I'll take the left wing loons over the right wing ones any day of the week and twice on sundays.
Please note that one can be "left wing" and "right wing" and still believe in the Constitution and personal rights. There are those on both wings that tend to ignore certain parts of the Constitution when it suits them, that's not isolated to "right wing loons."
Once you get past Constitutional infringements (attempted and successful) on both extremist wings--which are bad and inappropriate on both sides--I'll take the remaining conservative platform over the liberal. Like George Carlin has said, "Pacificism is a nice idea, but it can get you killed." I also don't like the idea of liberals destroying our economy with high taxes on any income level, rich or poor. These kinds of things can be debated within the legal Constitutional framework and when you limit contemplating policy to that which is really Constitutionally permitted, the conservative side wins on the merits.
Don't let the excesses of the current administration (perceived or real) blind you to the reality that liberal fiscal policy is inherently unsustainable, and that liberal social policy leads society down a very destructive road. A conservative policy does not necessarily lead to fascism or theocracy but a liberal policy almost invariably leads towards socialism which history has demonstrated to be a failure.
Left: Looking after society from the bottom up.
Right: Looking after society from the top down.
Actually that's exactly backwards. The left tends to think big government ("top") can fix the problems of those below it. The right tends to think the opposite is true in that the lower levels (local charities, families, etc.) can fix the problems of those around it so top-down fixing isn't required.
People don't usually rob for the hell of it and people are not just criminals.
Again, I'd ask for proof of that. It would seem to me that in many areas there is a culture of crime and doing those crimes just for the hell of it. Gang initiations is a prime example.
They rob because they feel they have to.
That's a questionable assertion. If that's the case, about the only people we'd expect to see robbing would be homeless people. Those are people that are desperate and could arguably say they "needed" to. And yet I'd be willing to bet most robberies aren't committed by homeless people. They are committed by people that either grew up in a culture of crime and/or not because they need to, but because they want the extra money for that big-screen TV or for their drug habit.
The number of people robbing to literally put food in their mouth is extremely small, I'll bet.
By that i mean, it is understandable people stealing if they need it to live or for kids, or they are having mental difficulties/drug problem.
So mental difficulties or someone's drug problems makes it understandable or somehow more acceptable for them to steal? No!
If you truly think that people don't deserve rehab programs then ok, otherwise put your wallet behind your moral code and chip in.
It's not rehab programs that are bankrupting this country. It's social security, medicare, and other free money handouts. I don't have a problem with rehab programs at all. I think they're a good idea. It makes far more sense (and costs less money) to help people break addictions than handing them money with which to further finance those addictions.
Oh, and I do chip in. To the tune of about 40% of my total income last time I checked (that's federal + SS + FICA + state). It's sickening. It's one thing to chip in. It's quite another to be complete shook down.
Life-expectancy in sweden is 3yrs more, Infant mortality rate is 1/2, gov pays for 88.5% vs 44% of costs AND they spend less! $3,149 per capita vs $5,711 in the US (9.4% vs 15.2%).
Those numbers don't tell all the story. You need to compare the lifestyles, the attitudes, and the availability of service. People don't exactly go to Sweden for medical care. They come to the U.S. There's a reason for that.
The 'profit' motive you mention motivates companies to release lifetime use drugs not cures.
Ok... so exactly how many "cures" has Sweden come up with and released? Uh huh, that's what I thought.
But decreasing taxes also does not help the economy, if the decrement is on the taxes that rich people pay.
The rich are the only people that pay any significant amount of taxes. It's impossible to decrease taxes on someone that doesn't pay them. For example, if you wanted to give $200 billion in tax cuts, you'd have to give most of that to the rich because the "poor" paid much less than $30 billion in taxes in 2004 so, by definition, at least $170 billion would have to go to higher income citizens. That doesn't mean a tax cut is a bad idea, it just means a tax cut will be of direct benefit only to those who are paying taxes.
the rich people should pay more, the poor people should pay less.
That's a philosophical/political opinion, not a statement of fact--and many, myself included, would disagree with you.
Seriously, if I were paying 94% taxes on each dollar earned, I'd stop working until the end of the year when my time would immediately become more valuable.
I just wanted to mention that, a decade ago during the Clinton years, I would occasionally hear Rush Limbaugh when I was driving around as a courier. I'd hear him say something to the effect of "High taxes reduces the motivation to earn money. If taxes are too high, people will just stop working." At the time I thought he was crazy. After all, as long as taxes are less than 100%, you're still earning money. Why would I stop working if I could earn something.
