Domain: mediamatters.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mediamatters.org.
Comments · 632
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Re:Contractors
Not 600 million. Please stop spreading that lie. 70 million to day, CGI contract was 93 million.
The FCC should force every pundit/News site you made that claim to publicly recant it, or be removed from broadcasting.
"Independently, the Sunlight Foundation estimated it cost $70 million to build the much-maligned website, not $634 million."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/the-myth-of-the-634-million-obamacare-website/196585 -
Re:Wow.
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Despite per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupling over the last 50 years (inflation-adjusted), mere 30% of 8th-graders nation-wide are deemed "proficient" in reading. Kentucky did the web-site right, even though their average is slightly above national.
We are now all set for our healthcare to become the same sort of dizzying success, that the public schools already are.
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Re:You think that government is apolitical?
I'll let your fanatical "NewsCorp topples America" hypothesis stand on its own merits.
It's fantastical, not fanatical. It would be fanatical if I were proposing that NewCorp should or would do it. You didn't ask that though, you asked if they could do it, and with enough money it's certainly possible. And any company were to try it, I wouldn't bet on them being able to control the country after they toppled the government. A much more likely scenario is NewsCorp providing favourable media coverage to try and influence elections so that the government works for them. But, of course, that would never happen.
Thank you for proving my point that Government trumps corporations, in terms of power.
It helps if you actually show how an argument supports your position rather than just claiming victory empty-handed. You might want to read up on NewsCorp's assets, for starters. I don't think you give corporations enough credit for the soft power that they wield.
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Re:what a joke
Proven a lie? Obama himself apologized and the targeting guidelines literally had the very words that were being used by conservatives. You would be up in arms if this happened under Bush with an identical scenario focused on things like "progressive".
Fox Still Ignoring That IRS Targeted Progressives
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/21/fox-still-ignoring-that-irs-targeted-progressiv/195511The problem with a lot of the coverage on the IRS non-scandal was that the Inspector General's report did not investigate all the facts, the Republican chairman of the oversight committee was only selectively releasing information from the incomplete IG report, and then he got very pissy after the ranking Democrat on the committee aired out all the laundry.
Guess what the facts showed?
Spoiler: that the IRS was targeting progressive groups as well. -
Re:The amount of Socialism...
The only thing socialism threatens you with now is better healthcare, and welfare (at a price, admittedly).
"Better"? As in Cuba? Where is this idea, that government can do something (be it manufacturing of goods, provision of services, or even charitable help to the unlucky) better than competing private entities coming from, when there is no evidence of such success anywhere in history?
Where are the welfare success stories? All I see are crime-infested neighborhoods populated by people born there to parents born there — a perpetuated misery.
Education, perhaps? Per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupled since 1962 (inflation-adjusted) — has anyone noticed improvement in quality? No — mere 30% of today's 8th-graders nation-wide are proficient in reading! And that nation-wide average is not helped, but dragged-down by those mighty pillars of Socialism like Chicago (21%) or Detroit (7%).
Maybe, the good old Postal Service? The program, that is, despite government-enforced monopoly on cheap ("First Class") letters, is usually in the red and in need of bailout every few years?
What, just what, makes you think, government-provided healthcare (and that is, where we are going as Obamacare-2.0 will be urgently needed, when the current version falls on its face in the mud) will fair better?
Socialism =/= Big government.
Right, Socialism does not equal Big Government. It is worse — big government not merely charging big taxes, but doing things with them, that no government should be doing at all.
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BBCFOX
BBC and Fox often present the same message different ways.
I see this too, in even historic coverage back to the "War in the Crimea" the news was used to stoke sentiment exactly as you describe.
Charge of the Light Brigade indeed
Fox News talking heads are now openly praising Putin:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/10/putin-is-one-who-really-deserves-that-nobel-peace-prize/
full analysis: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/09/06/a-right-wing-media-star-is-born-vladimir-putin/195756
The U.S. is recovering from the Bush years, it has to in a way...the question is how much progress can democracy make against colonial-era revenue chains?
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Re:eh...
Seeing how the tea party was manufactured by fox (not any proof, but see this link), I'm kind of curious how long the party can survive. Especially since republicans have been distancing themselves from them lately.
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Re:Let us opt out.
