Cable news is entertainment and they choose stories that will drive ratings. Once the public is bored with a story or there is little new to report, the TV folks move on.
It’s sad that you, and people in general have given up hope that our branches of government will function, but you are correct that dealing with the problem of mass migration is not simply a problem of which president is in office.
Like most complicated problems there is no one magic answer. My son worked for many years with a bunch of bright young professionals from many nations on finding root causes of migration from the African continent into Europe. Understanding the causes for migration is necessary to stem future migration. Dealing with those who have already left their former homes and are stuck in a place with few resources or infrastructure to support their simple human needs is an entirely separate problem. Nobody wants to see innocent children drown, starve, or die of disease.
The GOP has blocked legislative action across the board (with the exception of wall building and law enforcement interdiction) and that is a big part of the problem in resolving the crisis. With the large numbers of migrants it is likely that some percentage are criminals fleeing justice in their home countries, but clearly the vast majority are not. Certainly we can agree that children under 12 years old are very unlikely to have been persistent criminals. We have a system that is intended to investigate and process migrants who enter or wish to enter our country but that process has been overwhelmed by the numbers, and for years Congress has failed to provide resources to the judicial or state department side of that process. In fact, Congress has often cut money from budgets in what seems like a purposeful attempt to make the system fail.
Guess what? They have succeeded in making the system fail.
So government at every level from federal down to local counties and towns have been forced to deal with migrants ad hoc. The underlying systemic problems are not being resolved. It is, to coin a phrase, a swamp of Congress’ making. No single president can be blamed, tho all of them have had some hand in it.
We have seen that walls don’t work. They are expensive to build, create all kinds of associated problems, and they are ineffective. We see in Israel that walls did not work. In China recently a man was arrested for using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall because it obstructed his path to work. I am not anti-wall. I’m pro-functional wall. I spent some years in the housing business. I designed walls for people’s homes, and I wanted those walls to work for those people. But I didn’t want to build random walls that I knew would not be useful. That would have been wasteful and expensive. Same thing with the border.
For many decades there have been sections with walls and fences that functioned relatively well as long as the other infrastructure for dealing with migrants, commerce, tourists, and daily worker traffic is accommodated. At some point Congress decided to defund some of the systems that were meant to process all that traffic. Like an undersized culvert on a road the system kept working, but worked poorly under stress, and just like that culvert when a flood came the system failed catastrophically.
I’m not going to blame the culvert. Just like a wall a culvert performs a function but it is sized to meet a need at a time. If the expected volume of water changes radically the culvert will fail. It’s not politics, it’s culverts and water.
What we have seen is that the GOP, the Party of No, has purposely prevented action on building new culverts. Worse, they have decided to block the culverts. Predictably the culvert of our immigration system has failed.
The question is, will you support funding the design and construction of an upgraded system? Or do you stand with those who work to prevent reasonable action?
As for stew, I love stew! This time of year is perfect for it since I have a woodstove. I put a pot on in the morning and add ingredients and let it sit to one side so it doesn’t get too hot. You could just put in some meat and potatoes, and it would be a good stew, but if you add some carrots, some onions, maybe some celery - really, whatever is in the fridge - then you’ve got something! Every once in a while I give it a stir. Honestly, the more ingredients the better the flavor in the end. You just have to be patient and give it time for the flavors to mingle.
An Axios review of news stories found that the "open border" language took off during the Obama administration as conservatives worked to thwart planned immigration reform.
Obama pulled back from nominating Thomas Saenz, who is now the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to run the Justice Department's civil rights division after conservative pundits falsely claimed he was "an open-borders extremist."
Obama was routinely attacked for supporting open borders, though he stepped up deportations and was labeled by immigrant advocates as the "deporter-in-chief."
You are correct. There has never been anything even remotely like an “open border” policy in the USA, and when Obama attempted to improve the system so that it would not be overwhelmed Republicans failed to seek meaningful consensus on the issue. I’m being very generous in not calling it complete obstructionism for the political goal of creating failure of our immigration system.
It is true that Trump worked hard to make America a place that is seen around the world as a more brutish, violent, and unwelcoming place to live. That combined with the pandemic slowed the tide of immigration for a while.
