HOUSTON — Meeting at their first in-person convention since 2018, Texas Republicans on Saturday acted on a raft of resolutions and proposed platform changes to move their party even further to the right. They approved measures declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected” and rebuking Sen. John Cornyn for taking part in bipartisan gun talks. They also voted on a platform that declares homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice”
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/18/republican-party-texas-convention-cornyn/
Larry,
This is some really scary stuff.
Here's the entire problem.
All these people with these bat shist views didn't all do independent research and come to the same conclusions.
No, they ALL got it from Trump and far right sources that told them to believe this.
They had to work together in order to perpetrate the brainwash.
If Trump had told the Truth, that Biden won..........we wouldn't be here.
If Trump had claimed the election was stolen and Fox had told the truth and contradicted his bs...........people would have had good reasons to doubt Trump. Instead, Fox reinforced their belief that the election was stolen and backed Trump up..........and in fact, used the Big Lie to take advantage of their viewers, who get all their news from Fox and other far right sources.
Fox has the indisputable franchise on far right brains and this has been the perfect opportunity to capitalize on it.
This is how they perpetrated the scam to take advantage of them.
People go to places to be told what they like/want to hear. To hear the news interpreted and twisted so it confirms their personal belief system. Almost nobody goes to a place that they think is biased against their side. They intentionally pick places that line up with their views. When you go to places like that for all your news, you only get the side of news stories that agree with everything you stand for and the other sides views, if they see the light of day, it's because that site is denouncing those opposing views.
Like going to a movie with a happy ending and the good guys always win.
Only they are using the news and imposing the same "good guys" theme to distort/twist realities that always makes you/them and your party as the good guys in every news story and the opposite political party is always the bad guys trying to sabotage all the good things that you stand for.
They constantly manufacture realities that don't exist to misrepresent every political dynamic.
Good guys/us against Bad guys/them.
This is extremely attractive to viewers because every show casts people that think just like the viewers watching as the heros and people that disagree with them as the villains.
They have so much control over the brains of viewers using this strategy/technique that they have capitalized on Trumps lie that Biden stole the election by presenting Trump as one of the good guys, like they are and those watching are...and Biden's side as the bad guys who went so far as to rig and steal the election.
All the thousands of pieces of overwhelming evidence that contradict that are not to be believed because its just the corrupt system supporting the bad guys to take down the good guys and Trump.
Conspiracy theories are very frequently used as when applying this very effective strategy.
It's like the plot in a fictional movie but people can no longer tell what's manufactured and what's real.
The world that we live in is often defined by manufactured realities that are sold with convincing false narratives.
People have evolved because of the technology to no longer do the fact checking and critical thinking that once defined humans.
They go to their favorite source that tells them the news the way they like to hear it. This also lays the groundwork for how they interpret any new information.
If it confirms what they think they know.......it's stored as knowledge in their brains. Contradicting information is rejected........even if it's the truth.
So with time, your belief in everything always gets stronger and often more extreme but never changes.
You and your side are always right.
The other side is always wrong.
What can be done to stop this from getting even worse and prevent it from potentially costing us the democracy of this country?
You don't think that losing our democracy is a legit potential risk when 70% of an entire major party is rejecting the crystal clear results of the most secure and proven valid presidential election in history????
You must be part of the 70%!!!
Answer: Probably nothing.
However, I won't stop trying as a patriotic American committed to our country's democracy and truth.
Fox News’ role in promoting the Big Lie — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump — cost the network one of its most respected journalists, Chris Wallace. Wallace told The New York Times recently that he jumped to CNN because “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox.”
Now the question is whether Fox’s post-election programming will also cost the media empire (and its insurers) millions, if not billions, of dollars in legal judgments.
In allowing the $2.7 billion suit to proceed, a New York judge, David B. Cohen of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled last month that there was a substantial basis for claims that “Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth.”
Denver-based Dominion, which provided voting-machine technology in 28 states, filed a similar suit in March 2021, alleging that Fox “sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the progress.” In December, a Delaware judge, Eric M. Davis, denied Fox’s motion to dismiss the $1.6 billion case, writing that it was reasonable to conclude that Fox “either knew its statements about Dominion’s role in election fraud were false or had a high degree of awareness that the statements were false.”
