One sure thing about that shitstain Trump is that he is bribable. He will pivot on a pinhead if it would enrich him more.

The deeper reason is that they believe in a highly hierarachical society in which they have earned the right to be in the top strata. That’s why they chase the big donors. That’s why their calculations will always put themselves and their grip on power above: the basic needs of impoverished Americans; or the lives of innocent civilians getting bombed out of existance; or future generations that will inherit our strung out eco system; and about countless other maladies and evils that beset our tettering civilisation.

They are not leftwing, they are the corporate bulwark against leftwing ideas. They are not big tent, they promulgate a very narrow reading of reality to the benefit of their paymasters.

I think this is a bit naive. Both partys will have done their homework and have a fairly good idea what it is those disenfranchised voters want. The problem is is what they want is at odds with what the party’s big donors want.

100%

Not sure if the future tense ‘will’ is appropriate here

𝕴𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖙𝖔 𝖗𝖊𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖗𝖊𝖉𝖉𝖎𝖙!

There’s a bit of a difference in sentencing between premeditated murder and manslaughter

Too late!

They’ve still got a good reputation for news. So good that after a few combative interviews with Tory MPs (back when they were in power a few years ago) the Culture Secretary wanted to sell the channel off.

Don’t get me wrong they can still produce the occasional good comedy or documentary but they used to do so consistently.

You won’t get any disagreement from me on the corrosive effects of advertising.

I do think that Channel 4 used to regularly produce greater content than it can now. But that probably is more to do with advertising revenue being leeched away to online platforms and the growth of its direct competitors.

Well the distinction here is that TV license paying citizens of the UK don’t get the ads.

All Sunnis and all Shiites hate each other? Even unto death?

Well then they must be truely barbaric and therefore deserving of the decades of avarice inspired wrath meted out upon them by successive US governments and their proxy settler colony.

In the UK the BBC only has advertisements for its own content, nothing else. As bad as its got since Tony Blair and David Cameron both undermined its independence and quality, at least there are no ad breaks in its shows.

Well… in my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far.

Oh-a-a-a-Oh

Counter-counterpoint: the Tea Party was an astroturf movement funded by big oil, big tobacco and the Koch brothers. Given massive amounts of support by media companies (lots and lots of oxygen). With the purpose of taking over the GOP and entrenching their toxic industries and power.

With the perspective we have now it is clear that their plan was to push Republican supporters over into fascism (not to say that it wasn’t latent within many of them) and reduce the risks of democracy to the oligarchy.

Kinda relevant: from the latest Private Eye. Just a little insight to the background of the people pushing for this outcome.

The Heritage Foundation who would have guessed it would be in the mix.

Microfilms used to be sold as having a life expectancy of up 500 years. But in my experience they were a pain to use and the machines costly to maintain. The films would tear regularly too. Also the quality of the recorded image could be very poor sometimes.

Precluding Jack Burton: In what universe does a truck driver take out three trained soldiers in a gun fight. The quality of those soldiers must be fairly low.

The usual cycle of tech-bro capitalism would put them currently on the early acquire market saturation stage. So it’s unlikely that they are currently charging what they will when they are established and have displaced lots of necessary occupations.

Rad