DRUMPFication of the news part deux - increased coverage of Deplorables. Now Luzerne County, PA

[UTUSN]

Last edited Wed Apr 26, 2017, 01:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Navy ships are named, according to their “class”(type): Battleships = named for STATES; cruisers = cities; destroyers = naval heroes; submarines for fish; aircraft carriers = individuals, etc. & my first ship, the Vietnam one, was an LST (Landing Ship-TANK), LSTs being named for COUNTIES. Mine was the USS Luzerne County (LST 902), and that county is in Pennsylvania, so here comes the real Luzerne County being held up as a model for DRUMPF voters, which has nothing to do with me and my ship but I would be under perpetual FUNK if I were assigned to the USS Ronaldo RAYGUN.

It’s not news that veterans are wingnuts in probably majority numbers, yes Deplorables. At the VFW can be heard what it’s about: “We tend to do 'better' (IN COMPENSATION/BENEFITS) under (Repukes).” Which is NOT true, by the bye, but they tend to be suckers for all the FAKE TOUGH TALK of FAKE John WAYNE Repukes = CHICKENHAWKS.

But this item about Luzerne County, PA, is the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]new media trend[/FONT]: Trying to UNDERSTAND all those poor Deplorables and giving them more coverage instead of supposedly the ELITE LIB bubble of the east and west COASTS. Below that is the Huffington Post announcing it is falling right into line with the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]DRUMPFication of the news[/FONT] – shifting over to featuring THOSE WHO FEEL LEFT OUT, MARGINALIZED, AWAY FROM THE COASTS.

There is a play by Eugene IONESCO, “Rhinoceros” (1960) whose dramatic conceit was showing townspeople turning into literal rhinoceroses one by one – meaning the 1920s/30s when people were turning into Nazis, or as DRUMPF pronounces it, NAH-ZHEES. Or given the play's 1960 date, the focus was likely more universal than just Nazis.

*********QUOTE********

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/president-trumps-first-100-days/county-flipped-obama-trump-how-do-voters-feel-now-n749076
[font size=5]This County Flipped From Obama to Trump. How Do Voters Feel Now?[/font]
.... Considered a solid blue bulwark for nearly 20 years, 58 percent of voters in [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Luzerne County[/FONT] shirked tradition last year and voted for Trump — a move that helped flip Pennsylvania for the Republican.

Trump trounced Hillary Clinton here, beating her by 26,237 votes — a 20 point margin. Those [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Luzerne County[/FONT] ballots amounted to nearly [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]60 percent of Trump's total winning margin[/FONT] in Pennsylvania. The county had gone for Obama by nine points in 2008 and provided him a five-point edge in 2012.

County residents here don't fully fit the Trump voter narrative of the non-college educated out-of-work blue collar voter, pining for better times. While that demographic is at play in an area defined by its weakening unions, nearly 60 percent of residents have white-collar jobs and 78 percent pursued studies after high school.

But the county does struggle with unemployment, which is one point higher than the five percent national average. That number has come down significantly, however, since it hit 10.5 percent in 2013. ....

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10028979657
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lydia-polgreen-huffpost_us_58fe16b8e4b018a9ce5d2e4c?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
[font size=5]Letter From The Editor: HuffPost’s New Chapter[/font]
We’ve got a new name, look and mission ― to tell the stories of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]people who have been left out[/FONT] of the conversation.

By Lydia Polgreen

A simple but powerful question drove me to join HuffPost three months ago after nearly 15 years at The New York Times: What would it mean to create a news organization that saw itself not as writing about [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]people who feel left out[/FONT] of the political, economic and social power arrangements, but for them? ....

I think we can do better for people who feel that too much political and economic [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]power has accrued to a very small elite[/FONT]. People who feel they are [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]on the outside[/FONT] looking in at the prosperity created by globalization and technological transformation. That the game is rigged; that the deck is stacked[/FONT] against them; who feel that the house always wins. That definition includes many, many people who voted for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I suspect it also includes the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]majority of people who voted for Trump[/FONT]. It certainly encompasses voters on both sides of Brexit and the French presidential vote that took place over the weekend. ....