I find it perplexing that Dennis is advocating for what would effectively be an open border policy: “Until different legislation is passed, there is NO reason why our existing immigration laws should not be enforced. PERIOD.”
Edit: I should note that I’m being ironic with the comment on open borders, since so many seem to believe that is the current enforcement policy.
One point, and the Axious story pointed out (as did the two books I read about the building of the railroads)
After the civil war into the 1920's we basically had open borders.. but still had a lot of racism about who came to our country --- just like the republicans of 2000's
I agree with you that the United States needs a massive immigration overhaul and that unfortunately no new immigration laws have been passed since 2006. I am not sure though which immigration laws are not being enforced.
I agree that there have been more people at the border since Biden became president but I think you read that wrong. The share expelled is higher under Biden, 50.9% to 47.4% under Trump. And Trump released 52.2% while Biden released 48.6%.
This issue though, it is not Biden that is holding back the desire to fix immigration. He proposed an immigration bill titled The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. But the Congress, who is the body who makes laws, refused to negotiate and work on immigration reform. And why would they when they would rather draw everyone’s attention to the border versus actually fixing the problem? Yet, the majority of people in the United States would like immigration reform.
Again, what immigration laws are not being enforced?
Wondering what our “national identity” is? I always thought we identified as a diverse, entrepreneurial collection of people that valued education and growth. The GOP seems intent on pushing back against all these values, especially diversity.
The policies are different - one humane and one inhumane - It is will reported that the current administration would like a major boost in funds to address the issue, but of course Republicans will have none of that since that takes away a political talking point. I suspect, like you, most people don’t know what to think anymore about the border.
Ken, please. People have different views on how to deal with immigration and the border. But when you start saying one side is humane, and the other side is inhumane, that is the kind of rhetoric that divides us. My side, good, your side bad. Not helpful.
Well at least there are football games today and tonight! You nail it here, but I would add that we now carry around in our hands, the accumulated knowledge of humanity, and we are interested in none of it. The thing that has become so apparent in the age of the iPhone, we are easily distracted and mislead, as long as it's entertaining on some level. "Click bait" wasn't a phrase a few years ago and is now paramount in our national discourse. Mis-information? Another gem of our times, and created by those only a tad more savvy that its targets, but a real problem today. Even the Times and the Post seem bereft of policy discussion, it's all horse race. Politics has become, blood sport, especially for one side of the aisle.
Love the North Country Light Brigade! The Republicans don't want to fix the border issue. They choose not to because if they did, they couldn't complain about it and it is a huge talking point.
And you also appear to have no ideas on exactly how to “secure the border”. You do know that it is thousands upon thousands of miles in length and includes water, land, and air. There is no simple solution for a nation of our size.
I lived five miles from the southern border in Arizona for two years on a remote ranch. We saw border crossers once. They were starving and thirsty. I think the numbers currently coming to our borders are unsustainable unless we develop a cogent and HUMANE approach and policy. “Security” is the wrong approach, IMO. The GOP has turned an international humanitarian crisis into a political football with scare tactics and refusing to address the concerns in any reasonable manner. Immigrants are people!
When Elise Stefanik first ran for Congress, she promised to reach across the aisle and do what was best for the people. There were many other moderates like her. They no longer exist. Continuing resolutions to keep the government open is probably about as minimal a solution as you can come up with. It’s not solving a problem, its kicking the can down the road.
There will be little compromising because they see it as a success for Biden bringing the parties together. Especially a problem now that Haley is running on that concept.
And the Democrat lemmings voted, as directed, unanimously against him. I enjoy the hypocrisy of these posts, the pot calling the kettle black. I must admit I agreed with Ken regarding how we're forced to follow the election charade. Love him or hate him, Trump is the "click bait". How boring if it were DeSantis vs Phillips.....
What?? Have the news shows cover possible solutions to our most pressing problems and interview the politicians being paid to fix the problems about their solutions??? What a concept! I’m so sick of so much time spent on ‘reporting’ poll results and analyzing them to death. Even PBS does it. Who cares? How does that inform me about who I should vote for?
