scum" for bombing Gaza back into the stone age, causing thousands of deaths, mostly to innocent civilians, aside from how they've mistreated Gazans and Palestinians over the years. I wouldn't use the word "scum', kind a thuggish type of insult, and I'm not defending the Hamas 107/23 attack.

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    5. Hamas is scum, borne from the atrocious oppression the Israelis put on the Palestinians, propped up by Netanyahu, with funding from Russia/Qatar. They are ‘useful terrorists’.

      But are they rednecks?

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  11. Somerby doesn't like women much. Perhaps that is why he was unimpressed by Morning Joe when they said this:

    "On Monday morning, the entire panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" expressed their outrage at comments made by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday where she downplayed the rape of Jewish women by Hamas terrorists after they invaded Israel on Oct. 7.

    During the interview, the Democrat from Washington was asked by CNN host Dana Bash, "With respect, I was just asking about the women, and you turned it back to Israel. I’m asking you about Hamas," to which Jayapal replied, "...we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. Fifteen thousand Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes, three-quarters of whom are women and children."

    "And it’s horrible," Bash replied before pointing out, "But you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women."




    00:12

    03:44
    "I don’t want this to be the hierarchies of oppressions," Jayapal dismissively shot back.

    After watching the clip, a clearly stunned and fuming "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski stated, "My lord, was she equivocating?"

    Co-host Joe Scarborough, added, "I think what's remarkable is that you have many people, international organizations on the left, that just can't condemn Hamas raping and abusing and raping to the point of death and then parading them."

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    "She kind of sort of did," Brzezinski interjected.

    "But it was never, like, we can condemn Hamas," Scarborough continued. "It always has to be— there's always moral equivocation. There's always moral equivocation. You can never say that what Hamas did to Jewish women was absolutely savage and beyond the pale. It always has to be, 'yeah, but Israel.'"

    Morning Joe contributor Elise Jordan tersely chimed in, "I mean, you would think there is a huge outcry anytime rape is being used as a weapon of war. Period, that's wrong. It's a crime against humanity. It is a war crime. End of discussion. You don't have to do the other side here."

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    1. Jayapal never downplayed the stories we are being told about the rape of Israeli women. That is just flat-out misrepresentation. She unequivocally expressed her agreement that these were barbaric war crimes. But come on, folks.


      "And it’s horrible," Bash replied before pointing out, "But you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women."

      What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Killing women and children is horrible, but at least the Israelis are not raping the women. Bash is an ass.

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    2. I agree: the criticism of Jayapal was nonsensical; any "equivocation" was by Bash. And Jordan's "End of discussion." is the tell: Jayapal is attacked simply for not shutting up after condemning Hamas. Too many on both sides engage in the same "now-look-at-what-you-made-me-do" fallacy of finding a privileged start point and end point in an ongoing chain of wrongs, as if "our" reaction is "caused" by "their" action, but their "action" is utterly discretionary. Thus one side's wrongs are are (cast as) justified or necessitated by virtue of being wronged by the other side. Jayapal was rightly resisting precisely such "equivocation."

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    3. anon 6:18, with that clever come back you win the argument!

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    4. A healthy society prosecutes rapists, not bomb to death thousands of innocent civilians.

      I’m old enough to remember the Three’s Company episode where Jack thought his roommate was dating a rapist (because his business card said “The rapist”) but it turned out he was just a therapist, not a rapist. Ha ha. Fortunately, Jack was not subsidized with billions to fund a war machine, so the invitation in the theme song to come and knock on our door was meant literally, not a deadly bomb.

      IDF joke: knock knock, who’s there, Gaza, Gaza who, I’m gaza bomb the shit out of you and your entire family.

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    5. All Gaza has to do to live in peace is stop attacking Israel.

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  12. Replies
    1. Corby abhors all sexual violence, no matter who perpetrates it.

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    2. There’s a sexual assault in America every six minutes.

      Americans are remarkably blasé about how shitty our society is, they are too preoccupied with nonsense like college football.

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  13. Bob quotes a commenter who says climate change is a fact. Does the commenter realize how vague his statement? Does saying that climate change is a fact mean?
    -- the climate is changing
    -- the changes in the climate are caused by man's activity
    -- the changes in the climate are catastrophic
    -- the international plans to cut emissions are sufficient to save us from a climate disaster
    -- the changes in climate include more natural; disasters

    IMO none of these is precisely what the phrase means. I think it means acceptance of climate change as a religion. When one says he believes a particular religion, that means that the person will believe whatever the leaders of that religion currently say. E.g., when rabbinical leaders said a rabbi had to be a man, that was part of the Jewish religion. When rabbinical leaders said a woman could be a rabbi, then that became part of Judaism.

    Similarly, a "believer" in climate change will believe whatever the current narrative is among the climate change opinion leaders.

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    1. Carbon dioxide and methane absorb infrared light. They don’t care how it affects you. They don’t care what you think.

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    2. Calling climate science a religion is offensive.

