So you're using google to check on whether this anonymous article about LMG swiftboating Google by the guy who allegedly invented swiftboating is legitimate? Dude, that's so recursive it's positively fractal.
not quite.
wikipedia has open records, which help in determining whether there was "media engineering" following his op-ed.
Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, who serves as the party's deputy house leader, has been sending the following letter to concerned constituents about Bill C-61. The letter, which is the most substantive that I have seen, is posted in its entirety with permission.
Thank you for your letter concerning Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. Over the last few months I have made a concerted effort to better inform myself of all of the issues associated with copyright reform in Canada. In this vein, I joined the Intellectual Property (IP), Anti-Counterfeiting and Anti-Piracy Parliamentary Caucus. Through the meetings and consultations held by this group I came to the conclusion that reform of our copyright legislation will, I hope, have the following principles at its core:
1) Anti-circumvention measures and penalties must be linked to the efforts of those who violate copyright for commercial purposes, and not just the technology itself;
2) Provisions for flexible fair dealing. Fair dealing creates a limited number of exceptions, including private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting to charges of infringement.
3) It would also incorporate a fair and well defined 'notice and notice' system, which involves a notification from a copyright holder - often involving movies, software or music - claiming that a subscriber has made available or downloaded content without authorization on file sharing systems. The Internet Service Provider forwards the notification to the subscriber but takes no other action - it does not pass along the subscriber's personal information, remove the content from its system, or cancel the subscriber's service. It falls to the subscriber to remove the infringing content (if indeed it is infringing) voluntarily. In assessing the degree to which Bill C-61 incorporated these basic principles, I compared it with the previous Liberal government's proposed copyright Bill - Bill C-60 - which was introduced in June of 2005. Bill C-61 incorporates the same 'notice and notice' requirements as Bill C-60.
Though C-61 appears to offer more flexibility on fair dealing, in banning circumvention technology the means to legitimately copy or change formats is torn from the hands of legitimate users. Thus, the section of the bill banning legitimate anti-circumvention technology needs to be eliminated and replaced with something that experts in the field would feel is more appropriate in allowing a greater deal of flexibility in fair dealing. I hope that these changes will be developed during the committee's study of the bill.
In Bill C-60 (clause 27, new subsection 34.02(1)) anti-circumvention penalties required that circumvention be for the commercial purpose of infringing copyright, for example reproduction or communication of the work, whereas Bill C-61 (clause 31-new subsection 41.1(1)) prohibits circumvention in general and does not require infringement of an economic right in the work (thus circumvention alone is deemed an infringement). The bill prohibits picking the digital locks (often referred to as circumventing technological protection measures) that frequently accompany consumer products such as CDs, DVDs, and electronic books. Under the new bill, transferring music from a copy-protected CD to an iPod could violate the law. So too could efforts to play a region-coded DVD from a non-Canadian region.
Even the few exceptions to anti-circumvention measures in the bill are deceptive since the software programs needed to pick the digital lock in order to protect privacy or engage in research are prohibited. This is a part of the bill I hope will be amended when the bill gets to committee so that only deliberate infringement of commercial copyright is punished, not the possession of the technology to do so.
As you can see, this is a highly technical piece of legislation, and I will have to study it more closely. While it is my hope that the Conservatives will send this bill to committee for further study and changes b
from their response column, by a poster who has no history and joined the same day:
Most of you I am sure won't remember who Declan is... He was a prominent supporter of Microsoft in a newsgroup called "Appraising Microsoft" That group was active in the mid90's. That group was one of many spearheading the push for the justice department to "corral" Microsoft and prevent them form screwing up the computer industry. Alas as most of you are using Microsoft Windows, that group and many others failed. And as a result we have Microsoft as the operating system on the majority of computer world wide. And now we are at least 10 years behind in the software industry. Also Declan is attributed to starting and failing to stop a rumour regarding Al Gore. Declan was the sycophant reporter on Air Force One, traveling in the entourage of George Bush. It was Declan who misquoted Al Gore and ran off with the rumour that Al Gore Created / invented the internet. And although Declan has been laughed out loud at by the people who are aware of him and his writing, many of you who are not involved in the computer industry from the early days, are unaware of his actions. Declan has zero credibility in the information oped world, then as he does now. Unfortunately Declan will continue to create havoc in the press due to the fact that most of the public are unaware of his sycophantic habits. He will inexorably crawl up the butt of anyone with a buck to offer to his retirement fund. And since he writes about the information age, most people are blindly unaware of the facts and opinions that vary greatly in that arena. since most are unaware of the facts, they accept the writings of a few.