One analysis shows that family of 4 will have an increas of $7500 a year, Obama promised a cut of $2500 a year
I've never seen such a study but I would be interested in viewing it if it does indeed exist.
You think the mandate sucks but think universal is good? What is the difference? Let me answer. Mandate = corporations run it, universal = government runs it. You are required to buy it either way, one through premiums with a choice, the other through taxes with no choice.
Incorrect. A mandate has nothing to do with who actually implements health care. All it means is that the action is on you whereas universal means action is not required. Now we can quibble whether a tax is considered "buying something" but the fact remains that health care would far cheaper since there would be no shareholders or profit margins in the equation.
As for the GOP input, give me a SPECIFIC example of what they put in it.
This took me all but two seconds to find. Like I said, I watched all the proceedings:
"Republican Sen. John Ensign scored a victory in his pursuit of healthy lifestyle rewards with passage of his amendment to health care reform legislation that would offer deep discounts to those who quit smoking, lose weight or otherwise meet healthy milestones." -- source: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/01/john-ensign-scores-win-health-care-amendment/
There is ONE section and Obama has decided he will ignore that, and that was the part where Congress was required to be on exchanges and pay for it themselves
From my understanding, this is a popular conservative talking point. I haven't felt the need to research it.
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Re:Communism!
When the "greenhouse gas" you are trying to reduce the emissions of is CO2 than no there is no distance at all between "finding ways to reduce greenhose gas emissions" and "all economic activity is controlled by the government" because ALL economic activity generates CO2 (all human activity generates CO2).
Yeah, as if the cycling of carbon dioxide from plants to animals/humans and back is equivalent to digging up long-buried carbon dioxide and putting it into the atmosphere. Secondly, reducing carbon emissions is still a long way from controlling all activity. If we put a $2 / gallon tax on gasoline, how does this result in "controlling everything you do"? It doesn't. It means you pay a little money to drive anywhere and it incentivizes alternative fuel sources (which I would think that conservatives would appreciate since the world oil-based economy makes Middle Eastern Muslims rich). You're just trying to find a reason to avoid doing anything about our carbon emissions.
Speaking of the Ozone layer, looks like Rush Limbaugh was denying a human role in Ozone depletion, too. Are all conservatives this scientifically illiterate?
http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/08/16/limbaugh-falsely-denied-human-causes-of-ozone-d/133658
It seems to me that conservatives are just ideologically inclined to drag their feet on *anything* environmentally related. The science doesn't seem to matter. At this point, conservatives have devolved into the party of "not-shitting-on-the-environment is a liberal idea, and we have to oppose everything environment-related because we love any excuse to attack anyone on the left". It's retarded and childish and dangerous. -
Re: Trayvon Martin can Life Forever
Except, your "truth" is actually a twisted lie. The stand your ground law was absolutely a factor in this case. The police didn't initially arrest Zipperman based on this law and the jury was instructed to consider the law in their decision. The truth
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Re:And just maybe...
But that would involve admitting some facts, instead of citing natural temperature changes only to cover things contrary to your view, and dismiss when they actively contradict your views. It's also better instead to assume that anyone who believes different has been taken by a scam artist.
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Re:Everything you need to know about this
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Re:Middle Class
They can't possibly be poor, they have a whole refrigerator!
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Re:Geotag those military bases!
Well, the number of gun homicides in Chicago ARE going down. And the murder rate in Chicago per capita is below that of Memphis and many other cities which seem to have less restrictive gun control.
I'm not suggesting gun control is the cause of that, just pointing out that it's a purely manufactured crisis. Chicago isn't among the top 50 most dangerous cities in the world. New Orleans has four times the murders Chicago does. San Pedro Sula has TEN times as many murders. Chicago isn't as safe as, say, rural Japan, but it's not "dangerous" compared to most other places in the US. More people die of texting while driving than die by guns in Chicago.
Simple things like increasing or decreasing the number of guns isn't going to really affect crime rates unless you go to extremes. Successfully eliminate the vast majority of guns or arm everyone and then you'll see changes in crime, either for the better or worse I don't claim to know. Debating concealed carry laws or waiting periods is a waste of time. As you said, criminals don't follow laws. And both sides of gang wars are armed, yet it's not proving a deterrence to violence. Suggesting that more guns = lower crime assumes that criminals will act rationally. Kids in gangs certainly don't act rationally. -
Re:Union negotiators screwed up
It would be nice if internet feudalists didn't offer totally blind support for every robber baron.
