Yoshitsune comments

Posted in: China's bubble bullet trains start Winter Olympics venue dash See in context

The issue isn't whether China has good trains or a good high speed rail network. It definitely does.

The issue is that however good its infrastructure has recently become, China still has an authoritarian tech-dystopian system of government with terrible human rights abuses.

These Olympics are a PR sportswashing exercise for that government, and I won't be watching a single minute.

@addfwyn

Yes, it will go back to being a regular passenger line after the Olympics. It has already been in service as one for a couple of years, with trains running on through to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia.

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Posted in: 'SNL,''Big Little Lies,' 'Handmaid's Tale' rule at Trump-flavored Emmys See in context

@commanteer

Cool story bro

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Posted in: 'SNL,''Big Little Lies,' 'Handmaid's Tale' rule at Trump-flavored Emmys See in context

The shows are more about being PC than about being entertaining

Haha. You honesty think the primary motivation of making a TV show is 'PC'? Poppycock.

but I see the blatant double standard when it's ok for SNL to mock Trump repeatedly but had the same been done to Obama... there'd be shrieks

How is it a double standard? Trump is mocked for the garbage he tweets and his policies. Nothing to do with 'PC'. Obama would also have been mocked if he had also had a stream of constant garbage from his Twitter account.

There's also a great deal of misandry on the shows with women being shown as perpetual victims and white males as the perpetual male oppressors

Our world has a long history of men oppressing women. Enough. Men who cry victim over women who stand up to this (and the men who stand with them) frankly need to man up.

Those who whine about PC fairies without being able to make a coherent point on the subject of political correctness merely show themselves not to have a coherent point to make.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

And how do these apps track ships?

I would think by tracking their transponders - not hard to see how SS might get around that!

Anyway, enjoy your beers this evening. Kampai!

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Beer guy,

If it was that simple, I wonder why the whalers couldn't evade SS using your method? Answer: because knowing where a ship was 2 weeks ago doesn't help you today. Daft argument.

Nessie

Government subsidies are no proof of lack of demand. The government props up rice farmers. Do you think there's a lack of rice demand?

Obviously not, but with rice there's massive supply competition with cheaper imported rice available from SE Asia, hence the subsidies. As you're well aware already, whaling is a totally different matter, as there is no competition yet the government still needs to prop the industry up to keep it going. And when there was competition - Hvalur of Iceland exported thousands of tonnes of fin meat to Japan several years running recently - it caused so much Jaoanese whale meat to go unsold that the govt caused Hvalur as many difficulties as they could until Hvalur stopped whale hunting, citing the Japanese govt's trade barriers.

Pretty clear and empirical evidence of a lack of demand.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

if the whalers were getting information from a civilian maritime traffic monitor, it wouldn't be the "military power of an economic superpower" then, would it?

No, but if they're getting information from the military it would. Who said anything about civilian maritime traffic monitors?! Irrelevant. Even if the military itself only owns one satellite, and even if the military's satellite is in geosynchronous orbit above the wrong point, the military is analysing data from other satellites and could use that to track SS

Without more details it's hard to know if Watson's claim has veracity or not. But it's certainly not an absurd suggestion as you initially set out to claim on technological grounds; it's both technically feasible to do it, and easy to see the motive LDP politicians would have for doing it, if legally permissible. That's the question mark.

Regardless Watson's character & record, and regardless the veracity of Watson's claims about satellites being used to track SS, the whaling program remains a complete, utter and total waste of taxes, and as a Japanese taxpayer I remain completely and utterly opposed to having a portion of my taxes wasted on providing a niche food product for 1% of the population for little reason beyond national pride, saving face, and keeping the amakudari gravy train rolling for the ICR and the oyaji running it, when there are far more pressing things they could be used for.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

aye, they had their cat-and-mouse shenanigans, but fact is SS did successfully find them and disrupt the hunt, year after year; ergo, no the whalers can't outmanoeuvre SS with their onboard radars. It would take a military ship. Satellite data is clearly more efficient.

it is Japan's only military satellite

More specifically, it is the only satellite owned by the Ministry of Defence. But is that the only satellite the military gets data from?

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

The whaler ship already is equipped with radar. As are most ships. No need to send additional ships.

