The socialization argument is bunk - that's the teachers' unions talking. Kids don't need to learn how to deal with people from other kids, they need to learn how from adults. I don't want my kids learning about drugs, sex, rock and roll from their peers - they need to learn it from me. I don't want them in environments where they get crappy self-esteem lessons from teachers and kids with idiot parents. I don't want them sitting in a classroom going over and over again on stuff they could have learned in 10 minutes and moved on to something else and more productive.
No thanks. Home and private education worked fine for hundreds of years before the late 1800s when public schools were invented to turn kids into wage slaves at factories.
And simply because a kid is home-schooled doesnt mean they don't have friends and get out more. We have churches and civic programs that kids need to be involved in as well.
Yet another reason that if/when I have kids, I'm homeschooling. They don't have to put up with juvenile behavior, learn how to socialize from adults and kids I get to choose, and generally stay ahead of the mediocrity known as public education.
Visitors to Cuba see a limited amount of what is going on, and rarely does the real thing show through. Everything that is in "Sicko" is what the Cuban government wanted America to see - it's all sanitized to try and convince audience what isn't there.
I understand that propoganda can utilize truth; however, it's only to a point - very selective. It's the nature of propoganda. Moore cuts and pastes and doesn't tell half the story.
"Leftist" I use because "liberal" can be too generic. Leftists are akin to people that are vehemently promoting what can be a Marxist viewpoint - and very militant about what they do (it's what the -ist suffix has come to define - a militant ideal). Sheehan, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore - they're leftists, IMHO.
Using Michael Moore - and Cuba - is a VERY bad example. Moore is nothing but a leftist (notice my non-use of the term liberal or left-wing here) propogandist.
No, you need something semi-automatic, at minimum...or a shotgun. Bolt-actions would be good for sniping, but not when those suckers get too close. I suggest an AK-47 or SKS...cheap ammo, easy to use, and easy to maintain.
The bias appears right wing to me, because to a Brit both your parties are right wing. To the extent that the US media failed to hold a conservative adminstration to account even as treated the Constitution with contempt and generally screwed the US to no apparent benefit, it is certainly difficult to see a liberal bias.
Here is probably the biggest factor in our discussion - Euros have been removed for so long from decent right-wing politics that it's hard to recognize the good parts about it, or sometimes to even consider valid points that can have reasonable arguments (firearms for self-defense, pro-life positions, free market medical care, etc).
What are the things the Clintons were not challenged on by the media? Anything on a scale measured in dead Americans, trade and budget deficits, or significant increases in foreign ownership of US assets? Hillary hasn't been answering tough questions lately. Little about gun control, what she'll really do about Iraq or Afghanistan, how she plans to pay for ANYTHING she's promoting...I know that Europeans love the Clintons. I'm not sure if you can see how devisive a figure she is over here - she's one of the few people those of us on the right may be afraid of, because we see her almost as an outright Marxist.
During an internal selection process, it simply isn't the media's role to create the news and invent questions to satisfy the nutjobs in the other party. Filtering out smear tactics is entirely appropriate. You're concluding the media is biased on by doing what it is supposed to do. I thought you considered them to be the arbiters of accountability? There isn't any question they SHOULDN'T ask, in ANY stage of the electoral process. She should answer the same questions she would answer in the general election - which she will have to or be hit hard by the Republicans.
Obama's stance on the war has been consistent. If you don't think that's positive, then you really are as biased as you're pretending not to be. If you think voting to fund troops stuck in a war zone is the same as wanting to bring those troops home, you are quite simply wrong. Quite the contrary - it's a good vote if you're on the left. Funding the troops should be seen as a protection measure for them - it does NO good for them to be unfunded...it won't get them home sooner and it gets them the resources that they need. However, all that is heard out of the campaign is mostly the "hope, change, we can" stuff...but it's going to wind up being probably something along the lines of left of JFK politics.
Your initial point was that a pundit at one end of the political scale shows how the media is biased against his point of view - I say that's not possible. You say there is a liberal bias, I say there is not. These are not similar conclusions, these are opposites. And in the post above, the casual statements of distortion and bias are exactly the kind of thing I was posting against.
"Completely supports" is an absolute, and a complete distortion of accusing someone of failing their oversight duties. It's logically equivalent to saying that the Democrat Congress completely supports Bush. This is the kind of nonsense that propagandists use.
