all the blathering about an invasion is nothing more than right-wing FUD.
you can believe this if you want, but Obama is going to have to deal with this statement. I wish him luck, but expect him to have to eat a lot of crow to appease the Pakistani government on this point.
most other countries favored Obama over McCain
Says who exactly? Besides, if they want a say in the election there are ways of joining the union just like all of the other states did and getting a say, otherwise it's not their call. Ultimately this is tangential to the point I was making. I wasn't implying that their opinion matters as to who we should elect, but that Obama is going to have to deal with the bad blood his reckless statements will create between the Pakistani government and his own administration. I don't feel comfortable with the Pres-elect being so myopic as to ignore how is words will be interpreted by the Pakistani people, not because the Pakistani people should have a say in our elections, but because they do have a say in the Pakistani government and it's policy with regards to cooperating with us.
Besides I don't see why you are arguing with me on this point. No one I've spoken with, my wife included (she voted for Obama), felt that Obama had made a smart call in making that statement and the refusing to back down from it. As I said before, there is a difference between whether I feel that he should be willing to do such a thing, and whether I think it's intelligent to SAY IT on the record.
your statements clearly show that you have not actually heard or read Obama's statements.
I did actually hear what Obama said. I watched the debates where he was allowed to defend and explain what he meant by what he'd said previously (It came up during the 2nd Presidential debate). I gave him the benefit of the doubt and even agree with the sentiment. However, to state publicly that you are willing to violate the sovereignty of an allies borders against their wishes is a stupid thing to say. I admit that both candidates probably would have OK'd an operation to do what Obama said if conditions were right, but only Obama was stupid enough to say it on national television as a virtual "Fuck YOU" to the Pakistani people. This takes away the option of "Plausible Deniability" . If they run an OP inside Pakistan and a bunch of civilians die (or what cannot be identified as soldiers) it'll be much harder for Obama to claim it wasn't the US than it would have been for McCain. Now Obama has to hope that Bin Ladin isn't vicious enough to blow up a couple of villages and blame it on American military forces trying to get at him.
You, Obama, and most other people who defend his comments appear to have forgotten that Americans are not the only people paying attention to the Presidential Election.
At no point in time did I ever agree with the invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq.
But you seem to OK the invasion of the sovereign nation of Pakistan. Let me see if you can see the contradiction. It's NOT OK to invade a sovereign nation, with whom we've previously gone to war, and never actually declared peace with. Instead we declared a cease-fire, a no-fly-zone, and had to put up with the occasional pot shot from ground to air missiles aimed at our airmen patrolling the no-fly-zone.
However, it IS OK to invade a sovereign nation we've never gone to war with because they are not doing a good enough job tracking down a man we haven't even been able to find who isn't even a citizen of their country despite their difficult political situation making them pariahs within their own community for aiding the US.
There was no mention of an invasion.
This illustrates your naivete as it pertains to political borders, and is simply a case of splitting hairs. We need permission from Pakistan to cross their borders, just like Mexicans and Canadians need permission to cross the border into the US, except more so if we plan on sending in Armed and Trained Military Personnel. If Obama were to ok a MILITARY action INSIDE the borders of Pakistan, that would be tantamount to a declaration of war. You may not think a violation of Pakistans border for a short operation to apprehend one man is a big deal, but I guarantee you those elements within the Pakistani Government and Society that are not comfortable cooperating with the US will use this as a rallying flag. How else would you explain it? "Oh, don't mind us. We are just going to violate your borders and international treaties. We'll be gone before you know it." If you HONESTLY believe it's OK to perform military maneuvers within a sovereign state that we are allied with against their will, then I don't see what your problem is with our having invaded Iraq. Besides, what if the op is a failure? What if we end up killing a bunch of innocent people. What if that happens more than once. Their is no guarantee of success in any military operation.
instead of reading conservative analysis
So by this statement I take it you believe their is "Conservative Analysis" and "The Truth". That's just a deflection because you don't like the points I'm raising. Their is nothing fundamentally evil about either party or wing of political thought (Right/Left, Liberal/Conservative). Neither is fundamentally more or less correct than the other by it's very nature. However, their can be flaws in the arguments used to support either side and by dismissing anything that can be characterized as "Conservative" is exceedingly myopic.
Case in point, their are many on this forum that believe the Republican/Conservatives to be and always to have been Pro-War, but it was the Republicans that wanted to stay out of WWII and a Democrat in the White house that kept trying to get America involved. Turns out he didn't need to try so hard, Japan took care of that motivation for him. But the point remains, their is no issue that is so fundamentally one party or the other that over the course of time it won't switch off. Another example is balancing the federal budget. I grew up to the Dems saying it wasn't important and the Republicans pointing to it as evidence of how disconnected the Dems were. Now we have a Republican Pres who's blown through more $ than any before him and racked up record debt while the Dems turn the issue around and hammer at him for wasteful spending and a need to balance the budget.
Hence it is not conclusive that the surge was the only thing that improved the ground situation in Baghdad.
No one said that the Surge was the ONLY thing that improved the situation on the ground but the decrease in violence was greater than can be accounted for by it being the summer. If you take economics ideas and look at change in violence year-to-year within the same financial quarter there is still a huge reduction in violence where the surge was active. The trick is to extend the effect of the surge to a larger portion of the country by creating an environment that acts as an incubator for grass roots movements like the Sunni Awakening. The only way you can look the surge as only being a minor player in the improvements in Iraq are if you refuse to accept the possibility that the Bush administration finally got it at least partially right.
There is almost no similarity at all between WWII and the war in Iraq.
They were both armed conflicts in foreign countries where the majority of the US population didn't want us to get involved because when we are at peace, most americans lean toward Isolationism. The point I was trying to make was that no war, even the "Good" wars (being ones we haven't strung up our leaders for getting into) has a fixed end point. You keep tossing around the idea that we should know when we are getting out, but thats naive at best. The conditions for leaving Iraq have been laid out previously. They need to be able to provide for their own security and we need to be relatively sure they won't devolve into a civil war once we leave. The instability in Iraq is OUR fault. Even if you disapproved of every bad decision Bush made, you are a citizen of the country that elected him and we are all responsible for fixing the situation we created. Running away because we don't like the prospects is irresponsible.
WWII ended with unconditional surrenders.