But the whaling ships are not able to outmanoeuvre SS, whose ship was specifically designed for the express purpose of chasing & outmanoeuvring them - proof is in the pudding, as seen in previous hunting seasons when the whalers did in fact completely fail to outmanoeuvre or outrun SS. C'mon man, your claim that the whaling fleet's radars already enable them to outmanoeuvre SS doesn't stand up to even the briefest knowledge of the recent history between them. A military ship would be required to track & outmanoeuvre SS - which, again, is obviously less efficient than using a satellite to track them.

There are strict regulations on the use of military equipment. This article states that the satellite is considered military equipment, and its use is limited to military purposes.

Sure. The whaling fleet is operated by the ICR, a govt body; could the protection of an effectively govt-owned fleet not be considered a legit military purpose?

It also says that it is in geostationary orbit over Japan and can only cover as far as the Indian Ocean and South China Sea

Is that Japan's only satellite?

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Sensors and human attention that are busy monitoring NK and Japan's remote islands. Why would Japan divert these assets?

Are you still not getting it?

The sensors are trained on NK when NK is in the swathe of the satellite's sensors.

The same sensors could track a SS ship when the same satellite passes over the part of the earth where the ship is.

As the ship is nowhere near NK, the one does not affect the other. Surely you understand this.

As for Japan's remote islands, Japan is actively patrolling them with ships & planes, and has personnel and radar installed on many of them, and again they're nowhere near the Southern Ocean, so that's just completely irrelevant. You're just throwing random stuff out now.

A ship radar typical of the class and size, can monitor more than 50km out. More than enough to out maneuver SS.

Of course it could. But your point was that a ship would be more efficient than using a satellite. It obviously would not, as you would have to physically send the ship and its crew out there to do it - a ship and crew that you need for more important matters - like patrolling your remote islands. Whereas a satellite is already up there, already orbiting. Far more efficient.

You think use of a military satellite has less red tape?

There you go. This is what you should've been arguing all along, instead of all your above flounderings about orbits and radars. I don't know what red tape or constitutional clauses govern the permitted uses of Japanese satellites - that's why I asked you to inform us. Given you answered the question with a question, it seems you don't know either, so we're just speculating. But if there is doubt about Watson's claim, this is where it comes from.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

No one is contesting whether ships can be tracked by satellite

Well, you were for your last several posts. I'm glad we're moving on.

why would Japan sacrifice valuable assets on tracking SS

There is no 'sacrifice of assets' involved, other than directing the sensors and the attention of the technicians to the task.

when a ship radar can be just as efficient

How? That would involve sending a ship to physically track, which would be far less efficient.

As for 'constitutional red tape', tell us what does the constitution say about tracking ships with satellites?!

The question isn't could the govt do this (they could), or whether they'd want to; the question is simply whether or not they actually did so.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

The fastest satellites orbit once in six hours

Where are you getting that nonsense from? 90ish minutes is the usual orbital period for satellites of the type being discussed. (Those higher up with longer orbital times are usually comms relays. And they're not 'slower', they're further away).

If the satellite is trained on a course to cover the entire earth, it would still be a few days before it enters the same region again.

This makes no sense. A satellite doesn't 'cover the earth', it orbits it - you must remember that at the same time, the earth is rotating, and if the satellite is orbiting around the poles i.e. longitudinally it can therefore cover the whole earth - the longitude at which any given point is located will then pass directly under the line of the satellite's orbit twice per 24hr revolution. The satellite's sensors also cover a swathe of the surface, meaning the give point will also pass through that swathe both before and after passing directly under the satellite's orbit. At most, there's a period of a few hours where the given point isn't seen by said satellite, before it comes into view again on the other side. And, no, a ship at 50 kph can't move far enough to give a satellite the slip in just a few hours.

If you actually care to increase your knowledge, I don't have time to do it but I just hit this on Google which seems to cover it well:

https://www.rap.ucar.edu/~djohnson/satellite/coverage.html

A relevant passage reads:

"A satellite in lower Earth orbits is better positioned to obtain high quality remote-sensing data. If placed in a polar orbit, the Earth will rotate beneath the orbiting satellite allow global coverage from a single satellite. The critical design goal then is to place the satellite in an orbit that is low enough to permit a relatively short orbital period while at the same time the orbit is high enough to permit observation of a wide enough swath so that during a single orbit the Earth will rotate by less than the scan swath of the satellite's instrumentation. By placing a satellite at an altitude of about 850 km, you get an orbital period of roughly 100 minutes. At this altitude, you can get true global coverage if the scan swath of the satellite's instrumenation is about 3000 km."