So do you fall somewhere in between the whole left-wing/right-wing media debate, or do you discount the media altogether? Some of the angles I think you seem to take promotes a right-wing media that MOSTLY supports the presidency, but from this side, I can't see how - and I've studied this (not just taken Rush's word for it).
The presence of sensationalism is a given, but what are the actions of the Clinton administration that you feel did not receive coverage because instead they chose to discuss Britney? I don't recall any time where the entire planet was wishing to God someone would start challenging the Bush administration on its various abuses of their own country's principles.
How about few real challenges to Clinton from the media? Outside of the whole Lewinsky deal, which I felt they were almost forced to report on, the Clintons have had few challenges - especially recently - from the media. Tim Russert has been one of the few to call Clinton to carpet, and there has been little that doesn't challenge her pre-prepared answers to pre-prepared questions.
The reason you rarely hear positives about Iraq is because positives are rare. To believe the situation is generally (as compared to completely) negative is not ignorant and idiotic, but to talk once again in absolutes is.
I cede your point on the "completely" - stupid adverbs - but the point remains that too many reporters were holed up in hotels in Baghdad than out in the field like the initial invasion. I understand why many think it's "generally" negative, but I don't believe it's as bad as the mass media makes it out to be and not as good as the administration pushes.
What are the questions that are not being asked? Lack of experience, ties to slum landlords, an extremist liberal voting record, attendance at a Muslim school, divisive politics, failure to deliver on heathcare reform, relying on familiarity rather than achievement, voting for the war but claiming to be against it -these questions have all been asked. What is the difficult question you feel should be asked?
Most of which were out of the Clinton campaign before hitting the media, or filtered from them FIRST. Several of those points they were riding or pointing at before I saw any other reporting from mass media.
Because Obama seems such an impressive candidate, I've gone through his policies. They're more than detailed enough, especially when you consider that whoever becomes the presidential candidate will have to change their policies to represent their party and not just their own point of view. The role of the President is not to write policy, but to lead the nation. So what is a "serious positive stand"? Or are you just using vague accusatory questions as per standard smear tactics?
You pointed out several items - such as the war - which weren't positive stands for Obama. Clinton is especially bad about moving all over the place to tell people what they want to hear, and all we hear out of Obama's camp is "change." I shouldn't have to dig deep to find what they stand for, and I haven't quite found it, outside of general party principles, which I oppose most of the time anyway.
Media ownership isn't necessarily conservative - they are more likely to be overwhelmingly corporatist (please don't confuse the two - they may overlap, but are not the same thing). Ted Turner isn't exactly the right's best friend...and Rupert Murdoch you pointed out is more along the lines of sensationalist than right-wing.
If you think that the everyday media here completely supports the government completely, you're watching something different. Sensationalist has sold under any administration, particularly the last two (as Clinton was a bit of a sensationalist president), and doesn't necessarily help. Think about Iraq - we RARELY hear positive - just body counts - and to pretend that the situation there is completely negative is ignorant and idiotic...and the lack of challenge to Hillary or Obama is amazing...neither has had to answer a difficult question yet or make a serious positive stand.
I think that we're seeing two sides of the same coin here...we have similar opinions and come to similar conclusions somewhat based on political bias.
No, but they're the ones paying the bills and making the most out of what you see on television...and they're the ones with the ultimate editorial control. They're the ones who put up the whole Britney-Paris claptrep and the "if it bleeds, it leads" type stories on the front page.
True - there are plenty of journalists out there ready and willing to go the sensationalist route out there, but the reason which they are is because of the guy who cuts the paychecks and a stupid viewing audience.
There may be millionaire journalists out there, but they aren't the ones pulling the purse strings and who reap the ultimate benefits.
I'll go a little step further - the bias of media OWNERSHIP is toward making money - which is why there is a lot on both sides of the aisle that is underreported (or poorly done).
One is precisely that journalists tend to be liberals and vote overwhelmingly Dem.
The prime example that you're looking for is Dan Rather's reporting on the whole GWB "AWOL" non-issue - he let his personal political opinion get in the way of good reporting. He may actually have been partially right, but underestimated the ability of the internet to search his claims out. Also, there is a decent amount of NON-reporting coming out of Iraq - the only headlines you see are who has been blown up. Success stories, stories with extreme detail, and some sort of attempts at really digging into the whole complcated situation (which is what Iraq is - this is not a black and white issue) gets washed away.
Also, you need to differentiate between journalists and media ownership. Editorial content tends to come from some of the money guys who control WHAT is reported - and thus you get the idiocy of Britney and Paris and other sensationalist issues. It's not about agenda or left/right - it's about money. The reporters themselves tend to be lefties.