As we launch a brand-new name and look for HuffPost, I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions. How can we become better listeners? How can we serve you, our audience, better? We’re doubling down on our bold, splashy style, and serving up the news with a sense of humor, outrage and empathy. We’re also taking the suggestion of our audience across the globe and formally adopting the shorter name they’ve called us for years: HuffPost. ....

We’ll be asking [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]more voices from different[/FONT] perspectives to join our network of contributors and describe their experiences in their own words. And our global editions will work together much more closely to cover the big, sweeping stories of our time: the rise of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]nationalism, terrorism[/FONT] and climate change; the challenge of the global migration crisis; the struggle for human rights across the world. ....

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[Initech]

1. Just further disproves the GOP myth of the "liberal media".

There never has, nor ever will be a true liberal media. If there were, Trump would have been laughed out of the primaries the way Wesley Clark was.

[UTUSN]

2. Yip, and it ain't new or original: 2 examples

1) G.E. RUSSERT was a pioneer in suddenly giving special featuring to what might now be called Deplorables. We know now that G.E. RUSSERT had a Shrub political button behind his lapel on Coup-2000 night, plus that the then G.E. honcho Jack WELCH is a dyed in the wool wingnut (& patron of alleged? plagiarist BARNICLE). And that RUSSERT, after trading off of supposedly being a Lib, infamously said that being a (Lib) was for SCHMUCKS (will look up the quote). And he mentored Tweety in transitioning from being a supposed Dem operative into being a media wingnut. So I distinctly remember how RUSSERT sprung this SHIFT: He announced that us Bleeding Heart Libs have been totally cruel to the poor, suffering, wingnut masses out there and that LIMBOsevic was their champion and that LIMBOsevic was now (then) a big deal and that RUSSERT taped a long interview with him and got it played over the long Thanksgiving weekend multiple times.

2) CNN has long featured "non-traditional" voices, like Ruben NAVARRETE, meaning traitors to their home/minority group's predominant politics and self-interest (i.e., Democratic).

[FakeNoose]

4. So true

There may be reporters and columnists who are famously liberal and let it show in their columns. However the newspapers and media outlets are owned by (mostly) white males who are (mostly) one-per-centers and conservative.

We saw this here in Pittsburgh last fall. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County vote true blue even when the rest of PA goes red as it happened in November. Only Philadelphia and Harrisburg (plus Pittsburgh) went for Hillary while the rest of the state turned red and made it clear that Hillary would lose the election. Pennsylvania was considered one of the "swing" states so we could have really helped Hillary.

But anyway my point is that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which has been owned by the Block family for generations refused to endorse Hillary for the election. Most the editors and columnists fought this decision, and the readers were outraged by their non-endorsement. I'm saying the owners over-ruled the editors and refused to endorse her.

Being total chickenshits, they didn't endorse Trump either, they just laid back and said it was an executive decision not to endorse either candidate. They gave a "six of one, half-dozen of the other" justification and that was it. So many screaming letters to the editor, so much outrage, and less than a week later Trump won the election.

So what did the Pgh-PG know and when did they know it?

[oasis]

3. Deplorable racists feel left out because "diversity" is gaining ground.

Screw 'em.

[UTUSN]

5. Gaining ground and the inevitable, overwhelming wave of the future

[pnwmom]

6. And if you lived in a blue state, every vote beyond the 50+ percent counted for NOTHING,

thanks to the Electoral College.

But they never want to talk about the voters whose votes don't count, or those (largely minority) voters whose names were purged from the rolls because of CrossCheck, or who weren't able to meet new ID requirements.

Here is a good article about how CrossCheck worked, and the disproportionate impact it had on minority, largely Democratic, voters.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890

We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

Swedlund's statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian.

This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on the list. Was the program designed to target voters of color? "I'm a data guy," Swedlund says. "I can't tell you what the intent was. I can only tell you what the outcome is. And the outcome is discriminatory against minorities."

[UTUSN]

7. I'll be using this many, many times with the local wingnuts