No it didn't. We had soldiers placed all over Europe and southeast Asia for decades. We still have many of those bases that were originally set up to keep any eye on Japan, Germany, and Italy. The major difference has to do with the fact that Iraq was a country born out of British colonialism, not a defined national identity and so the loss of a brutal dictator at the top and the atrophy of normal political dialogue during his reign have left a country that is going to have to figure out who it is before it can decide who it wants to be.
Even the most rugged terrain in the US is pretty accessible in comparison to some parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Obama was not talking about invading Pakistan because the Pakistani would have difficulty finding the coordinates. Your use of this argument just proves that you know little about the political situation in Pakistan. The region we are talking about is only nominally part of Pakistan. If we were to invade this section of Pakistan it would signal our belief that Pakistan is not capable of governing it's people and our claims of friendship would be seen as two faced lies. And Rightly SO!
If you want to apologize for every stupid remark and decision Obama makes over the next 4 to 8 years, feel free, just don't expect the rest of us to drink the Kool-Aid as well.
ou must have missed the presidential debates. Obama agreed that the conditions in Iraq improved after the surge. However you cannot study a war in a vacuum and stating that the surge was the one and only reason for those improved conditions is just not logical.
I'll admit I missed the 3rd presidential debate, but I didn't miss the previous 2 and he didn't admit that the surge worked, he admitted that the situation had improved. That is not the same thing politically because the former would require he admit he'd been wrong and the second allows him to credit the improvements to what ever other actions have taken place without admitting he'd been wrong.
The second half of your statement implies that you believe the surge wasn't the primary motivator of the improvements, and that they may have occurred without the surge. As the brother of 2 military personnel and friend of several more, I can assure you that the surge was the primary motivator. Other events took place (Sunni Awakening) but they were as successful as they were because of the Surge.
However the war in Iraq is different in that there have never been any clearly defined goals for ending the war. Most other overseas conflicts have had set endpoints - the invasion of Iraq does not.
No, the Iraq war has always had a defined end. When Iraq is stable enough to take care of it's own defense and governance without the aid of our military and bureaucratic machine. They haven't reached that point, and we can't predict the day on the calendar when that will happen, but that's not the same as not having an end point. Similarly, in WWII the end was the liberation of Europe and the South Pacific via the defeat of German and Japanese military machines, respectively. We didn't know when, or even IF we would win, but that doesn't mean their wasn't a vague plan for how and when the conflict would end. We were just spoiled by the first Iraq war and now believe that every armed conflict should run so smoothly despite the difference in goals. Rolling back an invasion force is a lot easier than invading and holding a country and trying to build a new government from the ashes of the old.
If Canada or Mexico said they'd initiate military actions within the continental US using attack helicopters and Special Forces Personnel, I doubt you would see it as acceptable and not as an unprovoked act of aggression worthy of a potential declaration of war. If we initiate military action inside Pakistan, a nation that is barely remaining secular and pro-US, that would a violation of their national sovereignty. We already have a reputation of treating other nations as second and third class citizens of the global community. I was under the impression that one of Obama's main goals was to repair the US reputation and generate good will towards the US, Or was that only meant to apply to European nations.
The trick to surviving UMass is giving the impression that you believe what ever the crazies tell you. No one is more polarized (politically, socially, etc.) than they are at college, and students at the Amherst campus appear to be even crazier than the norm for undergraduates.
It's easier if your already a liberal Dem, which I was not, because then you won't have to deal with everyone trying to change your political views all the time.
I'm still in school, and while I knew that some schools were rated better than others, I also knew that your education is what you make of it. That's why I went
2 years at community college (HCC) 2 years at a State university (UMass Amherst) 3 years on a MS at a prestegious University within my field (Purdue). 3 years and counting on a PhD at the same university.
No student loans at Community college. 33% off of my tuition at UMass b/c I had a 3.8 at HCC. I had offers at 2 other Universities at the end of MS that were also offering tuition remission and a monthly stipend I could live on. As a result I've got 10 years worth of college education and only 2 years of student loans, neither year of which did I take the full amount, and I've been getting paid to go to school for the last 6 years.
I had friends that teased me for going the community college/state school route, but they owe 2-3 times what I do in student loans. Some of them even went to grad school but had to pay tuition and their own living expenses b/c they pursued degrees like Music Therapy and History.
* More tax cuts for the rich
- I say So What? Before Bush we had 8 years of Tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor. While their are those that are poor and industrious but unlucky, their are probably a lot more that are poor for other legitimate reasons. I'm poor at the moment because I'm still in graduate school, but I don't feel I deserve a hand out because eventually my hard work will pay off. My younger brother on the other hand is poor and feels entitled to a hand out despite his inability to hold down a job. Even if he finally remembers where he put his work ethic, he'll have 5 years of slacking off since HS to make up for. He doesn't deserve a tax break since he's collected more from unemployment than he's put it.
* Freezing science research budgets -That's not the same thing as cutting them. We are in the middle of a war being waged on credit while the global credit market is going haywire. They're lucky no one is talking about cutting them. Just means they'll need to use some of that intelligence to finding funding sources other than Uncle Sam. (I say this as a grad student who's stipend is fully funded by industry sponsored research)
* Extending the ware in Iraq indefinitely - The war in Iraq (or any war for that matter) has always been of indefinite length. To arbitrarily and unilaterally decide that the war is over because it's politically convenient is ludicrous. Besides, notice how Obama backed off from the whole 6 months deadline after he finally got around to talking to his military advisors and the surge started to work (which he refuses to admit despite calling for the exact same strategy in Afghanistan). Notice how McCain was a major critic of the Bush administration and actually proposed what the change in tactics should be to fix the situation. Instead, Obama acted like a petulant child and demanded we take our toys and go home because the other children weren't playing nice.
* Health care plan that could well cost me more than my current plan - I don't know your plan, and neither candidates healthcare plan affected the cost of my employer provided plan (which has doubled it's co-pay twice in the last 2 years). You may very well have a good financial reason here for not supporting McCain, but that doesn't make it a negative from everyones point of view.
* Threatening more military action against more countries.
- Both candidates threatened military action against more countries. However, McCain threatened countries that are not our allies and made no concrete claims as to specific actions he may take in the future. Obama on the other hand threatened military action against our allies. Both a specific action, and a surefire way to decrease the number of secularist muslim countries by one and increase the number of muslims calling for death to America by a fairly large margin.
