Best Online News Sources? Paid or Unpaid?

[lumpy]

You aren't reading the NY Post anymore? What about PAGE SIX! :)

Might switch.

[echappist]

You aren't reading the NY Post anymore? What about PAGE SIX! :)

I’d say page six of this thread (i do 20 posts/page) beats Page Six of the NY Post.

[vertical_doug]

Joe Biden was to be a "place holder" while the Democrats developed a candidate for 2024. In 2020, Biden was ramrodded to be the candidate even though there were viable, younger democratic candidates participating in the democratic primaries. Harris dropped before the first primary because she was polling poorly. People viewed the "uncle Joe" persona as someone who would be competent in office and could beat Trump. The people who decided on Biden wrecked their party. The rise of Trump wrecked the republicans. This is the last hurrah for Trump, he either wins and can't run again, or he loses and is too old in 2028. .

Well, interesting take. I have a slightly different view but not by much. What wrecked the democratic party was the arrogance at the top of the DNC for at least the past 10 years. They don't really want a competitive race it seems. If you go back to 2016 with the Super-delegates for Hillary. The DNC top decided they wanted a coronation not primaries. Bernie showed up and almost toppled the self-appointed coronation. Hillary went on to run a terrible campaign for President, and with the demoralized supporters of Bernie, the rest was inevitable history.

2020, maybe Joe was ramrodded but it was COVID, and the country was maybe ready for 4 years of less action. The real betrayal was people with access to Biden, hiding his condition in 2024, and really poo-pooing any candidates. Dean Philips threw his hat in the ring, because he thought someone had to. The DNC did everything to sabotage the candidacy.

You can redistrict the US to create as many competitive districts as possible, but an election being competitive isn't mandated by the constitution.So changing gerrymandering by the vested interests is probably impossible,



The irony here was Trump was headed to a landslide in the spring. If he had waited to debate Joe in September, this would have been such an epic disaster for the democrats. Instead Trump jumped the gun and actually had a tighter race on his hands. The question for 2028, have the democrats learned anything and will actually let the primaries be competitive.

Republicans have separate issues, but you can't blame this all on Trump. He is merely the accelerant. The table was being set since at least the time of Newt Gingrich, and then by the people who decided to fund the local elections who understood control over districts would yield such dividends and what a great bargain it was from the amount of cash required. .

[echappist]

If you're going to take these shots at me, I get to shoot back. I have an MA in American History and I am editing my thesis in Military History, and I'm assuming that you have neither or you wouldn't have made the comment. An MA in history means a decent background of events with a focus on one event for a thesis. I am not an expert in all things history, right now I'm writing on information warfare in the period between 1760 and 1774. That's how graduate degrees in history work. I'm not sure what my education has to do with the events you list, I really don't give a shit about a newspaper and who they endorse, and fail to see how that relates to my studies or backgrounds.

Your education is relevant for discussion because over the past four years, you keep on gratuitously reminding the forum about it. I expect self-proclaimed historians to offer cogent takes based on evidence, not unsubstantiated, shoot-from-the-hip gainsays.

You not only conflated news with editorial (again, quite the error), but you also missed on the context. After all, analysis of context of various sources is an essential part of a historian's task, no?

One reads one's sources while doing research, does one just blindly put the perspective of the respective authors as neutral, or does one think about what their proclivities and biases might be? In analyzing a past event, does one just read about what happened, or does one seek to understand underlying reasons? All that requires analysis of context.

So when you, self-proclaimed historian, makes a sweeping remark without thinking through the context behind the event, that's an omission.

I think you're pissed about the current situation in the election and venting on a bike forum. I get it, you want Harris to win, and anyone who doesn't support her is evil and self-interested. I think Trump is a turd and Harris has run a terrible campaign after being hamstrung by Biden hanging on too long.

You can't be more wrong, on both of your first two sentences, re: my motivations. But then, you aren't trained as a mind reader and you have already demonstrated your difficulty in assessing context, so I really shouldn't expect any better.

@htwoopup put this very cogently, and I defer to his analysis. In sum, when a paper genuflects to a potential power to curry favors, it puts serious doubts as to whether that paper can still be trusted. That's the reason for cancellation. And in grand scheme of things, an op-ed piece is the least of my concerns, as I want to ensure actual news reporting don't get nixed as well. Sure, there's a supposedly time-honored "firewall" between news and editorial at a publication, but how is one to believe that Bezos won't put his fingers on the scale when it comes to news coverage after this?

For all the faults of Murdoch, at least the WSJ's news section remain stellar, and I'm thinking of switching to WSJ reporting in place of WaPo. It was John Carreyrou, a dogged reporter at WSJ, who broke the news on malfeasance of Theranos. It probably wouldn't surprise anyone that Holmes tried to pull rank and get the story nixed, but Murdoch actually stood by his paper.

In 2015, Murdoch led an investment round by pumping $125 million into Theranos, making him the company’s biggest investor. (Other big-name Theranos investors who have now lost at least $600 million total include current U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the Walton family of Walmart heirs.)

Eventually, when Holmes learned that Carreyrou was investigating Theranos, she turned to Murdoch, whose media empire includes the journalist’s employer, The Wall Street Journal. Carreyrou writes that Holmes tried to get Murdoch to kill the story, telling the billionaire “the information I had gathered was false and would do great damage to Theranos if it was published. Murdoch demurred, saying he trusted the paper’s editors to handle the matter fairly.”

Now let's play some hypotheticals. Trump were in office, and a WaPo journalist were to come across something nefarious and want to publish that story. How confident are we that Bezos would act the way Murdoch did?

I think the country is too strong to be destroyed by any one candidate and have faith in our system of democracy.