It turns out, now that I'm more successful and can just barely break into some higher tax brackets on lucky years, that I've found myself putting off a lucrative deal until January rather than taking them in November or December precisely because my combined self-employment and income tax burden would be lower by putting it off to the next tax period. When I found myself thinking about that I swear I thought, "Oh my gosh... I thought Limbaugh was off his rocker when he made that claim a decade ago, but here I am doing exactly that!"
And that's with a tax rate that maxes out in the 30-40% area. If the tax rate were 94%, sheesh, charging $125/hour I'd be taking home $7.50/hour. You think I'm going to work for $7.50/hour? Heck no! I'd be on a beach or kicking back until January 1st where I could get closer to $100/hour. That doesn't contribute to the productivity of the country, but it's the only thing that makes sense to the individual.
As I said earlier, there is nothing progressive about a "progressive" tax. It's destructive. And the more "progressive" it is, the more destructive it is. It amazes me that liberals don't understand that. To even see a message mentioning 94% taxes and implying that it was somehow a good thing is insane. And worrisome.
I see you were appropriately modded as a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
The current administration started with lying propaganda from the start and the mainstream media was entirely complicit with the completely bullshit selling of this war on entirely false pretenses.
Nope. Saddam made an effort to convince Iran that he had WMDs. It was a calculated strategic deception on Saddam's part. His deception was so good that he pretty much fooled everyone. Putin said a few years ago that while he thought the Iraq war was a big mistake on Bush's part, he also said, "In his defense, we all thought Saddam had WMDs." So it wasn't just us/Bush that thought Saddam had WMDs. Pretty much the whole world did. It's spooky that so many other countries thought Saddam had them but weren't willing to do anything about it.
In any case, we can do away with that whole "Bush lied to go to Iraq" nonsense. That was debunked long ago. Most countries agreed with the U.S. that Saddam had WMDs so the case cannot be made that, in the run-up to the war, that it was an intentional deception on Bush's part.
They are scared to death of an informed population which is why we've heard nothing but blatant lies out of them.
The population has been misinformed by the liberal media, as I have said. The mainstream media parrots a bunch of Democratic party lines... not because the Democrats are right, but because the media is an extension of the Democratic party. The reason why support for the war in Iraq is so low is precisely because of the media. Consequently, Bush's low approval ratings are a direct result of the media's opposition to the war in Iraq. The fact that the economy's fundamentals were good (even with the sub-prime mess) but now things are going down a bit is precisely because the media has been scaremongering the country that a recession is coming which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have convinced the average citizen that Clinton had a surplus even though the national debt went up every year. They have been complicit in declaring the global warming debate "settled" even though it most definitely isn't. None of this is consistent with a right-leaning media. The exact opposite is clearly true.
The media, as an extension of the Democratic party due to the fact that the vast majority of those that work in the media are liberals, has been trying to destroy any and all support for Bush for years.
Why do you think there are still morons who think this war has anything to do with terrorism or protecting America? It's due to the government and the media conspiring together against the citizens.
Again, if you think the media is conspiring with this administration, you're blind. Or so completely out in the left-field of the political spectrum that Democrats look conservative to you. The war in Iraq does have relevancy in the war against terrorism but people as far left as you will never admit it--heck, they probably won't even understand the reasons why.
Me:I consider the vast majority of what is broadcast as supposedly neutral "news" to be biased and, in many cases, the propaganda arm of the Democratic party.
You: Then you are an ignorant delusional fool, completely divorced from reality. Not only is there no evidence for such a ridiculous idea, there isn't even a mechanism by which it could happen.
Of course there is. I would think that you be aware of the many surveys over the years that have found that those working in the media industry are overwhelming liberal. If you aren't are of this, you have no place in this discussion.
The MSM is owned by large corporations and run in the interests of those corporations. War makes cash so that's what they support.
I will agree that the MSM likes a good news feeding frenzy and so they love
Do you have any evidence to support that position? How many potential criminals do you think we're paying enough money to so that they think, "Oh, I was going to rob a gas station but since the government gave me $400 this month, I won't." I suspect the number is very low. And even if it isn't, that's basically a shakedown. "Here's $400, ok, don't commit crime." I don't agree that that's good policy.