I was reading a story about how poll results continue to be off. I believe people don’t have a problem lying to pollsters who bug them with questions that make them think.
Exactly! I was just saying earlier this morning that I wonder how elections would turn out if the polls were shut down and there were debates where the candidates actually expressed what their policies are instead of sniping at each other.
Curious thing - in the Sunday Gazette Opinion section there was a letter to the editor criticizing Stefanik. Since the Recorder and Leader Herald run basically the same content, out of curiosity, I looked at the Leader Herald which covers Fulton County, an Elise stronghold, to see if the letter appeared there. To my surprise, it appears that not only did they not run the letter, but neither the the Leader Herald nor the Recorder have an Opinion section.
Ken how can a newspaper have a public debate? The paper can write editorials stating a viewpoint and readers can write letters back to the paper stating theirs, I just don’t see how that is a debate. At one time I thought a debate was about finding answers but I was wrong, because it's not.
Ken, are you and I in a debate, I have made a statement that you disagree with it. On another subject I somewhat recall my English teacher tell the class, one was not to start a sentence with the word "and" is my recollection false.
The adk emptyprise takes it a step further, if they post a story on their social media and you point out facts they left out --- say about pos_tefanKKK.. they will block your account.
too many papers now have a bunker mentality.. "we know what we are doing, we don't need to listen to our readers"
As we commemorate or celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. it would be good to remember that his dream was that we would judge one another by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. We sadly still have a long way to go.
ª people want to blame it on bias reporting, or people wanting to be ignorant.. and yes that is true in that people use that excuse -- both of which I don't totally buy into.
But I look at the adk daily enterprise at the library and I see how it gets its nickname "adk emptyprise ". The paper has so little
There is some national news.. but too often only one story that is supposed to cover a lot of topics and doesn't (40 years ago, there would be one or two major stories, with a couple more smaller ones that would explain some of the details of the major stories)
Short of the sports page and obits, not much local news; no calendar to depend on.. I get bored with it, part because of the mediocre writing of most the reporters there.
News organizations did not decline because of lack of interest by the public or biased reporting. The business model is broken. Newspapers used to have three revenue streams - retail advertising, classified advertising and circulation. Craig’s List took care of classified by offering free ads. Amazon has helped to kill off the retail shopping experience in stores like Sears and KMart (big advertisers in newspapers) and as newspapers cut more and more resources, circulation has declined. Business model is broken.
The ADE and other local papers were very popular when Wal Mart was considering building a store. I believe that was because of high interest... perhaps they had lost their classified revenue* but they were selling papers.
I would also contend that when all this decline happened, newspapers made several other mistakes: 1) they didn't protect their copyright and continued to allow others to use their stories without payment; 2) didn't believe the internet was a thing.. didn't change their 'business model' to online for way too long; 3) the wrong approach to revenue from circulation.
To make up for declining circulation they raised the price, which stopped more people from subscribing. They also continued to focus on 'boomers' who often still do subscribe, but that is a dying bread.
I have never seen a business make the bottom line by cutting services and/or staff. Partly because when you are cutting staff.. you are not increasing wages to attract people who can make up for a lack of staff (where one person does as much as two)
* not changing when craislist came about and continuing to do what they always have done... is part of the problem. Clearly craislist took some away.. but you really needed to go to the paper for certain classifieds (mainly jobs, but also when I went to garage sales in Saranac Lake, people often had a newspaper and list of sales they were going to).
I don’t want to be a naysayer, but do the Oust Stefanik folks have a plan for ousting her? Props for spelling her name correctly. That seems to be something her supporters are consistently incapable of.
I write this as someone who’s probably as vocally opposed to her as nearly anyone.
Ironically, it reminds me of her first two campaigns on repeal and something something Obamacare. Her dictator wannabe leader is still calling for destroying it. His terrific plan will be out in two weeks.
OMG! THIS is what's wrong with education in America these days. How can it possibly be necessary to explain Martin Luther King? The accompanying piece on current events indifference is similarly flabbergasting. My 1955 sixth grade class read articles in the New York Times and we were expected to stand up and discuss our article of that day to our classmates. My family watched Walter Cronkite together every night, as did much of America. My parents read both daily A.M. (The Herald Tribune) and P.M. (The N.Y. Times) newspapers.