I mean, are you denying that the union accepted several wage consessions before striking? Are you denying that management then gave themselves raises? Are these not facts?
The article's depiction of the company's fall omits crucial context and leaves readers with the impression that the act of discarding union workers is what allowed the "trimmed-down" company to re-emerge. The AP did not tell readers that, just three years prior to Mr. Rayburn's negotiations with labor, union workers made "substantial concessions" to aid the company's financial health, or that Hostess stopped contributing to workers' pensions and cut wages and benefits "by 27 to 32 percent."
Nor did the AP story mention the dramatic pay raises Hostess provided its executives during its financial struggles. For example, Brian Driscoll -- Hostess CEO in March 2011 -- received a salary increase from $750,000 to $2.25 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tell me, in what way is my support blind? It appears to be supported by facts.
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Re:This is a distortion of what happened
You offer one piece of *evidence* an uncited statistic: *double digiits*. Being a good slashdot denizen, of course I tried to confirm or refute this this claim. There is zero evidence that *double digit percentages of employees* engaged in any misconduct or were even interviewed. I wonder where you got that statistic. The full transcripts, number of tapes , minutes of each tape, location of each tape is publicly available because the tapes were turned over to the police as a condition for O'Keefe's immunity from criminal prosecution. What they revealed was that O'Keefe systematically doctored and edited the tapes to produce guilt where there was clearly none. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_controversy Points arising- They did not interview *double digit percentages* of ACORN's lower level employees or employees of any type. O'Keefe was NOT in "pimp garb " as it appears in the video when he was addressing ACORN employees, he was actually in a suit and tie. O'Keefe was sued in court by one of his victims and lost to the tune of $100,000. From the totality of the scam that O'Keefe and Giles ran , I conclude the following. O'Keefe and Giles are classic, textbook sociopaths. http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html Not only did they run the ACRON scam and vicitimize the individual ACORN workers, but they also victimized civil society itself by destroying a wel-respected, law-abiding participant in that society. O'Keefe has admitted the reason he went after ACRON was because they were engaged in voter registration. O'Keefe was arrested at the Capitol for breaking into the telephone exchange there in an apparent attempt to tap the phone lines. Everyone form Forbes to MediaMatters has concluded the same thing about James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles- they're lowlife scammers - http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/03/08/james-okeefe-pays-100000-to-acorn-employee-he-smeared-conservative-media-yawns/ http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/02/17/james-okeefe-and-the-myth-of-the-acorn-pimp/160485 http://wonkette.com/505026/wonket-sexclusive-totally-blameless-crime-stopper-james-okeefe-to-pay-100000-to-acorn-criminal
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Re:Equal rights
Also remember that a policy like this creates a perverse incentive to favor employing a man instead of a woman-- he's less of a financial liability.
But I thought women make, what is it now, 72 cents for every dollar a man makes? Why would anyone hire a man to do a job if he can get an equally capable/qualified worker for 72 cents on the dollar?
Oh yeah, because it isn't true... Never mind.
ed note: Media Matters insists it actually exists - but oddly they left out the Department of Labor report in their "analysis - shocking!
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Re:Misleadingly framed
You seriously have to be joking. If you want to read http://mediamatters.org/ then go there, if you want to read http://foxnewslies.net/, if you want to read http://www.politifact.com/ then go there, if you want to read http://crooksandliars.com/ then go there. Don't waffle on about Fox not-News and demand people provide examples of Fox not-News blatant propaganda on slashdot, just bloody google it yourself there are thousands of examples, a regular daily act of corporate propaganda.
The reality here Fox not-News dresses up opinion as news whilst the other news channels are clear about what is opinion and what is news.
Here is a couple of links, just so can can go a bit rabid, http://rt.com/ and http://www.aljazeera.com/, go for it
;D. -
Re:Dixie Chicks
This kind of thing happens whenever you have an opinionated celebrity with controversial views that are at odds with a lot of their fan base.
Erm... no. No it doesn't. It "happens" when celebs fail to be politically correct. When a celeb with a cohort of degenerates says something politically correct it is celebrated and rewarded. No media drama. No discussion about precisely how far we need to bury the reprobate.
