My god. This deliciously tasty excerpt:
In various campaign biographies, a résumé and interviews, Mr. Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in New York City, where he was a volleyball star on a championship team. He boasted of working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and amassing personal wealth. He claimed to be descended from Holocaust refugees; that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks; and that he lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
None of those claims were true.
The real question is where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
Too busy playing horse race? Frantically trying to find something newsworthy about Hunter Biden’s laptop? Credulously glorifying some billionaire’s childish misconceptions?
Guess we’ll never know.
Well, he’s a representative for New York, in a district for
New York City itself.Long Island and “technically” a tiny bit of NYC. (I have been informed that his district is mostly Long Island)Let’s break this down into two parts, okay?
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Local journalism is dead, dead, dead, dead dead. Especially in big places like New York City, where everyone assumes that the New York Times will be covering things. They didn’t dig deep into Mayor Adams either, and that guy is under investigation now as well. They didn’t question his former police credentials after decades of police misconduct. Beyond that the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper. I’m sure there are plenty of small independent news sources in New York City, but I’m also sure they’re mostly drowned out and ignored compared to how many people read something like the NYT.
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Corruption in New York City is literally, completely nothing new. Journalists have been failing to uncover unscrupulous activity for decades in this city. As I referenced mayor Adams above, this city filled with the rich, egotistical, and greedy, is a city built on the kind of lies George Santos peddles. How do I know? Because that city allowed Donald Trump to be a successful real estate developer using similar tactics. People have known he’s corrupt since forever, but plenty of his corruption was just ignored until decades later. Same with Rudy Guiliani and so on.
Now I’m not saying we should just give up. Local journalism is important to fight for, and NYC being a corrupt hell-hole isn’t a permanent foregone conclusion. However, my point is that NYT employs far fewer reporters than you think to cover an entire country, and the dearth of real local news sources all over the country is contributing to these kind of people succeeding, because the local press is dead in the water and can’t afford to send someone researching local corruption.
Pay for your local news, is what I am saying, I guess, and things might marginally improve.
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I mean, it was always a lifestyle brand. Even back in the day you’d open the “Lifestyle” section of the paper, and it would be about how to afford that third house in the Hamptons. It’s always been clear who their market is aimed at.
Yeah, actual journalism is dead, especially since investigating stuff like this might get you raided by SWAT
Worth pointing out part of the reason local journalism died is because it’s not financially viable.
Because interest in local politics died.
If people have a shit, journalist could make a living.
In NYC construction, it’s well known that Trump businesses would get bids contracted, then call a meeting before kickoff and demand that the primes and subs lower there price or they won’t honor the contract. Some contractors would already have materials purchased and running the clock on the Net30s with their vendors. Trump Co. would basically tell them to go pound salt and try to sue if you want.
the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper
These days, the NYT likes to think of itself as a tech company that also does some journalism. They’ve bought games like Wordle, they’re a podcasting company, they publish books…
Games and alternative media formats for journalists have always been a part of journalism. I’m not sure how embracing modern technology makes them any less of a news organization. Would you prefer only the crossword and only in print?
A newspaper having a word game, a radio presence, and publishing books is not really a gotcha.
He was a representative of long island not NYC, specifically the district my dad resides in so I get to poke fun at him for electing this absolute joke of an asshat lol
Checking the map it looks like part of it might be in queens so “technically” some part of it is NYC, but it’s mostly rich long island assholes. (I wish my dad was rich, he’s just lucky to have had a house in that area for a long time) lol
You can tell I’m not from the area, because divisions like that are lost on me. I just know local news is hollowed out nationwide, and I somehow suspect it’s a similar situation for New York state as a whole. Thanks for the more detailed breakdown of his district for me.
Absolutely, local news would more than likely be “responsible” for covering him and they tend to favor the right, but not excessively thankfully.
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Ah yes, clearly we should simply accept that corruption is endemic, unavoidable really, and expect our press to ignore it.
Tale as old as time, I’m sure it’ll work out fine.
They have more important things to focus on anyway! Like Hunter Biden’s laptop.
And of course, Journalism’s collapsing payment model is entirely the public’s fault. Just give them more money you lazy bums!
Now I’m not saying we should just give up. Local journalism is important to fight for, and NYC being a corrupt hell-hole isn’t a permanent foregone conclusion.
Nice complete misrepresentation of what I said, chucklefuck.
EDIT: Also came back because like, you’re going to bitch about journalists not doing their job and then turn around and say its not our job to fund them. Pick a fucking lane. Do you care about journalism or not?
Oh I’m sorry, after re-reading it looks like you actually said we should fight for better journalism by skipping breakfast, or selling our plasma, and giving the money we save to the conglomerates providing our local news. Totally makes sense.
If you think journalists aren’t living the same way, you’re out of your mind. They need to be able to take care of themselves, too, to do their jobs.
But cool, I guess the answer is fuck all journalism then, because you can’t be fucked to care about how it’s funded. You’re expecting it to just be handed to you by people who do it for the love of it, and then wonder why that doesn’t happen, when you yourself understand exactly why it can’t and you just explained it.