Again, there is nothing absurd to the claim that a satellite can track a ship's movements. It is perfectly feasible. Again, the question is not "can this be done?" because it obviously can. The question is simply whether it actually was done as Watson claimed.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Beer guy,

Sorry mate but you don't appear to grasp how satellites work. Google Earth is totally irrelevant, and a ship doesn't move anywhere near fast enough to move out of the field of view of an orbiting satellite between passes.

Ossan,

Watson's claim that Japan's military assets are being used against Sea Shepherd is nonsense. Or do YOU believe it too?

I'm merely pointing out that a satellite could easily be used this way, while also pointing out that you initially appeared to mistakenly be talking about ocean-going military assets rather than orbital.

Do you honestly believe that with the current security concerns Japan is facing with respect to North Korea and China, that they have the luxury or desire to actually deploy any military surveillance capability on these eco-terrorists?

Again, the suggestion is not inherently absurd. It certainly doesn't represent a 'luxury'. They could do it easily. Whether they have the desire is more pertinent - and given how illogical nationalists tend to be, it wouldn't come as a big surprise if they did.

He said "satellites" specifically. How does one construe "warships" from that?

One does not, yet you apparently did so when you said "deploying military assets in international waters near the antarctic".

You are the only one waffling down a semantic rabbit hole because you don't know that "employ" and "deploy" are synonyms

In some senses they are, but not this one. Not when you're talking about satellites. Deployment of a satellite specifically means insertion into orbit from a delivery vehicle, and a satellite can't be deployed 'near the antarctic' unless it is initially deployed into geosynchronous orbit there (though of course if you'd actually been talking about satellites you'd have said 'above', not 'near' or 'in')

But anyway, it's by-the-by - you said "military assets deployed in international waters", and that really doesn't make sense with relation to satellites, not because of the semantics of 'deployed', but because satellites simply don't go in water. They don't get deployed in international waters, they don't get employed in international waters. The writer of this sentence appears to have been talking about ships. Honestly, stop digging! You made a mistake, but it's no big deal. We can still discuss the merits of Watson's claim - but you need to do so based on the likelihood of the Japanese govt deciding to track SS with satellites, not on whether the suggestion is inherently feasible in the first place.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Beer guy,

The military also does not provide intelligence to civilian entities

But are the whalers a civilian entity? The ICR which operates the fleet is a government body.

It's true that Watson hasn't proven his claim, but nor is the claim inherently absurd.

You point out the difficulties of changing a satellite's orbit, but there would be no need to do so so it's mute. Most satellites orbit in such a fashion as to be able to 'see' all points on Earth; not all at the same time, of course, but they also orbit at a tremendous speed, many times per day, and could easily track a ship's movements without any orbital alterations required.

The question isn't whether they can do it (they can), or whether it would be prohibitively difficult (it wouldn't); the question is merely whether or not they have.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Tina,

the majority of Japanese support this

You are not the majority. The majority neither support nor opppose it.

Japanese don't like emotional, unlogical, unreasonable, unfair demands

Nothing to do with being Japanese / non-Japanese. Insisting on wasting taxes on providing whale meat - a niche product for 1% of the population - when the money could go to child care, elderly care, etc etc, is both emotional and illogical.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Give it a rest and try to stay on topic

Stay on topic? We are on topic. The article is (partly) about Watson's claim that military satellites are being used to aid the whalers. Your attack on posters here for believing that satellites were 'deployed' to the Antarctic has been shown for the nonsense it was, and yes I'd be glad to give it a rest.

You'd be better off pointing out that Watson doesn't appear to have offered any evidence for his claim, rather than continuing to waffle on down a semantic rabbit hole about the absurdity of 'deploying' satellites to the Southern Ocean.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

If a satellite is used for surveillance over the Middle East, that is where they are "deployed". Give it rest

Hopeless. The only time a satellite gets "deployed" is when it gets deployed into orbit from the vehicle that took it up there. Beyond that point, the word makes no sense with relation to satellites in orbit. I'd advise you to give it a rest and stop digging, or better yet acknowledge the error.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

More whales die from getting tangled in fishing gear and hit by ships than caught by whalers.

Is that an argument for spending taxes on whaling? If so, it's a complete non sequitur.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Ossan

Military assets include satellites

Haha, yes - but satellites orbit the Earth in space, they don't get "deployed to international waters near the antarctic", which was the claim you mendaciously claimed was made:

Look how few people here even recognize the absurdity and impossibility of Japan deploying military assets in international waters near the antarctic

and then you say

Nobody is talking about ships

So what were you talking about with "assets in international waters"? Again, satellites are in space. Just admit you didn't read it properly and stop digging.