The phenomena is not symmetric. There are social check valves through which we stratify each other. Those valves are arranged by wealthy, urban multi-culties and their many well trained aspirants.
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Re:Anyone who doesn't like electric cars
Wow! Looks like some Koch Brother's fans have mod points on Slashdot, my comment (see below) got modded -1, Troll.
Interesting:
Assault rifles are good, they supported by the Second Amendment as a bulwark against government tyranny.
Church is fine, I mean if you believe in that sort of thing. I think it's a little silly, given that clown in the Vatican, but whatever floats yer boat.
Destroying the planet? Oh, I doubt he believes deliberately destroying Tesla will have much impact either way.
However, Tea Party rallies?
Ok, now you are getting somewhere. No, he probably doesn't attend the rallies, but the Tea Party is just an astro-turf organization funded by Big Oil and specifically the Koch brothers. The Koch Brothers are probably bribing either Broder or the NYT as an organization as well.
With the kind of economic resources the Brothers grim can bring to bear, getting a test scuttled in a major newspaper is nothing. At any rate, someone decided to skew the test, and I doubt it was because Broder has a personal grudge against electric cars or Tesla motors.
As always, follow the money and ask, "who benefits?"
I mean really, Big Oil had the New York Times help start a war with Iraq, skewing the results of an electric car test are nothing compared to that.
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Re:Where's the accountability?
Very little that you see on Fox News is actually classified as news. Even three years ago, their only news programming was from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (New York Times source, reference to New York Times article in case of paywall).
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Steven Chu, Physics, and Politics.
Dr. Steven Chu brought authority and evidence-based science to the US Cabinet. Former professor of physics at Stanford, he shared a Nobel prize for physics in 1997 for cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. he continued to publish science while serving as Secretary of Energy.
His very expertise and lifelong, professional interest were very lamely attacked by the right wing machine, typically accusing him of avocating raising oil prices and gas prices.
Having Dr. Chu there did more to forward the cause of science in the US Government in generations. How many administrations could walk down a hallway and access a scientist at the top of his game? He should be held and paraded around on slashdot's shoulders for his hard work. -
Re:Bureaucracy
The fact is, you are completely wrong:
GallupFederal Reserve (red line is government, blue line is private sector, the spike in the red line in 2010 is the constitutionally mandated Census)
The graphs in your link conveniently stop right when the private sector was bottoming out, which coincided with the Census hiring. We've actually fired approximately 600,000 government workers in the last 4 years.
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Re:Only 8%?
Likewise, documentation of the actions of others (which you state are a smear operation to lie about AGW) would be facts; your judgment as to what they are intended to accomplish is an opinion.
Here is some introductory reading, if you're actually interested.
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Re:Thank You Captain Obvious
Average welfare spending per poor household IS NOT higher than median income. That is a god damn lie and you fucking know it.
Then perhaps you should direct your fuck-yous to the appropriate liars then.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/welfare-spending-equates-168-day-every-household-poverty_665160.html
Slightly earlier claim, but it depends on what you mean by "welfare"; if you mean the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program - the program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, both programs being what people often mean by "welfare", it's not true. The Republican statement to which the Weekly Standard was referring is using "welfare" to refer to a list of 83 items.
(Of course, if you're a fan of Congressional Research Service reports, you're presumably not going to argue that cutting tax rates for the top tax brackets is a way to boost economic growth, but I digress....)
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Nonsense. This has NEVER happened before.
Not in modern times, at any rate. Republicans mocked liberals like Streisand for saying they'd leave the country if Bush was re-elected. Obama won in 2008, and all of a sudden Texas and Alaska start talking about secession.
If you insist on using Bill O'Reilly nutpicking and pretend three yahoos on USENET make a movement, I'll just ask which Democratic Governors and members of Congress started talking about withdrawing from the union after 2000 or 2004.
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Re:Serves them right
Is it really necessary to drop the fbomb?
