The Guardian is not a reliable source of what happens in reality. It´s very biased, very full of obsessions about race, gender, more race, why whites are evil, more gender, Trump is Hitler, is Christmas islamophobic? let´s vote again on Brexit please, and refugees welcome. It´s more of a pamphlet for driving lefties off the cliff than a source of reliable information.
In fact, usually newspapers are rarely good sources of facts about the world; most they can do is to alert you that something is going on somewhere, so that you do your own investigation.

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Okay, I will re-read your comments to try to understand better

The Guardian is not a reliable source of what happens in reality. It´s very biased, very full of obsessions about race, gender, more race, why whites are evil, more gender, Trump is Hitler, is Christmas islamophobic? let´s vote again on Brexit please, and refugees welcome. It´s more of a pamphlet for driving lefties off the cliff than a source of reliable information. — DiegoT

Translation: The Guardian writes stuff I disagree with.

In fact, usually newspapers are rarely good sources of facts about the world; most they can do is to alert you that something is going on somewhere, so that you do your own investigation. — DiegoT

Translation: In fact, most newspapers write stuff I disagree with and I only trust my own opinion any way.

I think there's a serious problem with The Canary if they trust Ray McGovern on the "forensics" of the Democractic hack. They say:

But forensic evidence has previously pointed to a leak from inside the Democratic Party, not a Russian hack. — The Canary

More details here: Democratic party data was leaked not hacked

This has already been extensively discussed by Michael and me when arguing with Raza in this thread from page 67 onwards.

The Guardian says they were told this by two sources. That is not "fake news". — Relativist

Well the Guardian is fairly reputable, and two sources is better than one, whereas the Canary is new and 'radical', and that article seemed to be sourced mainly in tweets. Still, the story is un-confirmed elsewhere, and the meetings denied by both parties. It would 'make sense' to Trump conspiracy theorists if it were true. And it would 'make sense' to Canary radicals if it was part of the Guardian's propaganda war on behalf of right-wing Blairite revisionists.

I'd imagine if there were meetings, there would be video images from security cameras, plane tickets, etc. I dare say such supporting evidence will be published or appear in a court-room if the story is true. In the meantime, it seems fair to put both links and let folks pick the one they prefer. Of course they are both 'socialist' so you may like just to laugh at the infighting of the fakers...

Personally, I think the Canary is well named. Every truth-miner needs a canary, and as long as the canary sings, all is well, it's when the canary dies that there is trouble down 'tpit. And meanwhile, one does not take much mining advice from the canary.

I was thinking the very same thing. All the canary does is sing without saying anything; but if something shuts it up, then it's time to take notice. Imagine if they took a parrot into the mine. The parrot would be telling the miners what to do, all day long. Probably the tweet! tweet! of the canary is a little easier to put up with.

I think that people have difficulties understand basically "agendas" and "bias" that media typically has. How these "agendas" can come out is simply looking at what isn't reported and what things are reported. Some unfortunately think that this means that the articles published are then "fake news" and totally untrustworthy. I think that in mainstream news the "liberal agenda", or in the case of Fox News the "right-wing agenda", is totally observable. One simply needs some understanding of the issues, some awareness of the current events and some source criticism. Disinformation is still quite easy to spot.

Yet the unfortunate fate of many nowdays is that they are totally complacent and happy to stay in their own echo chamber, which enforces their own views. They can do this and refer only to that the media "is biased". True Trump loyalists are the perfect example of this. Anything related to the Russia inquiry is dismissed as fake news, hence they don't have any reason to follow what is happening in the Mueller investigation. And with the "Trump is Hitler"-people the simply fact to be understood ought to be that one man doesn't make an administration.

I own two canary birds and a blue-gold macaw, and I can confirm canary sounds are way more bearable. I can report also, from years of direct observation, that sounds canary do are not meaningless. They aren´t an structured language, but they carry a lot of meaning. For example, if a bloody stray cat comes to visit my patio and I was asleep (early morning) the specific sound for "cat!" wakes me up so that I can get up and scare off the predator. But I don´t wake up with cheerful singing, that is way louder and longer; it´s because the sound for "predator here!" is very specific and used only when a cat is really there. Over time, you realize that sounds in birds are part of their behaviour management, like children playing alone and talking to themselves or chanting; and other birds read the patterns in those sounds like we read faces.