Sigh.... and Declan makes a living writing about this rubbish. Rubbish he is somewhat responsible for.....
There is no strong or weak DRM. At some point the data is decrypted, and at that point you extract it. End of story.
Imagine a CPU that can apply AES encryption to sensitive blocks of RAM. In that case, you'd have to tap the CPU's L2 cache (not likely without expensive tools) to extract anything decrypted.
all it will take is ONE person to get those tools, and it's out on the p2p networks. That doesn't necessarily require one rich person either.
I remember at one point several years ago there was an impending threat that all japanese tv would be encrypted. The anime fansubbing community was really ticked about this, and created a "seti at home" type program which would distribute the job of cracking the scheme across the entire community.
Apparently this worked, because there has been no gap in the fansubbing of series since that time.
There are BD rips (straight through both aacs and BD+) which are on the web right now.
Right now, with the exception of one proprietary tool, there is no naive way to crack AACS. It's an annoying, multipart process which, despite the conversations at doom9, I don't fully understand.
I haven't upgraded my tv to handle HD, but if I want HD content, where do you think i'll go? best buy, or usenet?
if i can't bypass DRM on something i want without a lot of work, i'll just go to (choose one of virtually infinite methods of sharing files here).
It only takes one break in the chain for the pirates to get hold of it, so all it takes is one compromise of the DRM at any point in the chain, and nobody else has to bother with it.
Wha? So having the will of California voters accurately reflected is against the will of the California voters, because other states don't do things the same way? -1 = 1 in your world as well?
no, I think -1+1 = 0 which is how the republicans are currently pulling it with most of the red states which have blue capitals.
it makes perfect sense. The will of the democratic voters is being subverted in districts all across the southern and midwestern blocks. Thus, in this case, 2 wrongs actually do make a "precarious" right.
If youre going to change a blue state's electoral counting system in a way which counts against one major party, it's only fair to do the same with another equally weighty red state. Otherwise, you have a fundamental national imbalance.
scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind
yay, now as soon as you walk in the door: "i'm sorry, but you don't meet our requirements for cookie-cutter-state-of-mind-x, good luck getting hired elsewhere, but it's now a 'standard practice' in the industry, and we make money selling data about this scan"
I'd like to add that the window-dressed name-calling is one thing, but I DO want competent economists on the news ripping these supply-siders limb from limb with injections of reality.
The naivety with which these organizations parrot "free market" and "supply and demand" is beyond unreal.
Sorry, but no market right now matches the theoretical perfect commodity market.
I challenge you to point out where I ever said that I don't want other states to use the proportional system.
this pretty much says it all. Don't you dare come at me with semantics, because the sentiment is pretty clear: california must be carved up now, and who gives a damn if any of the other states never do it, because those are red states, and republicans don't need to follow the same rules.
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
If Texas or whatever other 'Republican' state puts the proportional system into effect first... GREAT! But I don't see why California should wait around to make things 'fair' for both parties, at the expense of the voters' will.
But if they change it alone, it is at the expense of the voter's will. California makes up some electoral votes similarly "diluted" in the southeastern and midwestern block metropolitan areas.
So, by me wanting to have our electoral votes doled out in the most representative way possible, I'm now a 'Republican hack'? Please explain how that bit of logic works.
Oh, I see. Anything that might hurt the Democratic party's chances for winning is automatically a bad thing to you. And since in your small world, there are only two political parties (Ds and Rs), I must be on the Republican side. I don't vote for either party, thus my statement of "I don't care about political parties".
No, you want california carved up like this, but don't want republican strongholds like the southeastern block put through the same peacemeal process.
I'm sorry, but as a leftist (by canadian standards), I don't appreciate your efforts to destroy the one political party even remotely on my radar by focusing laserlike on california, when the exact opposite form of "vote dilution" is happening in the southeast and midwest.