You're confusing opinion content with news reporting. Journalists who form initial reports, as a rule, are left-leaning, and that bias leaks through most of the time (though not blatantly). You really have to know what to look for.
BTW, I've my MA in history - I know very well the liberal arts world, which is part of the reason I left it.
"Daily Show" is remarkably LESS biased than most media, actually. They really don't hold much back on anyone.
If you know what to listen for, you'll figure out fairly quickly who is slanted where, though. That is, if you care to listen...I pretty much stick to headlines (Drudgereport tends to be the best one, even though it's hardly a glorified news-link front page).
Eh, I extrapolated a little too far from your statement (you were a couple of words short of stating the media was full of right-wingers, and I read it in and it wasn't there. Unless that's your opinion.)
You have a very interesting definition of American left-wing politics. I'm guessing you lie somewhere around Stalinist-style military-forced Marxism, then.
Ummmm...so the tendancy of journalists - who graduate from liberal arts schools, and typically vote Democrat, is right-wing? Please.
Journalists are typically liberals, and newspaper owners are typically right-wing big corporation types (sans Ted Turner). Try listening to Rush when he breaks stuff down, big guy - it's pretty telling.
BTW, EVERYONE is biased in media. There has rarely - if ever - been true objectivity.
I find Rush at his best when he is doing analysis on the popular media. He breaks down - practically every day - the pronounced biases on the left of many media networks. True, there is a lot that goes unreported (which gives some credence to left-wing claims of right-wing media bias), but he shows how journalism is typically left of center.
Rush actually HAS a disability, which got hidden in his ADMITTED drug addiction. He's deaf (or was, before some implants) through complications. He didn't make a big deal of it until one day on radio he admitted it to his audience and went and got help. Hasn't spoken all that much more about it.
Hit up a local flea market, or find some out-of-the way store. There's a local guy at a flea market here in GA who sells them - the patent or something expired in Japan, and there's a couple of companies making systems that will play old cartridges.
Heck with that - go out and get you one of those nifty-keen-cool generic NES or NES/SNES systems. About the size of a book, TOP-LOADING, and $30 or so.
Slashdot Mirror
The socialization argument is bunk - that's the teachers' unions talking. Kids don't need to learn how to deal with people from other kids, they need to learn how from adults. I don't want my kids learning about drugs, sex, rock and roll from their peers - they need to learn it from me. I don't want them in environments where they get crappy self-esteem lessons from teachers and kids with idiot parents. I don't want them sitting in a classroom going over and over again on stuff they could have learned in 10 minutes and moved on to something else and more productive.
No thanks. Home and private education worked fine for hundreds of years before the late 1800s when public schools were invented to turn kids into wage slaves at factories.
And simply because a kid is home-schooled doesnt mean they don't have friends and get out more. We have churches and civic programs that kids need to be involved in as well.
Yet another reason that if/when I have kids, I'm homeschooling. They don't have to put up with juvenile behavior, learn how to socialize from adults and kids I get to choose, and generally stay ahead of the mediocrity known as public education.
No thanks, I'll opt out.
Wow, it's the original Duke Nukem Forever dev team!
Works for Drudgereport. Always has.
Don't wanna be a Canadian Idiot...don't wanna be a beer-swilling hockey nut...
Props to Weird Al!
Visitors to Cuba see a limited amount of what is going on, and rarely does the real thing show through. Everything that is in "Sicko" is what the Cuban government wanted America to see - it's all sanitized to try and convince audience what isn't there.
I understand that propoganda can utilize truth; however, it's only to a point - very selective. It's the nature of propoganda. Moore cuts and pastes and doesn't tell half the story.
"Leftist" I use because "liberal" can be too generic. Leftists are akin to people that are vehemently promoting what can be a Marxist viewpoint - and very militant about what they do (it's what the -ist suffix has come to define - a militant ideal). Sheehan, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore - they're leftists, IMHO.
Using Michael Moore - and Cuba - is a VERY bad example. Moore is nothing but a leftist (notice my non-use of the term liberal or left-wing here) propogandist.
We're talking about zombies and not commies, right?
Come to think of it...it's a zombie commie!...Or Fidel would want to be a Commie Zombie...
/ducks
No, you need something semi-automatic, at minimum...or a shotgun. Bolt-actions would be good for sniping, but not when those suckers get too close. I suggest an AK-47 or SKS...cheap ammo, easy to use, and easy to maintain.
