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House Republicans again block passage of disaster aid bill

[h=1]House Republicans again block passage of disaster aid bill[/h]

House Republicans again block passage of disaster aid bill - CNNPolitics

Washington (CNN)For the second time in a week, House Republicans blocked the passage of a more than $19 billion disaster relief bill, further delaying the approval of funds that cleared the Senate last week with overwhelming bipartisan support.

House Democrats attempted to pass the bill via unanimous consent on Tuesday, but Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky objected. Republican Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia was on the House floor standing next to Massie for the objection. It only takes one person to object in order to block a bill from passing immediately through unanimous consent.

With Congress in recess, House Democrats will have another chance at a second pro forma this coming Thursday, and then again next week when the House returns on Monday.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was also in the chamber Tuesday to call on Republicans not to object.
"I urge them to do so because millions of people ... are at risk," he said.

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It only takes one Republican to block this disaster relief bill, this is the second time one has blocked it passing. Trump has already said he would sign the bill when it comes to his desk, even if it didn't contain the border funding. There's not $3 billion for his wall in the disaster bill, so the GOP refuses to pass it.

Nancy Pelosi was right when she said "the heartlessness of House Republicans knows no bounds". North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer was quite succinct when he said ""A lot gets made of the fact that one person did this. The one person that did it obviously represents several others who would have done it if not for them,"


What is wrong with this sentiment?

From the CNN link in the OP:

"Massie told reporters after voicing his objection that he was trying to "stop legislative malpractice," by preventing legislation from passing without all House members present to take a vote."​
 
Essentially Democrats refuse to rob $4 billion of the disaster relief intended for those states devastated by last year's hurricanes to go to build Trump's wall. Just so you know in the future, this bill requires a 100% unanimous vote in the House to pass. Although the article explained that already, I guess you skipped that part.

Much of the $19 billion in recovery dollars will go to states hit by Hurricanes Michael and Florence in 2018, mostly Florida, Georgia and Alabama. It also includes money for states ravaged by wildfires, like California and Oregon.
The disaster aid package has been snared by setbacks since before the midterm elections, including Trump’s own determined efforts to block Puerto Rico from receiving more cash.

Republicans and Democrats ultimately agreed to deliver $600 million for Puerto Rico’s nutritional assistance program and $300 million for its community development programs.

Efforts to fund disaster relief were also made more complicated when the White House asked Congress for roughly $4.5 billion in emergency money for the southern border, where authorities and humanitarian efforts had been overwhelmed by a surge of arrivals from Central America.

Democrats had demanded stringent rules for any money going to the White House’s border operations — a hurdle that further delayed a deal. Republicans ultimately agreed to drop their border funding requests, punting that request until later this summer.

Congress last approved a giant disaster aid package in February 2018, which focused on a trio of deadly hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

So, that's what's in the bill.

There you have it right there...Democrats these days have to insert their obstruction into everything, and anything, even something that would aid people struck by disaster...Shameful...
 
Now you know how dems have amassed such a long list of Trump lies, for example. Some Trump 'lies' are outright incorrect accusations. Some Trump 'lies' are 'circumstantial'. All Trump 'lies' are political accusations.

Oh absolutely, but I am talking on a personal level...As personal as an anonymous message can be that is...I would think that starting out a reply to someone by calling them a liar is a point where the reader of that post should stop right there....
 
There you have it right there...Democrats these days have to insert their obstruction into everything, and anything, even something that would aid people struck by disaster...Shameful...

Yes they did EXACTLY what they are SWORN to do. Congress has the power of the purse, and they say where the money goes and who gets to spend it. Trump does not get a blank check to rob from military spending or disaster relief. Too bad if you don't like it, who cares.
 
Yes they did EXACTLY what they are SWORN to do. Congress has the power of the purse, and they say where the money goes and who gets to spend it. Trump does not get a blank check to rob from military spending or disaster relief. Too bad if you don't like it, who cares.

I'm just sayin....You want so badly to blame it on all Republicans that one Republican blocked a voice vote, when there is no bill that passes through Pelosi's crypt keeper like hands that doesn't have some smack at limiting Presidential powers involved....It may be her prerogative BUT, I sure don't want to hear how the mean ol Republican's won't let the wonderful Democrats do things for the people...Because that would be BS.
 