Today newspapers are fading into oblivion and Fox is the news source for most who choose to watch at all. The fundamental threat to Democracy is ignorance; Donald Trump and Elise Stefanik are merely its weapons.
I feel just the opposite. I think all stories should not assume their readers know everything.
I think of this when I listen to baseball. I know most of the rules, but I don't think it would hurt to assume everyone does and to explain the infield pop fly rule
===
In wrote a subbtack about how my dad and his friends all construction workers.. read the newspaper every day.. in the end they knew more than I would guess all the hmpy trmpy supporters combined
Labeling those you oppose is main stream media lesson 101. All Republicans' are "racist, anti-abortion, white, pro NRA and MAGA." I'm a Republican and do not fit that stereotype but, in this environment, it doesn't matter. Fox or MSNBC ,pick your poison.
Jason JOnes, then with the Daily Show, did a segment where they interviewed where he interviewed workers in a market.. he found... a supposedly dumb Iranian, who knew about American politics then I think hmpy trmpy knows now.
The Iranian knew things that I would guess 80% don't know who the Secretary of State is (if Dennis G. Defayette is reading: it is Antony Blinken).
Like your friend, he read the newspapers.. what is amazing to me is, he was reading Iranian papers and knew about the US
Thanks for posting his name, I'm going to look him up and send him all kinds of hate mail. That's a very different name, he shouldn't be hard to find He isn't the guy you banned is he Ken? He'll think my hate mail is coming from The Front Page. Defamation can be fun, Eddie thanks for the! it's coming from Ken
AMEN! And then they wonder why no one is watching the news. All the networks are content-light and often tell a story in two sentences before they go to commercial breaks. I think this piece belongs on the Editorial Page of the NYT. Won't you consider tightening it up a bit and submitting it?
Cable news is entertainment and they choose stories that will drive ratings. Once the public is bored with a story or there is little new to report, the TV folks move on.
It’s sad that you, and people in general have given up hope that our branches of government will function, but you are correct that dealing with the problem of mass migration is not simply a problem of which president is in office.
Like most complicated problems there is no one magic answer. My son worked for many years with a bunch of bright young professionals from many nations on finding root causes of migration from the African continent into Europe. Understanding the causes for migration is necessary to stem future migration. Dealing with those who have already left their former homes and are stuck in a place with few resources or infrastructure to support their simple human needs is an entirely separate problem. Nobody wants to see innocent children drown, starve, or die of disease.
The GOP has blocked legislative action across the board (with the exception of wall building and law enforcement interdiction) and that is a big part of the problem in resolving the crisis. With the large numbers of migrants it is likely that some percentage are criminals fleeing justice in their home countries, but clearly the vast majority are not. Certainly we can agree that children under 12 years old are very unlikely to have been persistent criminals. We have a system that is intended to investigate and process migrants who enter or wish to enter our country but that process has been overwhelmed by the numbers, and for years Congress has failed to provide resources to the judicial or state department side of that process. In fact, Congress has often cut money from budgets in what seems like a purposeful attempt to make the system fail.
Guess what? They have succeeded in making the system fail.
So government at every level from federal down to local counties and towns have been forced to deal with migrants ad hoc. The underlying systemic problems are not being resolved. It is, to coin a phrase, a swamp of Congress’ making. No single president can be blamed, tho all of them have had some hand in it.
We have seen that walls don’t work. They are expensive to build, create all kinds of associated problems, and they are ineffective. We see in Israel that walls did not work. In China recently a man was arrested for using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall because it obstructed his path to work. I am not anti-wall. I’m pro-functional wall. I spent some years in the housing business. I designed walls for people’s homes, and I wanted those walls to work for those people. But I didn’t want to build random walls that I knew would not be useful. That would have been wasteful and expensive. Same thing with the border.
For many decades there have been sections with walls and fences that functioned relatively well as long as the other infrastructure for dealing with migrants, commerce, tourists, and daily worker traffic is accommodated. At some point Congress decided to defund some of the systems that were meant to process all that traffic. Like an undersized culvert on a road the system kept working, but worked poorly under stress, and just like that culvert when a flood came the system failed catastrophically.
