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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • There is nothing bad faith in my arguments. I am sincere in saying that I disagree with sending troops over there and in saying that I don’t see it as a massive escalation to send 100 troops when we already have 50,000 in theater.

    You are arguing in bad faith by ignoring what I am saying and simply labeling any disagreement as “obvious propaganda”. Nothing here is black and white. This conflict has been going on for generations. Any immediate response has generations of previous actions behind it. To say otherwise is disingenuous.

    Nothing in this conflict is simple. Nothing is clear. Nothing is black and white. Maybe labeling me as a propagandist for disagreeing on one specific thing while agreeing with your broader stance shows who the real propagandist is.


  • Jesus fucking christ… Why does everything that anyone disagrees with “propaganda”? Why can’t it be someone with a different fucking viewpoint? What the fuck is wrong with people on Lemmy that we can’t discuss something without it being “obvious propaganda” or some other bullshit?

    Not everything is black and white. There is room for disagreement on parts of this conflict. I don’t agree with the US sending troops of any kind to Israel and I think we should stop giving them weapons until they stop committing genocide. The only point I was trying to make is that it doesn’t seem like a massive escalation to send 100 troops and a defensive system when we already have 50,000 troops, many war ships, two nuclear aircraft carries, and a ton of aircraft in theater already.


  • I agree that we shouldn’t be sending troops to Israel right now but 100 troops is hardly “all the troops” and isn’t a large change in the number of troops in the region.

    Again, I don’t think we should be sending troops or weapons to Israel right now, but this does seem like a proportional response to Iran’s attack. They launched missiles at Israel. The US sent an anti-missile battery and 100 troops to support it. It seems like kind of a token force to say “we’re supporting Israel in this, but we’re also not going to go crazy”.




  • Right now, if he were able to convert all of his $241.8B to cash, then distribute it evenly among all of the employees at all of his companies, he could give each of his 146,000 employees $1.6M.

    No one person should be that wealthy. I don’t necessarily think that billionaires should be abolished, but I do think they should be paying a shit load more in taxes than they are.

    Also, before anyone says it, yes, I know it’s not as simple as converting his holdings to cash. I’m just saying “if it were possible”.


  • I take it that you would argue that the media bias bot is worse than nothing?

    I’m not arguing in favor of the media bias bot in particular here. I’m just kind of thinking about what might be a better solution. Given the fractured media landscape at the moment, it seems unreasonable to expect everyone to immediately have know the various biases of each news source. Having tools that help with that, even if they are themselves biased, seems like a good starting point for understanding the bias of different news organizations. Is there a better way to develop a similar tool that provides more useful information?


  • Okay, I can certainly see that perspective and, after reading the link posted by @ayyy@InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works I can see how this scale is problematic in other ways since news bias isn’t one-dimensional.

    Is there a better way to educate people about the bias of particular new organizations, though? It seems unreasonable to expect everyone to develop their own individual assessment of every news organization. There are simply too many of them offering too many different spins. This attempt at providing something easily digestible seems like a reasonable starting point. It’s certainly not perfect and has a lot of room for improvement but is it worse than nothing?



  • This is an honest question because I see the media bias bot being consistently downvoted and don’t understand why. Can you fill me in? Why is the media bias bot hated so much? It seems fairly reasonable in its assessments. For example:

    • Daily Vox: Left with High factuality
    • Huffington Post: Left with Mixed factuality
    • MSNBC: Left with Mixed factuality
    • NPR: Left-Center with High factuality
    • Reuters: Least Biased with Very High factuality
    • Forbes: Right-Center with Mostly Factual factuality
    • Fox: Extreme-Right with Mixed factuality
    • OAN: Extreme-Right with Low factuality
    • Newsmax: Extreme-Right with Low factuality
    • Infowars: Extreme-Right with Very Low factuality
      • Conspiracy Level: Tin Foil Hat
      • Pseudo-Sci Level: Strong




  • Do you have a source that shows that he failed multiple times?

    I wonder how many do-overs the rest of us would get after blatantly lying on security clearance applications.

    Zero. The answer is zero. When you fill out the form for your security clearance application you are told to retain a copy and use it when completing your renewals because even minor differences between applications will raise questions. Dot correct previous mistakes, let them ride since they passed scrutiny before.

    Being caught in an outright lie would be immediately disqualifying for anyone except, apparently, Kushner.



  • Do you know where that graphic comes from? The data on opensecrets.org indicates that Biden has received $5,688,069 between 1990 and 2024.

    I’m not disagreeing that this is a problem. This is undoubtedly a route through which foreign money is making it into US politics and Biden is one of the biggest recipients of Pro-Israel funds. It just isn’t as much money as indicated by the graphic. It is $5,688,069 spread over 34 years but loaded heavily to more recent years.

    Biden donations from Pro-Israel sources by election cycle:

    • 2023-2024: $1,459,405
    • 2021-2022: Unsure - Not in top 20 and can’t find full dataset
    • 2019-2020: $3,753,304

    All other election cycles, Biden doesn’t appear in the top 20. Simple math indicates that, outside of 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024, Biden received an additional $475,360 over the rest of his career.

    I don’t like to see that Biden received $3,753,304 in the 2019-2020 campaign cycle. That is way too much foreign influence in my opinion, even if it technically came from American organizations. That said, Biden spent $1,614,843,740 in 2019-2020 meaning that only 0.23% of that was from Pro-Israel groups.