For the life of me, I don't know what you, or any rational person think you are accomplishing when you start out a post like this...

Do you really expect to have any sort of reasoned conversation surrounding any topic when you begin by calling the person you are addressing, "a liar"?

It's toxic...You should check yourself.

I expect no sort of reasoned conversation on sites like this because the history is quite clear that reasonable people here are very few and far between. They are too far determined to draw a line between them and whatever FOX News personalities tells them is their latest enemy.

And let's be clear, the liars declare themselves. The reasonable do not habitually make the same erroneous declarations that have long been debunked as a matter of historical fact. These are the people, years later, who still needed desperately to declare that Obama was a Kenyan born Muslim. When one dismisses the reality, the facts, and the common sense of issues in order to cling desperately to shallow and broken ideologies simply to engineer a personal rage, they have abandoned reason.
 
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Oh absolutely, but I am talking on a personal level...As personal as an anonymous message can be that is...I would think that starting out a reply to someone by calling them a liar is a point where the reader of that post should stop right there....

So...you believe that if I was only nice to the poster, who clearly presented long debunked falsehoods, he/she would have found her/his way to a reasonable path where the real world might actually be found? No, people like that know they lie. And people like that have no interest in reading anything that doesn't jive with their delusions.
 
I'm just sayin....You want so badly to blame it on all Republicans that one Republican blocked a voice vote, when there is no bill that passes through Pelosi's crypt keeper like hands that doesn't have some smack at limiting Presidential powers involved....It may be her prerogative BUT, I sure don't want to hear how the mean ol Republican's won't let the wonderful Democrats do things for the people...Because that would be BS.

Nancy Pelosi knows the Constitution better than almost anyone in Congress and the sworn duty of every Congressman, no matter which political party they're affiliated with, is to check the powers of the presidency. This is what was intended by the drafters of the Constitution in order to prevent any one president from having too much power and the country becoming a dictatorship. Yes, the Democrats would usurp the monies from anyone, even those suffering the loss of homes and businesses as a result of natural catastrophic events. They don't care as long as Trump gets his wall money. Screw everyone else.
 
[h=1]House Republicans again block passage of disaster aid bill[/h]

House Republicans again block passage of disaster aid bill - CNNPolitics

Washington (CNN)For the second time in a week, House Republicans blocked the passage of a more than $19 billion disaster relief bill, further delaying the approval of funds that cleared the Senate last week with overwhelming bipartisan support.

House Democrats attempted to pass the bill via unanimous consent on Tuesday, but Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky objected. Republican Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia was on the House floor standing next to Massie for the objection. It only takes one person to object in order to block a bill from passing immediately through unanimous consent.

With Congress in recess, House Democrats will have another chance at a second pro forma this coming Thursday, and then again next week when the House returns on Monday.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was also in the chamber Tuesday to call on Republicans not to object.
"I urge them to do so because millions of people ... are at risk," he said.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It only takes one Republican to block this disaster relief bill, this is the second time one has blocked it passing. Trump has already said he would sign the bill when it comes to his desk, even if it didn't contain the border funding. There's not $3 billion for his wall in the disaster bill, so the GOP refuses to pass it.

Nancy Pelosi was right when she said "the heartlessness of House Republicans knows no bounds". North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer was quite succinct when he said ""A lot gets made of the fact that one person did this. The one person that did it obviously represents several others who would have done it if not for them,"


Children are dying on the border but no money is given to solve the problem. Nevertheless democrats want billion taken from other programs and put in the hands of government money handlers to grease the palms of their friends and supporters as they see fit under the guise of disaster relief.
 
So, that really makes my wonder what's REALLY in the bill. First off the Dems have a strong majority in the House- if only all the Dems had voted for it, it would have passed. There's more to the story.
You either aren't paying attention or didn't read the first post. It's about UNANIMOUS CONSENT. Sure, when it comes to a vote it will pass. They wanted to pass it immediately.
 
Children are dying on the border but no money is given to solve the problem. Nevertheless democrats want billion taken from other programs and put in the hands of government money handlers to grease the palms of their friends and supporters as they see fit under the guise of disaster relief.

