Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Helen, in reply to Andre,
She came across as a bitter hardened campaigner until her cancer was announced.
No, she was never that.
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Hard News: Helen, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
It's one of the privileges of journalism that you get to speak to extraordinary people at extraordinary times.
It wasn't lost on me that this might be her last interview, but I never guessed she would be gone so soon.
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A Facebook friend has other FB friends who are conservative Americans.
Wondering what could lead one of them to say the things she did in a discussion under one of his posts, I clicked through to her Facebook page. It was a click through the rabbit hole.
There was cheerleading for Trump, but it seemed to come with less passion than her loathing for Clinton. But she had reasons – many, many reasons. Almost all of those reasons were long-debunked zombie memes. She didn’t seem to be a terrible person (and clearly wasn’t a racist), that was just her reality.
It seems significant that the only recent non-political post was a share of an undying 2008 hoax about a coming storm of cosmic rays, warning people to “not let your cell phone be close to your body, it may cause damage.” Maybe for all this to take there has to be some base level of credulity or paranoia.
A lot of her shares were links to Breitbart. Her favourite conspiracy theories mostly seemed to originate with Roger Stone. And, really, that’s what people like Stone and Bannon have done: over decades, created a imaginary narrative that millions of people now live within. It’s a bit of a worry.
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Warren Buffett responds comprehensively to Trump's attempt to deflect criticism of his tax affairs by claiming all rich guys do it.
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Foreign Policy magazine makes its first ever US Presidential endorsement – for Clinton, of course.
In the nearly half-century history of Foreign Policy, the editors of this publication have never endorsed a candidate for political office. We cherish and fiercely protect this publication’s independence and its reputation for objectivity, and we deeply value our relationship with all of our readers, regardless of political orientation.
It is for all these reasons that FP’s editors are now breaking with tradition to endorse Hillary Clinton for the next president of the United States.
Our readers depend on FP for insight and analysis into issues of national security and foreign policy. We feel that our obligation to our readers thus extends now to making clear the great magnitude of the threat that a Donald Trump presidency would pose to the United States. The dangers Trump presents as president stretch beyond the United States to the international economy, to global security, to America’s allies, as well as to countless innocents everywhere who would be the victims of his inexperience, his perverse policy views, and the profound unsuitability of his temperament for the office he seeks.
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From NBC:
During Sunday's debate, Donald Trump once again said he doesn't know whether Russia is trying to hack the U.S. election, despite Friday's statement by the U.S. intelligence community pointing the finger at Putin -- and despite the fact that Trump was personally briefed on Russia's role in the hacks by U.S. officials.
A senior U.S. intelligence official assured NBC News that cybersecurity and the Russian government's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election have been briefed to, and discussed extensively with, both parties' candidates, surrogates and leadership, since mid-August. "To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation," said the official. "The intelligence community has walked a very thin line in not taking sides, but both candidates have all the information they need to be crystal clear."
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In more past-24-hours madness:
Trump Ally Alex Jones: High-Level Sources Confirmed That Clinton, Obama Are Demons
NOT satire.
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Samantha's Bee's show has basically replicated the Daily Show vox-pops in the original post, only more cleverly:
The ease with which these people can be tied up in knots over their own stupid beliefs is really telling.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Tom Semmens,
To do a hatchet job on Trump supporters via a mentally ill woman – Melanie clearly has mental health issues, having lost her job after allowing a train to run a red light in what was obviously some sort of pyschotic episode and she is on medication – should be unacceptable to a MSM newspaper. Now, a vulnerable woman will be splashed across the world’s newspapers in order to give the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia something to to gloat over.
Sorta, but sorta not.
It's a very sad story, but the chilling part is the pervasive alt-media environment that feeds this poor woman's paranoid beliefs – and the candidate who embodies them. Literally millions of Americans believe the things she does – are they all mentally unwell?
The author, Stephanie McCrummen, is an award-winning writer on mental health issues – she's written a series of stories on people falling through the cracks. So it's not just a political hit-job.
A few days ago I watched Zed Nelson's Gun Nation documentary for The Guardian. Nelson revisits people he first profiled 18 years ago, very normal-looking conservatives, and it really gets quite dark by the end as it becomes clear what these people actually believe.
There's something wrong in conservative white America, there really is.
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Hard News: Friday Music: After the…, in reply to Sacha,
including transport costs to get across the sprawl. A few nightlife zones near transport nodes around the region isn’t unrealistic.
And Karangahape will have its own CRL station, plus an official designation as the "edgy and creative" zone.
But, you know, Onehunga makes some sense too ...
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