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Ossan

Look how few people here even recognize the absurdity and impossibility of Japan deploying military assets in international waters near the antarctic

No-one made such a claim.

domtoidi

Minke whales are not endangered

And that means my taxes aren't being wasted in hunting them?

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Posted in: Sea Shepherd pulls plug on campaign to disrupt Japan whale hunt See in context

Schopenhauer: Japanese consumers are not interested in this topic

They should be - their (our) taxes are paying for a government ministry with military assistance to send fleets of ships across the world to hunt whales at great expense merely to provide a niche product desired by 1% of the population.

Not like there's anything better for the government to do with the money, like say providing more nursery places or whatever... or for the military to do with its satellites, like say North Korea...

Dukeleto: If no Japanese went near a piece of whale meat again the industry would collapse overnight

The industry would already collapse without government funding.

dcog9065: Maybe they can instead focus on the Norwegians, they hunt many more whales than the Japanese. If they don't target the Norway and Faroe hunts now

They already do.

Jimizo: Stop wasting my bloody taxes on this nonsense

Hear, hear

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

Why do you insist on seeing 'outrage' in posts where there is only rational argument?

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

I don't know a single supporter of President Trump who feels prosecuted

Trump may well end up feeling prosecuted.

Of course, I'm sure you meant 'persecuted', as the word I used was 'persecution'.

And yes, all this whining about PC and the poor downtrodden white man comes from a ridiculous sense of persecution.

Steve Cannon said it best about the whiny, spineless left

I agree with you and Bannon on that - the left really does need to drop the kind of absurd identity politics which sees them shutting down museum kimono events etc

But if you think the right aren't playing identity politics, you're having a laugh. This whole Trump presidency is based on the whining spineless identity politics of the poor downtrodden 'persecuted' right wing white folk, which Bannon evidently knows how to exploit with great skill.

Seems to me that the US - all of it, left and right - is utterly obsessed with identity and race. Trump and Breitbart are indeed playing on that to great personal benefit, though to great detriment of a once-great country.

@Leila

Alex Jones went to Seattle and said that...

He also said under oath in court that nothing he said should be taken seriously because he's a performance artist. He also said he can sell you some snake oil for 100 dollars a bottle from his website to make the nasty PC fairies go away.

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

mass hysteria of whiny little brats

None greater than the whiner-in-chief Trump, and his mass of followers with their ridiculous persecution complex.

I truly believe historians will look back at this period a century from now and wonder how the populace became so weak so scared, and so spineless

Well, it's only 30-something percent displaying fear and spinelessness, but the way they got that way is the drip drip drip of Fox News / Breitbart alternative facts and fearmongering. We don't need future historians to tell us this.

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

@blacklabel

That was like a game of fallacy bingo. You've got ad hom & straw man, but no sound arguments:

The side who...

Whatever "side" you make up, and watever "side" you assign me to, is irrelevant to the point I made. That point being, alt-right is a label designed and worn with pride by the very group it describes, and is therefore a useful way of referring to said group. "Alt-left" is merely a label made up by Trump and the Breitbart-led alt right media sphere which has no worth in debate and no use other than in ad hom attacks, which are themselves worthless.

...wants to claim there is no 'alt-left' while at the same time blaming all conservatives for what only the 'alt-right' did

Straw man. "All conservatives" are not being blamed.

Ok, so your point is the Antifa and BLM are part of the core of the Democratic party along with everyone else.

Another straw man. You are well aware that that was not my point.

No extremists on the liberal side?

Straw man. That is not my contention.

Ok, thats fine but your whole party now owns their behavior, rhetoric and ideology.

My party? And who is "my party"? You're making some major assumptions - incorrect ones, and even then "my party" is ad hom reasoning and irrelevant to the points made.

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

I understand your side would like that to be true

This sentence merely indicates what you want to be true, not that you understand anything. "Your side"... and what "side" would that be? Who am I? What ad hominem group are you inserting me into as a way of avoiding the point I made?

if there is an alt-right where the extremists on one side are, then there has to be an alt-left when the extremists on the other side are

There is no truth or sound logic to this statement. The existence of one does not make the existence of the other a reality.