Money appropriated through bills approved by Congress are specific, not vague or re-assigned at the last minute. It's TRUMP and the Republicans who want to move it around to suit their own political agenda. Trump wants a victory to use for his re-election campaign. He wants to say to his crowds at his rallies "See! I got money for MY wall!"
 
Money appropriated through bills approved by Congress are specific, not vague or re-assigned at the last minute. It's TRUMP and the Republicans who want to move it around to suit their own political agenda. Trump wants a victory to use for his re-election campaign. He wants to say to his crowds at his rallies "See! I got money for MY wall!"

Democrats do the same thing yet they slander Trump because their political future depends on such despicable practices.
 
Democrats do the same thing yet they slander Trump because their political future depends on such despicable practices.

They aren't 'slandering' when they're referring to facts provided by Trump himself. That's not slander, it's fact.
 
Children are dying on the border but no money is given to solve the problem. Nevertheless democrats want billion taken from other programs and put in the hands of government money handlers to grease the palms of their friends and supporters as they see fit under the guise of disaster relief.

Let's test j-mac's theory of kindness:

1) Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $324 billion on the agencies that carry out immigration enforcement. Therefore, your declaration that "no money is given to solve the problem" is absolutely wrong.

2) Your second sentence was just partisan nonsense and without value, which is why your ideology allowed you to make such an obvious and malicious false statement up front.

Ultimately, the combination of the two merely re-enforces your illusions and your enduring need to draw a line between you (the righteous good American) and the left (the evil America destroyers). This is hardly an ingredient to actually discussing the issue and this is exactly the sort of obnoxious emotion that Trump has pandered to ever since the election trail.


As for the rational path of reason here: As is the case with so many government agencies, the issue is not quantity. It is the lack of quality within a busted system of inadequate laws, in which both Parties have gone on record for insisting the need for reform. The GOP had two full years to attack the need for reform. Instead, they did nothing until Democrats took back the House in 2018. THEN, Trump went right back on his wall crusade in which the Democrats were accused of wanting open borders; and you conservatives simply danced to the tune. He even sent battle trained Marines to the border to fill sandbags while the Border Patrol watched.

I find it very odd that conservatives can at once accuse Democrats of wanting open borders and also pervert the history about Democrats for their support of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Do you see how the two are in contradiction? Irrational and unreasonable.
 
I expect no sort of reasoned conversation on sites like this because the history is quite clear that reasonable people here are very few and far between.

So, in your mind then it is fine to be part of the problem...Got it.

They are too far determined to draw a line between them and whatever FOX News personalities tells them is their latest enemy.

See, the problem with this sort of thinking is that you start at a premise that you are always right...Wouldn't it be just as easy for your opponent to say the same of you, inserting CNN, or MSNBC for FNC? It's an arrogant position.

And let's be clear, the liars declare themselves.

In most cases I would agree, however, on a message board you only have the written word to go by. There is no inflection, no view of expression, no way to tell if the other person is being tongue in cheek. Misunderstanding is way too easy...And yes, let's be clear..Assholes declare themselves too.

The reasonable do not habitually make the same erroneous declarations that have long been debunked as a matter of historical fact.

And who exactly makes the declaration of reason in your scenerio? YOU? If you just declare the opponent a "liar" without making your case as to what you believe they are lying about, then it's just a lazy, trolling response...

These are the people, years later, who still needed desperately to declare that Obama was a Kenyan born Muslim.

As with this right here...Do you have examples? Should I just call you a liar for that statement without evidence of claim?

When one dismisses the reality, the facts, and the common sense of issues in order to cling desperately to shallow and broken ideologies simply to engineer a personal rage, they have abandoned reason.

Again, another declarative statement of your own opinion of others that disagree with your personal views...I'll take it for what it is worth, which isn't much.

So...you believe that if I was only nice to the poster, who clearly presented long debunked falsehoods, he/she would have found her/his way to a reasonable path where the real world might actually be found?

And again, you start with the premise that what you believe is the only correct conclusion on any given topic...There is then NO discourse with individuals like that....

No, people like that know they lie. And people like that have no interest in reading anything that doesn't jive with their delusions.