The biggest factor contributing to our high prison population isn't poverty, it's drugs. Whether or not the war on drugs is a good idea is certainly something that can be debated, but it has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not a socialistic welfare state is a good idea.
The difference between a government managed health insurance scheme and the current privatised debacle, no profit being siphoned off, and heavy discounting of the cost of the services provided and no corporations running around with lawyers and excuses to reject claims or to kick people off once they need to make a claim.
What you theoretically save by reducing the profit motive (which also reduces the motive to innovate new drugs) is going to be dwarfed by the increased cost of government inefficiency and the fact that the more people see something as "free," they more they will use it. If it costs a $40 co-pay to see a doctor, I'm not going to go and see the doctor for a case of the sniffles. If it's free and I sniffle for more than a day or two, I just might do that.
Medicine and health care is subject to the laws of supply and demand. While it'd be great if those laws didn't apply to something as essential as health care, the reality is that they do apply. It can't be free and work.
The catch with the US military trying to hire bloggers for their propaganda, they could only ever get the third rate ones, the highest quality bloggers all oddly enough have strong liberal leaning, towards the truth.
I'd say that's a perfect case of your bias clouding your view of reality. There are surely plenty of conservative--even neocon--bloggers. Good ones. But I'm guessing you don't really seek out that point of view so you aren't going to know much about them.
No, my line of thinking is that the Iraq war is a quagmire that should never have been gotten into, and I don't buy that it was a mistake.
Virtually all nations--including those vocally opposed to the war--thought Saddam had WMDs. Even Putin, who said in the last few years that he thinks Iraq was Bush's biggest mistake, said that "in all fairness, we all thought Saddam had WMDs." So, yes, I think it's reasonable to "buy" that it was a case of mistaken intelligence. In Saddam's attempt to convince Iran that he had WMDs, he convinced the whole world. While it's sad that the primary reason for acting at that point in time was apparently mistaken, the fact that most of the world also thought he had WMDs but was willing to do nothing is nearly as worrisome.
The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour. When that happens, you know that they consider YOU a threat to themselves. And that strongly implies that your interests are not their interests.
The same could be said of the mainstream media which is, arguably, why the government under the current administration and military feel the need to counter with what some consider to be propaganda. It's not the government or the military fears the citizens of the United States, they fear the consequences of those citizens only being influenced by the propaganda of the mainstream media which is no more pure than that produced by the administration/military.
Propaganda is a point of view. I consider the vast majority of what is broadcast as supposedly neutral "news" to be biased and, in many cases, the propaganda arm of the Democratic party. For example, any news source that repeats (or tolerates someone claiming) that Clinton ever ran a surplus should immediately be assumed to be either ignorant and inept as a reporter, or an agent of the Democratic party.
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
Sure, I'll do that. As long as I can reduce the amount I pay in taxes to things I don't support.
FDR didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with a tax cut.
Neither did Bush. Bush responded with a tax cut to try to help a struggling economy and because lowering taxes is the right thing to do even with a healthy economy.
Hell during WW2 the highest tax rate reached ninety-four percent.
Which is patently absurd. And JFK realized that and started the reduction of taxes to non-socialistic levels. Seriously, if I were paying 94% taxes on each dollar earned, I'd stop working until the end of the year when my time would immediately become more valuable. There is nothing progressive about a progressive tax--it's absolutely destructive. Especially at such confiscatory levels like 94%.
And Bush wouldn't even consider reversing his own ill advised tax cuts to help pay for the war.
Slowing the economy by increasing taxes isn't going to help generate income. It's just going to further slow the economy and hurt everyone, rich and poor, and create less tax revenue because the economy is being further punished by a destructive tax policy.
Reasoned discourse is good, marketing disguised as reasoned discourse is dishonest.
If all the bloggers are against the war maybe that might suggest that folks aren't too keen on our being there and ought to leave? OTOH if all the bloggers are for the war then they should stop whining about taxes, especially those with "support the troop" stickers.
So your line of thinking is that, regardless, Republicans are wrong. Gotcha. Good reasoned discourse. You're part of the problem, sir.
Who needs propaganda bloggers when you have fools like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly?
A few talk show hosts do not counter the propaganda that is the leftist mainstream media. All media is propaganda from someone's point of view. If "the news" was actually news rather than the propaganda arm of the Democratic party, talk show hosts and a lot of bloggers would have a lot less to talk about.
