h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Trish Regan from Fox Business had this to say about Venezuela and Denmark the other day:

http://www.facebook.com/FoxBusiness/videos/2071363799847623/UzpfSTE0MzgzNDQ5NDk6MTAyMTc4NTA0ODc2ODA3MDY/

Needless to say a lot of us Danes were left speechless for a while

But today one of us had this to say:

Denmark's right wing Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Kristian Jensen on Fox Host Trish Regan: "Sorry for my direct language, but she simply should not piss on Denmark!"

"It's an unheard of politicization of news in the United States when Fox Business Network equates Denmark with Venezuela.
It's totally wildly exaggerated and unbelievable. It's simply an expression of how politicizing American news has become. Totally detached from facts, one uses the media for such erroneous allegations," says Kristian Jensen.

In her tv program, Trish Reagan states that all Danes actually worked for the state when the top tax was 56 percent in 2015. In 2013 there were only three municipalities in which more than half of the population were working, according to this host.
According to Denmark's official statistics, employment rates in 2013 were just under 67 per cent for Danes between 16 and 64 years. It has since risen to 70.1 for employees.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 58.7 percent of Americans over the age of 16 had jobs in mid-2013. The proportion has since risen to 60.5 percent.

Denmark was in fact ranked 11 steps above the United States in the OECD inventory ...

"Yes, we have a high tax burden. People pay a lot of taxes - because we get a lot back from the public funds."

"The United States has let go of facts in its political journalism. It's very, very dangerous. If we do not have journalism rooted in facts, we will let go of what built our democracy, "says Kristian Jensen.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts."

Did I mention that Jensen is second-in-command of our right wing coalition government?

"The truth has a liberal bias!" - Stephen Colbert

When people start getting hypnotized by their own doctrine, it usually marks the beginning of the end for them.

Either they collapse on account of their own inertia or someone comes along with a better plan, often both.

Fox News seems to have an intense paranoia about Socialism. It seems that Fox News spews out propaganda lies. There are no words the anger and frustration I feel about Fox News.

Don't they know that Denmark is rated as one of the best countries for a high quality life.

I wonder if they is based on envy.

I meant to have said, I wonder if this attack is that is based on envy.

Yes, this mirrors a rant I went on to Elektra yesterday evening....

I am worried about the collective mind of this entire country. They wear down the reason, these 'alternative facts'....soon, nobody will know up from down, they will be like the citizens of ancient Gotham.
(That is not a Batman reference.) Heaven help us all.

The rant was due to John Oliver's excellent programme on 'Astroturfing' - creating false grassroots movements. (Astroturf, grassroots, get it?) In other words, an organisation pretends to be, say, for some public issue, while in reality being a paid promotion for an industry that wants to avoid regulation....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmh4RdIwswE

Here's why this happens: the US has always had probably more dishonest used car salesmen than anybody else in the world. They are drawn to this country by various perfectly explicable push-pull demographic factors. Unfortunately, in this climate, they thrive, like other invasive species.

Periodically, they threaten the political scene by tempting people with this 'made-up reality' stuff. It never ends well, and this time, they all may have gone too far.

I'm sorry Denmark ended up in the middle of it. That statement was no stupider than anything else they've said in the last couple of weeks, but intelligent people who are minding their own business shouldn't have to hear this nonsense.

What Fox news is saying is bad enough, but what the trump administration is doing leaves me breathless in astonishment. In today's Boston Globe, there are reports that the immigration administration has been trapping immigrants when the immigrants come to apply for citizenship. This is tyranny, and we seem to have no way to make the Trump people stop it.

The Trump administration has effectively neutralized two of the four branches that act as checks and balances. The republican party has chosen party over country and have advocated their responsibilities. Trumps war on the Press and Fox News' slavering coverage has made them the de facto State Media and delegitimized all critical coverage by other media sources for his base. When he gets another Supreme Court appointment through he will have the remaining branch as well.

You have put your finger on the main danger, BG. I'm afraid a lot of people don't see it, because they slept through 'Problems of Democracy' class....

Those who do not pass POD become one of the problems of democracy....

I want to see the Moon opened for economic development, which will mark the beginning of a trend of about five hundred years of growth economics.

There seems to be a concensus that we need to wait till the Chinese are ready.

Then the race will be on.

This just in: A former minister from the social democratic party follows suit:

http://www.facebook.com/danjorgensen/videos/vb.46151445835/1458262054275440/?type=2&theater

you probably need a facebook account to see this

The former US ambassador to Denmark and our present ambassador to the US have voiced there concerns also.

We should not let us get carried away, though. I understand that Trish Regan's show is seen by less than 100,000 viewers (not sure about this figure, though).

And in the end this turmoil will most likely hurt the US more than it will Denmark. Hopefully it will end with people coming to their senses and stop watching Fox.

Purblind ideologues frighten me.

I don't care what kind.

When people lose track of the principle that its results that count, not their ideological excuses, their judgement is not to be trusted.

In addition to what Dan Jørgensen said (post 11) what Trish Regan, the rest of Fox and in fact the rest of US must understand is this: Denmark is a small country with no raw materials except for the soil we grow our crops in.

The only asset to speak of are our children. And their brains. Which is why we invent a lot of tax in educating them as best as possible - regardless of how much money their parents make.

According to all kinds of surveys, statistics and what have you it has paid off very well. Very well indeed!

Rant over. As you were



PS: I should add that most of this goes for the other Nordic countries as well. In particular Iceland, I should think. Norway, Sweden and Finland have iron ore and wood and Norway even has a lot of oil.

...Greenland administered as a trust territory by Denmark...

re 15:

Yes and no.

Greenland's independency has grown a lot since 1979 and is still growing. But we are still shipping many hundred millions up there every year.

A lot of this comes back through Danish companies working up there, but I don't know enough about this.

Definitely belongs in the Nordic group, though.

Agreed

Who were the citizens of ancient Gotham and how do they fit in here, Dmitri

Sadly, all these refutations of Trish Wotsit's statements will lead nowhere. Fox News just doesn't care if their people lie... ever.


For decades now, Fox News has been beating the drum against socialism in general and against socialized medicine in particular. According to Fox News, Canadians hate their healthcare system and Canadians have to wait ages to see doctors and get treatment. They NEVER mention that Canadians only wait for elective and non-urgent procedures. They also never noticed that Canadians put the creator of their healthcare program on their CURRENCY!

Around 2009-2010, when congress last took up an overhaul of our horrid healthcare system, I saw a young Canadian woman on Fox expounding on how she couldn't get surgery to remove her "brain" tumor in Canada and had to cross the border to get it in the States. I saw her repeatedly. She was their poster child for long wait times. On one of her appearances though, she actually mentioned what kind of tumor she needed surgery for. It was a skull base chordoma. I had a skull base chordoma so I knew something about this. Chordomas are slow growing tumors. Obviously her doctors in Canadia had decided there was little risk from delaying her surgery (or was it radiotherapy... anyway). I postponed my proton radiation treatment for a couple of years (with my doctor's approval) when I learned that a Proton Center would be opening locally rather than travel to California for two months, costing me lost wages and high rents.
I later learned that this young woman's choice to get immediate care in the US cost her and her family hundreds of thousands of dollars putting her family in debt.

They never mentioned that on Fox News.

I've seen several videos, similar to the Danish responses above, refuting conservative denouncements of Canadian healthcare, but that hasn't stopped them from continuing to make similar statements for the last decade.