I know no metropolitan centers which are not left-leaning. A big part of the right's platform centers around intolerance of "anything different than mom's apple pie", and metropolitan citizens run into enough different people to see how ludicrous that is.
If you're going to carve up geographic districts like this, then you do it everywhere, or nowhere, not just in the "blue" states.
If you own a news station, or even a simple website, why should you have to present some other opinion, especially if it's from some crackpot?
Oh, the people left after the great purge at fox are not crackpots? "crackpot" is a relative term. Darwin was called a crackpot at one time.
It might be hard to compete against big media, but that's only because so many people watch them and believe in them, and that's their own fault
No, it's not their fault. "repeat a lie long enough, and people will believe it's true".
The MSM is still the majority source for peoples' news, and thanks to the removal of the fairness doctrine, the MSM has become half propaganda outlets, and the other half have been pulled to the right parroting stories they struggle to keep up with, but also cant substantiate, because lies are easy to come up with quickly.
I believe the internet is free of this kind of bias, at least in the us, because it's just not possible to effectively censor the internet, and everyone, especially the people capable of shotting the crap invented at fox, has a voice. I also think the 30% turned up in this poll are believing the big lie about "liberal media bias" which has been repeated ad nauseam over the airwaves with no correction (thanks to the removal of the fairness doctrine!) for years.
and.. from your diatribe.. im beginning to think you're one of them.
Here in Phoenix, in Arizona, a very very "red" state, our biggest paper is the Arizona Republic. It's famous for its blatantly liberal bias. Illegal immigrants are always "undocumented" instead of "illegal".
I would call the "undocumented" thing more accurate, not liberal. Not having documents is not the same thing as illegal.
Every time they report on a crime, if the suspects are white or black, they say so. But if they're hispanic, the description is "two men", which obviously doesn't help identify them in any way.
if it simply says "two men", then you are the one jumping to conclusions saying they're hispanic. Further, differentiating between race is a big "no-no" in the dingbat left. It's not "politically correct". The newspaper is not an investigative organization, and you are not the cops. It's not their job to help you identify the criminal. If the cops have that kind of description they have leads of their own, and likely names.
Would I support a law to force them to present conservative viewpoints too? No, because that's not fair.
i'm sorry, but there's a difference between choice of diction in basic reporting like what you just described, and actual, blatant bias, like smearing everyone who likes Obama as "the american idol crowd" (boortz), and far, far worse on hannity's show.
Good example! "Predatory"? Who held a gun to the head of these idiots who got loans they couldn't afford?
they did.
They won't hire you for a job that will pay modest apartment rent in a bad neighborhood unless you get a college education. Want to actually make enough to do something besides eat, sleep, and (explative deleted)? Then you have to go to a competitive school.
competitive schools cost money, and my competitive school only has a 50% recruitment rate. This means 50% of people there are graduating with near 6 figure student debts and going back to hat and nametag jobs, falling into the predator's trap.
3 decades ago, student loans guaranteed a basic standard of living. Now, theyre an extreme gamble on the lines of junk bonds.
Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Sorry, but when a corporation or an oligopoly is dictating the "choices", you are not free.
Just because the oppression is done via the "illusion" of choice rather than the straight denial of it doesn't make it any less oppressive.
Only Democrats would care about something like "fairness" in media, especially on the internet.
maybe it has something to do with the fact that the media is owned and controlled, both directly, and indirectly through advertising, by the ultra-wealthy people represented primarily through the republican party, and many of those media moguls have demonstrated moderate to extreme rightward leanings (example one)
Further, the anchors themselves are sealed in ivory towers. Their jobs cannot be outsourced, they're paid far in excess of the median wage, they live very urban lifestyles, and are nicely insulated from the everyday life everyone else lives day in and day out.
Requiring people who represent the opposition to the political agendas of media owners and the companies buying advertising from them be given equal time to state their case is imperative to prevent the kind of hijacking of public opinion going on right now through fox news, talk radio (death valley for anything moderate, let alone liberal), and the parroting verbatim of corporate press releases with little or no qualifiers indicating a source.
The republicans killed the fairness doctrine because it was getting in the way of their agenda (in conjunction with their "dumb-em-down" corporate masters) of discouraging critical thought, which is "bad for business" and bad for a party whose platform is built upon fallacy and intolerance.