I’m not going to blame the culvert. Just like a wall a culvert performs a function but it is sized to meet a need at a time. If the expected volume of water changes radically the culvert will fail. It’s not politics, it’s culverts and water.
What we have seen is that the GOP, the Party of No, has purposely prevented action on building new culverts. Worse, they have decided to block the culverts. Predictably the culvert of our immigration system has failed.
The question is, will you support funding the design and construction of an upgraded system? Or do you stand with those who work to prevent reasonable action?
As for stew, I love stew! This time of year is perfect for it since I have a woodstove. I put a pot on in the morning and add ingredients and let it sit to one side so it doesn’t get too hot. You could just put in some meat and potatoes, and it would be a good stew, but if you add some carrots, some onions, maybe some celery - really, whatever is in the fridge - then you’ve got something! Every once in a while I give it a stir. Honestly, the more ingredients the better the flavor in the end. You just have to be patient and give it time for the flavors to mingle.
show us proof
because there is no facts in this.
NO ONE
NO
O N E
not democrats, liberals, Obama, socialist, communists has an open border police
NO ONE*
to say this without proof is either because of a lack of knowledge
gleeful lying
or both
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/17/us-mexico-border-open-borders-myth
but nice try
The facts I provided you
prove the facts you don't have are wrong
More people are coming, but more people are stopped and returned
your number is a lie, and I am glad you don't have facts to prove it, so I know not to wast my time
I love when a republican not only doesn't have fact
but that he is also proud of his ignorance
Behind the "open border" myth
An Axios review of news stories found that the "open border" language took off during the Obama administration as conservatives worked to thwart planned immigration reform.
Obama pulled back from nominating Thomas Saenz, who is now the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to run the Justice Department's civil rights division after conservative pundits falsely claimed he was "an open-borders extremist."
Obama was routinely attacked for supporting open borders, though he stepped up deportations and was labeled by immigrant advocates as the "deporter-in-chief."
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/17/us-mexico-border-open-borders-myth
You are correct. There has never been anything even remotely like an “open border” policy in the USA, and when Obama attempted to improve the system so that it would not be overwhelmed Republicans failed to seek meaningful consensus on the issue. I’m being very generous in not calling it complete obstructionism for the political goal of creating failure of our immigration system.
It is true that Trump worked hard to make America a place that is seen around the world as a more brutish, violent, and unwelcoming place to live. That combined with the pandemic slowed the tide of immigration for a while.
I find it perplexing that Dennis is advocating for what would effectively be an open border policy: “Until different legislation is passed, there is NO reason why our existing immigration laws should not be enforced. PERIOD.”
Edit: I should note that I’m being ironic with the comment on open borders, since so many seem to believe that is the current enforcement policy.
I guarentee Dennis and Tucky tuck
Do not read.. Not books, not journalism
One point, and the Axious story pointed out (as did the two books I read about the building of the railroads)
After the civil war into the 1920's we basically had open borders.. but still had a lot of racism about who came to our country --- just like the republicans of 2000's
I think Dennis reads Epoch Times, which in effect is like hooking a fact vacuum to your brain.
There is no open door policy and I have not heard of any elected official endorse one.
how many posts have you made with NO facts to back it up..
as many as you have IGNORED with facts
I guess you are as bad at math as you are with current affairs
What does an “open border” look like exactly? And what exactly are our immigration laws? Isn’t seeking asylum legal?
all you have to do is search: "Dumb trump supporters"
And you see these talking points spouted over and over. When a reporter asks what their source is or uses facts.. the response is:
"I knew you were a democrat, I can't talk to you."
As if the people with facts are only democrats.. but with these people, maybe that is true
I agree with you that the United States needs a massive immigration overhaul and that unfortunately no new immigration laws have been passed since 2006. I am not sure though which immigration laws are not being enforced.
I did find this article though from the Cato Institute which supports libertarian positions. https://www.cato.org/blog/data-show-trump-wouldve-released-many-border-crossers-biden#:~:text=We%20would%20expect%20that%20of,Patrol%20in%20November%202023%3A%2057%2C122.
