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Getting Accurate Political Information?
XMorbius asks: "With the elections coming up in a few months, I (along with other Slashdot readers, I hope) want to get more informed about the candidates. But, where does one turn to get accurate (or as accurate as possible) information about them, while at the same time not having to review long logs and records of various hearings over the last decade or so? This seems like a nice compilation of information, but something tells me that it may not be very accurate. I've seen factcheck.org but I feel like there is more knowledge out there to be acquired. What does the Slashdot community recommend?"
you can get it delivered right into your living room.
opensecrets.org has a great amount of information on campaign contributions. Since we're nearing the end of the 2004 Presidential Elections, it's a great time to take a look at the top contributors to Bush and Kerry. (Note, the site doesn't list Bush's acceptange of $75 million in federal funds yet).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Disinfopedia
They're pretty good, or as I have heard. They link their stuff to sources so you can check it out yourself. Some people say they have a liberal bias since they released a book called "Banana Republicans" which is not flattering to the party in question.
I have to admit though, it's difficult to find good non-biased political info on the net. Maybe the best thing would be to just read both sides instead and in that way make up your mind. It's tougher than just getting from one source, but I think it's the only good way right now...
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I don't think you're going to find any single source that's never been accused of bias. There's just too many viewpoints out there-- and any source that tries to go straight down the middle of the road, like CNN, tends to be pretty dry.
So, my solution: Read a lot. I mean, a lot, and, by exposure to many viewpoints, you'll be better off when it comes time to form your own opinions.
If you're asking about specifics, I try to take in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Drudge Report, Slate, Salon, Al-Jazeera, the International Herald-Tribune, and the Guardian. Of course, all of the above have their strengths and weaknesses.
If you don't want to spend the time on all of those, though, I recommend Slate. It leans slightly left, but has good analysis from both sides of the aisle.
Read, read, read. Don't assume you're getting the whole story from a single source.
to compile your own. The Washington spin artists make it hard to see through all the smoke and evalute canidates on what matters to you. No canidate will serious tell you their strengths *and* weaknesses, so you have to become your own source.
Go to the closest headquarters for each canidate. There will be at least one in all but the smallest communities. Ask them what they think their strengths and weakness are and be prepared to hear a lot of bull shit. Ask them why you should vote for them and not for the other guy. Then take that information to the other guy's headquarters and ask the same stuff. Take a good look at what they say about themselves and their opponent, and this will give you a nice base to start at.
Then read the major newspapers and watch the Sunday morning political lineup. Be careful to note the leanings of each, i.e. Nytimes == Liberal, Wall Street Journal == conservative. Radio political talk has a right leaning, and Tv political talk often is leftist.
After doing this for a couple weeks you'll have enough to start on if you want to do some serious reseach at the library. The most important things to remember are there is no unbaised source, gets information from as many sources as possible, and make you own descision (ie beware of groupthink). If you put some descent effort into you'll have more then enough to decide who to vote for.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
wikipedia as usual ?
Kerry
Bush
--
www.jmeeting.com - meet friends.
For some information, check out the ACLU's scorecard: http://scorecard.aclu.org/scoremain.html/
Well, duh, I get all my political informatino from fark.com, doesn't everyone?
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The Washington Monthly
The Daily Kos
The Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk
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Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Tom Toles political cartoons
Ben Sargent cartoons
Pat Oliphant cartoons
Jamie Zawinski's freinds
Ed Fitzgerald's blog
more to follow-up...
I couldn't give you any two of those, let alone three.
Please.. also read other media than the American. Every country's media is probably biased in one way or another, but a good mix can give you more details so that you can decide yourself what is more likely to be the truth...
:-)
In my recent vacation in the US I was stunned that nobody saw a world-famous picture with US troops guarding the ministry of oil. It was printed in a lot of world press newspapers. A quick search on google couldn't turn up the image, but there is a reference here. No idea what this source is (I did a very quick search). Apparantly US media is biased or censured, so make sure you check all possible sources of information... It is hard to convince Europeans that the Iraqi war is not about oil when a picture like that is in the paper...
I loved NYC & New England, and I'm not an anti-American guy...just want the facts straight
Which is exactly the point. The more expensive the oil, the more money Bush and his cronies make.
