How do ANY of these people receive security clearances???
CIA: Polygraph says…
Trump Staffer: No it doesn’t
CIA: Yes it does
Trump Staffer: Nope
WTF? My head hurts!
Edit: Somebody is trying to find out how these people did get clearances
4 Likes
My parents never got divorced, but this is how I imagine it would feel to have to live with an abusive drunken stepfather and then get a postcard from your cool dad sending you greetings from his latest tropical getaway.
“WHY COULDN’T I GO WITH YOOOUUUU?” 
5 Likes
Not like this:
5 Likes
Fake president.
Fake administration.
Fake election.
Fake democracy.
11 Likes
They can always pull a Joe Wilson and just shout it out
9 Likes
They could do as Rachael Maddow suggested: cover this White House as if it were a silent movie. Quit paying attention to what they say, because going down the rabbit hole in an attempt to nail down every lie will tie one up forever. Instead, watch --and report on-- what they are doing. It’s time journalists quit depending completely on ‘access’ and started investigating the way they used to: grunt work.
17 Likes
But, but, journalism is dead. Right?
Perhaps now there will be an journalistic revival of sorts. Assuming that there are some journalists left on ever shrinking payrolls.
3 Likes
Whenever an obvious lie is told, the entire press pool erupts into laughter.
6 Likes
Ideal, but hard to do given the audience’s shrinking attention span and the news orgs’ shrinking budgets.
2 Likes
Why is the questioned being asked when it has already happened blatantly before and few journalists did anything about it? Has Boing Boing already forgotten the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction promoted by the Bush administration? That was an outright lie that was constantly reinforced by the White House press secretary, Sec. Cheney and Bush:
Via the Intercept: There’s no question that the Bush administration lied enthusiastically about what it knew about Iraq and WMD.
Examples:
"*Former Vice President Dick Cheney kicked off the push for war in August 2002 by claiming: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.
*The Bush administration said that aluminum tubes Iraq had tried to import were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs” — even as Bush himself was being told the State Department and Energy Department believed (correctly, of course) they were intended to be used as conventional rockets.
*Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union address that “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” even though his administration had been repeatedly warned this was dubious (and it turned out to originate with crudely forged documents).
*Colin Powell doctored intercepted Iraqi communications for his U.N. presentation to make them appear more alarming."
I mean Vice President Cheney
But grunt work costs money and who pays for news these days?
(It’s a problem that existed well before Trump, but now we’re really feeling the consequences of it)
3 Likes
Using conditioning would be more effective. At any lie, all journalists look down at their device/pad/whatever, or look anywhere but at the speaker (liar). If something true is said, smile, nod and pay attention. It won’t take long before it becomes psychologically difficult to lie.
1 Like
I agree there is a difference in scale here, I am just not optimistic that the media is going to step up to meet the greater challenge. The lead up to the Iraq War was such glaring failure of media coverage, which routinely failed to challenge the Bush Administration on its shaky (and later found to be untrue) case for war. Facing an administration that is willing to brazenly lie about everything, and a public now skeptical of the accuracy of news, the media is facing a serious crisis.
2 Likes
I choose to believe your account because it affirms my views and helps me reach my goals. I don’t even have to buy into it wholesale, just throw some doubt about any other possible contending assertion, including your own disclaimer. We can discuss this all day long, in the meantime I broke into someone’s garage and stole everything I wanted, but we won’t talk about THAT.
1 Like
I want my poll machines back!
1 Like
So glad that was considered to be within the bounds of Congressional decorum. /s
4 Likes
It’s a theory, but doing that is like telling someone their spouse is dating escorts or their kids are turning tricks to buy drug money – they already privately know, did the calculations, and decided to stay the course regardless because there is a real (if misused) power in denial. I do not understand when people point out things that others already know, believing this one brilliant insight will change people’s minds. No one likes to be told they are wrong anymore. People will play devil’s advocate just to tweak your nose. The press has to come to grips with a new reality and while they are preaching to the converted, they are just coming off as slimy little brats tattling on their big brother and the parents are just tuning him out.
The press has serious credibility problems of their own, like the boy who cried wolf one time too many. The scandals of Lara Logan, Sabrina Erdely, and Brian Williams, for instance, weren’t that long ago, and people who don’t want to hear it, they will cite all those real transgressions as reason why not to believe the press, and the worst thing is that they aren’t wrong in rejecting it, but believing someone else by default isn’t an answer, either.
I think people are looking for simple, easy, sassy, and Afterschool Special solutions, and that is not happening. The problems go much deeper than what the press is willing to admit. The press has no power anymore. They have to regroup before picking their battles carefully. People will believe the Kardashians before they will believe the Washington Post or 60 Minutes, and that reality is truly frightening.
My theory is to kill 24 hour news. Slow it down. Spend time being actual journalists.
6 Likes