I agree that there have been more people at the border since Biden became president but I think you read that wrong. The share expelled is higher under Biden, 50.9% to 47.4% under Trump. And Trump released 52.2% while Biden released 48.6%.
This issue though, it is not Biden that is holding back the desire to fix immigration. He proposed an immigration bill titled The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. But the Congress, who is the body who makes laws, refused to negotiate and work on immigration reform. And why would they when they would rather draw everyone’s attention to the border versus actually fixing the problem? Yet, the majority of people in the United States would like immigration reform.
Again, what immigration laws are not being enforced?
Wondering what our “national identity” is? I always thought we identified as a diverse, entrepreneurial collection of people that valued education and growth. The GOP seems intent on pushing back against all these values, especially diversity.
The policies are different - one humane and one inhumane - It is will reported that the current administration would like a major boost in funds to address the issue, but of course Republicans will have none of that since that takes away a political talking point. I suspect, like you, most people don’t know what to think anymore about the border.
Ken, please. People have different views on how to deal with immigration and the border. But when you start saying one side is humane, and the other side is inhumane, that is the kind of rhetoric that divides us. My side, good, your side bad. Not helpful.
Humane IS good. Inhumane IS bad. No brainer.
I agree. But having a discussion and calling your opponents inhumane is not helpful.
awww look it is factles tucky tuck.. who blocks anyone who proves them wrong
how sweet of you to come here in denial.
Facts show there have been more people at the border: arrested and deported by Democrats than gQpedos
not sure you would lie about things that are simple to prove..
but it does explain why you never have a source for your 'wanna believe propaganda
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG-116-GO00-20200109-SD007.pdf
Well at least there are football games today and tonight! You nail it here, but I would add that we now carry around in our hands, the accumulated knowledge of humanity, and we are interested in none of it. The thing that has become so apparent in the age of the iPhone, we are easily distracted and mislead, as long as it's entertaining on some level. "Click bait" wasn't a phrase a few years ago and is now paramount in our national discourse. Mis-information? Another gem of our times, and created by those only a tad more savvy that its targets, but a real problem today. Even the Times and the Post seem bereft of policy discussion, it's all horse race. Politics has become, blood sport, especially for one side of the aisle.
I think you about nailed it here. Trump became the king of saying “the outrageous” so he would constantly be in the headlines. Still doing it.
Love the North Country Light Brigade! The Republicans don't want to fix the border issue. They choose not to because if they did, they couldn't complain about it and it is a huge talking point.
Dennis, what does that mean? Tell us how to meet your standard.
My name is not sweetie. You insult me.
And you also appear to have no ideas on exactly how to “secure the border”. You do know that it is thousands upon thousands of miles in length and includes water, land, and air. There is no simple solution for a nation of our size.
I lived five miles from the southern border in Arizona for two years on a remote ranch. We saw border crossers once. They were starving and thirsty. I think the numbers currently coming to our borders are unsustainable unless we develop a cogent and HUMANE approach and policy. “Security” is the wrong approach, IMO. The GOP has turned an international humanitarian crisis into a political football with scare tactics and refusing to address the concerns in any reasonable manner. Immigrants are people!
That is also very clear. When is the last time there was a compromise in Congress.
When Elise Stefanik first ran for Congress, she promised to reach across the aisle and do what was best for the people. There were many other moderates like her. They no longer exist. Continuing resolutions to keep the government open is probably about as minimal a solution as you can come up with. It’s not solving a problem, its kicking the can down the road.
There will be little compromising because they see it as a success for Biden bringing the parties together. Especially a problem now that Haley is running on that concept.
Kevin McCarthy compromised and he got fired
And the Democrat lemmings voted, as directed, unanimously against him. I enjoy the hypocrisy of these posts, the pot calling the kettle black. I must admit I agreed with Ken regarding how we're forced to follow the election charade. Love him or hate him, Trump is the "click bait". How boring if it were DeSantis vs Phillips.....
Exactly!