The article that you're quoting isn't talking about the price that consumers pay for oil--it's talking about the price that the oil companies pay. If you read a bit further, you get to the part that says "oil was cheaper for US oil companies and the world as a whole under the UN's Oil-for-Food program. Now that Saddam is gone, this program no longer exists. If this war was about oil, you'd see either an extension of the program, or even sanctions lifted (in return for secret deals to use Iraq's oil). Yet, neither happened."
In other words, it now costs US oil companies more to buy oil that they can process and sell to the consumer. Sure, the oil companies will pass that excess price on to the consumer, but they won't be making more money because of it.
http://www.vote-smart.org/
They have biographical information, issue positions provided by the candidates (where available), campaign finance information (links over to Open Secrets), interest group ratings, voting records, speeches and statements in an organized format.
-- Mr. Furious
More expensive oil bought, means more expensive oil sold. Most likely the profit margin stayed constant in percentage points (it actually increased, see SEC reports of Shell, Chevron, etc). Even at constant it means more absolute dollars in the oil company's pocketses. It is better for them to sell it more expensive, higher oil proces also mean, that they can tap reserves, which were too expensive to tap beforehand (think arctic).
All is well, and business is booming. Especially when you can sell oil 2-3 times the going rate to the army, essentially funneling away taxpayer moey to corporate profit...
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
There is much talk and sites about national people like Bush and Kerry but little info is known about local ones. Where should I look to find out the issues of my local mayor or state rep? Yes it depends on the locale but or there any sites that can at least help?
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
especially if one of those secret deals were made.
If the Big Oil players wanted to make secret anticompetitive deals to widen their profit margins, they would not have needed a war in order to do so. I'm pretty sure that a a controversial war which puts their business practices under the microscope and could seriously affect their supply of crude is precisely what they would not want.
If you think that The National Review is "unintelligent" but Andrew Sullivan, Slate, or The New Republic are more "intelligent" or more inherently reliable, then you're not getting it. You're a parrot.
If you think Rich Lowry, George Will, or Jonah Goldberg are more "intelligent" than Andrew Sullivan or TNR, then you're still not getting it. You're still a parrot.
If you read Daily Kos or Free Republic and think either one is particularly accurate, you're not getting it.
When you stop thinking that people on one side are fools and the other side is the only one that has morality or truth on its side, then you'll be getting it.
The site you are thinking of is already cited in the Slashdot story: FactCheck.ORG from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Great site, but very limited focus. There is no examination of the underlying problems. In this case, that is a BIG shortcoming.
By far the biggest issue is one about which former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces and former Republican U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in a famous speech. He said that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here are quotes:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
The problem he warned us about has been happening big time for many years. The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since WW2. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
Every important speaker at the Republican convention spoke of keeping America safe. Every important speaker was reading speeches written for them by marketing consultants like Karl Rove. "Keeping America Safe" is code for "keeping America fearful by promoting violence so the rich can get richer". It was despicable when Bill Clinton did it, and it continues to be despicable now that George W. Bush is doing it. Possibly many of the nation's leaders are not fully aware of the circumstances. It seems that only a very small percentage of citizens realize the extent of the violence of the U.S. government.
The only really good way to educate yourself about the U.S. government is to read books about it. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. It's necessary to gather enough information that you can make your own informed conclusions, and not just copy the conclusions of others.
Don't like the books I found? Find your own. It's your duty as an adult to participate in the political issues of your country.
www.freerepublic.com
This'll probably get modded down, but consider that there are more than 2 points of view. Now, you may feel that the left is being underrepresented and all the media is pro-Bush - but the Free Republic people feel otherwise, and will show you the other side. Even if you don't like it, it's interesting to see what kind of stories are out there.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The more expensive the oil, the more money Bush and his cronies make.
Oh, really? Check the PFDR for FY2002 (the FY03 ones aren't available yet). The President doesn't get any income from any source that's affected by the price of oil. He has some interest-bearing investments, a couple of IRA's, some real estate, a stock portfolio and a boat-load of T-bills. You might as well say that the president's wealth depends on the price of routers because he owns stock in Cisco.
I dare you to find any evidence of an actual financial incentive for the president, or anybody in the executive branch for that matter, to keep the price of oil high.
And yet, the exact same methods were used to claim the Saddam-Osama connection.
By whom? Nobody in a position of authority ever said there was a Saddam-Osama connection. There was, however, a rock-solid, no-questions, if-you-don't-see-it-you're-an-idiot connection between Saddam and Islamist terrorism. Which is why he had to go.
