Does News Coverage Affect Perception?

The most recent CNN poll says:

Among the four major tickets (Clinton, Trump, Johnson, and Stein), 43% of likely voters plan on voting Clinton/Kaine and 45% of likely voters plan on voting for Trump/Pence.

If they had to choose between just Clinton/Kaine and Trump/Pence, 48% would pick Clinton and 49% would pick Trump.

Then they asked, "Regardless of who you support and trying to be as objective as possible, who do you think will win the presidential election this November?" (Note, it's not asking who they want to win, but who they think will win.)

59% said Clinton and 34% said Trump. In spite of Trump having a slight majority, people still think that others are going to vote for Clinton.

The poll also asks whether people have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate. Trump's favorable rating is higher than Clinton's. Also, more people have an unfavorable opinion of her than of him.

Not only are Trump's numbers getting better, Clinton's are steadily falling. The more people see her, the more they dislike her. (That bodes well for a Clinton presidency, doesn't it?) Yet if you look at headlines for campaign-related news on major news sites, it seems as if Clinton is the most popular candidate ever! (And that she farts fairy dust that will make all of your dreams come true while Trump is a big meany. And he has cooties.) She doesn't, he doesn't, but who are you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?

Shut It Down!

Reuters shuts down the video feed while Trump is receiving a blessing from Bishop Wayne T. Jackson.

Trump's speech was over, was the rest just going on too long or was there another reason for shutting it down? Too much God business? Too pro-Trump? It's a shame (for the reporters) that all news events can't be as scripted as Hillary's are.

No, Really HE'S The Racist

MSNBC says they're going to play a clip from Clinton's speech while they're talking about how racist Trump is. Instead they show how racist they are.

Update: I had the video embedded but it's been removed from YouTube. Here's a link where you can read about it and watch what happened.

"Absolutely not what we were going to play."

I bet it wasn't. It must suck when you're trying to talk about how Trump is a racist and you play a video that makes you look racist instead.

I wonder about people who are always accusing others of racism. Is it because they have a hard time suppressing the racism in their own hearts and assume that other people are equally hateful?

Fact-Checking Clinton's Columbus, OH Speech

Going through the whole speech so you don't have to. It's a long article, but fortunately you don't have to worry about space online the way print newspapers do. Maybe that's why traditional media doesn't spend much time fact-checking her. They save space by having an article called "Things Hillary Said That Were True". Then, with nothing to print, they just delete the title too. Assume that any blank spaces in newspapers used to be one of these articles.

Telemundo Staging Shots at Protest

And today we learn that if you're under 18 you can hit someone's camera and spit at them and some twit will defend it because you're "obviously a minor". Clearly too immature to be at a protest unsupervised.

Let @Telemundo know that their job is to report the news, not manipulate it. They're owned by @NBC, if you want to include them on the tweet too.

Is This Racist?

People who find this Chinese commercial offensive sure are complaining about it online. Weirdly enough*, more commenters found this similar Italian commercial funny.

What's Up With the Washington Post?

Just a sample of some of the headlines from today and yesterday.

Trump escalates attack on Bill Clinton
Donald Trump, the welfare king
The Trump train is fueled by conspiracy
Donald Trump’s primary success may have convinced him to make a critical error
A mural showing Donald Trump kissing Boris Johnson appears in Britain
What you need to know about the next recession (starring Donald Trump)
Want to see a GOP senator duck and run? Ask about Trump.
On Fox News, Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of taking ‘set-up questions’
The funny way the media asks Donald Trump questions
Trump shouldn’t wait until the convention to announce his vice president
Trump proposes wall to protect golf resort from rising seas (Yep, he even made it into the sports section)
Clinton: Trump could ‘bankrupt America’ like his companies (Clinton unclear on what Chapter 11 is)
Donald Trump’s trade policies are dangerous
In swing state suburbs, white women are skeptical of Trump
Reluctant pro-Trump Republicans are kidding themselves

I would suggest that the paper change its name but "We're Obsessed with Trump and We Must Prop Up Hillary's Failing Campaign" won't fit on the masthead.