I read your full reply. Oh, are you referring to the part where you say:
I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system...
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
in other words, you're a thinly disguised republican hack?
Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
It's entirely unfair to do this in california (free republican electoral votes) without also doing it in heavy red states like georgia (where the opposite of your scenario would occur)
public opinion polls on major issues show 65% of the US population is liberal. If you're going to apportion electoral votes by district it must be done nationwide.
If it is done, democrats will never lose another national election.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..)... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.
False dichotomy: providing funding does not equal legislating morality.
legislation circumscribes liberty by telling you what you CANT do.
funding enhances liberty by telling you: "if you want to do this, we'll make it less expensive for you"
keep in mind this is different from discrimination, because the discount is directly applied to the service, instead of a general easement of lifestyle based on personal preferences.
In the long term however, we must get government out of the education business, or our schools will continue to crank out sheeple.
this sounds suspiciously like another "vouchers" assertion.
BS. If the government stops financing education, the "sheeple" will never get to school, and those who want to go won't be able to afford the ones that actually matter.
There will be a de facto caste system because they will refuse to hire anyone for midde to upper ranks in companies if they didn't come from the upper quartile of the school rankings, and that upper quartile will be priced out of the market for the majority of american households.
And I don't see India as having changed much, either, in a society where you start low-class and end low-class.
sorry, but the american "rags to riches" story is a myth propagated by the wealthy to con an overwhelmingly disadvantaged populace into supporting their economically rapacious policies.
The reality is the number of people who do this are a statistical outlier, and, most importantly, they would have done this in any nation because they were willing to sacrifice their own preferences, personality, their very identity for the wealth they covet.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're using google to check on whether this anonymous article about LMG swiftboating Google by the guy who allegedly invented swiftboating is legitimate? Dude, that's so recursive it's positively fractal.
not quite.
wikipedia has open records, which help in determining whether there was "media engineering" following his op-ed.
this apparently was not the case
Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, who serves as the party's deputy house leader, has been sending the following letter to concerned constituents about Bill C-61. The letter, which is the most substantive that I have seen, is posted in its entirety with permission.
Thank you for your letter concerning Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. Over the last few months I have made a concerted effort to better inform myself of all of the issues associated with copyright reform in Canada. In this vein, I joined the Intellectual Property (IP), Anti-Counterfeiting and Anti-Piracy Parliamentary Caucus. Through the meetings and consultations held by this group I came to the conclusion that reform of our copyright legislation will, I hope, have the following principles at its core:
1) Anti-circumvention measures and penalties must be linked to the efforts of those who violate copyright for commercial purposes, and not just the technology itself;
2) Provisions for flexible fair dealing. Fair dealing creates a limited number of exceptions, including private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting to charges of infringement.
3) It would also incorporate a fair and well defined 'notice and notice' system, which involves a notification from a copyright holder - often involving movies, software or music - claiming that a subscriber has made available or downloaded content without authorization on file sharing systems. The Internet Service Provider forwards the notification to the subscriber but takes no other action - it does not pass along the subscriber's personal information, remove the content from its system, or cancel the subscriber's service. It falls to the subscriber to remove the infringing content (if indeed it is infringing) voluntarily.
In assessing the degree to which Bill C-61 incorporated these basic principles, I compared it with the previous Liberal government's proposed copyright Bill - Bill C-60 - which was introduced in June of 2005. Bill C-61 incorporates the same 'notice and notice' requirements as Bill C-60.
Though C-61 appears to offer more flexibility on fair dealing, in banning circumvention technology the means to legitimately copy or change formats is torn from the hands of legitimate users. Thus, the section of the bill banning legitimate anti-circumvention technology needs to be eliminated and replaced with something that experts in the field would feel is more appropriate in allowing a greater deal of flexibility in fair dealing. I hope that these changes will be developed during the committee's study of the bill.