If you like the police state this country is in
Sigh. If this country were half the police state you accuse it of being, you'd be dragged off in chains.
I write in my journal
If you read books about the issues, you may come to the conclusion that by far the biggest underlying issue in the present political campaign is U.S. government violence. You probably won't know this unless you read books.
The present system of violence in the U.S. and Britain started in the 1940s. In the 1940s, it was decided that the U.S. government could act in secret in foreign countries to preserve the profits of U.S. and British companies. It was decided that the U.S. government could not only act in secret, it could break the laws of the foreign country. It was decided the the U.S. government could even arrange the murder of the leaders of foreign countries. Agencies like the CIA were created for secret accomplishment of largely secret foreign policy.
Only an estimated 2% read non-fiction books not connected with work. The system of violence works partly by keeping U.S. citizens ignorant. It is not necessary that all citizens be ignorant, just a large percentage of the voters. Actually, there is plenty of information freely available in books, but only an estimated 2% of American citizens read non-fiction books not connected with their work. It is easy to understand why. United States citizens are the hardest-working in the world, with the exception of the Japanese. Many U.S. citizens have only two weeks of vacation every year, and they need that to rest. They simply don't have time to read books.
However, the only way to understand something as complicated as politics is to read books extensively. The issues are too complicated to express in a few words.
By far the biggest issue in the present political campaign is this fundamental one, about which former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces and former Republican U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in a famous speech. He said that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here are quotes:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
The problem he warned us about has been a major influence on both the politics and quality of life of the United States. The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
Very few U.S. citizens know the full history of the war against Iraq. This short article is a summary: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.
The events leading up to the present "war on terror" and the two wars against Iraq began in the 1950s, when hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran.
The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very violent toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iran overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence that came after. The U.S. government supported Iraq against Iran, supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein at a very high profit for the rich owners of U.S. weapons companies. To give a present example, the Bu
Yeah, Comedy Central is the best source of US political news now. And it's funny, yet. But there are two serious problems with it:
...
1. They only really deal with major national candidates, mostly the presidential candidates. It takes some major news for them to pay attention to state or local candidates. Understandable, because they mostly have only half an hour four evenings a week (though they upped it to an hour last week, due to the huge humor potential of the RNC).
2. Their web site sucks. Too bad; it has such potential. I've read a number of discussions of why their site works so poorly (if at all) iin most people's browsers. They only deliver in Real and WMA formats, both of which have rather flakey browser plugins. And CC's HTML is so confused that many browsers just can't decipher it sensibly, and lots of luck trying to extract the clip URLs yourself. On my Mac PB, their video clips work fine in the Real Player and Windows Media Player when I can find the URL for the clip. But they both fail almost every time when invoked from within a ComedyCentral.com web page. Even Real's fancy new browser fails on these web pages. This apparently isn't an attempt to shoot down Mac and linux viewers; Windows users also report garbled or blank videos.
OTOH, lots of political blogs are picking up on Comedy Central, and they often provide direct URLs to the videos. If you can find them, they usually work.
You might also look at theonion.com. They have some good political news. It's usually a lot more honest than the mass media, because their approach is to quote what the politicians were thinking, not what they actually said.
They recently had a headline about the New Jersey homosexual who had tearfully admitted to being the state's governor
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Spinsanity is a good site that takes some pretty hard swipes at each side.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
I subscribe to both factcheck and spinsanity's email lists. Spinsanity puts out fewer emails but they are of slightly higher quality. But both are excellent.
It's funny you mention that, as I have been surfing their webpage all day today (in fact, I had it up in another tab when I went to slashdot and saw this story). My system for surfing their site is to use konqueror 3.3, go to the page where the video should be embedded, use View->View Mode->Embedded Text Editor, search for "wmv", copy and paste that line into wget in konsole, grep for mms in the resulting file and then copy&paste that into mplayer. Works like a champ! Who says *nix isn't user friendly!??!? :-P In all seriousness, it sucks horribly but doesn't take as long to do as it does to describe.
Usually the LOUDER an organization proclaims its objectivity - the more biased it is. Most old media (large city papers, network TV, PBS) tilt left. CNN, MSNBC tilt left, Fox tilts right. Talk radio - right, NPR left.
