@sun what is the press secretary for again? are there ever any ramifications for them just lying? who is responsible for what they say (supposedly the president, but)?
And I'd sure like to know what brilliant insights they were able to glean from the subscriptions that they didn't already have access to in the leviathan of the federal government? Because if our annual multi trillion dollar prison wardens need Politico to function, then they clearly there's a disconnect.
Except that's the point. It was all laundered through fronts. The subscription service is just the cover. So is nearly every single social justice civil rights group of the last 50-70 years. It was all a grift to launder money for clandestine Ops and skimming. @sun
I realize it sounds stupid that the government needs someone outside government to tell them what other parts of the government are doing, but it's just a real thing.
But that's not what this was, was it? This was Politico. And I'm sure that there are at least 12 different redundant departments responsible for compiling the same data Lexis Nexis does. Library of Congress can do it if they don't already. But if the feds need to rely on these services, then fire the feds and keep the services. They're the ones doing the real work. @sun@amerika
@sun A few questions. What is the quality of this service vs lexis nexis? How many government employees actually need "up-to-the-minute, detailed reporting on policy decisions?" Shouldn't they be getting those from their coworkers who actually make these policies? Also, how many right-wing news services got anywhere near the same level of government support?
I think we already know the answers to all these questions.
The problem isn't that a govt agency was paying fees to a news org. It's that they were paying fees to a news org that was they pushing fake news also being crafted and propagated out of USAID. Like support for censorship.
Authors will always be tempted to write what their audience will want to hear if they pay well. The difference between 'bribe' and 'paying author for their work' is fuzzy to the point of not distinguishable here.
for the people who think 'this isn't fair! why should the government be paying to view a free website!'
this is exactly what @amerika and others often say people should do: "pay authors for their work! if you don't pay authors they won't write" this is more true of the kind of writing that politico does -- up to date analysis on current trends -- if you don't pay for this kind of thing, you'll get only the scraps and leftovers of people who do. For individuals this might not be a big deal, but for governments this might be. Also : they can afford to have a free loss-leader website if it means competing for the actual government subs with the likes of stratfor.
generally: there may be a net positive or net negative when costs and benefits of this service are considered, and it may very well be not worth the cost. But just flat out complaining because "writers are being paid" is imho beneath people like at least @amerika
Internally they are probably exactly the same, structurally.
They are just shitposters who get paid, and who write longer form reports when paid well, which is probably what we would do if we were paid 10,000$/subscriber
@jeffcliff@truthbait@amerika I'm not reading that shit but usually the way this works is, there are a few places where really powerful conservatives can express republican talking points about fucking over americans that democrats materially agree with; and they are allowed to do so. but the rank and file conservative is told by facebook that their post has had its visibility limited when they post an opinion held by 78% of americans.
I continued to follow conservatives on every platform that I had access to. That's not to say there was no censorship of them - of course there was. Just like there was of us.
@jeffcliff@amerika@truthbait when they say that conservatives are not censored, they mean that house n*gg*rs like ross douthat at nyt are allowed to write to make conservatives look stupid
@moth_ball@sun press secretary is like journo prime. we should get rid of the position and force politics journalists to do TMZ shit to find out whats going on in the country
Yeah, it was. There's been multiple waves of twitter refugees who were sick and tired of it at this point.
> You can only point to yourself.
No, I've pointed out MANY examples over the years and have spent a whole bunch of effort bringing awareness of those examples with my podcast and elsewhere. But it's a pretty big insult when I, myself, am affected and you just write it right off.
Speaking of this, it's worth noting that the release of "The Twitter Files" showed how the censorship was directed at the Right for the political advantage of the Left.
I'm not disputing there was some censorship of the left. But it wasn't mainstream. I can point to a long list of conservatives and their outlets that were censored. You can only point to yourself. You can't name a single prominent lefty who was censored can you? Not one mainstream, where on the right the list is long.
Just take the "L" on this one, Canada. You've earned it.
@amerika@11112011@truthbait@sun Yes very comparably. We're not going to get anywhere on this until the conservatives see this, too - it was a successful divide and conquer campaign by google to mass censor both left and right and then have eachother blame eachother for the censorship rather than the people who normalized the censorship (which may have even *actually* involved USAID)
[in fact the left was censored *more* than the right, generally but this is irrelevant even]
@saskboy@amerika speaking of widely infectious viruses did you catch the thread about the tobacco mosaic virus infecting humans? I had no idea that was possible.
@amerika@saskboy@truthbait@sun the genetic data says virtually everyone in kingdom mamalia is at risk, from whales to mice. Some groups are more at risk than others (perhaps including hispanics)
@amerika @truthbait@noauthority.social @jeffcliff@sun ... as you ignore the elephant in the room: practically everyone got infected by a harmful virus that directly killed millions, and other viruses are known to cause those comorbidities, but let's blame that science thing that conservatives now don't like together.
@amerika@truthbait@jeffcliff@sun call me a Conservative, I guess. "conservatives like order, which implicitly demands realism and goals like culture." A culture of respecting science isn't conservative now (if it ever was), because it's about sky gods, plane spraying hoaxes, eating well to cure viruses, and skipping shots to stay alive.
@amerika@truthbait@jeffcliff@sun well, currently conservative viewpoints are essentially Christian Nationalism at best, and at worst a type of fascism that builds concentration camps. And I hope those always remain taboo and ostracized views.
None of this happened here, and we're a top five medical town, so (shrug) I'd be cautious about believing the hysterical media... it's corporate produkt too.
@amerika@Waerloga@jeffcliff oh, you help cover up mass deaths. Another person who forgot there were freezer trucks full of morgue overflow, and people dropping dead in the streets only 5 years ago.
@amerika@Waerloga@saskboy "seem" to be doing OK until you actually bother to count *which even the above study does* and finds that there's fewer of the antivaxxers even around to count
@jeffcliff >>you have been consistently wrong for years.
-Never covid vaxxed, only wore my own cloth masks until I realized that too was bull$chitt. -Wife never covid vaxxed -4 kids never ever vaxxed for anything at all. -all alive and healthy -I have friends back in Ontario ages 25+ who have mysteriously died post-vaccination until now (about 1 every 4 months since 2021). Another in her 40s died two weeks ago and one in her mid 50s who is now terminal as of last week.
Being this “wrong” about covid, and living, is not to unlike being a pig to women and still hooking up with them.
>-there are more healthy people who died suddenly after taking the full schedule of vaccines than > -people who were sickly and susceptible who were completed protected once they came it contact with this alleged disease.
this is a lie. COVID is what caused people to "die suddenly" NOT the vaccine.
>Been beating this dead horse for years.
And you've been consistently wrong for years
and your link *supports* vaccination.
key point > here were 650 SARS-CoV-2–associated hospitalizations in the vaccinated group versus 823 in the unvaccinated group (VE, 16.64% [CI, 6.47% to 25.77%]). There were 109 SARS-CoV-2–associated deaths in the vaccinated group versus 147 in the unvaccinated group (VE, 26.61% [CI, 5.53% to 42.32%]
this is with vaccinating against a variant that wasn't even circulating
Pretty easy to show vaccines and their campaign were a sham. Already showed you two years ago that no government had documentation proving that they were able to isolate this “virus”.
If you cant isolate it, and the medicine against it doesn’t work, maybe something else is killing people.
Given the ubiquity of vaccine acceptance, the vaccines are at least worth a second look, especially since:
-there are more healthy people who died suddenly after taking the full schedule of vaccines than
-people who were sickly and susceptible who were completed protected once they came it contact with this alleged disease.
Last post about this I will make in this thread. Been beating this dead horse for years.