The article mentions that Comcast doesn't compress local stations, but I just dropped my Comcast service in Washington, DC and was surprised at how much nicer the OTA broadcasts look on my 1080 HDTV.
I don't know what's going on with my Comcast (and I haven't verified that it's still happening, but it was last week), but my local HDTV channels suddenly started appearing in reduced size! They used to fill up my 1080 HDTV but now it's like I have a nice black border and the picture is probably 70% of the screen. Now I guess there's a possibility it's my hardware or TV--like I said, I haven't verified it or tried to troubleshoot it. But I have no reason to think it's my hardware since I didn't change any configurations. I actually ended up watching what I wanted to watch on the non-HDTV version of the channel so it'd be full-screen.
But this only happened on the local channels, and I verified it was all of the HDTV local channels. But other non-local HDTV channels weren't suffering that (kind of eliminates hardware configuration as the culprit).
If this is ongoing and intentional I'll probably be dropping Comcast. I can get by with the non-HDTV channels even on my 46" HDTV, I'm not that picky... but I don't see any reason to pay for that kind of service if it was intentional.
See, you almost made it. You were doing really well, right up until the end there, where you showed your own bias.
I wasn't trying to hide it--you see, you knew exactly where I was coming from. I'd have much less of a problem with the MSM if every reporter/talk-show/etc. stated his political preference and, perhaps, his voting record in the last four elections. That way we'd know where he's coming from. The problem is that so much "news" is presented as an unbiased presentation of the facts when it most definitely is not.
There are "liberal 'professionals'" just as there are "conservative professionals" and choosing to point at either side as the problem while not pointing at the other side, is where the real problem comes into play.
All bias aside, it is generally accepted that the MSM leans to the left--it's just a matter of how far to the left. Sure, there are exceptions. But the reality is that the MSM is overwhelmingly liberal. Things like Fox aren't nearly as far "right" as some would suggest--it's just the fact that they aren't as left as we are accustomed to makes it easy to mock them.
The sad thing isn't that Fox is mocked for being too far to the right; the sad thing is that the rest of the media isn't mocked for being as far left as it is. At least not in "polite" circles.
* I personally don't watch Fox and rarely visit their website for news. I usually read the CNN website (with my bias filter on) and/or international sources.
As the trend continues, people are going to be even less likely to hear opposing points of view. If your circle of friends is the only group that sends you news, and your circle of friends tends to think/agree with your point of view, you'll be even more insulated.
Yep, it's going to lead to further political polarization in the U.S. You're going to tend to only see/read news that positively reinforces the beliefs you already have or confirms your negative views of the opposing position. You're not going to see those items that undermine your position or substantiates the opposing one.
Whether or not that is any worse than the news being filtered by a bunch of liberal "professionals" like CNN, New York Times, etc. is left as an exercise for the reader.
A modular approach could also allow the company to make functionality available on a time-limited basis, potentially allowing users to 'rent' a feature if it's needed on a one-off basis. Microsoft is already testing 'pay as you go' consumer subscriptions in developing countries."
Windows is already pirated left and right and that's when it's a one-time cost to buy legally. And they think people are going to go for a subscription model? Good luck with that.
I don't have any pirated Windows because the machines I have with Windows came with a Windows license. But I can guarantee you I'd never buy a computer just so I can start paying a monthly fee to use the OS.
If they have this equipment at all the major crossings and on the interstates, imagine the cost and the amount of money that has been spent on these type of projects.
Good! I'm not sure I like the idea of such scanning within the country, even near the border, but I definitely support it at the border. Anyone that travels internationally should know and accept that whenever they cross a border, they may be subject to intense scrutiny by the country they're entering.
I'm an American but I lived in Mexico for a decade. I don't know how many times I crossed the border (both before AND after 9/11), had my passport in hand, and the border guard just asked "Are you an American citizen?" and I replied, "Yes" and they waived me through. Now, sure, they can be jerks so it was always nice to get through with no hassles. But at the same time I couldn't help but feel this was a completely unacceptable level of security. Granted, I looked American, sounded American, and had American plates on my car, but is that all that should be required to avoid further inspection?