Here is probably the biggest factor in our discussion - Euros have been removed for so long from decent right-wing politics that it's hard to recognize the good parts about it, or sometimes to even consider valid points that can have reasonable arguments (firearms for self-defense, pro-life positions, free market medical care, etc).
What are the things the Clintons were not challenged on by the media? Anything on a scale measured in dead Americans, trade and budget deficits, or significant increases in foreign ownership of US assets? Hillary hasn't been answering tough questions lately. Little about gun control, what she'll really do about Iraq or Afghanistan, how she plans to pay for ANYTHING she's promoting...I know that Europeans love the Clintons. I'm not sure if you can see how devisive a figure she is over here - she's one of the few people those of us on the right may be afraid of, because we see her almost as an outright Marxist.
During an internal selection process, it simply isn't the media's role to create the news and invent questions to satisfy the nutjobs in the other party. Filtering out smear tactics is entirely appropriate. You're concluding the media is biased on by doing what it is supposed to do. I thought you considered them to be the arbiters of accountability? There isn't any question they SHOULDN'T ask, in ANY stage of the electoral process. She should answer the same questions she would answer in the general election - which she will have to or be hit hard by the Republicans.
Obama's stance on the war has been consistent. If you don't think that's positive, then you really are as biased as you're pretending not to be. If you think voting to fund troops stuck in a war zone is the same as wanting to bring those troops home, you are quite simply wrong. Quite the contrary - it's a good vote if you're on the left. Funding the troops should be seen as a protection measure for them - it does NO good for them to be unfunded...it won't get them home sooner and it gets them the resources that they need. However, all that is heard out of the campaign is mostly the "hope, change, we can" stuff...but it's going to wind up being probably something along the lines of left of JFK politics.
"Completely supports" is an absolute, and a complete distortion of accusing someone of failing their oversight duties. It's logically equivalent to saying that the Democrat Congress completely supports Bush. This is the kind of nonsense that propagandists use.
So do you fall somewhere in between the whole left-wing/right-wing media debate, or do you discount the media altogether? Some of the angles I think you seem to take promotes a right-wing media that MOSTLY supports the presidency, but from this side, I can't see how - and I've studied this (not just taken Rush's word for it).
The presence of sensationalism is a given, but what are the actions of the Clinton administration that you feel did not receive coverage because instead they chose to discuss Britney? I don't recall any time where the entire planet was wishing to God someone would start challenging the Bush administration on its various abuses of their own country's principles.
How about few real challenges to Clinton from the media? Outside of the whole Lewinsky deal, which I felt they were almost forced to report on, the Clintons have had few challenges - especially recently - from the media. Tim Russert has been one of the few to call Clinton to carpet, and there has been little that doesn't challenge her pre-prepared answers to pre-prepared questions.
The reason you rarely hear positives about Iraq is because positives are rare. To believe the situation is generally (as compared to completely) negative is not ignorant and idiotic, but to talk once again in absolutes is.
I cede your point on the "completely" - stupid adverbs - but the point remains that too many reporters were holed up in hotels in Baghdad than out in the field like the initial invasion. I understand why many think it's "generally" negative, but I don't believe it's as bad as the mass media makes it out to be and not as good as the administration pushes.
What are the questions that are not being asked? Lack of experience, ties to slum landlords, an extremist liberal voting record, attendance at a Muslim school, divisive politics, failure to deliver on heathcare reform, relying on familiarity rather than achievement, voting for the war but claiming to be against it -these questions have all been asked. What is the difficult question you feel should be asked?
Most of which were out of the Clinton campaign before hitting the media, or filtered from them FIRST. Several of those points they were riding or pointing at before I saw any other reporting from mass media.
Because Obama seems such an impressive candidate, I've gone through his policies. They're more than detailed enough, especially when you consider that whoever becomes the presidential candidate will have to change their policies to represent their party and not just their own point of view. The role of the President is not to write policy, but to lead the nation. So what is a "serious positive stand"? Or are you just using vague accusatory questions as per standard smear tactics?
You pointed out several items - such as the war - which weren't positive stands for Obama. Clinton is especially bad about moving all over the place to tell people what they want to hear, and all we hear out of Obama's camp is "change." I shouldn't have to dig deep to find what they stand for, and I haven't quite found it, outside of general party principles, which I oppose most of the time anyway.