Ah yes, if that were the case, why is the figurative turd (your own phrase) still floating in the toilet, with the water flow into the tank shut off most of the times and the downpipe clogged when there is water in the tank?

[Chik]

The first time that I sat for the International Baccalaureate history subsidiary level exam, I got a score of 1. It utterly shocked everyone in my school's administration and faculty because until then, the commonly held belief was that one can score a 2 just by writing in one's name (7 is, or was, full mark). To put it another way, I made school history that year.

Anyway, carry on.

[BBB]

The first time that I sat for the International Baccalaureate history subsidiary level exam, I got a score of 1. It utterly shocked everyone in my school's administration and faculty because until then, the commonly held belief was that one can score a 2 just by writing in one's name (7 is, or was, full mark). To put it another way, I made school history that year.

Anyway, carry on.

Outstanding!

There has to be a story behind this?!

[vertical_doug]

By The Editors
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Is it possible that the
hyperpartisanship and extreme polarization that has defined
American politics for the past decade may reach its apogee in
this election? It’s hard to believe, and much evidence weighs
against the idea. But one trend this year offers hope.
Rhetorical odes to harmony remain popular on the campaign
trail. Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President
Kamala Harris have presented themselves, with variable
seriousness, as unifying figures, just as Joe Biden did in 2020
and throughout his presidency. Yet by most available metrics,
polarization has continued to widen.

There are many reasons for that, but a big one is the
modern system of closed primary elections, where only party
members are eligible to vote. Adopted in the 1970s, such
contests are often decided by small pools of committed
partisans, heavily influenced by activist campaigns. They
encourage candidates to gravitate to extreme positions, reject
compromise and demonize their opponents. And once campaigns end,
the real problems begin: Sane elected officials live in
perpetual fear of being “primaried” by fanatics.

In some states, that could begin to change. Although little
noticed amid the relentless attention on Trump and Harris,
voters in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and South
Dakota will decide whether to adopt open primaries next week.
The proposals vary, and some include ranked-choice voting, but
all share a common principle: Primary ballots would include all
candidates regardless of party, be open to all voters regardless
of party, and allow the top finishers to advance to the general
election regardless of party.

The idea isn’t new. A handful of states, both Democratic-
and Republican-leaning, have already adopted it. Nor is it
complicated: Open primaries change the political calculus by
broadening the electorate, forcing candidates to contend with
the independents and centrists who generally outnumber the
ideologues, and giving competent centrists a better shot.
It probably isn’t a coincidence that of the 10 Republicans
who voted to impeach Trump after the disgraceful attack on the
Capitol in 2021, the only three who won reelection the next year
were from states with open primaries. In one of those states,
Alaska, a Democratic centrist prevailed over a favorite of the
far right, Sarah Palin.

Political scientists tend to be skeptical of open primaries
— many prefer stronger elite control over the nomination process
— but there is empirical support for them, including evidence
that, by creating more competitive contests, they increase voter
turnout.
Not surprisingly, party organizations and ideological
groups are trying to defeat the six ballot proposals. In Alaska,
they’ve put up one of their own, to repeal the open primary that
voters there adopted in 2020 — which, clearly, has worked too
well.

Open primaries won’t, on their own, eradicate extremism or
reverse the country’s partisan alienation. That may be a
decades-long process. But if voters embrace this change on Nov.
5, it will be a victory for more sanity in campaigns and
government, no matter who wins the presidency. Here’s hoping.

[Chik]

Outstanding!

There has to be a story behind this?!

Hahaha, there's not much to be told, really. This was European history, and I was a bit shit as the exam result so unequivocally showed. It may have been the way it was taught: all dates and names, which just bored my tits off.

It raised more than a few eyebrows. Nobody knew that a 1 was even possible. It was as if the examiners in Geneva hurled a lightning bolt up my school's backside. My Latin teacher, who used to be the headmaster and the most saintly person I've every met, pulled me aside one day and in a very nice way told me to get my shit together given that history is a required subject for the bac.

I did sit for another history exam the following year but for Asian history, which was taught with some context thrown in and made it a bit more interesting, and passed, to the relief of many.

[thollandpe]

As an information warfare guy, I guess I don't get the outrage over a newspaper not supporting a candidate.

An explanation I saw likened it to a lawyer not making a closing statement. The editorial page has laid out all this evidence and then forgoes the opportunity to sum it all up. I'm also of the mind that not endorsing and having the owner override his staff's endorsement are two very different things.

The brilliant Alexandra Petri summed it up well, "I'm just a humor columnist. I only know what's happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there's no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. That's what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see; that if we think tRrump should not return to the White House and Harris would make a fine president, we're going to be able to say so.

That's why I, the humor columnist, am endorsing Kamala Harris by myself!"
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https...bbniKGUUOV02rS

It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president
Isn’t this what a newspaper is supposed to do?

And 16 or 17 of the WaPo's opinion writers have spoken out forcefully, "The Washington Post's decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald tRump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing tRump's opponents in 2016 and 2020."
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https...IF_4j_10tAOW_q

Post columnists respond
The newspaper's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate is a mistake.

My apologies if those second-hand gift links don't click through. I'm no longer a subscriber.

[Mark Walberg]

The first time that I sat for the International Baccalaureate history subsidiary level exam, I got a score of 1. It utterly shocked everyone in my school's administration and faculty because until then, the commonly held belief was that one can score a 2 just by writing in one's name (7 is, or was, full mark). To put it another way, I made school history that year.

Anyway, carry on.

This reminds me of a test we took in elementary school, one where you had to color in the little circles so that a machine could tally the score.
At the end, they passed out all the tests, then said who didn't get one?
That was me, because I had gotten my name wrong - Mark Markerg instead of Walberg