My two cents is to look for news sources that are up front about their biases. Then fact check them your self. Personally I like a weekly called "The Economist". Their reporting on science and technology is usually pretty accurate - which is fairly rare in the mainstream media. On political matters they tilt towards the (British) conservatives. Their coverage of world news and of U.S. news is excellent.
[Insert pithy quote here]
If you live in Ohio or California try this site:
http://smartvoter.org
It can be a little bland since it takes no stance but it has always been a great starting source for me and shows me what will be on my ballot.
Any argument for which you cite the BNP is likely to be bullshit. The BNP, if you don't know, are a far right racist political party known to be a haven for neo-Nazis, anti-semites and general racist motherfuckers. They fucking hate all the media because all the media realise that they're racist motherfuckers. As for the Telegraph article, it seems as though the murder was completely unrelated to any work he did for the BBC, even less BBC News. He happened to murder somebody, after being employed by the BBC.
:)
As for the left right scale, CNN and PBS are leftist, Fox News are right wing twats and MSNBC I haven't seen enough of to know.
For the record, I get my news from the Guardian (left wing newspaper), the Independent (nice, politically independent (although VERY slightly leftist) newspaper which employs Robert Fisk), the BBC and CNN International (a completely different beast from the American CNN, with more concentration on world affairs). Anybody looking for radio can do no worse than the BBC World Service. If you haven't noticed, most of those are British (and even CNNI comes from London). That's because we kick ass
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
If you're looking for a great aggregate of news sites put into context, I highly recommend The Note. While the ABC News site itself has a leftward bias, The Note stands out for being pretty impartial, and extremely thorough. Now that college is back in session, I don't have time to visit it as often, because it's a long read, especially if you follow all of the links.
For a good analysis of things, I prefer the Christian Science Monitor. The bias vacillates, simply because of the variety of guest columnists.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
Wikipedia cannot be said to be completely accurate, but you will get a very good overview, based upon a mixture of expertise and community thoughts.
Extreme views tend to be put to one side in an effort to strip away spin and leave the facts.
Political history, and other details are available as links. The two articles change very often, now that the campaign is underway.
George Bush Presidential Campaign
John Kerry Presidential Campaign
Also it is worth checking out the article discussions, for opposing views, challenges and related links.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
That's actually sort of true. I wasn't terribly worried about Saddam having non-nuclear WMDs. Here's why.
The US military also deposed one of the world's terrible dictators. That alone should have been reason enough to justify military action.
Okay, which thugocracy should we go after next? Can you even name one of the ones in the Middle East, or Africa, or even South America? Personally, I think we should have stuck to rebuilding Afghanistan from the thugocracy we'd already overthrown, but nobody even remembers them anymore.
Would you rather fight the war in NYC?
The whole point is that Saddam wasn't going to invade the US. Please, please, come up with any kind of scenario (I won't even ask you to come up with a plausible one) that has Iraqi tanks rolling down Wall Street.
And if you read enough about Iraq trying to get nuclear weapons, there is a substantial back story that may indicate they were looking into African uranium. I really don't know.
No, you really don't.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Your best bet for a single source of non-biased news is NPR and PBS. A recent study by the non-partisan PIPA found that NPR/PBS listeners/viewers had the best understanding of the situation in Iraq. By contrast, the more people watched Fox, the less they understood.
Of the mainstream news stations, Fox, and the Murdock and Scaif newspapers, are the only ones that have biases that interfere with their coverage. These stations and papers lean hard right and make a ton of money. As a result, media companies like MSNBC are starting to emulate their approach and are therefore going to lean slightly to the right. NPR and PBS, and to a lesser extent the New York Times get badmouthed by conservatives, but really don't spin their stories. There are some liberal news sources, but they tend to advertise that in their name (like, say, the Socialist Review).
Your best bet for finding out candidate information is to check out the various watch-dog sites that slashdoters have pointed out. Also, services at google and yahoo give you a pretty representative cross section of the day's news coverage.
quit watching Fox http://www.alternet.org/story/16892
Yet, to initiate the war in Iraq...
Why would he mention September 11th? I think he believed they would find documents to prop up what the entire administration believed and implied every day before the invasion: Saddam Hussein tactically or monetarily supported the terrorists of September 11th.
In fact, they focused so much on the thin ties between Al Queda and Hussein, Cheney waffled and lied about it.