Now, you can consider those positives or negatives for Obama, but I'm sure you can see what I think of those points. While I'm always willing to debate the facts with people, I never believe my arguments will change anyones mind because politics are too similar to religion for most people (Myself included at times)
How many white comedians do you see telling racial jokes on TV? Now, how many "Minorities" do you see telling racial jokes? Do I need to remind you about how everyone freaked out on Kramer when he blew his top? I believe in "White Guilt" because I've seen it 1st hand and if you haven't, then you are the minority (I'm not sure if that's a pun or not)
I didn't mean to imply that people only liked Obama because they may feel unnecessarily guilty, but if they do feel "white Guilt" then liking Obama is like a two for one sale.
I think Obama's race helped him with more people than it hurt him. That's not saying he wasn't an attractive candidate before considering race. I'm just saying that their are more "White" people that feel guilty for the perceived sins of previous generations than their are white people who want to keep minorities down. (I say perceived sins because I'm white, but like most of the families I know, my family emigrated to the US long after slavery had been abolished).
If the economy hadn't tanked so close to the election the results would probably have been much closer based on the polling prior to Wall Streets implosion. I think that is what pushed Obama over the top in a big way, but to say that NO ONE let race influence their vote is just willful ignorance.
I think you raise a good question and then attach a personal view point as the answer when it probably is way to simple.
During an election cycle, those that buy newspapers will buy them before actually reading the articles, and probably buy them regardless of what's been said in them (at least at first). So the idea that they were biased because Obama was positive doesn't jive, at least initially. As for later in the campaign, BOTH went negative. I live in Indiana and was caught between the eyes by Obama approved attack ads every commercial break for at least a month.
From my perspective, the bias stems from the personal political beliefs of the staff at the news agency. Despite their best efforts, liberal dems (possibly with that "white guilt" they're always trying to make reparations for) are going to want and enjoy writting articles about the candidate they find interesting. When they've got more articles in the pipeline than they'll be able to finish, it's easier to finish the article you actually want to write as opposed to the one you feel you should write.
I take umbrage with the implication that McCain/Palin simply campained on the idea that Obama was a terrorist. I voted for McCain because of the solutions he put forward, not the connections between the Pres-elect and some domestic terrorist I'd never heard of before.
If you can't name any of the positive solutions McCain proposed then that's either because you never gave his candidacy a fair shake (for what ever reason), or you were never exposed to them because the media did such a piss poor job telling you what they were while they were creaming their jeans over Obama.
None of my arguments were "weak or sham arguments designed to be easily refuted" which is the definition of a strawman. I don't normally watch Fox News, but the handful of times I've watched it I've not noticed it to be any more prone to bias than CNN.
That being said, I don't know what your "Translation" is supposed to mean.
My 1st paragraph is simply saying that if no one watches Fox because they don't like it, Rupert Murdock will change the format because he's in business to make money by running a news channel people want to watch, not to throw money in a hole on a channel no one watches because they don't agree with the commentary or believe the accuracy of the news. Obviously Fox is making money because people do prefer it to the alternatives, and trust it at least as much as they do the alternatives.
My second Paragraph can't be a strawman because Republicans and Conservatives both existed before Fox created it's news channel so there's no easily refutable, false argument.
The 3rd paragraph is based on my personal experience growing up and attending college in one of the Bluest of Blue states (MA). If you want evidence to support that point I can probably write you a masters thesis worth of examples from my own life. The cherry on the top would be sitting in a bus full of students from my college Ag class on my way to visit a farm and having to defend my beliefs as a Republican to the 2 professors and 15 other students on the bus.
I'll just assume that your translation wasn't meant to apply to the last statement because that would just be stupid.
My post was not based on assumptions. At the end of the original post you said
Fox News should be shut down, immediately,...
Even if everyone stopped watching Fox News Today it would still take months, if not a full year, for them to go out of business. Unless you are daft, the only way that they could be shut down "immediately" would be for the federal government to revoke their broadcast license.
The specific words you choose are important in getting your point across accurately. If you wanted to say that people should "wise up and stop watching" you should have said that in the first place and their would have been no confusion on my part.
Also, their was no Attacking of a Straw man. Your post inaccurately stated your point and I responded to what you'd said instead of what you'd meant because (as I'm always reminding my wife) I'm not a mind reader. Also, this was not a verbal conversation for a lot of the non-written context clues are missing. Deflecting what I said by claiming I'm "Attacking a straw man" is just silly.
Then either don't watch Fox News and you won't have to worry about being brain washed, or if you're worried about picking up the broadcasts you can make yourself a nice hat out of tinfoil to block the radiation.
The people that do watch Fox News were probably conservative and/or Republican before they started watching that channel and were most likely going to vote the way they did anyway.
Their seems to be this persistent belief that anyone that isn't a liberal Democrat is some how just misinformed and if you can silence the media they listen to they'll have to come around to the other way of thinking. It's why we've got this "FOX EVIL" bandwagon here on Slashdot, and the euphemistically name "Fairness Doctrine" being considered to silence conservative talk radio. It's also complete BS.
Also, last time I checked their is nothing inherently wrong with making money. Unless you live in your parents basement, you probably have a job just like the rest of us.
how would you define a social conservative? Crazy hate-mongers with no sense of humor? What I believe and what I find funny have very little to do with each other.
I found Tina Fay's rendition of Sarah Palin to be frighteningly funny, but at the same time I didn't buy into the point her characterization was trying to make. That being, Sarah Palin is somehow unqualified because she's attractive and a relative novice on the national stage (How much experience did Obama really have on the national stage when he started running for the more important job of President, not just VP).
If you are unable to differentiate the two (what's funny and what you believe to be true), you are by no means alone in that. However, I would prefer if you didn't project your own intellectual shortcomings on to me.
Fox, CNN, NBC, and CBS are not politicians with a record to defend every 2 to 6 years. People that run corporations of any kind are in business to make money. If a little inconsistency leads to a dramatic increase in profit, then what of it?
It sounds like your just bitter because you've either watched Fox News and don't like it (perfectly acceptable), or you're one of the ignorant masses that have jumped on the "Bash FOX" bandwagon and are trying to be pithy.
besides your point is a combination of the first one and third one that I made above via my fourth point
Notice your use of the word "pander" which means to "gratify or indugle (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire, etc.)" according to the dictionary in Mac OS 10.5.