And with all due respect, is that the best you can do? One article talking about one specific thing Jon Stewart said? Jon Stewart had even (which he of course then twists to his own purposes...) apologized on air for his remarks. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-21-2011/fox-news-false-statements?xrs=share_copy
I also managed to find this. I don't know what the political leanings of that site is, but they make an interesting point.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/06/22/jon-stewart-gets-it-right-about-fox-news/180787But thank you for pointing me to that politifact site. If you look further into the site, they seem to have an a pretty substantial number of items calling out republicans as well. In fact, if you check out their Pants on Fire section (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/rulings/pants-fire), that entire section is overwhelmingly, almost exclusively republican, which is consistent with my argument that conservatives actively try to misinform. Not that democrats don't lie of course, but republicans seem to be way far in the lead on that score.
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Re:Three
Not exactly.
Beck said that empathy leads to bad decisions and that leads to bad decisions
Finally â" well, he wasn't the president, he was the chancellor â" Hitler, decided that it was the only empathetic thing to do, is to put this child down and put him out of his suffering. It was the beginning of the T4, which led to genocide everywhere. It was the beginning of it. Empathy leads you to very bad decisions many times.
is what he said. T4 btw was the euthanasia program carried out by Germany leading up to and during WWII. It was part of the Eugenics program that Hitler was fond of. you can watch the statement as said with context here
http://mediamatters.org/video/2009/05/26/beck-cites-hitler-example-to-state-that-empathy/150513T4 was not the holocaust.
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Re:the Democrat party
Yes actually. http://mediamatters.org/research/2006/08/16/gop-strategists-christen-democrat-sic-party-and/136406
Frank Luntz said so.
All that proves is that modern journalists (or rather, what passes for a 'journalist' these days) are idiots.
*thinks about election year conversations he's had with "regular" people*
Ok, considering... maybe you've got something there... -
Re:the Democrat party
Yes actually. http://mediamatters.org/research/2006/08/16/gop-strategists-christen-democrat-sic-party-and/136406
Frank Luntz said so.
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Re:Sounds Familiar
most of the mainstream news media were far to the left (over 70%), and Fox News was only slightly to the left (IIRC 52%, within experimental error).
This makes you sound just like those climate change deniers who are always pointing to a handful of deeply flawed studies (often published by shills) and ignore a massive body of scientific work that goes against their agenda.
News outlets including CNN cited a study of several major media outlets by a UCLA political scientist and a University of Missouri-Columbia economist purporting to "show a strong liberal bias." But the study employed a measure of "bias" so problematic that its findings are next to useless, and the authors -- both former fellows at conservative think tanks cited in the study to illustrate liberal bias -- seem unaware of the substantial scholarly work that exists on the topic.
-- http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/12/21/former-fellows-at-conservative-think-tanks-issu/134514
Oh yeah, and even though the numbers coming out of the study were outrageous, you succeeded to push them into the realm of the ludicrous. The UCLA study (with all its flaws) still classified Fox News as "right of center"... Then again, that may just be your memory, as your "last year" turns out to be 7 years ago.
I'm not even going to start arguing against all the other BS in your post. Except this: yes, academia is somewhat left-leaning (although far less than you'd have people believe). What does that prove? Smart people see through the populist lies being perpetuated by the American right? -
Re:Well you know...
He definitely used the "long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking" line elsewhere, on more than one occasion:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2011/03/02/limbaugh-wisconsin-protesters-are-long-haired-m/183331
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/06/06/audio-limbaugh-poor-romney-accused-of-bullying-a-long-haired-maggot-infested-dope-smoking-type-kid-back-in-prep-school/and it's obvious he's not joking, and it's clear that he doesn't care for marijuana users.
The other one may be too far in the past for people to dig up, but this seems sufficient to confirm the OP's point. And given that much, it seems unlikely that the above quote is faked or taken out of context. If it is, it shouldn't be that hard for a dittohead capable of listening to this dreck to dig it up the specific broadcast and refute it.