Not even Hitler was really Hitler. Hitler has become a Darth Vader figure, a quintaessential villain. It´s no wonder than stupid people deny the facts of WW2; the period and especially the National-Socialist regime have been made too literary and archetypal.

Truth to that

Trump or rather the state of the world is what happens when dangerous geniuses write books that the intelligent read and over the following 2-3 generations indocrinate the combination of semi-intelligent and unintelligent, or rather entirely stunted, that remain. Mayhem. Trump and the guys that got him elected has their fingers on the pulse of the deplorables. Anyhoo I kind of think it’s the role of the philosophically minded to view all this as irony loving observers rather than take an active part in such a dirty,
murky and ambigous world.

All tongue in cheek of course. Couldn’t care less.

All though the bit about the canary calling cat is interesting.

"
Well the Guardian is fairly reputable, and two sources is better than one, whereas the Canary is new and 'radical', and that article seemed to be sourced mainly in tweets. Still, the story is un-confirmed elsewhere, and the meetings denied by both parties. "
The important thing is that we ahould not treat the claim of meetings as fact. Even if true, it will only be relevant if there is admissable evidence for it. We have to wait for Mueller's report to know what what facts can be established. In the meantime, we just have these little tidbits, that may or may not pan out.

Obamacare vs. Republican plan compared

I don't get how Trump, or Republicans, or anyone else, can think that the Republican plan is an improvement on, or would do more good than, Obamacare.

The Republican plan scraps mandates for having or offering health insurance and scraps penalties for non-adherents, it makes it possible for a state to waive mandatory coverage of certain health conditions, it makes it possible for a state to apply for waivers that allow them to drop coverage for maternity care, introduces changes which would see reduced government support for Medicaid and tax subsidies for individual's purchasing health insurance.

Why cut government support at a time when the US economy is doing well? Why expose more people to greater risk? Why transfer powers to determine policies on healthcare coverage from the government to individual states or employers, when that increases the risk of inadequate or exploitative policies? Why do they want less people covered or supported?

Why do they want less people covered or supported? — S

Government organized healthcare smacks of socialism. It conflicts with the conservative's small government/survival-of-the-fittest attitude.

Medicare is central to American healthcare. It will begin falling short financially in a few years, so change is on the horizon. Inteligent people would start planning decades in advance for the change. Not us. We'll just face-plant into it.

I love your relating democracy with biological function. Have you read John Dewey a past expert on education? He speaks of an organic democracy and the transition to a nuclear state. The US is experiencing an education problem that shifted its organic democracy to a nuclear Military Industrial Complex. So many people are writing about this now, but none of them have studied the history of education so they are not mentioning the most important part of the ramifications of replacing liberal education with education for technology and what military technology and corporate interest have to do with the transformation.

I am afraid Bill Gates is misled when he pushes for education for computer technology over education for being humans living in human communities. Surely computer technology can improve our lives, but not if we do not develop our independent humanness and sense of our responsibility for the present and future. Our trust in technology is no better than our trust in a God. We need to trust ourselves and each other.

What I want to know is, if a law saying we must have medical insurance is unconstitutional, is it also unconstitutional to have a law that requires us to have car insurance? I remember when having car insurance was only a good idea to be covered in case of being sued. It was not a law that we had to have the insurance.

In a democracy, perhaps we all want to own a hospital? Why have an insurance company instead of supporting the medical facility a community needs directly? I think our reasoning is as silly as not having a community paid water supply and sewage system and making water and sewage privately owned and controlling who gets water and sewage who does not, by the person's ability to pay for it. I know we pay for water and sewage but not the same way we pay for medical care. The internet and medical care and our education should have more of a utility mentality behind it, that a private capitalist mentality.

Why are our taxes supporting a Military Industrial Complex instead of our communities?

My goodness you say such interesting things!

Hitler and Trump are the result of education for technology for military and industrial purpose and Prussia bureaucratic order. It is both that made Germany the New World Order and made the US what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex and the Bush family bragged about the US being in control of the New World Order. This is what we defended our democracy against, now we are what we defended our democracy against and only when we realize, only when our democracy is defended in the classroom, will our democracy be strong again.

With the change in education, it is also very important we replace our autocratic industry with the democratic model. If we did both, return education to defending democracy in the classroom and replace autocratic industry with democratic industry, our democracy would be strong again.