Then why the hell are you even here? I mean, if you think that anyone that doesn't agree with you is "delusional" I would think that you have better things, more meaningful things to apply your righteous views to than to the "delusional".... Speaks volumes to your character.
 
Nancy Pelosi knows the Constitution better than almost anyone in Congress and the sworn duty of every Congressman, no matter which political party they're affiliated with, is to check the powers of the presidency. This is what was intended by the drafters of the Constitution in order to prevent any one president from having too much power and the country becoming a dictatorship. Yes, the Democrats would usurp the monies from anyone, even those suffering the loss of homes and businesses as a result of natural catastrophic events. They don't care as long as Trump gets his wall money. Screw everyone else.

Nah, trying to proactively, and preemptively legislate against something that hasn't been done is exactly why the founders made each branch of the government equal in power....Pelosi, and gang are trying their hardest to box in the President, and make his Presidency a paper tiger with no power....It's a power grab.
 
Let's test j-mac's theory of kindness:

1) Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $324 billion on the agencies that carry out immigration enforcement. Therefore, your declaration that "no money is given to solve the problem" is absolutely wrong.

2) Your second sentence was just partisan nonsense and without value, which is why your ideology allowed you to make such an obvious and malicious false statement up front.

Ultimately, the combination of the two merely re-enforces your illusions and your enduring need to draw a line between you (the righteous good American) and the left (the evil America destroyers). This is hardly an ingredient to actually discussing the issue and this is exactly the sort of obnoxious emotion that Trump has pandered to ever since the election trail.


As for the rational path of reason here: As is the case with so many government agencies, the issue is not quantity. It is the lack of quality within a busted system of inadequate laws, in which both Parties have gone on record for insisting the need for reform. The GOP had two full years to attack the need for reform. Instead, they did nothing until Democrats took back the House in 2018. THEN, Trump went right back on his wall crusade in which the Democrats were accused of wanting open borders; and you conservatives simply danced to the tune. He even sent battle trained Marines to the border to fill sandbags while the Border Patrol watched.

I find it very odd that conservatives can at once accuse Democrats of wantinIf we g open borders and also pervert the history about Democrats for their support of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Do you see how the two are in contradiction? Irrational and unreasonable.

If we put the Secure Fence Act of 2006 on the floor today, and erased out 'of 2006' and inserted 'of 2019' with Trump's name on it, would it pass?
 
Democrats do the same thing yet they slander Trump because their political future depends on such despicable practices.

This is also irrational. First, one doesn't get to pretend that one is better than "the left" when one celebrates what their side does because the other side does it too. At that point, it has become full acknowledgment that Republicans are morally no better than "the left."

Second, it is not the DNC that has been accused by the Supreme Court for racially gerrymandering. It has not been the DNC that has been politically stacking the courts since 2014. It has not been the DNC that has been trying to adopt Jim Crow tactics. It has not been the DNC that has created laws at the state level to fill a winning Democrat's cabinet with Republicans in order to strip all power fro the executive. All of this has been for the purpose of winning elections from one state to the next wherever the Republicans gained power since 2014. Even at the White House level we see Bush winning in 2000 and Trump winning in 2016 through Electoral College, not popular vote. The GOP knows that they are representing less and less Americans and so, instead of doing their jobs and actually trying to represent as wide a spread of Americans as possible, they have been adopting despicable practices for the few in order to cling to power and to try to turn back the clock. This is why a very vague slogan like "Make America Great Again" resonated with the conservative masses, though none of them can define what that even means. It is obviously the GOP that is in need of despicable practices. This is a matter of documented record. Democrats are just weak and stupid. Republicans are calculating and malicious.

I would think that when neo-Nazis and white supremacists began showing up at Trump rallies that the conservative masses might have taken a step back and reassessed hat they had spent years becoming.
 
See, the problem with this sort of thinking is that you start at a premise that you are always right...Wouldn't it be just as easy for your opponent to say the same of you, inserting CNN, or MSNBC for FNC? It's an arrogant position.

This is exactly my point. It is a factual position. There are multiple studies spanning years that show how uninformed FOX News viewers are because of FOX News. And an "opponent" can try to argue from a place of denial all he wants, but all he/she will be doing is denying the facts in order to preserve that comfortable ignorance. As for the rest of the media world, lets see how these facts resonate...

