Text 13275, 271 rader
Skriven 2008-03-20 16:22:00 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
  Kommentar till text 13265 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Ärende: Re: Bush Vetoes Waterboarding Bill
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RW> The Democrats have no choice but to run Obama now. And he'll lose because
RW> of his race and very little experience. The racial thing has to be
RW> addressed for fear of losing the black voters. If they put Hillary up for
RW> election, she'll lose. Probably as bad as Mondale did in 1984, if not
RW> worse.
 
After watching Obama's ~40 minute speech from the other day, my opinion of him
did go back up, after faultering from the whole Jeremiah Wright debacle. Not
only did he apparently write the speech himself, but it shows again that he's
really a good speaker.  And he spoke a lot about race, which is something that
doesn't come up a lot from candidates, because everybody's afraid of offending
somebody these days.  I also commend him for using the word "black" a lot to
descibe himself and others.  It's a word that a lot of overly-sensitive America
has stopped using in favor of the horribly incorrect term "African-American".
 
 
RW> Yeah, but the do-nothing Democrat led Congress has given them a worse
RW> popularity rating than Bush. There'll be a big change up this time, just
RW> the opposite of what happened in mid-term elections.
 
While the Democratic congress has been disappointing to me in some respects,
when I rate them against the Republican one that was in there for over a decade
before that, the Dems still pull ahead in my book.  Which isn't saying much
about either, but still. 
 
 
RW> Global warming has been proven to be a hoax. AlGore is about to be sued
RW> by the founder of the weather channel for perpetrating that hoax.
 
Global warming in and of itself is true and happening and proven.  Whether it's
man-made is what's debatable.  And that hasn't been proven anything.
 
The weather channel founder lost a lot of credit in my book by parading around
making such statements.  He's not a researcher, he was a meteorologist turned
businessman.  His claims are opinions.  Him saying global warming isn't true is
like a die-hard Christian saying there was no such thing as dinosaurs and that
the earth has only been here a few thousand years, despite evidence to the
contrary.  It's easy for one to ignore evidence when they don't want to believe
it.
 
One has to keep an open mind about any of this stuff until it can be proven.
Only if I were a scientist and researched this data with my own hands and eyes
would I be able to sit here and tell you it's this or that.  And since I
mentioned religion, I keep the same open mind about it too, since nobody truly
knows, and I find it rather arrogant of an athiest to pretend he or she does
any more than for a priest to say their version is fact.
 
 
RW> Such as the ice build up this winter was a month ahead of the normal
RW> schecule and much thicker than ever.
*snip*
RW> The boys in northern Canada would disagree with you on that. They had
RW> record low temps this winter, -57 where it's normally around -30...
 
Unusual freezing can be an indication of global warming just the same as
melting, due to how weather patterns are disrupted by imbalances.  And that
statement is neither for or against global warming, it's just a known fact.
 
 
RW> Sounds like they don't know what they're talking about. Big oil would
RW> include the people who actually own it to begin with. Meanwhile, Bush is
RW> saying that we need to get off away from using oil...
 
Bush says it, but we aren't really doing it.  Why would an (albeit failed) oil
man like himself want to ruin the industry his family used/uses to become rich
in the first place?
 
 
RW>JB> Spending in general isn't the problem, it's how they're spending it
RW>JB> inappropriately that hurts.
 
RW> Spending is the problem. There are more pork barrel politicians than
RW> ever.
 
And yet during Bush's terms with the Republican congress, pork barrel spending
skyrocketed.  
 
"According to a Congressional Research Service study, the number of earmarks in
spending, or appropriations, bills went from 4,126 in 1994 to 15,877 in 2005.
The value of those earmarks doubled to $47.4 billion in the same period.
Earmarked projects often include roads, bridges and economic development
efforts."
 
Maybe you'd be interested in the source.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2007Jan03/0,4675,Bush,00.html
 
Of course, they conveniently don't mention who was in control of congress all
that time.  But here's info you don't see Fox News willing to admit:
 
"As promised when they took control of Congress, in 2007, House Democratic
leaders cut in half from last year the value of earmarks in the bill, as they
did in the other 11 agency spending measures."
 
That's from the New York Times, which keeps getting accused by everyone of bias
on both sides, so take it as you will.  Doesn't mean you can't go confirm the
numbers just the same if you don't believe it.
 
Anyway, it's things like that which actually earn credit in my book for the
Democrats.  Enough earmarks already.
 
 
RW> Had the Republican whiner from Alaska not gotten his way by threating to
RW> resign (they should have let him), the money slated for that bridge would
RW> have been re-apportioned to fix a damaged bridge in Lousiana that was
RW> destroyed by Katrina, and the remainder to the Alaska highway projects
RW> that are needed.
 
I wish they had seriously let him resign, because then we would have never
gotten that pathetic attempt at him explaining the internet and net neutrality.
 It's scary that men like him are allowed to still introduce legislation
towards things he entirely doesn't understand whatsoever.
 
Let's not forget that he's still under investigation for corruption involving
an oil company, getting his home searched and everything by FBI/IRS.  A home
which itself may have been bought through such crooked dealing.
 
 
RW> Do you realize that the talk of a recession is global? It's not any one
RW> person or thing that has brought this about.
 
Talk of a recession has a funny way of actually causing one, as you may already
be aware.  We didn't actually have to do anything major in America for the rest
of the world to get scared and pull out of investments and such. Which, of
course, in turn, hurts the situation worse.  The world wasn't worried about
recession during Clinton's time.  It wasn't till Bush starting messing things
up that people got truly concerned.
 
 
RW> Banks loaned money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, thus
RW> we have a glut of home reposessions.
 