Bernie Finds Out What It's Like to Be a Conservative

Bernie isn't denouncing the people that some on the Left think should be denounced. He's not rolling over and letting Hillary take the position that she's "obviously" earned.

This is how the Left treats Republicans. "Say what we tell you to say! Don't represent the people who support you, just get out of our way!"

Two months ago, Moulitsas declared the primaries effectively over and banned from his site “malicious attacks on our presumptive presidential nominee or our presidential efforts.” Last month Drum said Sanders was “basically running a con … we were never going to get a revolution, and Bernie knew it all along.”

Why don't they just crown Hillary queen and stop all of this other nonsense?

Icon of Tolerance and Jew Hater

A young Muslim woman who took selfies in front of the Belgian right-wing and anti-Islam party Vlaams Belang was declared to be an icon of tolerance, fighting against Islamophobia.

Teen Vogue called her a total badass.

More than just being a badass, Zakia makes a remarkable point — racism is often just ignorance. Once these protestors experienced and got to know her vibrant spirit they immediately warmed up to her. We bet some of them even felt silly.

So cute, so sweet, so filled with love...

Well, maybe not for everyone.

Trump Bump

Where now they tell you why Trump is gaining in popularity even though they were all predicting he wouldn't "be the nominee, or even come close", or that Rubio would be the Republican candidate, and, besides, he's not really a Republican and his favorability ratings are too low for him to be the nominee.

“I can guarantee you Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee.” - Jeb Bush

Playing the Woman Card

The Daily Beast has an article on why it's not working for Hillary Clinton to play the woman card against Trump. It talks about the failed NYT hit piece.

Among the allegedly startling revelations, we learned he sees many women as sex objects, whom he’d like to see in a bikini. (What a surprise.) We learned he believes the ideal woman is not overweight. (Shocking.) We learned he judges beauty pageant contestants on whether he considers them hot or not. (Didn’t see that coming.) We also learned—perhaps most legitimately surprising of all—that Trump has actually promoted a number of women to key leadership roles within his organization.

That Trump has promoted women is only a surprise if you believed the propaganda put out by his opponents. At least The Daily Beast is admitting to being that gullible, or that they believe their readers are.

 The New York Times’ groundbreaking investigation essentially proved one thing: Trump is more like the average man than some of us thought only with more ego and money to say what he actually thinks, and to date who he actually wants to.

Yes. That's why people have been talking about it being the year for populists. Trump may be extremely wealthy but regular people are still able to identify with him.

You can tell that they still aren't quite paying attention.

 It’s hard to know how Trump would legislate on “women’s issues” because as with most issues, the man has not exactly been Mr. Consistent. (He wanted to punish women who seek abortions, until he thought about it for a nanosecond then didn’t.)

He didn't say he wanted to punish them, just that if abortion were illegal it would be logical to assume there would be consequences for anyone breaking the law. That's usually how laws work.

We Haven't Corroborated Any of This

Might want to recheck that, Anderson.

How Trump Treats Women

The NYT wrote what they probably hoped would be a damning report. There's a lot of words but not much content.

I have a problem with people relating stories that happened decades ago, especially ones about people or situations that would make it likely that they've repeated the stories often. Stories grow with retelling. It's not malicious, it's human nature. You tell an anecdote and get positive attention. The next time you tell it, you might add a little embellishment - not an outright lie, just some tweaking - to the parts that got people's attention before. Over time, the story has changed, and because our minds work that way, we believe the changes to be the truth. (Reconstructive memory)

In all, more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks.

Even with that, there's not much here that could be considered damning, and I can't help but wonder where was the "how Bill Clinton treats women" article before he was elected? Has there at any time been an interview with "dozens of women" who have worked for him, dated him, or interacted socially? Or for that matter, how Hillary Clinton has treated the women that Bill worked with, dated, or interacted with?

Who's Crazy Now?

I saw this article - Maybe Donald Trump has really lost his mind: What if the GOP frontrunner isn’t crazy, but simply not well? - and Googled the author to see what her background in psychology was, since she felt assured of her opinion enough to write about it like this.