News Bias.jpg

But hey, everybody but FOX is "fake," right?

And who exactly makes the declaration of reason in your scenerio? YOU? If you just declare the opponent a "liar" without making your case as to what you believe they are lying about, then it's just a lazy, trolling response...

Or I don't wish to make the same factual argument over and over to very same gaggle of liars who insist on their delusions as if the facts don't exist. When one declares over and over that Global Warming is just a liberal hoax despite an entire world of scientists declaring it so, yes, I get to declare what is and is not reasonable. When one declares that tomato paste is a vegetable so they can make a stand for "liberty" against the evil left who want to introduce healthier school lunches, yes, I get to declare what is and is not reasonable. And when one denies the documented facts of how horribly damaging FOX News is to the nation, yes, I get to use those documented facts to declare what is and is not reasonable. You too can declare what is and is not reasonable; You only need to start from a place where the facts actually matter.

As with this right here...Do you have examples? Should I just call you a liar for that statement without evidence of claim?

You can call me a liar. But like the others you will simply be practicing the need to deny the documented facts that you absolutely know are true. As late as 2016...


The polls on this are endless. If only FOX News actually told the truth, huh? And who did the conservatkves fal over for in 2016 (Primaries too)? A champion Birther.

Again, another declarative statement of your own opinion of others that disagree with your personal views...I'll take it for what it is worth, which isn't much.

Oh? So it is reasonable to argue from a place where one pretends to be unaware of how conservatives denied Obama's citizenship for years and voted for a champion birther in 2016? Is it reasonable to argue from a place where one pretends that they are not aware of the propaganda machine that is FOX News, in which any acknowledgment simply defaults to "FOX is just like everybody else?" See the chart. Obviously it is not. And by the way, do you know where the false notion that millions of illegals voted for Clinton in California came from? It came from Infowars, through a Donald Trump Tweet, and into conservative minds everywhere. And despite all evidence to the contrary, FOX News, sitting pretty close on the chart to Infowars, played along. So, it's not as simple as a personal view. It's about the facts. A personal view, if it is worth anything, absolutely should come from a place of fact, not ideology, and certainly not fact denial.

Then why the hell are you even here? I mean, if you think that anyone that doesn't agree with you is "delusional" I would think that you have better things, more meaningful things to apply your righteous views to than to the "delusional".... Speaks volumes to your character.

For the cheese. And...absolutely not. One may disagree with me if one interprets the facts differently or have facts that I am not aware of. As a reasonable person, the discussion commences. My record is clear.

What one may not do is deny the well documented facts in order to cling to a busted ideology, and then pretend that one actually has a counterargument as if I'm supposed to also forget the facts and play their game. Get to the truth of the issue and then figure out my character. You can start by acknowledging all the facts above, in which you pretended that you hadn't seen me and others post before; or pretended that these facts simply don't exist, despite you knowing full well they they do. Is this reasonable? Rational? What ideology are you trying to protect?
 

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There you have it right there...Democrats these days have to insert their obstruction into everything, and anything, even something that would aid people struck by disaster...Shameful...

No, they just learned their lesson that budgets don't mean a damn thing with Trump unless made very specific. What did you think would happen when Trump declared an emergency then started robbing other areas of the budget to fund the wall?

He's like a teenager given the credit card for "emergencies" then using it for beer and pizza, explaining that he was really hungry and spent his cash on concert tickets, and so it was an "emergency." Even teenagers understand when you abuse privileges granted by others, you lose those privileges. Trump poured gasoline on that bridge and burned it into the river.
 
Nah, trying to proactively, and preemptively legislate against something that hasn't been done is exactly why the founders made each branch of the government equal in power....Pelosi, and gang are trying their hardest to box in the President, and make his Presidency a paper tiger with no power....It's a power grab.

Of course they're trying to box him in. Last time Congress had a MONTHS long debate about border funding, came to an agreement that passed the Democratic House and the GOP Senate, and sent it along to Trump who SIGNED THE BILL with their considered decision about funding levels.