As I've said before I believe, this is all in part due to Americans thinking
they can live too high on the hog and living off of credit like it's endless. 
I blame the greedy credit companies for allowing it to happen in the first
place.
 
I know a fellow who managed to run up thousands of dollars of credit card bills
on just completely trivial crap, and now he's expecting others to help him pay
it off before it eats him alive.  Forget that shit.  Consider it a lesson
learned.
 
 
BW> High priced oil products has caused the price of food and manufactured
BW> goods to rise. This is happening all over the world, not just here.
 
Which is why I believe it had a lot less impact on any recession than the other
aspects.  It doesn't help, though, when combined with the other problems.
 
RW> Bush did what he had to do when America was attacked by terrorists. If
RW> he didn't, we'd be fighting terrorists on our streets, just like they're
RW> doing in Europe.
 
Aside from my position that the Bush administration's incompetence possibly led
to 9/11 in the first place, Bush did the right thing going into Afghanistan. 
Going into Iraq was obviously a dumb move though.  Iraq is what screwed us up
so bad.  I bet we'd have been fine had we just dealt with Afghanistan alone. 
Bush estimated we'd only have 30,000 troops not long after the invasion, and
now that number is almost 6x higher.  There's really no excuse for such a
horribly wrong estimate.
 
As for Britain and France having so much trouble with extremists, you have to
remember that they're landlocked.  It's extremely easy to get from one country
to another over there than it is to get into the US.
 
 
RW>JB> Just because a reporter is liberal or conservative doesn't mean
RW>JB> they're naturally biased.
 
RW> The hell it doesn't. You're liberally biased and your writing shows it.
RW> Mine is more conservative and I show it. No one can write news articles
RW> without showing some personal bias'...
 
I write liberally-biased posts here because we're having discussion.  That
doesn't mean I couldn't write a completely fair news story about somebody who
is conservative.  Even Bush, of all people.
 
But the thing is, people tend to see things they don't like being made public
again, and so they cry bias.  If I included that Bush's popularity rating is
really low, or that he and his administration took us into Iraq with what
turned out to be false information, or his history with alcohol, or the
questioning of his service in the Air Force, many Republicans would cry fowl.
That doesn't change the fact that these are all true statements or things that
did happen, but they don't want to hear it. If I left those things out to
satisfy Republicans, Democrats would shout bias for leaving out important facts
about the man's life and career.  It's easy for someone to read bias into
something if it doesn't suit them.
 
Regardless, I continue to say that being liberal or conservative doesn't mean
you _have_ to write biased articles.  But most people do include bias to
satisfy their majority readers.  Or worse, their editors.  Fox News
viewers/readers wouldn't be satisfied if there was heavy coverage of every
Republican scandal, for example, but they are if there's coverage of what's
being done right.
 
 
RW>JB> You can hate someone's guts, but that doesn't mean you can't write
RW>JB> a fair story about'em.
 
RW> LOL! Tell that to Helen Thomas. At the July 18, 2006 White House press
RW> briefing, Thomas remarked, "The United States is not that helpless. It
RW> could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon. We have that much control
RW> with the Israelis... we have gone for collective punishment against all
RW> of Lebanon and Palestine." Press Secretary Tony Snow responded, "Thank
RW> you for the Hezbollah view."
 
Had she left out the last statement, she would have been okay regarding the
appearance of being non-bias.
 
Regarding her statement, personally I agree, we could have stopped them had we
wanted.  I'm not saying I wanted us to, though.  We interfere in their garbage
too often.  Let them duke it out amongst themselves for a change.
 
Anyway, you're citing one example.  Just because we don't tend to see honest
reporting these days doesn't mean it's not possible.
 
 
RW> I'm not talking Republican reporters. Remember that only 8% of the media
RW> is conservative. You don't have to be Republican to be conservative. My
RW> father was as conservative as you could get, yet he was a staunch
RW> Democrat. He never voted outside of the party in his entire life. Much to
RW> my and my siblings dismay.
 
Considering many conservatives are religious, and many religious consider
liberals horrible people for supporting gays and all that, I find it hard to
believe that an average conservative reporter isn't going to be biased against
liberals.
 
As I said though, there's no reason they couldn't be fair if they chose to be. 
Just like a liberal reporter could.  But you can't ever make me believe that
all conservative reporters are honest, no more than I'd believe all liberal
ones are.  And don't think I haven't frowned at seeing blatant liberal bias in
stories before.
 
 
RW>JB> So just because a website or channel you don't like covered
RW>JB> something, that automatically makes it bogus?
 
RW> If it's biased in a certain way. You say that just because a person leans
RW> one way or the other, they cannot write an unbiased report. I'm here to
RW> tell you that isn't so.
 
If you go to a heavily-leaning place, then of course it's not.  But if you go
to a place like Youtube, which allows content from anyone (and trust me, I've
seen plenty from both), then there shouldn't be a problem.  You simply don't
have to look at the parts you don't like.  Bias is not an issue.
 
 
RW>JB>  Liberal sites cover lots of things, that doesn't mean it's not
RW>JB> covered elsewhere too.
 
RW> Yet, those same things are covered in a different bias...
 
Regardless of bias, that doesn't mean you can't extract facts.  Or at least
learn of the story, and then research it yourself at various other places. I've
done that many times.
 
 
RW> But it's still on a liberal website. That says a lot about it in itself.
 
So even if O'Reilly said America was the worst country in the world, and that
he wished we were all dead, as long as the clip of him saying that showed up on
Youtube, you'd still refuse to believe it?
 
I keep trying to understand why exactly you consider any content that touches a
website you consider liberal somehow makes it tainted and untrue.  Even if it's
still the original, unmodified content.  And yet if a clip of Olbermann saying
the same thing aired on O'Reilly, you'd believe it without question.

--- D'Bridge 2.99
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)