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Re:If you think
Go ahead, keep regurgitating garbage you hear without basic fact checking first:
http://factcheck.org/2012/09/romney-gets-it-backward/
and just in case you suspect I'm a liberal (I am), lets run down some of the conservative roll call (as pulled from http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/09/13/even-as-experts-gop-figures-criticize-romneys-e/189862):
Bill O'Reilly: "I'm Not Sure [Romney] Is Correct On That. The Embassy Was Trying To Head Off The Violence" With Statement. During the September 12 edition of Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly played video of Romney's remarks from his September 12 press conference and said, "I'm not sure the governor is correct on that. The embassy was trying to head off the violence" with their statement. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/12/12]
Former McCain Adviser: Pointing Out "That We Reject Vile Attacks On Muslims...Does Not Constitute Sympathy For The People Besieging Our Embassy As Gov. Romney Alleged." Longtime John McCain adviser Mark Salter responded to Romney's remarks on the embassy's statement on the website RealClearPolitics:
"
[T]here is nothing wrong in principle with making clear to people, who have yet to embrace the categorical right to free speech, that Americans and their government deplore the deplorable, that we reject vile attacks on Muslims as vigorously as we reject vile anti-Semitic attacks.To do so does not constitute sympathy for the people besieging our embassy, as Gov. Romney alleged. Nor is at an apology for America, as some Obama critics have claimed. It's an expression of our decency. [RealClearPolitics, 9/12/12]
"Noonan: Romney Isn't "Doing Himself Any Favors," "When Hot Things Happen, Cool Words -- Or No Words -- Is The Way To Go." Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan commented on Romney's remarks on Fox News, a Wall Street Journal blog reported:
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Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan who writes a column for The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages, said on Fox News that he had opened himself up to accusations that he was "trying to exploit things politically.""I belong to the old school of thinking in times of great drama and heightened crisis, and at times when something violent is happening to your people, I always think discretion is the better way to go," she said. "I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors.... When hot things happen, cool words- or no words- is the way to go." [Washington Wire, The Wall Street Journal, 9/12/12]
" ... (it continues, but my point is made)...- Toast
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Re:Some people like to brew beer as a hoby, so wha
... if the president spent his money collecting stamps or collecting guitars I doubt you would you beat him up over it.
Are you kidding? This President has been condemned as "elitist" for his choice of condiments.
Yeah, by a couple of right-wing whackjobs that don't deserve the label 'Republican'. Jesus Christ, if they gotta try crucifying him for eating a fucking hamburger he paid for out of his own fucking pocket, the far-gone Right has serious fucking problems. Course, go after their guy and criticize every fucking move he makes and you're un-American.
FWIW, I don't put ketsup on my hamburgers either. Ketsup belongs on french fries goddammit, just like GAWD ordained in the fucking Bible. -
Re:Some people like to brew beer as a hoby, so wha
... if the president spent his money collecting stamps or collecting guitars I doubt you would you beat him up over it.
Are you kidding? This President has been condemned as "elitist" for his choice of condiments.
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Pat Robertson is not amused.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/09/13/religious-conservatives-claim-katrina-was-gods/133804
""Did God have anything to do with Katrina?," people ask. My answer is, he allowed it and perhaps he allowed it to get our attention so that we don't delude ourselves into thinking that all we have to do is put things back the way they were and life will be normal again."
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Re:IN SOVIET AMERIKA
Brilliant! Just brilliant dodge to the original point!
Popularity != correctness still remains unchallenged by you. But good on you for jumping in to do a jab on the president instead.
But hey you're right. AM radio and Fox news are the last bastions of truthiness. Don't let a little reading get in your way:
http://foxnewslies.net/
http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/10/27/30-reasons-why-fox-news-is-not-legit/156164
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversiesDon't forget to try the Kool-Aid on the way out.
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Re:Honest question
With enough electrical energy we could convert to a hydrogen/oxygen economy, rather than a carbon-based one. There are some issues though, like the Hindenburg.
Then don't build your airship with a highly flamable skin - hydrogen was only part of the problem.
It turns out that Hydrogen in a normal Earthlike atmosphere is explosive.
So are many other common fuels like gasoline and natural gas, yet we've learned to harness them safely.
Also, it wants to be a gas rather than a liquid, which limits its utility.
As does natural gas, yet there's growing talk of using Natural Gas to fuel long haul trucks due to the dropping costs of natural gas.
And as a gas, it passes freely through any known material at room temperature because hydrogen2 molecules are as small as molecules get.
Generate it at the filling station so it doesn't have to be pumped for long distances, and dissolve it in some other substance to ease storage.
And then there's the whole "we get half of our electrical energy from coal" thing, and the conversion losses.
But the whole premise of this article is that we need to move to "clean" nuclear power, not fossil fuels.
Unless we get some good watts from some other source, your electric hybrid is likely generating more CO2 than my Chevy truck.
