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30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging
Cutie Pi writes "In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'"
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
Because with only three blogs in the blog-o-sphere, the millions of Americans these blogs serve really deserve government-mandated balance.
Oh, what's that, there's more than three? How many, then? Five?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Conservative politicians want a smaller government. The previous Republican majority was not conservative.
Balanced is not equal to fair.
"Balanced" in this case means that only the democratic party and the republican party will have their voices heard.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
But most republican politicians seem to like bigger government! I'm so confused...
Don't worry, so are they! How I long for the days when the Repulicans were for a government that took less of your money, and the Democrats were for a government that took less of your freedoms. Now both are pro-censorship, and both are for more government spending, and both are for more government power to combat scary things.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Given the multi-national congregation that is the net, I can't really see how this could be enforced anyhow. It could be easily circumvented by simply hosting your blog in Britain, or Congo, or anywhere else in the world without this rule. There's no law saying you can't blog about American politcs from abroad (and many people already do).
Go by the term Classical Liberal then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
Those want a limited government (which itself is a more correct term, a smaller government is the natural effect byproduct of a limited government but a smaller government isn't always more limited - i.e. outsourcing everything)
"Conservative" means nothing anymore, it's been so diluted. The biggest "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes (passing staggering debt onto future generations while still paying for massive entitlements/porkbarrel is not more conservative than tax and spend), embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations (war is the health of the state, thus anti-conservative) and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
Plus the term liberal drives many of the unreasonable ones on edge. People like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh types that want to pidgeonhole everyone in their arguments.
If I remember right the fairness doctrine was the law from 1949 until sometime into Reagan's second term. Its repeal lead to the rise of talk radio and helped cable news. Probably indirectly led to the lack of regulation by the FCC of the internet.
a) Less than 1/3 of all Americans support the censorship of political blogs.
b) 70% of Americans do not support regulation of political blogging.
Same data, different spin.
Why are so many supposedly liberal-minded people so ... illiberal? Is it because they think a fairness doctrine would only be used against Republicans?
It's like they want to attack their enemies by removing the oxygen out of the air, without considering how they themselves will breath.
What rubbish. I'd imagine that most Democrats are socialists who look towards the Nordic welfare states.
Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts.
(I presume you're talking either about the Electoral College system or something else related to election by states rather than general popular vote.)
If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.
The election of the congress critters by district, senators by state, and president by state electors is one of the firewalls against tyranny.
(It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
So? Opinion isn't exempt in the Fairness Doctrine. In fact most of the application of the doctrine on the airwaves has traditionally been against editorial content. The argument goes that there's only so much broadcast bandwidth out there, and so since the government licenses the airwaves, they have a responsibility to see that all viewpoints get a fair shot.
Never mind that with the huge selection of opinion avenues... radio, TV, satellite, print, the Internet... the idea of bandwidth scarcity is essentially obsolete, especially for the Internet. But that hasn't stopped the doctrine's backers from trying to bring it back from the dead anyway, and worse, they want to apply it to non-broadcast media.
The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies, or at least quiet them down some. The doctrine is nothing but government nannyism, and its death was too long in coming. For those of you that are so eager to bring it back, think long and hard about that. Sooner or later, someone you don't like is going to get elected, and use it against you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
All it takes is enough sympathetic judges, and viola, it's Constitutional... even if it isn't Constitutional.
One thing both political sides seem to increasingly agree on these days is that the judicial branch may be the weak link in the design of our Constitutional guarantee of rights. If a judge says so, it's so, even the the Constitution directly contridicts it. All you need is a majority of SCOTUS opinions, and what's done is done. Once SCOTUS rules, unlike a Congressional Bill or an Executive Order, there's no way to appeal it. It's done. Final. You'd have to get a Constitutional Amendment passed to change that ruling, and if the issue came back before SCOTUS, they could simply void the meaning and spirt of the amendment with a stroke of their pens.
Increasingly, the written opinions of the Supreme Court is our real constitution, not the 200+ year old document itself.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Conservative" means nothing anymore ... . ... "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes ... embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations ... and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
Not to (borrowing your term) pidgeonhole anyone or anything...
wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
You know, that's how I feel whenever I see people with bumper stickers slathered all over their cars (who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal). Why is it so important that other people know that you're a vegan, are pro-abortion, etc, or, my personal favorite, are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush." ~shrug~
With sufficiently predatory lending practices and things of that nature, it becomes far less than "voluntary" too.
Good example! "Predatory"? Who held a gun to the head of these idiots who got loans they couldn't afford? As I said, being exploited by a corporation is entirely *voluntary*.
On the other hand, try opting out of various laws that you don't like. I'm sure I don't need to make a list of various laws that are stupid, yet you have no choice to suffer them.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
Whereas a democrat would say, "Stab Bill Gates, take his money and live in his house instead." Republicans would just slaughter your children and bathe in their blood because they are pure evil.
I can see why you troll like that, it's kind of fun to push another ideology to the extreme and then say that it's immoral. The real philosophy of libertarians is that nobody should be forced to do something, like give up their money to help others. Virtue shouldn't be forced. Almost anyone can get a job, even if it's just working at wal mart. Almost everyone has friends that can help them out or family that can give them a place to stay. A typical response would be that you can't live off of wal mart's pay, to which I reply that you should make do with the smaller paycheck, get another job or get skills that pay more.
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know are very kind people who give a lot to charity, they just believe in freedom of choice. If you honestly couldn't find a job that could feed your family, then they would try to give you a leg up to get that job, they just wouldn't believe that the government should force them to give it to you.
Ah! I understand, now. On my left, I find... bullshit. On my right, I find... more bullshit! Is it any wonder I don't vote? My choices are between bullshit and bullshit. Well, shit!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
You know have noticed the internet acronym "IMHO" in my post. Not exactly a common internet acronym i guess, though you see it fairly often on slashdot etc. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/imho (in short, in my humble opinion). Emphasis on the opinion. I'd be fascinated by any statistics, but I don't have any. I'll google around a little bit, but it's hard to track this kind of thing.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine works for the Democratic Party in NC, and a number of years ago they briefly stopped selling bumper stickers, only to face a lot of popular discontent from people who were big fans of the bumper stickers (and reversed their decision). ~shrug~
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who are "pro-abortion." Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a poor girl in a terrible situation walks into a clinic.
That's true to a degree, but ultimately, whether you consider yourself "pro-choice," "pro-life," whatever, you're arguing over one action--aborting a fetus. And those on one side want that to be legal, and the other want it to be illegal. The rest is just semantics.
"Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter" seems to me a bit disingenuous. I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance. If you're really taking a libertarian view, one should probably argue against planned parenthood's dependent relationship. Not trying to put words in your mouth here, maybe you're consistent in your position, but most people I've met haven't made that argument.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..) ... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.