Her degrees are in Spanish and Latin American literature and philosophy. On an "about me" page it says, "she was raised by a strong, bright, and brave mother, who taught her children that “rules were made to be broken” and to question authority." So, I don't know, is she questioning authority here or questioning someone else's right to question the status quo?

If you're wondering whether you should bother reading the article, I'll give you one quote to help decide - "One excellent example was John Oliver’s brilliant piece on Trump that ended by outing that Trump’s name had originally been Drumpf—a truth that was extremely ironic since Trump himself likes to mock others for their names."

If you think an ancestor in the 1600s changing the spelling of their last name is a "gotcha", then this article is for you. If it bothers you to see someone repeat falsehoods while calling the other person a liar, then this article will just smell like desperation.

Is Hillary Really Crooked?

The NYT asks, "Is Hillary Dishonest?" (because they don't want to use the c-word - crooked).

[W]hen Gallup asks Americans to say the first word that comes to mind when they hear “Hillary Clinton,” the most common response can be summed up as “dishonest/liar/don’t trust her/poor character.” Another common category is “criminal/crooked/thief/belongs in jail.”

The op-ed argues that this is all overblown. She's just pragmatic. She's a politician who thinks and talks the way politicians do. This just goes to show that you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but only the NYT editorial staff can get fooled all of the time.

Math is Hard

847 + 400 = 1247
553 + 684 = 1237
148 + 1090 = 1238
1930 + 483 = 2413
1223 + 1160 = 2383

CNN got 2 out of 5 right. But don't worry, I'm sure they fact check all of their other stuff much better.

Asked and Answered

The interview is one of the most successful tricks that politicians and the media plays on voters. A politician will do an interview with a journalist that (secretly or not-so-secretly) supports that candidate. The journalist will ask a tough question that the voters have been wondering about. The politician will give an answer that touches on the subject but doesn't really answer the question. Then, the journalist will move on to a new question, no follow-up on the previous question.

This way, the politician can say that the question has been asked and answered and now we need to move on. Obviously the only people still asking for an answer are from the other party and have an agenda.

Or people who noticed that it wasn't really answered in the first place.

Some politicians are worse about this than others, but have no doubt, any of them will use this if they can. ("If they can" means they have to have a willing journalist participating. This is harder for some politicians than others.)

Who Is Lying, Michelle or Corey?

I can believe that Michelle Fields thought she was being pulled down by Corey Lewandowski. Maybe she never played any contact sports or games like King of the Hill when she was a child. And she's way too young to have attended a concert at Riverfront pre-1980. Her attention was on Trump and being pulled startled her and it felt worse than it looked. For her it was a rare event that happened to her.

I can also believe that Lewandowski doesn't think he did anything. He mostly only saw her from behind, his attention was more on Trump than her, and he was just moving away a random person who had gotten to close and refused to move when told to back off. It happened quickly, and for him, it could be something he has to do a lot - push or pull people away from Trump so they can get through the crowd. (I'm not saying he's always yanking people out of the way. If he grabs someone who is paying attention to him, it would be easier to pull and gently maneuver that person out of the way than it someone whose attention was elsewhere.) For him it was a common event (people crowding Trump).

This is where Fields in continuing to touch Trump after having been told to back off, before Lewandowski grabs her.

Their perceptions of what happened are different, but for similar reasons:

• their attention was on Trump
• how rare/common the event was
• who was the principal in the event - for Michelle, it became about her. For Corey, it started out being about Trump and stayed about Trump.

So, I think they can be both be telling the story the way they believe it happened. I also think that if she were a man, we never would have heard of any problem.

Hillary on a Hot Mic

Hillary Clinton and Chris Matthews discuss Trump and endorsements by Christie and Carson.

Hillary wonders if Christie had a debt, implying that The Donald is helping to pay it. The best part comes when Matthews is talking about Dr. Carson and the Academy of Achievement. He's saying there was also a guy there who was the first to climb Everest. The name of the guy seems to be eluding him.

Trump's Hacked Voicemail

You won't believe what they found.

Anonymous wanted to find dirt on Trump after he said he would ban Muslims from entering the country. Instead they found messages from MSNBC hosts thanking him for charitable donations.