When I finally moved back from Mexico into the U.S. I had 10 years of stuff packed in shipping boxes. I made two runs to move my stuff, 8 shipping boxes in my SUV in each run. Both times they flagged me into the "further inspection" area, but all they did was ask for my passport, run it through the computer, and had their dogs sniff my car with the doors open. I was fully prepared with a pretty detailed list of what each numbered box contained just to make it easier when they wanted to look in the boxes or at least ask what was in them. They did neither. They didn't even open a single box just as a random, representative sample. They just asked, "Moving back to the U.S.?" "Yep!" "Welcome home!"
Again, I appreciated the lack of hassle but I couldn't help but feel that this was completely inadequate border defense.
If our border defense is iron-clad, protecting against both substances and people, we could get by with a lot less domestic security.
You are right to fear the FBI. Now they have a one click way to harass, smear and jail the political and economic opposition they have spent the last few years identifying. Detention centers have been built and police have been practicing mass arrests. Arbitrary arrest and torture of opposition, this is how democracy dies.
Yeah, I heard that conspiracy theory, too, back in the 90's before Clinton was getting his blowjobs. You forgot to mention the black helicopters, though!
and those who were shown the Apple logo generated more creative ideas after the test than did those who were shown the IBM logo.
Footnote: The definition of "creative" was defined and judged by "objective" Apple representatives--whatever "objective" means when it comes to judging how "creative" something is.
Great. If mods and add-ons could be more seamlessly added, that'd be great. But upgrading your phpBB when it has a half dozen mods and modifications twisted into the code is daunting at best.
'Time claims that "nobody cares" about the Government's increased spying powers and that "polling consistently supports that conclusion." They don't cite a single poll because that assertion is blatantly false. Just this weekend, a new poll released by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University proves that exactly the opposite is true. That poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is "very secretive" has doubled in the last two years alone (to 44%)'"
I have no idea what the truth is on this matter, but the fact that "nobody cares" is not refuted by "the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is 'very secretive' has doubled... to 44%." Simply put, it's entirely possible more people believe the government is more secretive--but they simply don't care.
It's not in any way shocking to learn that people are apathetic. If you ask them whether they want a secretive government, most people will say no. But if you use an objective metric it's very easy to conclude that those same people really don't care that strongly one way or the other.
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Please note that one can be "left wing" and "right wing" and still believe in the Constitution and personal rights. There are those on both wings that tend to ignore certain parts of the Constitution when it suits them, that's not isolated to "right wing loons."
Once you get past Constitutional infringements (attempted and successful) on both extremist wings--which are bad and inappropriate on both sides--I'll take the remaining conservative platform over the liberal. Like George Carlin has said, "Pacificism is a nice idea, but it can get you killed." I also don't like the idea of liberals destroying our economy with high taxes on any income level, rich or poor. These kinds of things can be debated within the legal Constitutional framework and when you limit contemplating policy to that which is really Constitutionally permitted, the conservative side wins on the merits.
Don't let the excesses of the current administration (perceived or real) blind you to the reality that liberal fiscal policy is inherently unsustainable, and that liberal social policy leads society down a very destructive road. A conservative policy does not necessarily lead to fascism or theocracy but a liberal policy almost invariably leads towards socialism which history has demonstrated to be a failure.
Actually that's exactly backwards. The left tends to think big government ("top") can fix the problems of those below it. The right tends to think the opposite is true in that the lower levels (local charities, families, etc.) can fix the problems of those around it so top-down fixing isn't required.
Again, I'd ask for proof of that. It would seem to me that in many areas there is a culture of crime and doing those crimes just for the hell of it. Gang initiations is a prime example.
That's a questionable assertion. If that's the case, about the only people we'd expect to see robbing would be homeless people. Those are people that are desperate and could arguably say they "needed" to. And yet I'd be willing to bet most robberies aren't committed by homeless people. They are committed by people that either grew up in a culture of crime and/or not because they need to, but because they want the extra money for that big-screen TV or for their drug habit.
The number of people robbing to literally put food in their mouth is extremely small, I'll bet.
So mental difficulties or someone's drug problems makes it understandable or somehow more acceptable for them to steal? No!
It's not rehab programs that are bankrupting this country. It's social security, medicare, and other free money handouts. I don't have a problem with rehab programs at all. I think they're a good idea. It makes far more sense (and costs less money) to help people break addictions than handing them money with which to further finance those addictions.
Oh, and I do chip in. To the tune of about 40% of my total income last time I checked (that's federal + SS + FICA + state). It's sickening. It's one thing to chip in. It's quite another to be complete shook down.
