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Andrew Prutsok

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Posts posted by Andrew Prutsok

  1. A week later and the angry calls to my little daily newspaper are increasing with heightened vitriol. Of course we don't even cover national and international news, just use a limited amount of Associated Press content to fill holes.

    Nonetheless, had to write an extensive memo for our reception desk and news department on how to deal with people who have been radicalized by the rightwing noise machine and their cult membership. I've been dealing with this for years.

    Basically said to just remain calm, let them vent and not to engage them in debate. They don't want to debate, they just want to scream at the media for reporting something different than what they know the evidence-free truth to be.  Thank them for the input and tell them they'll pass it along to the higherups, but most of the time they don't get that far. They just say what they want to say and slam the phone down. 

    It's stressful, particularly so for people who aren't used to having abuse heaped upon them.

    We run some syndicated columnists on our editorial page -- largely conservative ones -- and we're even under attack for them.

    Conservative is no longer enough. You have to go "full retard"  or you are the enemy.

    At my last paper I had the local police come in and conduct a class on what to do in the event of a shooter coming in. Fortunately, coronavirus has forced us to lock our doors and not a lot of concern at the moment on that front.

    I suspect it's going to get worse before it gets better.

  2. So it looks like McConnell and Trump are going all-in on overturning the election results. Anyone who dismisses their efforts is kidding themselves. These are two of the most corrupt, vicious, despicable politicians the country has produced and are fully capable of pulling it off. Our system is not set up to deal with what is coming.

  3. Highly recommend heading over to Twitter for a great laugh and distraction from what has been going on recently. This guy started this thread back on Nov. 1 and has been adding to it by the day. It's our election as seen from the viewpoint of Africans, reported in the same style in which US media outlets report on elections in Africa. A sample is below:

     

     
     
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    Replying to
    #BREAKING Amid reports the first family is digging in following failure to secure asylum abroad, fears grow that tensions in nuclear-armed US could boil over into ethnic violence as the political deadlock over the disease-ravaged nation's chaotic presidential election continues.
     
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    Replying to
    #BREAKING The former UK colony, with breathtaking natural beauty and richly endowed with natural resources and friendly people, but also riven by deep ethnic divisions, has suffered a series of political, humanitarian and economic crises which have killed nearly 250,000 people.
     
     
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    #BREAKING With millions of unemployed youth roaming the streets, many worry the political stalemate over who is the legitimate ruler of the strategically located north American country could easily trigger widespread violence and are calling for a quick resolution to the crisis.
     
     
     
     
    #BREAKING The troubled country is split between supporters of incumbent autocrat, Donald Trump, primarily members of the white ethnic majority living in the vast rural interior; and a coalition of ethnic minorities and moderate whites which supports opposition leader, Joe Biden.
     
     
     
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    #BREAKING While many African observers are aghast at the conduct of the US presidential election, others note that by American standards, it was a relatively good election, in a country where gerrymandering and voter suppression are not considered reasons to invalidate elections.
     
     
     
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    #BREAKING Opinion poll shows majority of Africans think it is ultimately possible to bring an end to humanitarian suffering in the US but aid agencies warn that many are becoming desensitized to images of violence, malnutrition and disease from the unstable north American nation.
     
     
     
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    #BREAKING Nairobi-based aid group Keya International cuts ties with Ben Githae after viral social media images of the singer holding obese American children drew the ire of US media with accusations of "ignorant African do-gooder celebrities trying to solve Western problems".
     
     
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    #BREAKING AU mediator, Monica Juma, says moderate leaders of the white community in strife-torn US must come out to condemn white political extremism in all its forms including by those within the white community who reject results of peaceful, free and fair democratic elections.
     
     
     
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    #BREAKING After he fires defence minister who refused to deploy army against unarmed protestors, many fear aging US autocrat, Donald Trump, will declare martial law in the strife-torn, banana-growing republic so as to keep power despite losing last week's presidential election.

     

  4. All Trump cries of rigged elections are the same charges he made against Democrats in 2016 and even Ted Cruz after the 2016 Iowa primary. He appointed a commission of deranged, vote suppressing wingnuts to investigate and they found nothing. These are the types of people who find vote fraud everywhere, all the time, and they couldn't validate Trump's charges. 

     

  5. 15 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

    Biden was way behind in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. So when they started stuffing ballots, they got really sloppy. That's how you end up with a batch of 138,000 ballots in one bunch, all marked "Biden", which is statistically impossible. (138,000 coin tosses in a row that all end up "heads.")

    Federal Investigators Deployed To Michigan After Undercover Video Alleging Voter Fraud Goes Viral

     

    Clerical error, fully explained here:

    https://amp.freep.com/amp/6161367002?__twitter_impression=true

  6. 18 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

    Ahh the time excuse, well i'm off fishing, i'll fire off a quick one before I go. 

    Do you think it's going to be one? I think you're in for a surprise, Kirk. 

    So, you acknowledge Biden's onset of dementia, which Trump is showing much less of of any. Cool.

    Trump globalist, hmm, thats a big topic, he might be, more so than Biden? More so than the hierarchy of the Democratic party?

    I'd heard both terms, I don't like to get my news from one place like some, otherwise you just get one narrative fed to you. 

    Fascist? So the Bushes weren't? I note Trump hasn't spent is presidency raping the developing word, killing millions, displacing peoples with unjust wars to line the pockets of munitions contractors and defence contractors. Smedley Butler was spot on. 