In Bill C-60 (clause 27, new subsection 34.02(1)) anti-circumvention penalties required that circumvention be for the commercial purpose of infringing copyright, for example reproduction or communication of the work, whereas Bill C-61 (clause 31-new subsection 41.1(1)) prohibits circumvention in general and does not require infringement of an economic right in the work (thus circumvention alone is deemed an infringement). The bill prohibits picking the digital locks (often referred to as circumventing technological protection measures) that frequently accompany consumer products such as CDs, DVDs, and electronic books. Under the new bill, transferring music from a copy-protected CD to an iPod could violate the law. So too could efforts to play a region-coded DVD from a non-Canadian region.
Even the few exceptions to anti-circumvention measures in the bill are deceptive since the software programs needed to pick the digital lock in order to protect privacy or engage in research are prohibited. This is a part of the bill I hope will be amended when the bill gets to committee so that only deliberate infringement of commercial copyright is punished, not the possession of the technology to do so.
As you can see, this is a highly technical piece of legislation, and I will have to study it more closely. While it is my hope that the Conservatives will send this bill to committee for further study and changes b
from their response column, by a poster who has no history and joined the same day:
Most of you I am sure won't remember who Declan is... He was a prominent supporter of Microsoft in a newsgroup called "Appraising Microsoft" That group was active in the mid90's. That group was one of many spearheading the push for the justice department to "corral" Microsoft and prevent them form screwing up the computer industry. Alas as most of you are using Microsoft Windows, that group and many others failed. And as a result we have Microsoft as the operating system on the majority of computer world wide. And now we are at least 10 years behind in the software industry. Also Declan is attributed to starting and failing to stop a rumour regarding Al Gore. Declan was the sycophant reporter on Air Force One, traveling in the entourage of George Bush. It was Declan who misquoted Al Gore and ran off with the rumour that Al Gore Created / invented the internet. And although Declan has been laughed out loud at by the people who are aware of him and his writing, many of you who are not involved in the computer industry from the early days, are unaware of his actions. Declan has zero credibility in the information oped world, then as he does now. Unfortunately Declan will continue to create havoc in the press due to the fact that most of the public are unaware of his sycophantic habits. He will inexorably crawl up the butt of anyone with a buck to offer to his retirement fund. And since he writes about the information age, most people are blindly unaware of the facts and opinions that vary greatly in that arena. since most are unaware of the facts, they accept the writings of a few.
Sigh.... and Declan makes a living writing about this rubbish. Rubbish he is somewhat responsible for.....
A quick google of "declan al gore internet" gets me this, among many other results.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/10/39301
This is confirmed by the wikipedia entry, which has not been edited for quite some time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Declan_McCullagh&action=history
So, this guy is telling me the extent of the astroturfing? The guy who helped swiftboat gore?
bullhockey!
libel and slander are illegal.
This was a libel and slander movement against google and the american public.
There is no strong or weak DRM. At some point the data is decrypted, and at that point you extract it. End of story.
Imagine a CPU that can apply AES encryption to sensitive blocks of RAM. In that case, you'd have to tap the CPU's L2 cache (not likely without expensive tools) to extract anything decrypted.
all it will take is ONE person to get those tools, and it's out on the p2p networks.
That doesn't necessarily require one rich person either.
I remember at one point several years ago there was an impending threat that all japanese tv would be encrypted. The anime fansubbing community was really ticked about this, and created a "seti at home" type program which would distribute the job of cracking the scheme across the entire community.
Apparently this worked, because there has been no gap in the fansubbing of series since that time.
no, you're not understanding.
There are BD rips (straight through both aacs and BD+) which are on the web right now.
Right now, with the exception of one proprietary tool, there is no naive way to crack AACS. It's an annoying, multipart process which, despite the conversations at doom9, I don't fully understand.
I haven't upgraded my tv to handle HD, but if I want HD content, where do you think i'll go? best buy, or usenet?
if i can't bypass DRM on something i want without a lot of work, i'll just go to (choose one of virtually infinite methods of sharing files here).
It only takes one break in the chain for the pirates to get hold of it, so all it takes is one compromise of the DRM at any point in the chain, and nobody else has to bother with it.
Wha? So having the will of California voters accurately reflected is against the will of the California voters, because other states don't do things the same way? -1 = 1 in your world as well?
no, I think -1+1 = 0 which is how the republicans are currently pulling it with most of the red states which have blue capitals.
it makes perfect sense. The will of the democratic voters is being subverted in districts all across the southern and midwestern blocks. Thus, in this case, 2 wrongs actually do make a "precarious" right.