What?? Have the news shows cover possible solutions to our most pressing problems and interview the politicians being paid to fix the problems about their solutions??? What a concept! I’m so sick of so much time spent on ‘reporting’ poll results and analyzing them to death. Even PBS does it. Who cares? How does that inform me about who I should vote for?
I was reading a story about how poll results continue to be off. I believe people don’t have a problem lying to pollsters who bug them with questions that make them think.
Those are push polls, but there are many legitimate polls, but even those have been suspect of late.
Not true of all polls, Carl.
• Wit cellphones (and probably spam on cellphones) people don't respond to calls.. I think it isn't a text for younger people, it isn't a call
• seems like the sample size gets smaller too
• but you are right, we have no morals
Exactly! I was just saying earlier this morning that I wonder how elections would turn out if the polls were shut down and there were debates where the candidates actually expressed what their policies are instead of sniping at each other.
I was once a question person on a local debate.
When a politician didn't answer the question, I followed up.
Afterwards, the owner of the radio station complained to me. He said, without irony: "you are turning this into a debate?"
He meant I shouldn't hold the politicians' feet to the fire
That is sad.
Curious thing - in the Sunday Gazette Opinion section there was a letter to the editor criticizing Stefanik. Since the Recorder and Leader Herald run basically the same content, out of curiosity, I looked at the Leader Herald which covers Fulton County, an Elise stronghold, to see if the letter appeared there. To my surprise, it appears that not only did they not run the letter, but neither the the Leader Herald nor the Recorder have an Opinion section.
That is probably the most disturbing part about your post. Many newspapers have abandoned public debate.
Ken how can a newspaper have a public debate? The paper can write editorials stating a viewpoint and readers can write letters back to the paper stating theirs, I just don’t see how that is a debate. At one time I thought a debate was about finding answers but I was wrong, because it's not.
I disagree. That is a debate. And there is also the opportunity to comment on line as well.
Ken, are you and I in a debate, I have made a statement that you disagree with it. On another subject I somewhat recall my English teacher tell the class, one was not to start a sentence with the word "and" is my recollection false.
Sad.
The adk emptyprise takes it a step further, if they post a story on their social media and you point out facts they left out --- say about pos_tefanKKK.. they will block your account.
too many papers now have a bunker mentality.. "we know what we are doing, we don't need to listen to our readers"
Also sad.
As we commemorate or celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. it would be good to remember that his dream was that we would judge one another by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. We sadly still have a long way to go.
1) Decline of newspapers. I have written about this numerous times (https://edwardlow.substack.com/p/the-dying-media?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2)
ª people want to blame it on bias reporting, or people wanting to be ignorant.. and yes that is true in that people use that excuse -- both of which I don't totally buy into.
But I look at the adk daily enterprise at the library and I see how it gets its nickname "adk emptyprise ". The paper has so little
There is some national news.. but too often only one story that is supposed to cover a lot of topics and doesn't (40 years ago, there would be one or two major stories, with a couple more smaller ones that would explain some of the details of the major stories)
Short of the sports page and obits, not much local news; no calendar to depend on.. I get bored with it, part because of the mediocre writing of most the reporters there.
º maybe sports is the new opiate of the people
News organizations did not decline because of lack of interest by the public or biased reporting. The business model is broken. Newspapers used to have three revenue streams - retail advertising, classified advertising and circulation. Craig’s List took care of classified by offering free ads. Amazon has helped to kill off the retail shopping experience in stores like Sears and KMart (big advertisers in newspapers) and as newspapers cut more and more resources, circulation has declined. Business model is broken.
I am not sure if I can totally agree with that.
The ADE and other local papers were very popular when Wal Mart was considering building a store. I believe that was because of high interest... perhaps they had lost their classified revenue* but they were selling papers.
I would also contend that when all this decline happened, newspapers made several other mistakes: 1) they didn't protect their copyright and continued to allow others to use their stories without payment; 2) didn't believe the internet was a thing.. didn't change their 'business model' to online for way too long; 3) the wrong approach to revenue from circulation.
To make up for declining circulation they raised the price, which stopped more people from subscribing. They also continued to focus on 'boomers' who often still do subscribe, but that is a dying bread.