What a fucking shitty crank. You don’t get what you want, so you want to tear down the whole thing, which is conveniently what you’ve accused me of. Do you do a lot of projection like this?
I don’t exactly see you considering solutions, just a lot of bitching.
Because you’re obviously struggling, what I’m saying that objective & effective journalism is vital to informed decision-making in a democracy, and we’re not getting it because journalism in the US is run as a business¸ which imo will always end with media focusing exclusively on whatever makes them the most money, irrespective of the truth. If we want real journalism we need to view it, and fund it, as a public service. The problem is systemic, and our news media will continue to fail us until the system is rectified.
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I remember seeing articles about this stuff during his election. Republicans elected him anyway. That’s where we are now
Why are you blaming journalists and not the GOP for not vetting their own fucking candidate.
¿Porque no los dos?
Have you seen most of the recent GOP candidates?
How do we know he isn’t above their threshold for corruption and dishonesty?
Their bar seems pretty low.
Pretty sure the republicans saw that fake resume and thought “fucking hell, we got president material here!”
The North Shore Leader, a small paper on Long Island, broke the scandal before the November election. By the time other outlets picked it up, Santos had been elected. Grant Lally joined Geoff Bennett to discuss.
Local media does need support.
where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
There aren’t enough journalists to go around. There are hundreds of congresspeople and there definitely aren’t hundreds of journalists covering random unimportant congresspeople.
People have voted with their dollars, saying they don’t care enough about vetting congresspeople before they’re elected to actually pay the salaries of journalists to do that.
Wow, so It’s almost as if expecting unregulated capitalism to solve this problem is not working? How could that be?
Oh well, I guess we just need to ignore the problem until it gets better.
Look the incredibly rich people who own the media wish that us peasants would care enough about politics to force them to cover these things properly but unfortunately all their journalists are busy writing opinion pieces about how we need to get back in the office, how we shouldn’t even try to make ethical purchasing decisions, and how great whatever makes them the most money this week is.
Journalism as it used to exist has been absolutely gutted. There’s no time for investigation, we need endless content pumped out at faster and faster rates. Who cares what’s accurate as long as people click the link and give up that sweet, sweet ad revenue?
There’s a reason why there are so many memes about this guy:
How dare you sully the name of Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein!
Well, go big or go home. I’m sure he met Jesus Christ personally and he knows where Excalibur is hidden.
But can he find Jimmy Hoffa’s body?
“Of course I know where the body is. He’s me!”
Jesus, after all the shit that has been uncovered about this fucker, 114 voted “No” to throw him out?
Investigate those 114 motherfuckers.
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Nah. They’re on record saying it sets a bad precedent to expel a member before they are convicted. I can only imagine the awful shit they’re hiding and are worried they could get expelled for.
Power protects power
George Santos is from tomato red Long Island. The seat is gonna stay red. Long Island was literally founded on racism (look up the history of Robert Moses)
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Nah bro, everyone on Long Island is a racist republican.
Say “in Long Island” just to piss em off.
It’s not rocket science. The only publicly said reason it’s never happened before is they want to respect the decision of their constituents. Unofficially, nobody wanted to see themselves on that chopping block.
From a political scientist game theory point of view it’s possible that a majority faction of party A throws a minority faction of Party A on the chopping block and Party B obliges them because they think they can pick up those voters.
So yeah, a lot of resistance to actually unseating someone. For good and bad reasons.
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I can’t believe that they treated the first Congolese-American female PHD/Astronaut this way. Did she cure polio for nothing? You can’t do enough for some people.
I thought he stormed Delaware Beach at Normandy while solving P=NP.
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As with most things American the more likely explanation is we played ourselves
At first, settlers had stuck to the edges of America, leaving the middle untouched, like a frozen pie in a microwave.
But Americans back then weren’t the humble, unassuming people they still aren’t today.
They believed in something called Manifest Destiny, the belief that all the land belonged to them and that God wanted them to go west and claim it back from the Native Americans he’d put there first by mistake.
-Philomena Cunk from Cunk on Earth.
What’s the relevance to your quote?
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Nah he’s a piece of shit from my neck of the woods, he more than likely saw what Trump was able to get away with and said “I live in prime Trump moron land, I can pull this off.” So he lied about literally everything and almost got away with it lol I know 100 other people who would try the same thing.
Most of us long islanders are absolute garbage selfish greedy assholes lol
This dude was a straight russian psy-op right?
Well, he claims to be gay, but the rest is spot-on
A Russian agent would be more subtle.
Which shade of Cheeto orange do you think he’d use? And how big are his hands and toupée?
I refuse to believe the KGB has that much of a sense of humor.
Hey everyone, so here’s the deal with Santos aka Kitara Ravache: he’s totally heading back to Brazil, probably to chill on a reality show. But the real game plan? He’s gonna make bank selling some sketchy stuff and, get this, he’s got a pretty good chance of landing a gig as a deputy back there
Wow it finally happened. Now I wonder if they’ll take away his Grammy, 2 Oscar’s, MTV Movie Award, Nickelodeon Teen Choice Award, and induction into the Grand Ole Opry.