Those numbers don't tell all the story. You need to compare the lifestyles, the attitudes, and the availability of service. People don't exactly go to Sweden for medical care. They come to the U.S. There's a reason for that.
Ok... so exactly how many "cures" has Sweden come up with and released? Uh huh, that's what I thought.
The rich are the only people that pay any significant amount of taxes. It's impossible to decrease taxes on someone that doesn't pay them. For example, if you wanted to give $200 billion in tax cuts, you'd have to give most of that to the rich because the "poor" paid much less than $30 billion in taxes in 2004 so, by definition, at least $170 billion would have to go to higher income citizens. That doesn't mean a tax cut is a bad idea, it just means a tax cut will be of direct benefit only to those who are paying taxes.
That's a philosophical/political opinion, not a statement of fact--and many, myself included, would disagree with you.
Replying to myself...
I just wanted to mention that, a decade ago during the Clinton years, I would occasionally hear Rush Limbaugh when I was driving around as a courier. I'd hear him say something to the effect of "High taxes reduces the motivation to earn money. If taxes are too high, people will just stop working." At the time I thought he was crazy. After all, as long as taxes are less than 100%, you're still earning money. Why would I stop working if I could earn something.
It turns out, now that I'm more successful and can just barely break into some higher tax brackets on lucky years, that I've found myself putting off a lucrative deal until January rather than taking them in November or December precisely because my combined self-employment and income tax burden would be lower by putting it off to the next tax period. When I found myself thinking about that I swear I thought, "Oh my gosh... I thought Limbaugh was off his rocker when he made that claim a decade ago, but here I am doing exactly that!"
And that's with a tax rate that maxes out in the 30-40% area. If the tax rate were 94%, sheesh, charging $125/hour I'd be taking home $7.50/hour. You think I'm going to work for $7.50/hour? Heck no! I'd be on a beach or kicking back until January 1st where I could get closer to $100/hour. That doesn't contribute to the productivity of the country, but it's the only thing that makes sense to the individual.
As I said earlier, there is nothing progressive about a "progressive" tax. It's destructive. And the more "progressive" it is, the more destructive it is. It amazes me that liberals don't understand that. To even see a message mentioning 94% taxes and implying that it was somehow a good thing is insane. And worrisome.
I see you were appropriately modded as a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
Nope. Saddam made an effort to convince Iran that he had WMDs. It was a calculated strategic deception on Saddam's part. His deception was so good that he pretty much fooled everyone. Putin said a few years ago that while he thought the Iraq war was a big mistake on Bush's part, he also said, "In his defense, we all thought Saddam had WMDs." So it wasn't just us/Bush that thought Saddam had WMDs. Pretty much the whole world did. It's spooky that so many other countries thought Saddam had them but weren't willing to do anything about it.
In any case, we can do away with that whole "Bush lied to go to Iraq" nonsense. That was debunked long ago. Most countries agreed with the U.S. that Saddam had WMDs so the case cannot be made that, in the run-up to the war, that it was an intentional deception on Bush's part.
The population has been misinformed by the liberal media, as I have said. The mainstream media parrots a bunch of Democratic party lines... not because the Democrats are right, but because the media is an extension of the Democratic party. The reason why support for the war in Iraq is so low is precisely because of the media. Consequently, Bush's low approval ratings are a direct result of the media's opposition to the war in Iraq. The fact that the economy's fundamentals were good (even with the sub-prime mess) but now things are going down a bit is precisely because the media has been scaremongering the country that a recession is coming which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have convinced the average citizen that Clinton had a surplus even though the national debt went up every year. They have been complicit in declaring the global warming debate "settled" even though it most definitely isn't. None of this is consistent with a right-leaning media. The exact opposite is clearly true.
The media, as an extension of the Democratic party due to the fact that the vast majority of those that work in the media are liberals, has been trying to destroy any and all support for Bush for years.
Again, if you think the media is conspiring with this administration, you're blind. Or so completely out in the left-field of the political spectrum that Democrats look conservative to you. The war in Iraq does have relevancy in the war against terrorism but people as far left as you will never admit it--heck, they probably won't even understand the reasons why.
Of course there is. I would think that you be aware of the many surveys over the years that have found that those working in the media industry are overwhelming liberal. If you aren't are of this, you have no place in this discussion.