If youre going to change a blue state's electoral counting system in a way which counts against one major party, it's only fair to do the same with another equally weighty red state. Otherwise, you have a fundamental national imbalance.
don't worry, mind control got hit with the new 10 second cap several patches ago.
scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind
yay, now as soon as you walk in the door: "i'm sorry, but you don't meet our requirements for cookie-cutter-state-of-mind-x, good luck getting hired elsewhere, but it's now a 'standard practice' in the industry, and we make money selling data about this scan"
I'd like to add that the window-dressed name-calling is one thing, but I DO want competent economists on the news ripping these supply-siders limb from limb with injections of reality.
The naivety with which these organizations parrot "free market" and "supply and demand" is beyond unreal.
Sorry, but no market right now matches the theoretical perfect commodity market.
I challenge you to point out where I ever said that I don't want other states to use the proportional system.
this pretty much says it all. Don't you dare come at me with semantics, because the sentiment is pretty clear: california must be carved up now, and who gives a damn if any of the other states never do it, because those are red states, and republicans don't need to follow the same rules.
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
If Texas or whatever other 'Republican' state puts the proportional system into effect first... GREAT! But I don't see why California should wait around to make things 'fair' for both parties, at the expense of the voters' will.
But if they change it alone, it is at the expense of the voter's will. California makes up some electoral votes similarly "diluted" in the southeastern and midwestern block metropolitan areas.
So, by me wanting to have our electoral votes doled out in the most representative way possible, I'm now a 'Republican hack'? Please explain how that bit of logic works.
Oh, I see. Anything that might hurt the Democratic party's chances for winning is automatically a bad thing to you. And since in your small world, there are only two political parties (Ds and Rs), I must be on the Republican side. I don't vote for either party, thus my statement of "I don't care about political parties".
No, you want california carved up like this, but don't want republican strongholds like the southeastern block put through the same peacemeal process.
I'm sorry, but as a leftist (by canadian standards), I don't appreciate your efforts to destroy the one political party even remotely on my radar by focusing laserlike on california, when the exact opposite form of "vote dilution" is happening in the southeast and midwest.
I know no metropolitan centers which are not left-leaning. A big part of the right's platform centers around intolerance of "anything different than mom's apple pie", and metropolitan citizens run into enough different people to see how ludicrous that is.
If you're going to carve up geographic districts like this, then you do it everywhere, or nowhere, not just in the "blue" states.
If you own a news station, or even a simple website, why should you have to present some other opinion, especially if it's from some crackpot?
Oh, the people left after the great purge at fox are not crackpots?
"crackpot" is a relative term. Darwin was called a crackpot at one time.
It might be hard to compete against big media, but that's only because so many people watch them and believe in them, and that's their own fault
No, it's not their fault. "repeat a lie long enough, and people will believe it's true".
The MSM is still the majority source for peoples' news, and thanks to the removal of the fairness doctrine, the MSM has become half propaganda outlets, and the other half have been pulled to the right parroting stories they struggle to keep up with, but also cant substantiate, because lies are easy to come up with quickly.
I believe the internet is free of this kind of bias, at least in the us, because it's just not possible to effectively censor the internet, and everyone, especially the people capable of shotting the crap invented at fox, has a voice. I also think the 30% turned up in this poll are believing the big lie about "liberal media bias" which has been repeated ad nauseam over the airwaves with no correction (thanks to the removal of the fairness doctrine!) for years.
and.. from your diatribe.. im beginning to think you're one of them.
Here in Phoenix, in Arizona, a very very "red" state, our biggest paper is the Arizona Republic. It's famous for its blatantly liberal bias. Illegal immigrants are always "undocumented" instead of "illegal".
I would call the "undocumented" thing more accurate, not liberal. Not having documents is not the same thing as illegal.
Every time they report on a crime, if the suspects are white or black, they say so. But if they're hispanic, the description is "two men", which obviously doesn't help identify them in any way.
if it simply says "two men", then you are the one jumping to conclusions saying they're hispanic.
Further, differentiating between race is a big "no-no" in the dingbat left. It's not "politically correct".
The newspaper is not an investigative organization, and you are not the cops. It's not their job to help you identify the criminal. If the cops have that kind of description they have leads of their own, and likely names.