    Right, fishing....  ;)

     

    We'll know soon enough how committed to democracy he is. Right now, it appears not so much.

  7. 10 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

    If true...Wow!

    Good point Andrew.

    I just checked. Tampa Bay Times says it's not true on the mail in ballots. Sorry. Been a busy week and haven't had time to follow everything.

     

    The 27 percent figure was derived based on a tweet from Hill reporter (and former PolitiFact reporter) John Kruzel. The tweet showed USPS data, and for the South Florida delivery area, the processing score for ballots was 74.43 percent.

    A few people took that and, with a bit of sloppy math, came up with 27 percent undelivered.

    But anyone reading the thread in the tweet would see that in order to speed up the delivery of ballots to election offices, the postal service had said that it didn’t bother to scan ballots on their way out from the mail processing center.

    “Many facilities have arranged for local turnaround,” lawyers for the postal service affirmed wrote in a Nov. 3 filing.

    “It’s not that they weren’t delivered,” said National Association of Letter Carriers chief of staff Jim Sauber. “They were pulled out directly from the rest of the mail and delivered the same day.”

  8. Most of the commentary has been about what a blow this has been to the polling industry. I'm not so sure they were that wrong. It's my guess they likely don't figure in vote suppression efforts to their forecasts,  like limiting voting machines from urban locations, forcing people to stand in line for hours, urging armed thugs to go to polling locations to intimidate people, spreading disinformation in general -- Hell, wasn't it reported that some 27 percent of mail in ballots in Florida didn't get delivered due to DeJoy's machinations?

     

  9. 11 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

    that is absolute nonsense. You think they don't want to do anything? You are just regurgitating what is basically a Fox news line.

    I'm just going by what Obama did. Biden was his VP, remember? No public option on healthcare, no banksters or torturers prosecuted or even investigated. "Look forward not back." Biden himself has been saying nothing will fundamentally change when fundamental change is needed now more than ever. He sincerely believes there are reasonable Republicans and they will work with them.

     

    Apart from not tweeting and acting like an adderall-addled lunatic most of the time, what is it you think Biden is going to try to change?

  10. On 10/26/2020 at 11:16 PM, James DiEugenio said:

    Its really something is it not?

    Gore gets more votes than W in 2000.  But then his brother steals the election in broad daylight, thanks to the originalist Justice Scalia.

    W steals the election again in Ohio in 2004.

    HRC outpolls Trump by nearly 3 M votes but loses.

    This is why I say that if Biden is a real Democrat he will do these five things:

    1. Make District of Columbia  a state

    2. Make Puerto Rico a state

    3. Expand the court to 13

    4. Do away with the Electoral College

    5. Make Sheldon Whitehouse AG

    I wouldn't doubt that Biden's people, DNC, are pulling for a GOP senate majority so they have a built-in excuse -- Republican obstruction -- not to do any of that, or much of anything else.

  11. Pretty good read here from Sarah Kendzior in the Globe and Mail.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-the-election-shows-america-is-a-broken-country/?utm_medium=Referrer%3A Social Network %2F Media&utm_campaign=Shared Web Article Links&__twitter_impression=true

    There's nothing here to refute:

    "But Donald Trump was always an aspiring autocrat: one who spelled out his brutal policies during his campaign and put them into practice in office. He followed the dictator’s playbook: packing courts, purging agencies, profiting off the presidency, installing his family members into power, demonizing minorities and dismantling the institutions that could hold him accountable...the first president to say his political opponent (Joe Biden), his opponent’s family (Hunter Biden), his predecessor (Barack Obama) and his former opponent (Hillary Clinton) should all be jailed. He is the first president to be named as “Individual-1” in a federal criminal probe. He is the first president whose former campaign managers were all arrested for different crimes. He is the first president to be impeached for soliciting aid from a foreign state (Ukraine), the first to win an election with help from illicit foreign aid (in 2016 from Russia), and the first to pressure foreign leaders for dirt on the rival he baselessly thought should be imprisoned."

     

     

  12. 1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

    Andrew,

    What part of Montana? I lived in Bozeman for a while. I'd move back there in a heartbeat.

    That's not white privilege. That's Montana privilege.

    🙂

    Do drivers in MT still drive around with $5 bills stuck in their visors to pay the State Police when they stop you for speeding on the Interstate?

    Steve Thomas

    I'm in Southeastern Montana, Steve, not the pretty part. Miles City, hardcore cowboy country. Wound up here after the newspaper company I worked for in Ohio decided to exit the business back in 2018. Got rid of all of their publishers to cut costs and then sold out about eight months later. Good move, I suppose. Had to come west to make a living. I've been to Bozeman a couple times. Our home office is in Livingston, so I get over there occasionally.  Really nice out that way. I like it here.

     

    As far as drivers, not sure about the bribes. I can't get used to driving 80 miles an hour. Every car on the Interstate flies by me. Speed limits are 80, but they seem to look the other way pretty much to 90.

  13. Biden just said in Philadelphia he's opposed to packing the court but will appoint a commission with liberals and conservatives to study it for six months and will listen to what they have to say. Just imagine how disappointing he is going to be. We're going to go from outrage and disgust to total despondency, which may be a natural progression for residency in a failing empire.

    I felt the same way about Obama in 2008 before he was even inaugurated. Once he picked his cabinet, it was obvious there would be no reckoning or accountability about anything that came before. 

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