I will agree that the MSM likes a good news feeding frenzy and so they love
Do you have any evidence to support that position? How many potential criminals do you think we're paying enough money to so that they think, "Oh, I was going to rob a gas station but since the government gave me $400 this month, I won't." I suspect the number is very low. And even if it isn't, that's basically a shakedown. "Here's $400, ok, don't commit crime." I don't agree that that's good policy.
The biggest factor contributing to our high prison population isn't poverty, it's drugs. Whether or not the war on drugs is a good idea is certainly something that can be debated, but it has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not a socialistic welfare state is a good idea.
What you theoretically save by reducing the profit motive (which also reduces the motive to innovate new drugs) is going to be dwarfed by the increased cost of government inefficiency and the fact that the more people see something as "free," they more they will use it. If it costs a $40 co-pay to see a doctor, I'm not going to go and see the doctor for a case of the sniffles. If it's free and I sniffle for more than a day or two, I just might do that.
Medicine and health care is subject to the laws of supply and demand. While it'd be great if those laws didn't apply to something as essential as health care, the reality is that they do apply. It can't be free and work.
I'd say that's a perfect case of your bias clouding your view of reality. There are surely plenty of conservative--even neocon--bloggers. Good ones. But I'm guessing you don't really seek out that point of view so you aren't going to know much about them.
Virtually all nations--including those vocally opposed to the war--thought Saddam had WMDs. Even Putin, who said in the last few years that he thinks Iraq was Bush's biggest mistake, said that "in all fairness, we all thought Saddam had WMDs." So, yes, I think it's reasonable to "buy" that it was a case of mistaken intelligence. In Saddam's attempt to convince Iran that he had WMDs, he convinced the whole world. While it's sad that the primary reason for acting at that point in time was apparently mistaken, the fact that most of the world also thought he had WMDs but was willing to do nothing is nearly as worrisome.
The same could be said of the mainstream media which is, arguably, why the government under the current administration and military feel the need to counter with what some consider to be propaganda. It's not the government or the military fears the citizens of the United States, they fear the consequences of those citizens only being influenced by the propaganda of the mainstream media which is no more pure than that produced by the administration/military.
Propaganda is a point of view. I consider the vast majority of what is broadcast as supposedly neutral "news" to be biased and, in many cases, the propaganda arm of the Democratic party. For example, any news source that repeats (or tolerates someone claiming) that Clinton ever ran a surplus should immediately be assumed to be either ignorant and inept as a reporter, or an agent of the Democratic party.
Sure, I'll do that. As long as I can reduce the amount I pay in taxes to things I don't support.
Neither did Bush. Bush responded with a tax cut to try to help a struggling economy and because lowering taxes is the right thing to do even with a healthy economy.
Which is patently absurd. And JFK realized that and started the reduction of taxes to non-socialistic levels. Seriously, if I were paying 94% taxes on each dollar earned, I'd stop working until the end of the year when my time would immediately become more valuable. There is nothing progressive about a progressive tax--it's absolutely destructive. Especially at such confiscatory levels like 94%.
Slowing the economy by increasing taxes isn't going to help generate income. It's just going to further slow the economy and hurt everyone, rich and poor, and create less tax revenue because the economy is being further punished by a destructive tax policy.
So your line of thinking is that, regardless, Republicans are wrong. Gotcha. Good reasoned discourse. You're part of the problem, sir.
A few talk show hosts do not counter the propaganda that is the leftist mainstream media. All media is propaganda from someone's point of view. If "the news" was actually news rather than the propaganda arm of the Democratic party, talk show hosts and a lot of bloggers would have a lot less to talk about.
I don't know what's going on with my Comcast (and I haven't verified that it's still happening, but it was last week), but my local HDTV channels suddenly started appearing in reduced size! They used to fill up my 1080 HDTV but now it's like I have a nice black border and the picture is probably 70% of the screen. Now I guess there's a possibility it's my hardware or TV--like I said, I haven't verified it or tried to troubleshoot it. But I have no reason to think it's my hardware since I didn't change any configurations. I actually ended up watching what I wanted to watch on the non-HDTV version of the channel so it'd be full-screen.
But this only happened on the local channels, and I verified it was all of the HDTV local channels. But other non-local HDTV channels weren't suffering that (kind of eliminates hardware configuration as the culprit).