Why are our taxes supporting a Military Industrial Complex instead of our communities? — Athena

Tell me about it! I wouldn't go as far as scrapping the former, but I would certainly makes changes to how that money is put to use in military matters, and I would divert a significant portion of the funds to support the healthcare system. It's awful to think that, to give just one recent example, some of those funds, in both the US and the UK (where I'm from), are being used to support the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen.

“Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, that words of a president matter, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. Where are those Republicans today? At some point, someone has to stand up, and in the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement.” — James Comey

Comey also dismissed Republican criticisms of how the FBI handled its interview of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the agency and has been cooperating with federal prosecutors. “Oh come on,” Comey said with a laugh. “Think of what’s happening to the Republican party. They’re up here attacking the FBI’s investigation of a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI."

Source.

Comey was interviewed on Australian current affairs a few months back. Even acknowledging his hamfisted handling of the 'Clinton email issue' during the election campaign, he came across as entirely truthful, candid, modest and scrupulous. Completely unlike the man he's criticizing.

The real amazing event here is just how did the Republican party get castrated and became these fearful yes-men for an inept idiot.

The Guardian is biased because it offers a simplistic, manichean, super-racist, anti-west, pro-feminist, pro-globalist view of the world; and their reports are heavily filtered by those human algorithms. It´s a parody newspaper at best. Sorry but that´s the objective truth, and what I think or I am does not change the fact.
We are all biased, that´s why we need each other, but ask yourself if you´re just putting too much from you when you guess how I am; after all you don´t know me. It is possible that I´m not like you portrait me?

Ah... more opinion with claims to facts and truth without offering... well, facts. I don't know anything about you except that your posts are devoid of arguments and facts and instead filled with opinion. I don't argue against opinion I only reveal that it is exactly that. So fine, you don't like the Guardian. At what point should I even care about your caricature of something you don't like? It's about as informative as complaining about the fact Toy Story doesn't deserve a 9 on IMDB because its pro-feminist and unamerican. Whatever.

The largest donation in the foundation’s history — a $264,231 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989 — appeared to benefit Trump’s business: It paid to restore a fountain outside Trump’s Plaza Hotel. The smallest, a $7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump’s family. It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son Donald Trump Jr. was 11.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-agrees-to-shut-down-his-charity-amid-allegations-he-used-it-for-personal-and-political-benefit/2018/12/18/dd3f5030-021b-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b3daa67ea42c

$7 ! I think this shows the calibre of the man like nothing else - stealing a paltry sum from a charity that bears his own name. He has reached absolute zero.

we're obviously talking Kelvin here.

We don't need to talk about Kelvin, we need to talk about Donald.

The Guardian is biased because it offers a simplistic, manichean, super-racist, anti-west, pro-feminist, pro-globalist view of the world; and their reports are heavily filtered by those human algorithms. — DiegoT

I lost count on the number of oxymorons there.

https://nyti.ms/2GzhcuL

How an educated electorate has allowed a Trump to happen continues to be a mystery to me. — Rank Amateur

By the laws of random chance wacky things are going to happen from time to time. The moment of decision will come in the next election. If he is elected again, then it's totally on us, and our reputation in the world will be permanently damaged.

I blame the Dems for Trump's victory as much as anything else. — LD Saunders

Yes, that's my worry for 2020. I'm not sure the Dems are up to the job of presenting a compelling alternative to Trump.

A moldy lettuce would be a compelling alternative from where I stand.

I feel that way too. A lot of people do. But that may not be enough. How people feel is less the issue than who shows up to vote.

Here's an example of my concern. I'm not sure the Democratic Party really gets what a bad candidate Elizabeth Warren would be. I probably agree with many or most of her positions. But she projects this snotty, superior dance, moralizing, finger pointing style that is going to turn off masses of people, whatever their views.

Here's a better example. I loved Bernie Sanders. But he immediately turned off my wife, who may be even more liberal than me. The angry old white man always waving his finger at the audience. Good guy, bad candidate. Same for Hillary.

Yes, any of them would be better than Trump. But what the last election proved is it takes more than that to beat Trump.

Ronald Reagan was an example of a great candidate. I don't mean his positions, but his public image. You liked the guy, even if you disagreed with him. Reagan had the two important qualities of a winning candidate...

1) Big ideas
2) Charming personality

If the Dems can't find someone like that to run, we may be in big trouble.