Unless your Chevy truck gets better than 53/48 mpg, then my electric hybrid generates less CO2 than your truck since both of our vehicles are powered by the same fuel - gasoline. Even when electric cars are powered by coal plants, they than conventional cars.
If I had an electric car, most of its power would come from hydroelectric power.
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Re:Partisan content?
Andrea Mitchell Report is an MSNBC show. But yes, the Zimmerman tape. Attempting to be objective is not the same as achieving perfection in every regard on every issue. Here is a list from Media Matters for America which includes the NBC tag:
http://mediamatters.org/tags/nbc
You can see the left has complaints as well.
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Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b
You're completely delusional. My relatives in Ireland, England, and Australia have much better healthcare than we have here in the US. They don't have to waste ages filling out forms; they just get care because they are citizens. And you know what? They pay less for their healthcare than we do.
Yes, you heard that right: we pay as much in taxes for Medicare & Medicaid as they do for universal healthcare. Plus, on top of medicare/medicaid, we also pay private insurance. Here's a breakdown of how we pay through the nose for our stupid healthcare system.
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/oecd042111.cfmWe should stop paying private companies and make Medicare universal. There's no reason healthcare in the US should be so miserable. If you still want a private plan, great, but stop making me pay twice what my cousins pay.
Oh, and by the way, Australia is not a depressed economy. And no, doctors don't consider quitting over "Obamacare". Creating a phony survey isn't the same as actually doing real work:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/10/comically-awful-survey-says-83-percent-of-docto/187029 -
Re:I'd be more interested in the media
"I would have assumed a fairly even distribution with Wikipedia so the results weren't that surprising. I'd be more interested in using it to find bias in the media."
You might be interested in hearing the show Counterspin, by the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):
Also worth looking at is Daved Brock's Media Matters
You should also read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and watch the documentary based on the book
There's a lot more to recommend, but these should get you started.
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Re:Party afiliation not important
In real life: http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906240026
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Re:Agreed...mostly...
Adding insult to injury, the reason why the Columbia was destroyed upon re-entry is in part because the Environmental Protection Agency got into a feud with NASA over the foam being used for the cryogenic tank connectors. The original foam being used would have broken up and was much, much lighter where it wouldn't have caused any problem like what caused damage to the leading edge tiles that ultimately caused the problems for the Columbia. The problem was that the original foam had chlorofluorocarbon compounds that were perceived as "hazardous to the environment". I don't know how many lives were spared by the switch to the new foam due to slightly reduced skin cancer rates worldwide, but I know of at least seven astronauts who are dead because of that change. I sure hope that EPA bureaucrat feels nice warm fuzzies over all of the lives he saved because of that move.
The EPA bureaucrat has nothing on his conscience over the Columbia tragedy. The "EPA killed the Columbia astronauts!" hysteria that you wasted half your comment on, was Rush Limbaugh bullshit.
As noted in this comment, the Columbia Accident Investigation Report states that the external tank used on that mission, and therefore the foam that broke off and doomed the shuttle, was an older tank and therefore still used the old CFC foam.
(Link in that comment that refutes the Linbaugh bullshit: http://mediamatters.org/research/200508090007)
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Re:Why is it news
>>>no thanks to Fox News and their involvement.
FOX News is involved with the Tea Party? As in giving funds and organizing the events? I'd like to see a citation of that, because it's the first I ever heard it.
Please tell me you're being sarcastic. If not, start here. The Tea Party was created by Republican strategist Dick Armey and promoted relentlessly by Fox News- it was never intended to be grass roots. Amusingly, it's actually grown some legitimate roots since and has proved more difficult to control than the establishment would like.
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Re:They Never Even Said Those Things
That the best you could do? Your link doesn't have anything to do with environmentalism - you just Googled for "Bush + Hitler" and posted the first link you clicked on, didn't you?
Common, you can do some better nutpicking than that. Some environmentalist board where one comment out of 150,000 went Godwin on the former president.
Wont change the fact that you are nutpicking, not finding a actual "Bush=Hitler" meme from actual environmentalists.
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Let's spend more money on schools!
Our per-pupil spending on public schools has quadrupled since 1962 (inflation-adjusted, the nominal increase is over 25 times). Yet, only 30% of 8th-graders nation-wide can read properly, and about as many have a firm grasp of science. Obviously, we aren't spending enough money, are we?
