LA Times (May 28)
“Trump hasn’t been a victim of bias” as he made out while trying “to take a big, dumb bite out of the Twitter hand that feeds him.” In fact, “he’s been the prime beneficiary of the platforms’ lax and inconsistent enforcement of their terms of service. It’s richly ironic that the president would want to remove liability protections for the platforms that broadcast the damaging rumors and wild conspiracy theories he spreads about his rivals.”
Tags: Beneficiary, Bias, Conspiracy theories, Damaging, Dumb, Enforcement, Inconsistent, Ironic, Lax, Liability, Rivals, Rumors, Trump, Twitter, Victim
The Week (May 23)
“How much of a problem is it that the president of the United States, the most powerful person on Earth, is a blithering idiot?” Depends what kind of blithering idiot. “Raw intellect doesn’t translate to presidential success, and its absence could, in the right circumstance, be compensated for.” But “President Trump’s particular brand of stupidity” is very dangerous. “You can be dumb but modest, or dumb but thoughtful, or dumb but careful. Trump is none of those things. He’s boastful, impulsive, and careless, all while continuing to blaze new trails of thickheadedness, while the rest of us are left to stand back and gawp in amazement.”
Tags: Boastful, Careless, Dangerous, Dumb, Idiot, Impulsive, Intellect, Powerful, President, Problem, Stupidity, Success, Thickheaded, U.S.
USA Today (October 15)
When the U.S. unemployment rate fell from 8.1% to 7.8%, some alleged conspiracy. Former GE CEO Jack Welch suggested the numbers had been manipulated to improve Obama’s reelection odds. These suggestions are frankly “a little nuts.” Eventually Welch “admitted he had no evidence that anyone was manipulating the jobs numbers, or that the respected numbers crunchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other agencies were engaged in a plot that would be cause for terminating their professional careers.” Calculating the unemployment rate is not an exact science. The initial numbers often go up and down more than expected, but they get subsequently revised twice. Welch’s suggestion is among the “dumbest and most irresponsible things said by people who ought to know better.”
Tags: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Conspiracy, Dumb, GE, Jack Welch, U.S., Unemployment