If this is ongoing and intentional I'll probably be dropping Comcast. I can get by with the non-HDTV channels even on my 46" HDTV, I'm not that picky... but I don't see any reason to pay for that kind of service if it was intentional.
I wonder if anyone would want to buy it??
I wasn't trying to hide it--you see, you knew exactly where I was coming from. I'd have much less of a problem with the MSM if every reporter/talk-show/etc. stated his political preference and, perhaps, his voting record in the last four elections. That way we'd know where he's coming from. The problem is that so much "news" is presented as an unbiased presentation of the facts when it most definitely is not.
All bias aside, it is generally accepted that the MSM leans to the left--it's just a matter of how far to the left. Sure, there are exceptions. But the reality is that the MSM is overwhelmingly liberal. Things like Fox aren't nearly as far "right" as some would suggest--it's just the fact that they aren't as left as we are accustomed to makes it easy to mock them.
The sad thing isn't that Fox is mocked for being too far to the right; the sad thing is that the rest of the media isn't mocked for being as far left as it is. At least not in "polite" circles.
* I personally don't watch Fox and rarely visit their website for news. I usually read the CNN website (with my bias filter on) and/or international sources.
Yep, it's going to lead to further political polarization in the U.S. You're going to tend to only see/read news that positively reinforces the beliefs you already have or confirms your negative views of the opposing position. You're not going to see those items that undermine your position or substantiates the opposing one.
Whether or not that is any worse than the news being filtered by a bunch of liberal "professionals" like CNN, New York Times, etc. is left as an exercise for the reader.
Windows is already pirated left and right and that's when it's a one-time cost to buy legally. And they think people are going to go for a subscription model? Good luck with that.
I don't have any pirated Windows because the machines I have with Windows came with a Windows license. But I can guarantee you I'd never buy a computer just so I can start paying a monthly fee to use the OS.
Good! I'm not sure I like the idea of such scanning within the country, even near the border, but I definitely support it at the border. Anyone that travels internationally should know and accept that whenever they cross a border, they may be subject to intense scrutiny by the country they're entering.
I'm an American but I lived in Mexico for a decade. I don't know how many times I crossed the border (both before AND after 9/11), had my passport in hand, and the border guard just asked "Are you an American citizen?" and I replied, "Yes" and they waived me through. Now, sure, they can be jerks so it was always nice to get through with no hassles. But at the same time I couldn't help but feel this was a completely unacceptable level of security. Granted, I looked American, sounded American, and had American plates on my car, but is that all that should be required to avoid further inspection?
When I finally moved back from Mexico into the U.S. I had 10 years of stuff packed in shipping boxes. I made two runs to move my stuff, 8 shipping boxes in my SUV in each run. Both times they flagged me into the "further inspection" area, but all they did was ask for my passport, run it through the computer, and had their dogs sniff my car with the doors open. I was fully prepared with a pretty detailed list of what each numbered box contained just to make it easier when they wanted to look in the boxes or at least ask what was in them. They did neither. They didn't even open a single box just as a random, representative sample. They just asked, "Moving back to the U.S.?" "Yep!" "Welcome home!"
Again, I appreciated the lack of hassle but I couldn't help but feel that this was completely inadequate border defense.
If our border defense is iron-clad, protecting against both substances and people, we could get by with a lot less domestic security.
Yeah, I heard that conspiracy theory, too, back in the 90's before Clinton was getting his blowjobs. You forgot to mention the black helicopters, though!
Footnote: The definition of "creative" was defined and judged by "objective" Apple representatives--whatever "objective" means when it comes to judging how "creative" something is.
Great. If mods and add-ons could be more seamlessly added, that'd be great. But upgrading your phpBB when it has a half dozen mods and modifications twisted into the code is daunting at best.
And I'm sure American Slashdotters is a statistically valid subset of the American people, right?
I have no idea what the truth is on this matter, but the fact that "nobody cares" is not refuted by "the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is 'very secretive' has doubled... to 44%." Simply put, it's entirely possible more people believe the government is more secretive--but they simply don't care.
It's not in any way shocking to learn that people are apathetic. If you ask them whether they want a secretive government, most people will say no. But if you use an objective metric it's very easy to conclude that those same people really don't care that strongly one way or the other.
Exactly. I'll adjust by using my normal $70 DVD player, probably for years to come.
Who cares? Beatles are overrated and so is iTunes. I guess in that sense they are meant for each other.