If this discussion were about slashdot serving the under addressed market of people with an interest in "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that Matters" would you use the same word?
It's word choices like this (probably unconscious) that leave conservatives with the feeling that the other mainstream media outlets are biased and pushes them to Fox for their news.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, but does it strike anyone else as odd that the summary appears more than a little biased in it's form? Both campaings get hacked, but somehow it's all about Obama's campaign with the mention of the McCain campaign thrown in to imply that it wasn't them doing the hacking? It's as if the expectation was that the hacking came from the other camp and they've gotten away with something by being hacked themselves.
I recognize that Obama has won, so it's obviously more important to know what the winners secret files said than the losers, but the summary sounds unnecessarily partisan to me.
maybe i'm just being over sensitive since I didn't vote for Obama, and am just being a Troll
When it's a letter to the editor that's one thing, but when it is a letter from the editorial staff, and that letter claims to be an unbiased representation of the facts, I take offense no matter the slant. When they go on to attack the critics, an openly conservative paper, for being exactly what it says it is, I find that disingenuous at the very least. When the whole thing gets kicked off because the openly biased agency is pointing to some inconsistencies in the reporting of the agency claiming to be nonpartisan results in attacks on the accuser instead of addressing the issues raised, I find that reprehensible.
If I remember correctly, the issue at hand was the use of student fee's to pay for an alcohol fueled, week long party on the Cape, thrown by the student body president for his friends. The "Non-partisan" paper's editorial staff were friends with the student body president and tried to gloss over the incident, and tried to paint the issue as a witch hunt. They even went so far as to completely fail to mention it when the President struck one of the senators during a senate meeting (he pushed him into is seat once and punched him in the face when he stood back up). The criticism of the papers conduct was legitimate.
However, instead of addressing those issues, they went on the offensive and tried to shoot the messenger. The general thrust of the argument on those responses implied that there was something some how wrong with being a Conservative and even worse about being a Republican, as though it's allowed but shouldn't be.
As to the connection between the 2 points, in both cases you had someone being attacked for being partisan despite having made no attempt to claim otherwise, and in fact making that partisanship a self-advertised, defining characteristic .
Your advocating censorship of a station that is obviously making money because some people that disagree with you prefer to watch it over the channels you watch? Explain to me how that is in line with the written text or spirit of the constitution. Like I said before, if you don't like Fox you don't have to watch it. If enough americans agree with you then it'll either change format or go off of the air. Your just pissed and bitter because their are enough people that prefer Fox and disagree with you that it stays on their air despite your contempt. Well welcome to the free world where shit you don't approve of has the same right to exist as shit you do approve of. Get used to it or found your own despotic regime where everyone agrees with you or has to hit the highway.
O'Reilly never claimed to be non-biased. He's always made it plain that he's a conservative. However, he has maintained his independence and demonstrated it by calling the Bush administration and other Republicans to task when he thinks they are not toeing the conservative line.
I saw similar criticism as an undergraduate at UMass Amherst. The primary campus paper had a string of fairly liberal editorial page articles that were criticized for being passed off as neutral by the conservative paper on campus. The next 4 months consisted of the supposedly neutral paper attacking the openly conservative paper for being... Conservative!
you need to separate the political pundits that get paid for presenting a specific view point from the anchors and newsmen.
probably not. Those that believe Obama is the answer to all the countries problems are in for a rude awakening when he turns out to be human. Even if he tries to keep all of his campaign promises (which I personally don't believe he'll even try), he won't be successful at all of them.
A large portion of Obama's supporters don't care who he is, as long as he's not a Republican or connected to the President.
Obama is not the same type of Dem as the former Pres Clinton. Obama is an old-school Dem, and that means he believes that it's the governments job to protect us from ourselves. It's ironic, because it's that same belief that their are those uncapable of being responsible for themselves that was used to justify slavery, jim crow, denial of suffrage to those that were black, female, or landless.
The euphemistically named Fairness Doctrine isn't about fairness, but instead is about forcing the beliefs and views of the Democratic party on those that disagree under the false banner of fariness. They justify this to themselves by the belief that everyone would agree with them if they weren't confused by the nasty lying Republicans.
1. Fox believes in freedom of speach and is fighting to up hold it for the Moral and "Small Government" resons that seem so important to most conservatives
or
2. They are fighting to cut down on the overhead associated with getting everything approved by the FCC for purely financial and organizational reasons
or
3. They think that it is ok in principle for the FCC to censor TV in certain situations, but that the FCC is being Capricious and they need the clarity that can be brought by adjudication via the highest court in the land
or
4. some combination of the above.
If I had a penny for every time someone who didn't even watch Fox news made some derogitory comment about it's supposed bias I'd be richer than Bill Gates. If I got another penny for each attempt by those people to justify their belief by using a partisan reference to back it up I'd have enough money to pay of the National Debt.
If you've watched Fox News and don't like it, then don't watch it. I don't care for most of the personalities on Fox, but I also don't care for most of the personalities on CNN or MSNBC. I think most major news anchors are, for the most part, a bunch of pompus tools that aren't worth listeninging to no matter which station they are on.
1. The entertainment and news divisions are run an operated separately, as they should be.
or
2. People that believe in social and/or financial conservativism (like me) can also appreciate off color humor (I own every season of Family Guy that's available on DVD).
or
3. Fox news and Fox entertainment division cater to different markets that they thought were being under served by their competitors
Fox is no more of a right wing chanel, than the rest of the major news chanels are left wing. The majority of people that pursue careers in the news are liberal, and their unconcious bias shifts the news ever so slightly to the right. That hardly makes them "Right Wing". However, when you hold up Fox News which has made a habit of hiring those few individuals with conservative predispositions that pursue a career in the news, they look biased by comparison because their slight unconcious bias is in the oppsite direction, and people naturally believe the Majority to be Normal.
Now, are their conservative blow hards on Fox? YES! But, their are also Liberal blow hards on all the major news chanels including Fox.
Their is no such thing as the "Fox News view of the world" to have gotten crushed. The Republicans got crushed, but I flipped between the major news outlets as well as the local chanels last night and the only bias I saw was CNN taking over an hour longer than the rest of the chanels to project Texas for McCain.
I voted for McCain and as a result I'm disapointed that he lost, but my attention is now on seeing whether or not I got behind the wrong candidate. The only way for that to happen is for Obama to live up to the hype, and for America, I hope he does.