Media ownership isn't necessarily conservative - they are more likely to be overwhelmingly corporatist (please don't confuse the two - they may overlap, but are not the same thing). Ted Turner isn't exactly the right's best friend...and Rupert Murdoch you pointed out is more along the lines of sensationalist than right-wing.
If you think that the everyday media here completely supports the government completely, you're watching something different. Sensationalist has sold under any administration, particularly the last two (as Clinton was a bit of a sensationalist president), and doesn't necessarily help. Think about Iraq - we RARELY hear positive - just body counts - and to pretend that the situation there is completely negative is ignorant and idiotic...and the lack of challenge to Hillary or Obama is amazing...neither has had to answer a difficult question yet or make a serious positive stand.
I think that we're seeing two sides of the same coin here...we have similar opinions and come to similar conclusions somewhat based on political bias.
No, but they're the ones paying the bills and making the most out of what you see on television...and they're the ones with the ultimate editorial control. They're the ones who put up the whole Britney-Paris claptrep and the "if it bleeds, it leads" type stories on the front page.
True - there are plenty of journalists out there ready and willing to go the sensationalist route out there, but the reason which they are is because of the guy who cuts the paychecks and a stupid viewing audience.
There may be millionaire journalists out there, but they aren't the ones pulling the purse strings and who reap the ultimate benefits.
I'll go a little step further - the bias of media OWNERSHIP is toward making money - which is why there is a lot on both sides of the aisle that is underreported (or poorly done).
One is precisely that journalists tend to be liberals and vote overwhelmingly Dem.
The prime example that you're looking for is Dan Rather's reporting on the whole GWB "AWOL" non-issue - he let his personal political opinion get in the way of good reporting. He may actually have been partially right, but underestimated the ability of the internet to search his claims out. Also, there is a decent amount of NON-reporting coming out of Iraq - the only headlines you see are who has been blown up. Success stories, stories with extreme detail, and some sort of attempts at really digging into the whole complcated situation (which is what Iraq is - this is not a black and white issue) gets washed away.
Also, you need to differentiate between journalists and media ownership. Editorial content tends to come from some of the money guys who control WHAT is reported - and thus you get the idiocy of Britney and Paris and other sensationalist issues. It's not about agenda or left/right - it's about money. The reporters themselves tend to be lefties.
You're confusing opinion content with news reporting. Journalists who form initial reports, as a rule, are left-leaning, and that bias leaks through most of the time (though not blatantly). You really have to know what to look for.
BTW, I've my MA in history - I know very well the liberal arts world, which is part of the reason I left it.
"Daily Show" is remarkably LESS biased than most media, actually. They really don't hold much back on anyone.
If you know what to listen for, you'll figure out fairly quickly who is slanted where, though. That is, if you care to listen...I pretty much stick to headlines (Drudgereport tends to be the best one, even though it's hardly a glorified news-link front page).
Eh, I extrapolated a little too far from your statement (you were a couple of words short of stating the media was full of right-wingers, and I read it in and it wasn't there. Unless that's your opinion.)
My bad.
You have a very interesting definition of American left-wing politics. I'm guessing you lie somewhere around Stalinist-style military-forced Marxism, then.
Ummmm...so the tendancy of journalists - who graduate from liberal arts schools, and typically vote Democrat, is right-wing? Please.
Journalists are typically liberals, and newspaper owners are typically right-wing big corporation types (sans Ted Turner). Try listening to Rush when he breaks stuff down, big guy - it's pretty telling.
BTW, EVERYONE is biased in media. There has rarely - if ever - been true objectivity.
I find Rush at his best when he is doing analysis on the popular media. He breaks down - practically every day - the pronounced biases on the left of many media networks. True, there is a lot that goes unreported (which gives some credence to left-wing claims of right-wing media bias), but he shows how journalism is typically left of center.
Rush actually HAS a disability, which got hidden in his ADMITTED drug addiction. He's deaf (or was, before some implants) through complications. He didn't make a big deal of it until one day on radio he admitted it to his audience and went and got help. Hasn't spoken all that much more about it.
Hit up a local flea market, or find some out-of-the way store. There's a local guy at a flea market here in GA who sells them - the patent or something expired in Japan, and there's a couple of companies making systems that will play old cartridges.
Check http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/ces-2008-retro.htmlhere for what I'm talking about.
Heck with that - go out and get you one of those nifty-keen-cool generic NES or NES/SNES systems. About the size of a book, TOP-LOADING, and $30 or so.
Now that we're done comparing each others JOYSTICKS....