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Heartland: a policy advocacy group, not science
Shills for the oil industry.
Well, they are funded by the fossil fuel industry (not just oil; that includes coal), or by billionaires whose money comes from in the oil industry. (For this campaign, anyway; they also work on other issues.) Whether this makes them "shills" is a value judgement.
What we learn the billboard, however, is simply this: the Heartland Institute is a policy advocacy organization, not a science institute. They are no longer even pretending to have any interest in actual science. Their only interest in science is to attack it in order to make policy points.
They have stated this before-- Joseph Bast, the president of Heartland, stated that the Heartland Institute's focus is "commitment to a free market policy agenda," and that the main motivation for the Heartland Institute being involved in this debate is to "prevent the U.S. government from adopting policies that favor renewable energy," which he claims would cause an "economic disaster for the country."
But, despite clear statements that their agenda is related to policy, not science, people have been taking their attacks on science seriously.
Some links:
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2012/01/ethical-analysis-of-the-climate-change-disinformation-campaign-introduction-to-a-series.html
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201107070016 -
Re:Depends on the field, and depends on the subjec
No, hypotheses that withstands tests over time do not rely on people _wanting_ them to be true or _believing_ in them - which are words used together with "consensus"
Merriam-webster's definition of consensus: general agreement
If you don't have a general agreement on what is true and what is not, how do you tell what is true?
It's completely irrelevant and the concept of a consensus brings nothing to the scientific table.
The scientific consensus (what is generally accepted as true) is the feedback loop that allows science to progress.
As far as I know, it's only used by conservative scientists who want to dismiss scientific challenges (see the links I posted).
And those scientists were actually doing their proper job which was to be sceptical of new claims. When the scientists provide compelling evidence, the new theory is admitted into the consensus. The scientific consensus is the body of science.
Regarding the Heartland Institue, their total budget and the payouts according to fakegate won't even get you a cup of coffee in a big university. Thus it's proved conclusively that they (at least) do not operate a "denial machine" (your words).
That's specious logic. First, I'm not aware of any big university that has only a single climate science faculty. Second, when presented with evidence that the Heartland Institute (among other similar organisations) pays people to argue that global warming isn't happening, you choose to say they're probably not paying them enough so it doesn't count? It looks like you're in denial. I suggest you try reading Merchants of Doubt or "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic's Guide to Life " by Richard Wilson. The media loves stories with conflict, they bring in more product to sell to their advertisers, so it doesn't take much to get them to promote the "controversy" angle. That's before we consider media bias and outright distortions on the issue itself.
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Re:Depends on the field, and depends on the subjec
No, hypotheses that withstands tests over time do not rely on people _wanting_ them to be true or _believing_ in them - which are words used together with "consensus"
Merriam-webster's definition of consensus: general agreement
If you don't have a general agreement on what is true and what is not, how do you tell what is true?
It's completely irrelevant and the concept of a consensus brings nothing to the scientific table.
The scientific consensus (what is generally accepted as true) is the feedback loop that allows science to progress.
As far as I know, it's only used by conservative scientists who want to dismiss scientific challenges (see the links I posted).
And those scientists were actually doing their proper job which was to be sceptical of new claims. When the scientists provide compelling evidence, the new theory is admitted into the consensus. The scientific consensus is the body of science.
Regarding the Heartland Institue, their total budget and the payouts according to fakegate won't even get you a cup of coffee in a big university. Thus it's proved conclusively that they (at least) do not operate a "denial machine" (your words).
That's specious logic. First, I'm not aware of any big university that has only a single climate science faculty. Second, when presented with evidence that the Heartland Institute (among other similar organisations) pays people to argue that global warming isn't happening, you choose to say they're probably not paying them enough so it doesn't count? It looks like you're in denial. I suggest you try reading Merchants of Doubt or "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic's Guide to Life " by Richard Wilson. The media loves stories with conflict, they bring in more product to sell to their advertisers, so it doesn't take much to get them to promote the "controversy" angle. That's before we consider media bias and outright distortions on the issue itself.
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Re:Wakeup call to those who only hound Fox "News"
In the past, Fox News has maliciously edited videos, edited audio, and willfully distorted the truth through selective editing. The primary difference between Fox News and other News programs is that when confronted, Fox News will never admit to this being a mistake while others own up to it and publicly denounce it.