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I think the last time I watched CNN was probably 1991.

idk if you're into that sort of thing like I am, but if you're into someone tearing CNN to absolute shreds for their complete lack of journalistic integrity, you should check out former libertarian party chair/comedian Dave Smith take CNN and former #1 CNN news anchor Chris Cuomo apart to his face on a debate on YouTube. didn't watch the entire thing yet but the clips were very satisfying. 

I intend to watch CNN on election night in Nov

Should be very entertaining

it will likely be the highest watched debate ever.

Biden does not look like he's doing too hot and looks like he's rapidly deteriorating, as can happen when someone is suffering from dementia. It's like NFL QB's before Brady broke the mold- you fall right off the cliff- FAST.

I think Biden should be drug tested before the debate. If they have to hop him up on steroids and meth to get through a 90 minute debate without drooling all over himself, falling over on the stage, drifting off, or shitting his pants- seems like he shouldn't be running for President. Test that geriatric f*ck for PEDs.

Mdot gets his "facts" from SPECIAL SOURCES not available to regular commoners.

The rest of us just slavishly feed on whatever CNN tells us, I reckon.

CNN is still alive, right?  I think they are hosting a "debate" of sorts down the street from me.

you'll actually get better journalism watching YouTube videos from comedians like Dave Smith than you will from CNN.

You want to get some actual news I'd say check out YouTube before you check out any cable tv news garbage. Journalists like Matt Taibi, Matt Stoller, Katie Halper, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, Sy Hersh, comedians like Dave Smith, Tim Dillon, Russell Brand, Jimmy Dore, podcasts like Judge Andrew Napolitano's, Tucker Carlson's, or Joe Rogan's- academics like Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Professor John Mearsheimer, Professor Noam Chomsky, Professor Norman Finklestein are all over YouTube and are all across the ideological spectrum and YouTube news shows like Breaking Points, Rising, The Young Turks, Democracy Now, Majority Report with Sam Seder all bring something to the table and all across the ideological spectrum as well. You're going to get a lot of different view points and be exposed to a lot of different things, and the great thing is you can fact check anything you read, hear, or see, cause Google & WikiLeaks is your friend.

Being exposed to a wide range of views is how you can actually begin to kind of ascertain what is actually going on in this country and in the world. You ain't going to know jacksh*t reading absolute garbage newspapers like the NY Times or the Washington Post or watching cable tv news aka literal human sh*t like Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. The internet streaming shows and podcasts have let the cat out of the bag. And the political ruling class in Washington and it's minions in the largely NYC based corporate news media are freaking out because they can't effectively control the narrative anymore- which is why they have been pushing hard for censorship on Silicon Valley based social media apps like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc., etc.. Can't have freedom of speech on those platforms! What are we? Animals? People can say or read whatever they want! NOOOO. CAN'T HAVE THAT.

I tried to watch election TV coverage early in the night a few cycles back and it just gave me a headache. So I went to a bar.

Last election, I did a movie night, that served me well.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the CNN folks to achieve meltdown status

I've actually made the argument [elsewhere] that abortion was a virtue signaling issue for a lot of Republican women. They could be the most vociferous pro-life advocates publicly, but with the knowledge that if they [or their daughters] ever needed an abortion, it was available, due to Roe.

Once Roe was overturned, they realized that availability of abortion was actually in jeopardy. And what we see at the ballot box is that even in Republican states like Kansas, keeping availability legal won resoundingly (60/40) at the ballot box. It did this DESPITE polling to lose 43/47, in a state which Trump carried 56/42. How to explain that??

My guess is that there were a bunch of Republican women arguing publicly that they were going to vote pro-life, that were telling their husbands and fathers and everyone else that they were going to vote pro-life, and then in the secrecy of the ballot box said "nope". Because they realized that when it REALLY came down to it, if they [or their daughters/granddaughters] needed an abortion, they wanted it to remain available.

This isn't impossible but I do notice one weakness in it immediately.  I think your statement that these "virtue signaling Republican Women", "(tell) their husbands and fathers . . . that they were going to vote pro-life" implies two things about their "husbands and fathers":

• That their husbands and fathers have significant control/influence (not actually since you posit that once Roe was overturned they balked), and
• That the Abortion issue was REALLY important to their husbands and fathers.  

I think this buys into the Leftist/Democratic/Media narrative that ONLY men are Pro-Life then from that assumption it tries to concoct a reason for women (who must by definition be Pro-Choice) to vote for Pro-Life candidates.  


This is false on both counts.  Despite Leftist/Democratic/Media theories, we don't live in a Patriarchy and VERY few "husbands and fathers" even attempt to exert this level of control over their wives and daughters.  Additionally, the polling suggests that the Abortion issue simply isn't very important to most guys so even if they DID exert this level of control it probably wouldn't be focused on this specific issue.  