Slashdot Mirror
all the blathering about an invasion is nothing more than right-wing FUD.
you can believe this if you want, but Obama is going to have to deal with this statement. I wish him luck, but expect him to have to eat a lot of crow to appease the Pakistani government on this point.
most other countries favored Obama over McCain
Says who exactly?
Besides, if they want a say in the election there are ways of joining the union just like all of the other states did and getting a say, otherwise it's not their call. Ultimately this is tangential to the point I was making. I wasn't implying that their opinion matters as to who we should elect, but that Obama is going to have to deal with the bad blood his reckless statements will create between the Pakistani government and his own administration. I don't feel comfortable with the Pres-elect being so myopic as to ignore how is words will be interpreted by the Pakistani people, not because the Pakistani people should have a say in our elections, but because they do have a say in the Pakistani government and it's policy with regards to cooperating with us.
Besides I don't see why you are arguing with me on this point. No one I've spoken with, my wife included (she voted for Obama), felt that Obama had made a smart call in making that statement and the refusing to back down from it. As I said before, there is a difference between whether I feel that he should be willing to do such a thing, and whether I think it's intelligent to SAY IT on the record.
your statements clearly show that you have not actually heard or read Obama's statements.
I did actually hear what Obama said. I watched the debates where he was allowed to defend and explain what he meant by what he'd said previously (It came up during the 2nd Presidential debate). I gave him the benefit of the doubt and even agree with the sentiment. However, to state publicly that you are willing to violate the sovereignty of an allies borders against their wishes is a stupid thing to say. I admit that both candidates probably would have OK'd an operation to do what Obama said if conditions were right, but only Obama was stupid enough to say it on national television as a virtual "Fuck YOU" to the Pakistani people. This takes away the option of "Plausible Deniability" . If they run an OP inside Pakistan and a bunch of civilians die (or what cannot be identified as soldiers) it'll be much harder for Obama to claim it wasn't the US than it would have been for McCain. Now Obama has to hope that Bin Ladin isn't vicious enough to blow up a couple of villages and blame it on American military forces trying to get at him.
You, Obama, and most other people who defend his comments appear to have forgotten that Americans are not the only people paying attention to the Presidential Election.
At no point in time did I ever agree with the invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq.
But you seem to OK the invasion of the sovereign nation of Pakistan. Let me see if you can see the contradiction. It's NOT OK to invade a sovereign nation, with whom we've previously gone to war, and never actually declared peace with. Instead we declared a cease-fire, a no-fly-zone, and had to put up with the occasional pot shot from ground to air missiles aimed at our airmen patrolling the no-fly-zone.
However, it IS OK to invade a sovereign nation we've never gone to war with because they are not doing a good enough job tracking down a man we haven't even been able to find who isn't even a citizen of their country despite their difficult political situation making them pariahs within their own community for aiding the US.
There was no mention of an invasion.
This illustrates your naivete as it pertains to political borders, and is simply a case of splitting hairs. We need permission from Pakistan to cross their borders, just like Mexicans and Canadians need permission to cross the border into the US, except more so if we plan on sending in Armed and Trained Military Personnel. If Obama were to ok a MILITARY action INSIDE the borders of Pakistan, that would be tantamount to a declaration of war. You may not think a violation of Pakistans border for a short operation to apprehend one man is a big deal, but I guarantee you those elements within the Pakistani Government and Society that are not comfortable cooperating with the US will use this as a rallying flag. How else would you explain it? "Oh, don't mind us. We are just going to violate your borders and international treaties. We'll be gone before you know it." If you HONESTLY believe it's OK to perform military maneuvers within a sovereign state that we are allied with against their will, then I don't see what your problem is with our having invaded Iraq. Besides, what if the op is a failure? What if we end up killing a bunch of innocent people. What if that happens more than once. Their is no guarantee of success in any military operation.
instead of reading conservative analysis
So by this statement I take it you believe their is "Conservative Analysis" and "The Truth". That's just a deflection because you don't like the points I'm raising. Their is nothing fundamentally evil about either party or wing of political thought (Right/Left, Liberal/Conservative). Neither is fundamentally more or less correct than the other by it's very nature. However, their can be flaws in the arguments used to support either side and by dismissing anything that can be characterized as "Conservative" is exceedingly myopic.
Case in point, their are many on this forum that believe the Republican/Conservatives to be and always to have been Pro-War, but it was the Republicans that wanted to stay out of WWII and a Democrat in the White house that kept trying to get America involved. Turns out he didn't need to try so hard, Japan took care of that motivation for him. But the point remains, their is no issue that is so fundamentally one party or the other that over the course of time it won't switch off. Another example is balancing the federal budget. I grew up to the Dems saying it wasn't important and the Republicans pointing to it as evidence of how disconnected the Dems were. Now we have a Republican Pres who's blown through more $ than any before him and racked up record debt while the Dems turn the issue around and hammer at him for wasteful spending and a need to balance the budget.
Hence it is not conclusive that the surge was the only thing that improved the ground situation in Baghdad.
No one said that the Surge was the ONLY thing that improved the situation on the ground but the decrease in violence was greater than can be accounted for by it being the summer. If you take economics ideas and look at change in violence year-to-year within the same financial quarter there is still a huge reduction in violence where the surge was active. The trick is to extend the effect of the surge to a larger portion of the country by creating an environment that acts as an incubator for grass roots movements like the Sunni Awakening. The only way you can look the surge as only being a minor player in the improvements in Iraq are if you refuse to accept the possibility that the Bush administration finally got it at least partially right.
There is almost no similarity at all between WWII and the war in Iraq.
They were both armed conflicts in foreign countries where the majority of the US population didn't want us to get involved because when we are at peace, most americans lean toward Isolationism. The point I was trying to make was that no war, even the "Good" wars (being ones we haven't strung up our leaders for getting into) has a fixed end point. You keep tossing around the idea that we should know when we are getting out, but thats naive at best. The conditions for leaving Iraq have been laid out previously. They need to be able to provide for their own security and we need to be relatively sure they won't devolve into a civil war once we leave. The instability in Iraq is OUR fault. Even if you disapproved of every bad decision Bush made, you are a citizen of the country that elected him and we are all responsible for fixing the situation we created. Running away because we don't like the prospects is irresponsible.
WWII ended with unconditional surrenders.
