I'm out. Too much blue and red Kool-aid being sloshed around in here.

I think everyone is throwing purple Kool-Aid and doesn't realize it.

While I am a very religious person, I realize that "the Bible says so" is not a productive argument. If social conservatives are serious about pushing their ideas, they are going to have to do better than that.

Excellent. I'm glad some people can realize this!

Palin was a bone thrown to the right wing ... nothing more, nothing less.

 

Given the pit-bull tone of her campaigning, Palin probably won't have much appeal outside of the "conservative base" of the Republican Party.

 

 

Exactly right. Independents shun Palin because they recognize her as unqualified and intellectually lacking. She's the political equivalent of a trick play that has been blown up.

.... She is the liberal Demcrats' worst nightmare and that is why so many unfounded smears were manufactured during the first couple of weeks following the convention.

 

 

Where have I seen this played out recently???? It wasn't about Sarah Palin....????? Who was that guy?????

Where have I seen this played out recently???? It wasn't about Sarah Palin....????? Who was that guy?????

There is a difference in simply manufacturing lies and feeding them to the media. CNN rushed a crew to Alaska to investigate the Daily Kos smear that Palin was not her own child's mother (and reported the rumor on the air) and the New York Times ran a front page, above the fold story about Palin being a member of the Alaskan Independence Party - both accusations were total fabricatons. Please spare me the details of chain letters claiming that Obama is a Muslim. The smears are not comparable.

Please spare me the details of chain letters claiming that Obama is a Muslim. The smears are not comparable.

Smears are smears, no matter what side of the fence from which they come ...

Smears are smears, no matter what side of the fence from which they come ...

Smears that are based on total fabrications and reported by Obama's mainstream media allies are not on the same level as a chain email. I have not seen any total unfounded rumors make it to the front page of the NYT, have you?

:lol: Hey, Habib, I am sure this thread certainly went in the direction you wanted! :lol:

 

Similar to how my thread on gay marriage and libertarianism went into the archives- as cliche as it is, I can't wait till this election is over.

:lol: Hey, Habib, I am sure this thread certainly went in the direction you wanted! :lol:

 

Similar to how my thread on gay marriage and libertarianism went into the archives- as cliche as it is, I can't wait till this election is over.

 

Your location. :lol::lol:

Your location. :lol::lol:

Let me give you a clue to my state of mind- its U of K- and it is Thursday night. And yes, as much as Family Guy tortures me (and the rest of their audience), I love some of their punchlines :lol:

 

And this is from a "diehard conservative"

I do not necessarily disagree with your premise or the content of the Brooks article.

 

However, all of you who have somehow bought this absolute crapola that the cause for the economic crisis and need for bailout was somehow caused by the policies of the past 8 years have taken leave of your senses. You're simply drinking Obama flavored Kool-Aid. The destabilization of the market die was cast in the 70's and 90's during frenzied Democratic led efforts to push homeownership to those, particularly minorities, who were not qualified to own homes. To be sure, many Republicans and banks pushed the idea as well, but it was a Democratic environment in which the effort was led, and any and all challengers to the policies were swept aside as fear-mongerers and racists.

 

Any assertion to the contrary is baptized with the very ignorance of intellect that Palin is accused of in post #1.

 

:thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:

Smears that are based on total fabrications and reported by Obama's mainstream media allies are not on the same level as a chain email. I have not seen any total unfounded rumors make it to the front page of the NYT, have you?

One big difference ... in the media, reports eventually get labeled as rumor, fact or fiction.

 

The chain e-mails have no factchecking to go with them ... believe me, more people read that stuff than read the front page of the New York Times.

One big difference ... in the media, reports eventually get labeled as rumor, fact or fiction.

 

The chain e-mails have no factchecking to go with them ... believe me, more people read that stuff than read the front page of the New York Times.

Surely you do not believe this. I had assumed that you understood how many newspapers across the country reprint front page New York Times stories, how many web sites run them, and how many TV and radio stations cite them. A front page story in the NYT or Washington Post reaches far beyond those newspapers' shrinking lists of subscribers. Most sane people discard unsolicited email messages without reading them and blacklist the sender's address.

 

Liberals have a tough time acknowledging the obvious media bias in this campaign - despite several top Democrats expressing the same opinion as me on the subject.

Surely you do not believe this. I had assumed that you understood how many newspapers across the country reprint front page New York Times stories, how many web sites run them, and how many TV and radio stations cite them. A front page story in the NYT or Washington Post reaches far beyond those newspapers' shrinking lists of subscribers. Most sane people discard unsolicited email messages without reading them and blacklist the sender's address.

I know very well about that stuff ... but I still maintain the e-mails and stuff are reaching just as many people. I know a lot of people that believe the e-mail crap and a lot of people that don't believe what they read in the newspaper unless it meshes with their preconceived views.

 

Again, in the mainstream media things get labeled as fact, fiction and rumor ... not always so in other venues.

Liberals have a tough time acknowledging the obvious media bias in this campaign - despite several top Democrats expressing the same opinion as me on the subject.

Most of whom had a bias themselves or a vested interest in proclaiming it.

 

I don't believe the media is perfect, by any means. But it isn't the bogeyman that some make it out to be.

The two sides are never going to concede or agree. I read an interview in The Onion with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone that I thought raised an interesting point:

 

" I think what's different about it now is that we had a relatively cohesive national society for a while. For a giant industrial country, we had a situation where pretty much everybody agreed on the same sets of facts when they talked about the news, and they believed in the media. When somebody reported something, they generally accepted that it was true. For a long time, I think that was the case in this country. But recently, because of a bunch of things—there was a general collapse in faith of the mainstream news media, because of Jayson Blair. And the 2000 election was a situation where if you were on the Bush side, you believed X set of facts, and if you were on the Democratic side, you believed Y set of facts. The wound was never healed. You got a situation where people decided to reality-shop and search for their own sets of facts at their own news sources, and they just kind of stopped coming to this common meeting-place where we all had the same commonly accepted set of facts. And because of the Internet, which is a new phenomenon, people can do that more than ever before. You can have somebody living next door to you and you can live in a completely different world from that person, which is definitely something we've never experienced before. So I think just because of the media landscape and the way we get our information now, we're more atomized and isolated from each other than ever before."