My theory is that unless you are on the far fringe (either way), for a guy the Abortion issue simply isn't very important:
If you are a radical Pro-Lifer who literally believes that even a VERY early, morning after pill "abortion" is murder then the Abortion issue is probably very important to you because you see it as State Sanctioned MURDER of millions of babies.  If you believe this then you more-or-less have to believe that Abortion in the modern US is literally worse than the Holocaust because it has certainly taken more "lives".  

If you are a radical Pro-Choicer who literally believes that it is a abominable infringement of a woman's rights to prohibit her from Aborting a full-term fetus with no medical defects because she wanted a different color of hair, then similarly, you probably view restrictions on Abortion as a terrible injustice that must be righted at all costs.  

I frankly don't think there are a lot of guys in both of those camps combined.  In this thread we've seen a discussion of bans at 6-weeks, 15-weeks, viability (my threshold), third trimester bans, etc.  If you are in one of these groups, the difference between 6-weeks vs 15-weeks vs viability vs 3rd trimester just isn't that big of a deal.  

I'll tell you anecdotally that I've met die-hard Republican women, I am talking campaign volunteers, phone bank operators, people who don't just vote Republican but who give time and treasure to elect Republicans who are Pro-Life and otherwise would probably be Democrats or maybe independents.  I've never seen nor heard of a guy like that.  

I also think that people tend to move toward Pro-Life as they get older.  I'm not saying completely flip from radical Pro-Choice to Radical Pro-Life just a general movement maybe from strongly Pro-Choice to weakly Pro-Choice or from weakly Pro-Life to strongly Pro-Life. 

I think this makes sense.  When you are at the age where you are hoping and praying that the test comes back negative, you tend to lean Pro-Choice.  When you get to the age where you are hoping and praying that the test comes back positive, you tend to lean Pro-Life.  

I also think generally that "virtue signaling" is pretty clearly more of a leftist phenomenon.  The media, academics, etc all tell us that we need to believe in Leftist positions.  Anyone who has abandoned that probably doesn't care what other people think of them or they wouldn't have abandoned it in the first place and they'd be leftist virtue signaling.  

This isn't impossible but I do notice one weakness in it immediately.  I think your statement that these "virtue signaling Republican Women", "(tell) their husbands and fathers . . . that they were going to vote pro-life" implies two things about their "husbands and fathers":

• That their husbands and fathers have significant control/influence (not actually since you posit that once Roe was overturned they balked), and
• That the Abortion issue was REALLY important to their husbands and fathers. 

I think this buys into the Leftist/Democratic/Media narrative that ONLY men are Pro-Life then from that assumption it tries to concoct a reason for women (who must by definition be Pro-Choice) to vote for Pro-Life candidates. 

On the first point, I don't necessarily think that all of these women are "controlled by the patriarchy". But it wouldn't shock me that some of them profess to have certain beliefs in public that suddenly go by the wayside once it might affect THEM and people they care about. 

Similar to Catholics and birth control. The Church says don't use it. They consider themselves good upstanding members of the church. But when it comes to THEM, they don't want more kids so they do what they want. Like vegetarians who eat cheeseburgers "but only when they're drunk". 

I would probably have put it better if I said that they're outwardly pro-life to not ruffle feathers in their communities. It's not that anyone is controlling them, but they have appearances to maintain, right? At church you say you're pro-life. When polled you say you're pro-life. But when you get in the ballot box, you keep that lifeline available in case you or someone you care about needs it. 

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Per the male-female divide on the issue, you might be right. I haven't studied it closely (b/c as a man I don't care). However I do think there's one wrinkle you didn't cover. Men can have either opinion on the matter "cost-free" since we don't have a uterus. Women cannot. So it's easier for a man to be pro-life because it isn't his body, and it's also easier for a man to say "I don't care" and be pro-choice because it's not his body. I do think whatever the overall opinions are within the gender divide, that for women it's far more personal of an issue. How that shakes out overall, I don't know. But I think we look at it differently, and I think that MAY affect voting patterns depending on its potential personal impact or lack thereof.

What virtues does the right have left to signal?  The awkward, upside-down holding of a bible?

Under Trumpism, the right has forfeited any pretense of having the moral high ground.  Whether they ever actually had it, they'd speak and act like they did, but that's GONE.  Hitching your wagon to Trump shows none of that matters to you, going from holier-than-thou to holier-than-none.

On CNN, I do not envy their reality.  They were mostly harmless when they were the only game in town.  Once FN showed up and skewed radically right and MSNBC tried to be its counter-weight far-left, CNN was hemorrhaging viewers.  If simply reporting the news was leading to your downfall...what are you supposed to do?  If the masses are schleps for confirmation bias, what are you supposed to do?
I'm not saying what they've done is right, but I also don't have any good replacement for it.