The next thing Trump did was say, F*** you, Congress!!, I don't care what you appropriated, I'm going to steal the money for the wall from projects you did fund, to spend on a project you as a body carefully debated, considered and REJECTED, and you, Congress, can go pound sand for all I care.

And the founders didn't make them "equal" in power, actually, but even if we accept that (false) premise for the sake of discussion, they also carefully divided the duties, and gave CONGRESS to power to appropriate money. They didn't give that power to the President, and yet he seized it, and gave Congress the two handed middle finger salute. What goes around comes around....
 
If we put the Secure Fence Act of 2006 on the floor today, and erased out 'of 2006' and inserted 'of 2019' with Trump's name on it, would it pass?

I have no idea. But wasn't there a recent agreement among the House and Senate, in which Trump crapped on? Democrats are historically weak and stupid; Republicans are historically malicious and stubborn, leading them to do stupid things. That's the only thing consistent enough among my studies that I can safely predict about what either might do.

But if this is what Trump would put his name on in 2019, it would be a political victory for the Democrats to pass it. It would be a very far cry from what Trump has been parading around, thus equating to Trump to being weak in the eyes of even conservatives. It would be the ultimate compromise and Right-wing nut cases like Ann Coulter would have a field day. But this is of Trump's own making. By pandering to the most radical of the conservative base, he has promised them the moon. And like just about everything, domestic and international that the man has done, any destination between the moon is unacceptable and a failure. And by declaring "moon or bust," so to speak, he hardly offers incentives to compromise.

By the way, this attitude is also why he has been a fiasco for foreign policy and a walking contradiction to even his own December 2017 National Security Strategy. The man is so bad that the last two remaining men of integrity in his Administration, Kelly and Mattis, walked.
 
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Of course they're trying to box him in. Last time Congress had a MONTHS long debate about border funding, came to an agreement that passed the Democratic House and the GOP Senate, and sent it along to Trump who SIGNED THE BILL with their considered decision about funding levels.

The next thing Trump did was say, F*** you, Congress!!, I don't care what you appropriated, I'm going to steal the money for the wall from projects you did fund, to spend on a project you as a body carefully debated, considered and REJECTED, and you, Congress, can go pound sand for all I care.

And the founders didn't make them "equal" in power, actually, but even if we accept that (false) premise for the sake of discussion, they also carefully divided the duties, and gave CONGRESS to power to appropriate money. They didn't give that power to the President, and yet he seized it, and gave Congress the two handed middle finger salute. What goes around comes around....

The ultimate hero here is George Washington, who largely defined presidential powers through his action and refusals to exercise his powers. He established the constitutional norms for future executives and for congress. Anyway...

The breaking of Constitutional norms largely began in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich's Republicans refused to work with Clinton, who went wild with Executive Orders as a result. And after Republicans criticized Clinton for going around Congress on matters, Bush simply doubled down on the amount of Executive Orders in order to shove Congress aside. Then, when Paul Ryan and others schemed up the "Party of No" for the GOP against Obama in 2009, Obama increased the amount of Executive Orders even more, especially after 2014, in order to bypass a stubborn Republican-led Congress. Of course, this culminated in the 2016~2017 congressional refusal to consider a seated President's nominee for a Supreme Justice seat...a FIRST in American history.

And now? The GOP and Trump have made it a matter of policy to wreck Constitutional norms on every level and their constituents merely applaud. We have truly come to a place in our history where the idea of "winning" a race is more important than what is actually good for the nation. They are playing a game of power, in which the idiot voters are encouraging.

We've been here before though. It resulted in a Civil War and then the Compromise of 1877, which established and opened the door to Jim Crow in the South. Curious enough, our political compromise was healthy after that up until the Civil Rights Marches when the Parties began to act less like big tents that used to hold liberals and conservatives in both. Liberals pulled to the Democrat side, which supported the Marches, and conservatives pulled to the Republican side, which criticized the whole thing as "leftist." Eventually, over time, the Right's response in 2008 was to deny the "Kenyan-born black African Arab" in the White House. And with neo-Nazis and White Supremacists publicly cheering for Trump in 2016 for all the world to see, they actually think they can convince people that race isn't a factor at the very base of where they stand.
 