I have never seen a business make the bottom line by cutting services and/or staff. Partly because when you are cutting staff.. you are not increasing wages to attract people who can make up for a lack of staff (where one person does as much as two)
* not changing when craislist came about and continuing to do what they always have done... is part of the problem. Clearly craislist took some away.. but you really needed to go to the paper for certain classifieds (mainly jobs, but also when I went to garage sales in Saranac Lake, people often had a newspaper and list of sales they were going to).
Marylin Luther King Day.
is that right?
I don’t want to be a naysayer, but do the Oust Stefanik folks have a plan for ousting her? Props for spelling her name correctly. That seems to be something her supporters are consistently incapable of.
I write this as someone who’s probably as vocally opposed to her as nearly anyone.
Yesterday, Percy Shelley, today the Beatles.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can
Ironically, it reminds me of her first two campaigns on repeal and something something Obamacare. Her dictator wannabe leader is still calling for destroying it. His terrific plan will be out in two weeks.
mia_pos_tfnKKK is smart
she plays the dumb
I couldn't name one policy issue she has had in the last couple years that wasn't just faux outrage... and "let's hate people"
OMG! THIS is what's wrong with education in America these days. How can it possibly be necessary to explain Martin Luther King? The accompanying piece on current events indifference is similarly flabbergasting. My 1955 sixth grade class read articles in the New York Times and we were expected to stand up and discuss our article of that day to our classmates. My family watched Walter Cronkite together every night, as did much of America. My parents read both daily A.M. (The Herald Tribune) and P.M. (The N.Y. Times) newspapers.
Today newspapers are fading into oblivion and Fox is the news source for most who choose to watch at all. The fundamental threat to Democracy is ignorance; Donald Trump and Elise Stefanik are merely its weapons.
I feel just the opposite. I think all stories should not assume their readers know everything.
I think of this when I listen to baseball. I know most of the rules, but I don't think it would hurt to assume everyone does and to explain the infield pop fly rule
===
In wrote a subbtack about how my dad and his friends all construction workers.. read the newspaper every day.. in the end they knew more than I would guess all the hmpy trmpy supporters combined
still think this will hide your hate for a black man
all black men?
Labeling those you oppose is main stream media lesson 101. All Republicans' are "racist, anti-abortion, white, pro NRA and MAGA." I'm a Republican and do not fit that stereotype but, in this environment, it doesn't matter. Fox or MSNBC ,pick your poison.
A friend of mine ran a convenience store for a time and read all the newspapers. He could hold his own with anyone on national and world issues.
Jason JOnes, then with the Daily Show, did a segment where they interviewed where he interviewed workers in a market.. he found... a supposedly dumb Iranian, who knew about American politics then I think hmpy trmpy knows now.
The Iranian knew things that I would guess 80% don't know who the Secretary of State is (if Dennis G. Defayette is reading: it is Antony Blinken).
Like your friend, he read the newspapers.. what is amazing to me is, he was reading Iranian papers and knew about the US
thank s for conceding
Wendy, what accompanying piece on current events? I would say I think I missed I, but I know I missed, I don’t see one.
Below the piece on the North Country Light Brigade is a very brief one on MLK Day. Easy to miss.
Thanks
After the 1980 Olympics I can’t believe you don’t believe in miracles, Ken
You get one a lifetime and that was it.
Actually 2. Trump in 2016.
Still hiding?
I believe it is
Dennis G. Defayette
https://substack.com/@kirksnotdead
Thanks for posting his name, I'm going to look him up and send him all kinds of hate mail. That's a very different name, he shouldn't be hard to find He isn't the guy you banned is he Ken? He'll think my hate mail is coming from The Front Page. Defamation can be fun, Eddie thanks for the! it's coming from Ken
God bless the North Country Light Brigade!!!
Truth. I have found myself turning away from TV election coverage and watching more movies and exploring new series. I guess that’s a good thing.
Love the light brigade.
AMEN! And then they wonder why no one is watching the news. All the networks are content-light and often tell a story in two sentences before they go to commercial breaks. I think this piece belongs on the Editorial Page of the NYT. Won't you consider tightening it up a bit and submitting it?