So where does that leave Fox News? Truth is an absolute defense in libel cases, but the statements in question were patently untrue. That puts Fox in the position of arguing that the unhinged “Stop the Steal” assertions aired by Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani, were newsworthy and therefore protected by what’s known as neutral-reportage privilege. Such a defense protects news organizations that accurately and dispassionately report false information from authoritative sources.
“I view the Dominion and Smartmatic cases as a great opportunity for the neutral-reportage privilege to be recognized and to become more visible,” George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, told me. “For the most part, good law and good journalism are parallel, which is a good thing. But shouldn’t you allow neutral publication of wild newsworthy statements that are either unknown as to their truth or where there are serious doubts as to their truth? The point of them isn’t really to make the accusation, but rather to show what an idiot the person making the charge is.”
“You’re safe reporting on baseless claims that other people make, but you are not free to embrace them and advance them,” Zick says. “That’s a difference that makes a huge difference.”
Another defense that’s unlikely to hold up for Fox, which serves its viewers an uneasy mix of fearless reporting and feckless commentary, is that the hosts’ remarks were constitutionally protected opinion. To paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, commentators are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Or as Wallace put it to the Times, “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”
Unsustainable indeed. The courts will determine whether it was also actionable.
Bill Sternberg is a veteran Washington journalist and former editorial page editor of USA Today.
An April 2023 jury trial has been scheduled in Dominion Voting Systems Inc's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit accusing Fox News of trying to boost its ratings by falsely claiming the voting machine company rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election against former President Donald Trump.
Updated Jun 17, 2022, 10:04am EDT
Dominion sued Newsmax in Delaware state court in August and sued One America News Network (OANN) and its anchors in federal court, alleging the two far-right networks promoted fraud allegations despite knowing they were false and “helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where ... Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud.”
Denver-based Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who has been the most prominent person spreading the fraud claims, seeking $1.3 billion in damages, and U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied Powell’s motion to dismiss the case in August.
Nichols also ruled lawsuits Dominion filed against attorney Rudy Giuliani, MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell can move forward—though the cases against them and Powell may not go to trial until late 2023 or 2024, based on a schedule the judge set in early March.
$1.6 billion. That’s approximately how much Dominion is asking for in damages against Byrne, OANN, Newsmax and Fox News. Its lawsuits against Powell, Giuliani and Lindell are each seeking $1.3 billion in damages. Smartmatic’s Fox News lawsuit is seeking $2.7 billion in damages, but its OANN, Newsmax and Lindell complaints do not specify exact figures.
Newsmax has not yet responded to a request for comment, but has said previously after being sued that it stands by its reporting and the network “reported accurately on allegations made by well-known public figures” and called Dominion’s lawsuit “a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press.” Those sued have largely remained defiant, and Fox News said in a statement after the Smartmatic ruling that it was “grateful” the court dismissed the charges against Pirro but would “immediately” appeal the decision, as well as file a counterclaim “to prevent the full-blown assault on the First Amendment which stands in stark contrast to the highest tradition of American journalism.” Giuliani said the lawsuit against him was “another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing,” and has also filed a countersuit against Smartmatic in an effort to recoup his attorney’s fees. OANN has also moved to dismiss the cases against them, and Nichols is now deliberating on whether to throw out the case.
The companies’ voting machines are at the heart of a right-wing conspiracy theory alleging they were used to fraudulently flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden, which is not substantiated by evidence. Dominion says that the claims have substantially hurt its business and put its employees in danger. The voting company controls about 30% of the U.S. market, according to data cited by ProPublica in 2019—making it the second-largest business of its kind in the country—and said in its Fox News lawsuit that it has contracts with 28 states. Business analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet estimated the company’s 2021 annual revenue will be $40.15 million, though the company alleges it has lost out on state contracts over the fraud claims, including a $10 million contract in Stark County, Ohio, and a $100 million contract in Louisiana. London-based Smartmatic’s machines were only used in Los Angeles County in the 2020 election, though CEO told Antonio Mugica told Forbes the company has ambitions to expand further in the U.S. The company alleged in its complaints the fraud claims have caused Smartmatic to lose more than $2 billion in valuation since the 2020 election, going from more than $3 billion to less than $1 billion, though Forbes has independently valued Smartmatic at an estimated $730 million.
From Mike's source:
To paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, commentators are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Or as Wallace put it to the Times, “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”
Great quote/paraphrase Larry!