Wasn’t he also a winner of the Beijing Film Festival’s coveted Crying Monkey Award?
He never said any of those things. He just didn’t correct you when you said them.
Now convict him of his crimes so he doesn’t have any of the other perks of Congress.
Seven counts of Wire Fraud. He’s donezo.
According to factcheck.org
Members of Congress are eligible for a pension at age 62 if they have completed at least five years of service.
He didn’t last a year…
You can’t just kick a Galactic Emperor out of Congress, WTF?
He’s not our Lord zaphod beeble brox, he’s one hoopy frood
So there’s finally a line: “you must be this shit to get fired”. I expect a lot of people toeing up to it.
Well yes and no.
The line was literally defrauding another republican and his mother.
He could have kept on being as shit as he wants to the out-group, just never turn on the in-group, that has always been the line.
Which two Democrats voted against expulsion and which two voted Present?
According to NYT, Robert Scott of VA and Nikema Williams of GA voted No.
Al Green of TX and Jonathan Jackson of IL votes Present
Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), AOC (NY) and Dean Phillips (MN) have no vote recorded
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
Overall vote tally:
98% (206) of Democrats voted yes (to expell)
1% (2) voted No
1% (2) voted present
49% (105) of Republicans voted to expel
51% (112) of Republicans voted No
I’m betting AOC is because they’re both from NY and they’re very close geographically. Definitely seems like a conflict of interest
She voted to expel him last time. I’m assuming she just wasn’t there today.
Probably. They can’t all be there for every session
That’s a weak excuse.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
[No]
Nikema Williams
Robert C. Scott
[Present]
Jonathan Jackson
Al Green
Their no votes were because they wanted due process and judicial conviction before kicking him out.
“Unfortunately, George Santos won a free and fair election and elections have consequences. He also has not yet been convicted of a crime and the ethics investigation is ongoing. It would be dangerous to set the precedent of expelling a Member of Congress who has not been convicted of a crime. When and if Santos is convicted of these serious offenses an expulsion resolution would be more appropriate. Let’s be clear – we have current members who have been accused of even more egregious crimes while the Republican majority continues to look the other way.”
“The Ethics Committee is charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the past, I have been appointed to serve on multiple investigative subcommittees, and I can personally attest to the nonpartisan, rigorous and deliberative process conducted by the committee. In fact, the committee is expected to soon release findings and recommendations on the Santos matter. These resolutions were rushed to the floor outside of that deliberative process. In 2002, I voted to expel Rep. James Traficant but that was after he was found guilty in a court of law. Absent any report or recommendation from the committee, or a criminal conviction, these resolutions are premature. For the sake of the institution, we must stop the cheapening of the censure and expulsion processes for political expediency and get back to the process that we already have in place to appropriately deal with these matters.”
Congressional expulsion is not a “innocent ‘til proven guilty” situation and has never intended to be. Expulsion and conviction are unrelated, and these people struggle with basic elementary school level civic concepts for their reasonings.
“We want to drag things out when people are blatantly lying because there is a sliver of a chance that it might set a precedent that clearly does not apply to the things we are worried about, like false accusations.”
If any of those processes took less time than the two year term of a Representative I might agree with them.
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The two year term is key here. Let’s say that instead of just being a conman and liar, he was accused of being put into office by Chinese or Russian spies. Should he be allowed to spend 2 years voting on things, attending confidential meetings, serving on committees, etc. while there’s an investigation about whether or not he’s an agent of a foreign government?
If he’s found innocent of everything, all that happens is that he lost his job. He could run again, and being kicked out over lies and rumours would be a good grievance to campaign on. But, the potential damage he could do during the time it takes to investigate, try and convict him is enough to say that he should be removed now.
Which is bullshit, because his open, verified non-criminal lies should have been enough to have him expelled from Congress.
I guess we know which side of the truth these particular so called politicians are on.
guess we know which side of the truth these particular so called politicians are on.
Lying is the default position for politicians. Save the “so called” label for the rare honest one
Goodbye to Rep. Evil Pee Wee Herman. He was often hilarious, but he had to go. 
You shouldn’t sully Pee Wee Herman’s good name with this man, lol.
I did say Evil Pee Wee Herman 
Probably can’t even grow a proper evil goatee.
Too much Botox
And he went home and masturbated and the world went on like nothing happened.
Seriously wtf, is this the actual end?
He’s still under indictment
I’m shocked the former King of Spain doesn’t have diplomatic immunity.
The emperor-king of Ceylon might though
so Santos for President 2028?
I’m sure he came, he’s dirty like that.
He needs jail time for his theft and fraud.
That’s still in the works. Congress doesn’t have control over that.
Poor guy, he’s never going to have good work references.
So just like any other government job, it was porn at work that does a person in.
Or did they… apparently the NY Times source was a Mr. George Santos…
You might remember him because he was the first Asian-American to join the Harlem Globetrotters.
That’s the guy who was also a WW1 veteran right?
That’s right, and then his grandparents were holocaust survivors in WWII. The delorean he invented and built almost broke down a couple times, but he made it!