No it didn't. We had soldiers placed all over Europe and southeast Asia for decades. We still have many of those bases that were originally set up to keep any eye on Japan, Germany, and Italy. The major difference has to do with the fact that Iraq was a country born out of British colonialism, not a defined national identity and so the loss of a brutal dictator at the top and the atrophy of normal political dialogue during his reign have left a country that is going to have to figure out who it is before it can decide who it wants to be.
Even the most rugged terrain in the US is pretty accessible in comparison to some parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Obama was not talking about invading Pakistan because the Pakistani would have difficulty finding the coordinates. Your use of this argument just proves that you know little about the political situation in Pakistan. The region we are talking about is only nominally part of Pakistan. If we were to invade this section of Pakistan it would signal our belief that Pakistan is not capable of governing it's people and our claims of friendship would be seen as two faced lies. And Rightly SO!
If you want to apologize for every stupid remark and decision Obama makes over the next 4 to 8 years, feel free, just don't expect the rest of us to drink the Kool-Aid as well.
ou must have missed the presidential debates. Obama agreed that the conditions in Iraq improved after the surge. However you cannot study a war in a vacuum and stating that the surge was the one and only reason for those improved conditions is just not logical.
I'll admit I missed the 3rd presidential debate, but I didn't miss the previous 2 and he didn't admit that the surge worked, he admitted that the situation had improved. That is not the same thing politically because the former would require he admit he'd been wrong and the second allows him to credit the improvements to what ever other actions have taken place without admitting he'd been wrong.
The second half of your statement implies that you believe the surge wasn't the primary motivator of the improvements, and that they may have occurred without the surge. As the brother of 2 military personnel and friend of several more, I can assure you that the surge was the primary motivator. Other events took place (Sunni Awakening) but they were as successful as they were because of the Surge.
However the war in Iraq is different in that there have never been any clearly defined goals for ending the war. Most other overseas conflicts have had set endpoints - the invasion of Iraq does not.
No, the Iraq war has always had a defined end. When Iraq is stable enough to take care of it's own defense and governance without the aid of our military and bureaucratic machine. They haven't reached that point, and we can't predict the day on the calendar when that will happen, but that's not the same as not having an end point. Similarly, in WWII the end was the liberation of Europe and the South Pacific via the defeat of German and Japanese military machines, respectively. We didn't know when, or even IF we would win, but that doesn't mean their wasn't a vague plan for how and when the conflict would end. We were just spoiled by the first Iraq war and now believe that every armed conflict should run so smoothly despite the difference in goals. Rolling back an invasion force is a lot easier than invading and holding a country and trying to build a new government from the ashes of the old.
If Canada or Mexico said they'd initiate military actions within the continental US using attack helicopters and Special Forces Personnel, I doubt you would see it as acceptable and not as an unprovoked act of aggression worthy of a potential declaration of war. If we initiate military action inside Pakistan, a nation that is barely remaining secular and pro-US, that would a violation of their national sovereignty. We already have a reputation of treating other nations as second and third class citizens of the global community. I was under the impression that one of Obama's main goals was to repair the US reputation and generate good will towards the US, Or was that only meant to apply to European nations.
My major was (is) Animal Science.
The trick to surviving UMass is giving the impression that you believe what ever the crazies tell you. No one is more polarized (politically, socially, etc.) than they are at college, and students at the Amherst campus appear to be even crazier than the norm for undergraduates.
It's easier if your already a liberal Dem, which I was not, because then you won't have to deal with everyone trying to change your political views all the time.
I'm still in school, and while I knew that some schools were rated better than others, I also knew that your education is what you make of it. That's why I went
2 years at community college (HCC)
2 years at a State university (UMass Amherst)
3 years on a MS at a prestegious University within my field (Purdue).
3 years and counting on a PhD at the same university.
No student loans at Community college. 33% off of my tuition at UMass b/c I had a 3.8 at HCC. I had offers at 2 other Universities at the end of MS that were also offering tuition remission and a monthly stipend I could live on. As a result I've got 10 years worth of college education and only 2 years of student loans, neither year of which did I take the full amount, and I've been getting paid to go to school for the last 6 years.
I had friends that teased me for going the community college/state school route, but they owe 2-3 times what I do in student loans. Some of them even went to grad school but had to pay tuition and their own living expenses b/c they pursued degrees like Music Therapy and History.
Lets take those point by point, Shall we?
* More tax cuts for the rich
- I say So What? Before Bush we had 8 years of Tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor. While their are those that are poor and industrious but unlucky, their are probably a lot more that are poor for other legitimate reasons. I'm poor at the moment because I'm still in graduate school, but I don't feel I deserve a hand out because eventually my hard work will pay off. My younger brother on the other hand is poor and feels entitled to a hand out despite his inability to hold down a job. Even if he finally remembers where he put his work ethic, he'll have 5 years of slacking off since HS to make up for. He doesn't deserve a tax break since he's collected more from unemployment than he's put it.
* Freezing science research budgets
-That's not the same thing as cutting them. We are in the middle of a war being waged on credit while the global credit market is going haywire. They're lucky no one is talking about cutting them. Just means they'll need to use some of that intelligence to finding funding sources other than Uncle Sam. (I say this as a grad student who's stipend is fully funded by industry sponsored research)
* Extending the ware in Iraq indefinitely
- The war in Iraq (or any war for that matter) has always been of indefinite length. To arbitrarily and unilaterally decide that the war is over because it's politically convenient is ludicrous. Besides, notice how Obama backed off from the whole 6 months deadline after he finally got around to talking to his military advisors and the surge started to work (which he refuses to admit despite calling for the exact same strategy in Afghanistan). Notice how McCain was a major critic of the Bush administration and actually proposed what the change in tactics should be to fix the situation. Instead, Obama acted like a petulant child and demanded we take our toys and go home because the other children weren't playing nice.
* Health care plan that could well cost me more than my current plan
- I don't know your plan, and neither candidates healthcare plan affected the cost of my employer provided plan (which has doubled it's co-pay twice in the last 2 years). You may very well have a good financial reason here for not supporting McCain, but that doesn't make it a negative from everyones point of view.
* Threatening more military action against more countries.
- Both candidates threatened military action against more countries. However, McCain threatened countries that are not our allies and made no concrete claims as to specific actions he may take in the future. Obama on the other hand threatened military action against our allies. Both a specific action, and a surefire way to decrease the number of secularist muslim countries by one and increase the number of muslims calling for death to America by a fairly large margin.