The alt-right are a self-declared, self-labelled group, formed with the mission statement of repackaging white supremacy as an acceptable mainstream position. We know who they are because they told us. There is no comparable "alt-left"; rather than being anything if substance, that is just an attempt to create a label which can then be used for ad hominem attacks.

Otherwise, you have to tell everyone that BLM and Antifa are part of the mainstream Democratic party and their ideas, rhetoric and propensity for violence are accepted and supported by you all

I have to do no such thing.

"You all"... who all?

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Posted in: Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence; hints at pardon for Arizona sheriff See in context

Many posts here commenting on the drivel of incoherent mess emanating from Trump. Unfortunately, his rally speeches don't need to be coherent. They only need to contain certain key words & phrases repeated over and over - the exact same words and phrases being used over and over on Breitbart. It's an act of mass hypnosis, and this is how it's done; the intended audience is the 30-something percent who believe anything he says, and the goal is to keep them that way. In that light, his absurd 'speeches' are actually very effective, with the proof in the pudding.

@blacklabel

Its a good measurement of hypocrisy to use those names for comparison. Like when Trump does something once and people complain but then we find out Obama did the same exact thing

Haha. Indeed. Like when Obama did something, Trump attacked him on Twitter for it, and then did the same thing himself once elected, laying his hypocrisy bare and yet his 'hypocrisy hating' supporters don't mind Trump's hypocrisy.

It's like Alan Dershowitz said, if the alt-right has to claim and be responsible for the actions of extremist white supremacists then the alt-left has to claim BLM and Antifa as the extremists on their side

False equivalency. There is no such thing as the 'alt-left', whereas the alt-right is the name white supremacists have chosen for themselves in an intentional rebranding.

The alt-left needs to disavow such violence against police and free speech demonstrators

Asking a non-existent entity to do something is unlikely to produce results.

@Raw Beer

indeed, I used "suspect" because in this case I do not have direct proof that that is what happened, but I do suspect it.

On the say-so of Alex "Performance Artist" Jones? Don't worry, I'm sure he sells he some hormone pills you could use a substitute for the complete lack of substance or evidence for the claim.

@Fizzbit

Where was all this neo Nazi hatred when Obama was putting Ukrainian neo nazis in positions of power?

It was absent because that only happened on Russia Today.

@bass

He was always against war, he pounced on Bush so many times, too many to count

Indeed. And he then pounced on Obama for inheriting Bush's mess and not getting out of it. And now, lo and behold, Trump then inherits the same mess and declares he's going steaming back in. Shameless hypocrisy from a man with no shame whatsoever.

Anyone would be if you have 98% of the media desperately trying to pull you down

You seriously make Fox News and Breitbart out to be only 2% of the media?

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Posted in: Bannon out at White House as pressure mounts on Trump See in context

He did on many, many occasions

I'm not aware of a single instance of Obama attacking the 'mainstream media'. If you know of one, please do share.

No difference

The difference is that the last president didn't attack the media or present himself as anti-establishment. Trump does both, so his cosying up to an establishment mainstream media mogul is something I'm curious to know how his followers react to. In your case, that's been whatever deflection or denial you can throw out, as expected. Thanks for answering.

Any other Trump fans out there with either the same or a different take on this?

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Posted in: Bannon out at White House as pressure mounts on Trump See in context

The last president did it with MSNBC

Sure. But the last president didn't do it while constantly attacking the media. That's why Trump's cosying up to Murdoch is of interest i.e. because he does it while constantly attacking 'the MSM' and presenting himself as anti-establishment; and that's why I'm amused that his supporters don't seem to mind the blatant hypocrisy.

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Posted in: Bannon out at White House as pressure mounts on Trump See in context

Has nothing to do with influencing

So what do you imagine Trump and Murdoch discussed over dinner? Baseball? Game of Thrones? Murdoch has a long track record of using his media outlets to support politicians who give him what he wants (see The Sun, Blair, etc)

Anyway, your answer to my question appears to be that you don't mind the president canoodling with a media mogul despite his constant railing against the media. Is that right? Because that's all I was asking.

Any other Trump fans care to answer?

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Posted in: Bannon out at White House as pressure mounts on Trump See in context

So what's your point?

I didn't make one, I asked a question.

I'll rephrase it for you:

Given how Trump & support spend so much time attacking the 'mainstream media', how do you feel about Trump being under the influence of a mainstream media mogul like Rupert Murdoch?

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