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Media Bias Fact Check

MediaBIasFactCheck.com describes itself as “the most comprehensive media bias resource in the Internet.” The site is owned by Dave Van Zandt from North Carolina, who offers no biographical information about himself aside from the following: “Dave has been freelancing for 25+ years for a variety of print and web mediums (sic), with a focus on media bias and the role of media in politics. Dave is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence based reporting” and, “Dave Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence.”

WND was unable to locate a single article with Van Zandt’s byline. Ironically, the “fact checker” fails to establish his own credibility by disclosing his qualifications and training in evaluating news sources.

Asked for information concerning his expertise in the field of journalism and evaluating news sources, Van Zandt told WND: “I am not a journalist and just a person who is interested in how media bias impacts politics. You will find zero claims of expertise on the website.”

Concerning his purported “25+ years” of experience writing for print and web media, he said: “I am not sure why the 25+ years is still on the website. That was removed a year ago when I first started the website. All of the writing I did was small print news zines from the ’90s. I felt that what I wrote in the ’90s is not related to what I am doing today so I removed it. Again, I am not a journalist. I simply have a background in communications and more importantly science where I learned to value evidence over all else. Through this I also became interested in research of all kinds, especially media bias, which is difficult to measure and is subjective to a degree.”

WND asked: Were your evaluations reviewed by any experts in the industry?


“I can’t say they have,” Van Zandt replied. “Though the right-of-center Atlantic Council is using our data for a project they are working on.”







Van Zandt says he uses “three volunteers” to “research and assist in fact checking.” However, he adds that he doesn’t pay them for their services.

Van Zandt lists WND on his “Right Bias” page, alongside news organizations such as Fox News, the Drudge Report, the Washington Free Beacon, the Daily Wire, the Blaze, Breitbart, Red State, Project Veritas, PJ Media, National Review, Daily Caller and others.

“These media sources are highly biased toward conservative causes,” Van Zandt writes. “They utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”

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Van Zandt says he uses a “strict methodology” in determining which news sources are credible, but his website offers vague and typo-ridden explanations of his criteria, such as the following:
image: https://www.wnd.com/files/2017/02/VanZandt-categories.jpg

VanZandt-categories

Asked if his own political leanings influence his evaluations, Van Zandt said: “Sure it is possible. However, our methodology is designed to eliminate most of that. We also have a team of 4 researchers with different political leanings so that we can further reduce researcher bias.”

Bill Palmer of the website Daily News Bin accused Van Zandt of retaliating when the Daily News Bin contacted him about his rating. Palmer wrote:

t turns out Van Zandt has a vindictive streak. After one hapless social media user tried to use his phony ‘Media Bias Fact Check’ site to dispute a thoroughly sourced article from this site, Daily News Bin, we made the mistake of contacting Van Zandt and asking him to take down his ridiculous ‘rating’ – which consisted of nothing more than hearsay such as ‘has been accused of being satire.’ Really? When? By whom? None of those facts seem to matter to the guy running this ‘Media Bias Fact Check’ scam.

Continued
 
“But instead of acknowledging that he’d been caught in the act, Van Zandt retaliated against Daily News Bin by changing his rating to something more sinister. He also added a link to a similar phony security company called World of Trust, which generates its ratings by allowing random anonymous individuals to post whatever bizarre conspiracy theories they want, and then letting these loons vote on whether that news site is ‘real’ or not. These scam sites are now trying to use each other for cover, in order to back up the false and unsubstantiated ‘ratings’ they semi-randomly assign respected news outlets. …


“‘Media Bias Fact Check’ is truly just one guy making misleading claims about news outlets while failing to back them up with anything, while maliciously changing the ratings to punish any news outlets that try to expose the invalidity of what he’s doing.”


But Van Zandt accused Palmer of threatening him, and he said MediaBiasFactCheck welcomes criticism. If evidence is provided, he said, the site will correct its errors.


“Bottom line is, we are not trying to be something we are not,” he said. “We have disclaimers on every page of the website indicating that our method is not scientifically proven and that there is [sic] subjective judgments being used as it is unavoidable with determining bias.”


Read more at Phony baloney: The 9 fakest fake-news checkers - WND

In short MBFC is garbage....Just another leftist conformation bias site for people like yourself to confirm their own cynical view....
 
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