Now, you can consider those positives or negatives for Obama, but I'm sure you can see what I think of those points. While I'm always willing to debate the facts with people, I never believe my arguments will change anyones mind because politics are too similar to religion for most people (Myself included at times)
How many white comedians do you see telling racial jokes on TV? Now, how many "Minorities" do you see telling racial jokes? Do I need to remind you about how everyone freaked out on Kramer when he blew his top? I believe in "White Guilt" because I've seen it 1st hand and if you haven't, then you are the minority (I'm not sure if that's a pun or not)
I didn't mean to imply that people only liked Obama because they may feel unnecessarily guilty, but if they do feel "white Guilt" then liking Obama is like a two for one sale.
I think Obama's race helped him with more people than it hurt him. That's not saying he wasn't an attractive candidate before considering race. I'm just saying that their are more "White" people that feel guilty for the perceived sins of previous generations than their are white people who want to keep minorities down. (I say perceived sins because I'm white, but like most of the families I know, my family emigrated to the US long after slavery had been abolished).
If the economy hadn't tanked so close to the election the results would probably have been much closer based on the polling prior to Wall Streets implosion. I think that is what pushed Obama over the top in a big way, but to say that NO ONE let race influence their vote is just willful ignorance.
I think you raise a good question and then attach a personal view point as the answer when it probably is way to simple.
During an election cycle, those that buy newspapers will buy them before actually reading the articles, and probably buy them regardless of what's been said in them (at least at first). So the idea that they were biased because Obama was positive doesn't jive, at least initially. As for later in the campaign, BOTH went negative. I live in Indiana and was caught between the eyes by Obama approved attack ads every commercial break for at least a month.
From my perspective, the bias stems from the personal political beliefs of the staff at the news agency. Despite their best efforts, liberal dems (possibly with that "white guilt" they're always trying to make reparations for) are going to want and enjoy writting articles about the candidate they find interesting. When they've got more articles in the pipeline than they'll be able to finish, it's easier to finish the article you actually want to write as opposed to the one you feel you should write.
I take umbrage with the implication that McCain/Palin simply campained on the idea that Obama was a terrorist. I voted for McCain because of the solutions he put forward, not the connections between the Pres-elect and some domestic terrorist I'd never heard of before.
If you can't name any of the positive solutions McCain proposed then that's either because you never gave his candidacy a fair shake (for what ever reason), or you were never exposed to them because the media did such a piss poor job telling you what they were while they were creaming their jeans over Obama.
None of my arguments were "weak or sham arguments designed to be easily refuted" which is the definition of a strawman. I don't normally watch Fox News, but the handful of times I've watched it I've not noticed it to be any more prone to bias than CNN.
That being said, I don't know what your "Translation" is supposed to mean.
My 1st paragraph is simply saying that if no one watches Fox because they don't like it, Rupert Murdock will change the format because he's in business to make money by running a news channel people want to watch, not to throw money in a hole on a channel no one watches because they don't agree with the commentary or believe the accuracy of the news. Obviously Fox is making money because people do prefer it to the alternatives, and trust it at least as much as they do the alternatives.
My second Paragraph can't be a strawman because Republicans and Conservatives both existed before Fox created it's news channel so there's no easily refutable, false argument.
The 3rd paragraph is based on my personal experience growing up and attending college in one of the Bluest of Blue states (MA). If you want evidence to support that point I can probably write you a masters thesis worth of examples from my own life. The cherry on the top would be sitting in a bus full of students from my college Ag class on my way to visit a farm and having to defend my beliefs as a Republican to the 2 professors and 15 other students on the bus.
I'll just assume that your translation wasn't meant to apply to the last statement because that would just be stupid.
Fox News should be shut down, immediately, ...
Even if everyone stopped watching Fox News Today it would still take months, if not a full year, for them to go out of business. Unless you are daft, the only way that they could be shut down "immediately" would be for the federal government to revoke their broadcast license.
The specific words you choose are important in getting your point across accurately. If you wanted to say that people should "wise up and stop watching" you should have said that in the first place and their would have been no confusion on my part.
Also, their was no Attacking of a Straw man. Your post inaccurately stated your point and I responded to what you'd said instead of what you'd meant because (as I'm always reminding my wife) I'm not a mind reader. Also, this was not a verbal conversation for a lot of the non-written context clues are missing. Deflecting what I said by claiming I'm "Attacking a straw man" is just silly.
Then either don't watch Fox News and you won't have to worry about being brain washed, or if you're worried about picking up the broadcasts you can make yourself a nice hat out of tinfoil to block the radiation.
The people that do watch Fox News were probably conservative and/or Republican before they started watching that channel and were most likely going to vote the way they did anyway.
Their seems to be this persistent belief that anyone that isn't a liberal Democrat is some how just misinformed and if you can silence the media they listen to they'll have to come around to the other way of thinking. It's why we've got this "FOX EVIL" bandwagon here on Slashdot, and the euphemistically name "Fairness Doctrine" being considered to silence conservative talk radio. It's also complete BS.
Also, last time I checked their is nothing inherently wrong with making money. Unless you live in your parents basement, you probably have a job just like the rest of us.
how would you define a social conservative? Crazy hate-mongers with no sense of humor? What I believe and what I find funny have very little to do with each other.
I found Tina Fay's rendition of Sarah Palin to be frighteningly funny, but at the same time I didn't buy into the point her characterization was trying to make. That being, Sarah Palin is somehow unqualified because she's attractive and a relative novice on the national stage (How much experience did Obama really have on the national stage when he started running for the more important job of President, not just VP).
If you are unable to differentiate the two (what's funny and what you believe to be true), you are by no means alone in that. However, I would prefer if you didn't project your own intellectual shortcomings on to me.
It sounds like your just bitter because you've either watched Fox News and don't like it (perfectly acceptable), or you're one of the ignorant masses that have jumped on the "Bash FOX" bandwagon and are trying to be pithy.
besides your point is a combination of the first one and third one that I made above via my fourth point
4. Some combination of the above 3.
Notice your use of the word "pander" which means to "gratify or indugle (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire, etc.)" according to the dictionary in Mac OS 10.5.
If this discussion were about slashdot serving the under addressed market of people with an interest in "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that Matters" would you use the same word?