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    3. David in Cal,
      Perhaps you're correct. Perhaps the change in climate will not include more natural; disasters.(sic)
      Time will tell.
      Besides, we always ave the option to bring back the 90% top tax rate to fund FEMA if you're wrong.
      Also, bringing back the 90% top tax rate might just be the trick to healing our political divide. No human with a heart would be against that.

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    4. Income over $1M should be taxed at 100%.

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    5. The Estate Tax rate should be 100%.
      Let your lazy, good-for-nothing, deadbeat kids get a job, like I did.

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    6. The significant role of human activity in escalating world temperature change is established science and has been for decades. Those that believe in the science are not to be disparaged by rubes like DIC whose opinions are largely formulated by right wing media outlets.

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    7. When you "believe in the science" you're a "believer", just like David said.

      Most of what you call "the science" is, in this case, a bunch of computer models. And most of computer models are highly speculative guesses, as readily demonstrated by the famous "these glaciers will be gone by 2020" signs at Glacier National Park.

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    8. The sign that said, “David has a brain” was wrong.

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    9. Hurricanes are not computer models.

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    10. @12:18 You seem to think that the EPA has the power to stop global warming if their budget is sufficient. Don't forget that global warming is, well, global. The two largest greenhouse gas emitters are China and India. Underdeveloped countries in Africa are moving to get carbon fuel-based electricity. China's carbon emissions hurt the US just as much as US carbon emissions.

      The bottom line is that the human race is not going to reduce the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere IMO. The best we can hope for is that the percentage continues to rise at a slightly slower rate.

      Now, I am not giving an opinion as to how bad the effects of rising CO2 will be. I am just saying that in the real world, we don't have the ability to reduce the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.

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    11. Someone better be able to stop global warming, budget or not, because otherwise there will be dire consequences for all of humanity. Giving up is not an option.

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    12. unamused -- I agree that human activity plays a significant role in global warming. But, that alone is not adequate as a guide to policy. That fact is just not enough.
      Look at all the unknown things your belief and mine leave out. E.g.,
      -- at the current rate of emissions, by year 2100 how much will the temperature rise? 0.1 degree? 1 degree? 10 degrees? Some other amount?
      -- since the relation between emissions and temperature is logarithmic, and given the specific amount of carbon in the ground, is there a max on the temperature rise? If so, what is the max?
      -- How much harm will the temperature rise cause?
      -- How much benefit will the temperature rise and CO2 rise provide? (As of today, the higher CO2 and higher temperatures have resulted in a more forested world and more food.)
      -- Are there better ways to fight global warming than cutting emissions? E.g., some sort of geoengineering.
      -- How does the cost of reducing CO2 emissions compare with cost of the damage these emissions will cause?
      -- Given that many past predictions regarding climate change have not panned out, how much confidence should we have in current predictions?

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    13. To be fair, the pathway of hurricanes can be manipulated merely with the stroke of a Sharpie.

      Amazing how far we’ve come!

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    14. Davy, you ignorant slut. It takes more faith to deny scientific consensus than to accept it.

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    15. David, keep your greedy little shorts on. Nobody brought up "policy" except you. TDH quoted a commenter saying climate change is a fact. Everybody knows what he meant, but you had to come here and be a dick pretending there was some ambiguity.

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    16. "commenter saying climate change is a fact"

      Ah, "climate change". So, no more "global warming" hysteria? Replaced by new-and-improved "climate change" hysteria?

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    17. either phrase will work, dummkopf

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    18. So, what was wrong with the original "global warming" hysteria? Or, for that matter, with the "global cooling" hysteria before it, back in the 1970s?

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    19. The Marketing.
      Why is the fact we live in a Capitalism-based economy/ country such a hard concept for some people?
      You may as well ask why we have inflation.

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    20. what was wrong with the original "global warming"

      man made climate change is more precise, and it eliminates letting assholes like you walk into Congress carrying a snowball pretending you're proving something for the rubes who elected you.

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    21. So, no global warming, then? Or global cooling, as the case might be. That was all imprecise. How unfortunate.

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    22. It's too confusing for fucking morons like you, troll boy. Take a snowball and shove it up your ignorant ass. Then move to Florida and buy a pair of wading boots.

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    23. I hear "climate change" turns believers into easily triggered idiots. So sad.

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    24. Where did you hear that, pig fucker?

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  14. DIC: "...a "believer" in climate change will accept whatever the narrative is among climate change opinion leaders..."
    This is an attempt at denigrating those who have respect for the scientific consensus regarding this issue. They are not lemmings. Substituting the term "opinion leaders" for what is far more accurately described as "the scientific community" is denigrating. Scientists are not internet influencers. Using the word "religious" to refer to those who respect the process of scientific inquiry and its outcomes is likewise disrespectful. This is standard boilerplate right wing anti- science gibberish. Right wing narratives regarding science are invariably aimed at undermining any consensus opinion that deviates from right wing dogma. Backtracking, DIC then poses a series of questions that have no bearing on his original statement.

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  15. Taxing the fuck out of the rich, will be the silver-lining on the cloud of increased natural disasters.

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