Would I support a law to force them to present conservative viewpoints too? No, because that's not fair.
i'm sorry, but there's a difference between choice of diction in basic reporting like what you just described, and actual, blatant bias, like smearing everyone who likes Obama as "the american idol crowd" (boortz), and far, far worse on hannity's show.
they did.
They won't hire you for a job that will pay modest apartment rent in a bad neighborhood unless you get a college education. Want to actually make enough to do something besides eat, sleep, and (explative deleted)? Then you have to go to a competitive school.
competitive schools cost money, and my competitive school only has a 50% recruitment rate. This means 50% of people there are graduating with near 6 figure student debts and going back to hat and nametag jobs, falling into the predator's trap.
3 decades ago, student loans guaranteed a basic standard of living. Now, theyre an extreme gamble on the lines of junk bonds.
Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Sorry, but when a corporation or an oligopoly is dictating the "choices", you are not free.
Just because the oppression is done via the "illusion" of choice rather than the straight denial of it doesn't make it any less oppressive.
Only Democrats would care about something like "fairness" in media, especially on the internet.
maybe it has something to do with the fact that the media is owned and controlled, both directly, and indirectly through advertising, by the ultra-wealthy people represented primarily through the republican party, and many of those media moguls have demonstrated moderate to extreme rightward leanings (example one)
Further, the anchors themselves are sealed in ivory towers. Their jobs cannot be outsourced, they're paid far in excess of the median wage, they live very urban lifestyles, and are nicely insulated from the everyday life everyone else lives day in and day out.
Requiring people who represent the opposition to the political agendas of media owners and the companies buying advertising from them be given equal time to state their case is imperative to prevent the kind of hijacking of public opinion going on right now through fox news, talk radio (death valley for anything moderate, let alone liberal), and the parroting verbatim of corporate press releases with little or no qualifiers indicating a source.
The republicans killed the fairness doctrine because it was getting in the way of their agenda (in conjunction with their "dumb-em-down" corporate masters) of discouraging critical thought, which is "bad for business" and bad for a party whose platform is built upon fallacy and intolerance.
I read your full reply. Oh, are you referring to the part where you say:
I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system...
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
in other words, you're a thinly disguised republican hack?
Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
It's entirely unfair to do this in california (free republican electoral votes) without also doing it in heavy red states like georgia (where the opposite of your scenario would occur)
public opinion polls on major issues show 65% of the US population is liberal. If you're going to apportion electoral votes by district it must be done nationwide.
If it is done, democrats will never lose another national election.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..) ... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.
False dichotomy:
providing funding does not equal legislating morality.
legislation circumscribes liberty by telling you what you CANT do.
funding enhances liberty by telling you: "if you want to do this, we'll make it less expensive for you"
keep in mind this is different from discrimination, because the discount is directly applied to the service, instead of a general easement of lifestyle based on personal preferences.
In the long term however, we must get government out of the education business, or our schools will continue to crank out sheeple.
this sounds suspiciously like another "vouchers" assertion.
BS. If the government stops financing education, the "sheeple" will never get to school, and those who want to go won't be able to afford the ones that actually matter.
There will be a de facto caste system because they will refuse to hire anyone for midde to upper ranks in companies if they didn't come from the upper quartile of the school rankings, and that upper quartile will be priced out of the market for the majority of american households.
And I don't see India as having changed much, either, in a society where you start low-class and end low-class.
sorry, but the american "rags to riches" story is a myth propagated by the wealthy to con an overwhelmingly disadvantaged populace into supporting their economically rapacious policies.
The reality is the number of people who do this are a statistical outlier, and, most importantly, they would have done this in any nation because they were willing to sacrifice their own preferences, personality, their very identity for the wealth they covet.
The eventual capacity to man neurons will bring one of the most vapid lines ever to enter cinema to reality.
*plugs in* *whooshing sound* "I know kung fu"
I for one welcome our new Rat-Brained Robot overlords!
who said they were new "ba-dum TSH"
I remember hearing something about a windows car going bsod and locking someone in for 2 hours in the sun.
No laughing matter, unless that someone is bill gates, mitch bainwol, or some bastardized clone combination of the two.