It's word choices like this (probably unconscious) that leave conservatives with the feeling that the other mainstream media outlets are biased and pushes them to Fox for their news.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, but does it strike anyone else as odd that the summary appears more than a little biased in it's form? Both campaings get hacked, but somehow it's all about Obama's campaign with the mention of the McCain campaign thrown in to imply that it wasn't them doing the hacking? It's as if the expectation was that the hacking came from the other camp and they've gotten away with something by being hacked themselves.
I recognize that Obama has won, so it's obviously more important to know what the winners secret files said than the losers, but the summary sounds unnecessarily partisan to me.
maybe i'm just being over sensitive since I didn't vote for Obama, and am just being a Troll
When it's a letter to the editor that's one thing, but when it is a letter from the editorial staff, and that letter claims to be an unbiased representation of the facts, I take offense no matter the slant. When they go on to attack the critics, an openly conservative paper, for being exactly what it says it is, I find that disingenuous at the very least. When the whole thing gets kicked off because the openly biased agency is pointing to some inconsistencies in the reporting of the agency claiming to be nonpartisan results in attacks on the accuser instead of addressing the issues raised, I find that reprehensible.
If I remember correctly, the issue at hand was the use of student fee's to pay for an alcohol fueled, week long party on the Cape, thrown by the student body president for his friends. The "Non-partisan" paper's editorial staff were friends with the student body president and tried to gloss over the incident, and tried to paint the issue as a witch hunt. They even went so far as to completely fail to mention it when the President struck one of the senators during a senate meeting (he pushed him into is seat once and punched him in the face when he stood back up). The criticism of the papers conduct was legitimate.
However, instead of addressing those issues, they went on the offensive and tried to shoot the messenger. The general thrust of the argument on those responses implied that there was something some how wrong with being a Conservative and even worse about being a Republican, as though it's allowed but shouldn't be.
As to the connection between the 2 points, in both cases you had someone being attacked for being partisan despite having made no attempt to claim otherwise, and in fact making that partisanship a self-advertised, defining characteristic .
Your advocating censorship of a station that is obviously making money because some people that disagree with you prefer to watch it over the channels you watch? Explain to me how that is in line with the written text or spirit of the constitution. Like I said before, if you don't like Fox you don't have to watch it. If enough americans agree with you then it'll either change format or go off of the air. Your just pissed and bitter because their are enough people that prefer Fox and disagree with you that it stays on their air despite your contempt. Well welcome to the free world where shit you don't approve of has the same right to exist as shit you do approve of. Get used to it or found your own despotic regime where everyone agrees with you or has to hit the highway.
O'Reilly never claimed to be non-biased. He's always made it plain that he's a conservative. However, he has maintained his independence and demonstrated it by calling the Bush administration and other Republicans to task when he thinks they are not toeing the conservative line.
I saw similar criticism as an undergraduate at UMass Amherst. The primary campus paper had a string of fairly liberal editorial page articles that were criticized for being passed off as neutral by the conservative paper on campus. The next 4 months consisted of the supposedly neutral paper attacking the openly conservative paper for being... Conservative!
you need to separate the political pundits that get paid for presenting a specific view point from the anchors and newsmen.
probably not. Those that believe Obama is the answer to all the countries problems are in for a rude awakening when he turns out to be human. Even if he tries to keep all of his campaign promises (which I personally don't believe he'll even try), he won't be successful at all of them.
A large portion of Obama's supporters don't care who he is, as long as he's not a Republican or connected to the President.
Obama is not the same type of Dem as the former Pres Clinton. Obama is an old-school Dem, and that means he believes that it's the governments job to protect us from ourselves. It's ironic, because it's that same belief that their are those uncapable of being responsible for themselves that was used to justify slavery, jim crow, denial of suffrage to those that were black, female, or landless.
The euphemistically named Fairness Doctrine isn't about fairness, but instead is about forcing the beliefs and views of the Democratic party on those that disagree under the false banner of fariness. They justify this to themselves by the belief that everyone would agree with them if they weren't confused by the nasty lying Republicans.
1. Fox believes in freedom of speach and is fighting to up hold it for the Moral and "Small Government" resons that seem so important to most conservatives
or
2. They are fighting to cut down on the overhead associated with getting everything approved by the FCC for purely financial and organizational reasons
or
3. They think that it is ok in principle for the FCC to censor TV in certain situations, but that the FCC is being Capricious and they need the clarity that can be brought by adjudication via the highest court in the land
or
4. some combination of the above.
If I had a penny for every time someone who didn't even watch Fox news made some derogitory comment about it's supposed bias I'd be richer than Bill Gates. If I got another penny for each attempt by those people to justify their belief by using a partisan reference to back it up I'd have enough money to pay of the National Debt.
If you've watched Fox News and don't like it, then don't watch it. I don't care for most of the personalities on Fox, but I also don't care for most of the personalities on CNN or MSNBC. I think most major news anchors are, for the most part, a bunch of pompus tools that aren't worth listeninging to no matter which station they are on.
1. The entertainment and news divisions are run an operated separately, as they should be.
or
2. People that believe in social and/or financial conservativism (like me) can also appreciate off color humor (I own every season of Family Guy that's available on DVD).
or
3. Fox news and Fox entertainment division cater to different markets that they thought were being under served by their competitors
or
4. Some combination of the above 3.
Fox is no more of a right wing chanel, than the rest of the major news chanels are left wing. The majority of people that pursue careers in the news are liberal, and their unconcious bias shifts the news ever so slightly to the right. That hardly makes them "Right Wing". However, when you hold up Fox News which has made a habit of hiring those few individuals with conservative predispositions that pursue a career in the news, they look biased by comparison because their slight unconcious bias is in the oppsite direction, and people naturally believe the Majority to be Normal.
Now, are their conservative blow hards on Fox? YES! But, their are also Liberal blow hards on all the major news chanels including Fox.
Their is no such thing as the "Fox News view of the world" to have gotten crushed. The Republicans got crushed, but I flipped between the major news outlets as well as the local chanels last night and the only bias I saw was CNN taking over an hour longer than the rest of the chanels to project Texas for McCain.
I voted for McCain and as a result I'm disapointed that he lost, but my attention is now on seeing whether or not I got behind the wrong candidate. The only way for that to happen is for Obama to live up to the hype, and for America, I hope he does.