Juror#8

O.k., thought you were responding to this from post #266: "I guess in some communities they hear something enough that it just because undisputed truth. I wonder how many of them have actually critically analyzed the claim to see if it held water." I think that the presumption was reasonable considering that you quoted my post #266 when making the comment. Either way, I should not have presumed. My apologies for being incorrect. Apropos your second point, the coverage on that goes both ways. For every republican congressman that gets their "R" emphasized in your scenario, there seems to be a democratic congressman who gets their "D" emphasized with respect to financial "indiscretion." Back in 2005 William Jefferson and Duke Cunningham had similiar (though not analagous) issues of financial "indiscretion." William Jefferson and his "D" were all over the place. Duke Cunningham was B-sided. If you remember that, there is no way that you wouldn't remember the skewed reporting. MSNBC was the worst. They plastered Jefferson's name. Cunningman's name would be on the update "crawl" ensconced at the bottom of the tv screen. In fairness, I recognize your points. How about you, and mine?

Awesome. I've backed it up and posted surveys as well. We can both post more but we'll likely not convince one another. I respect your opinion and appreciate the convo. I didn't bunch anyone together "HERE." That comment didn't mention "this," "here," "TSW," "PPP"... It seems like you're trying to instigate. Ditto.

Absolutely not. That's not what I was saying or inferring. In fact, the point that I'm making is that on balance, there is no media bias. I don't think that there is pervasive bias coming from the right....or the left. There is crappy coverage. There are editorialists and pundits who hate both sides. There are people who remain objective and go all "just the facts" on things. Some seasons you'll have ______, others you'll have ________; it seems to depend on atmospherics. But collectively, there is no appreciably biased media slant. I have tried to provide examples and even some metrics so as to avoid the " ," " ," and " " responses. I guess in some communities they hear something enough that it just because undisputed truth. I wonder how many of them have actually critically analyzed the claim to see if it held water. I have. I was going to write a book about the 2008 Presidential election that never made it beyond the conceptual stage. But the research that went into it was fairly involved. And it caused my paradigms to shift a bit. If you get a chance, you should go back to square one...before you had an ideological disposition...and approach this election cycle - from right around April to late October - as if you were trying to be convinced by the media about who to vote for. You'll surprise yourself.

Selective memory by some posters. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=media-bias-presidential-election "This past summer, just as the view that journalists were going softer on Barack Obama than on John McCain was becoming widely accepted, CMPA issued a report showing that 72 percent of the statements in TV news reports about Obama in late spring and early summer were negative, whereas 57 percent of the statements about McCain were negative. When Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly attacked Lichter’s method during a radio interview, saying it would embolden liberal bias, Lichter responded, 'You can take all my studies or none of my studies'—an allusion to past uses of his work to support conservative views." Yes, that was a study by this Robert Lichter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Robert_Lichter "Lichter has authored or co-authored fourteen books and over a hundred scholarly articles and monographs on the news and entertainment media. His best-known work, The Media Elite, (written with Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter) argued that journalists, on average, held more liberal political views than the general public, and that their backgrounds and outlooks affect their coverage of the news...... Some critics, such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Columbia Journalism Review, have criticized Lichter and the CMPA for holding a conservative bias of their own or for being funded by conservative foundations." What else you got? I apologize in advance for wrecking paradigms here. Let me know if you want to go back to putting smiley faces, declarative statements, and "of course nots" in response to the idea that there is equidistance in the media. And GG, of course this is not an erudite conversation. Nothing of substance here. Meaningfulness? Meh...

Lol. I guess I could respond. However your post speaks volumes in my favor.

Post Script - The 2008 race was pitifully covered; but the coverage was NOT one-sided. And there was a lot of good pub for Palin and McCain on the non-Fox stations. At the same time though, Chris Matthews was VERY critical of Palin (personally so). But he was also critical of Hillary (personally so). McCain was almost universally covered as a principled, intelligent, seasoned vet who, if anything, made a bad decision for running mate. His marital past was superficially touched upon (almost fleetingly so) nationally. The media seemed to accept his claim that he met his current wife after he divorced his former wife even though anecdotally there were suggestions of wholesale infidelity. He basically skated on that **** big time. Palin was covered as a free-spirited, anti-Washington, confident, up-and-coming conservative voice. But she was also covered as a stupid, intellectually incurious, policy-averse, dolt. If you begin peeling apart the 08 election cycle and the coverage thereof, you would be surprised. The point is, reasonable minds can differ.

I respect your point. How about these narratives? Stop me when it rings a bell: Obama is an aspirational character, a refreshing voice, who is promising the world but hasn't done anything to suggest that he can deliver on those promises. He is an politically-inexperienced academic whose only meaningful public service appointment was that of a community organizer in South Chicago. He pals around with _______, was mentored by a racist demagogue, and a hippie revolutionary, and whose allegiance, religion, and patriotism could be subterfuge so an elevated level of vetting is necessary. Biden is a brash, boarish, indelicate career politician whose foreign policy bona fides is considerably outweighed by his self-serving personal nature and innability to recognize an extant chain of command. He can't keep his mouth shut, he is perilously extemporaneous in conversation, and he is good for one campaign trail gaffe at every campaign stop. Those narratives ran on MSNBC, CNN, national news, Washington Post, NY Times, et cetera, et cetera. No conjecture. Fact.

"I hate to say this," said my attorney as we sat down at the Merry-Go-Round on the second balcony, "but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the Fear." "Nonsense," I said. "We came here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit." I grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. "You must realize," I said, "that we've found the main nerve." "I know," he said. "That's what gives me the Fear."

I watched the entire election cycle in 2008. I watched every debate either live, CSpan or recorded. I watched news programs beginning with "Morning Joe" at 6, and ended with O'Reilly's re-run at 11. I have an absolutely different opinion...so much so that I'm questioning whether or not you watched what could even be considered an appreciable amount of coverage during that cycle. There was fawning over Palin, an admiration with Hillary, and a curiosity about Obama that began favorable but then that devolved into something personally critical. With Palin, it was so partial, that commentators on Fox were discussing how Biden couldn't be his characteristically boarish self during their debate, because of how it would play in 60 second sound-bytes after the fact. Therefore, the WH was working on different ways to delicately handle points of contention. So the consensus was that she did phenomenally post-debate....however, Biden couldn't fairly critique her as a candidate. It was really bad. Now were Clinton, Palin, and Obama criticized and lauded. Yep. It's the extent to which those things happened that was suspect. The bolded point above is what I was mentioning when I discussed "self-contained" arguments; e.g., "this is so obvious, that I don't have to discuss it." (I'm looking out for ya by the way, because you'll get Rule 56'd out playing that game. I'm not stipulating, so present your case). It's not obvious. You're not the sky and your argument is not blue. Reasonable minds can differ and my observation is different than yours. You can provide metrics, and I can offset those. So you're left fighting this out anecdotally. And I'm your huckleberry.

"Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other."

So since you, Magox, and Rob's House say that it is, I guess that it is decidedly so. Since an echo chamber community here doesn't object, I guess that it is decidedly so. Ignorance is bliss. Here is where we're at with this...there are plenty of studies that show that news coverage is liberal and that news coverage is conservative. When you account for media in the aggregate (print, television, radio, internet) - the thousands of outlets, the millions of personalities - there is no wonder that opinions are mixed and studies have arrived at different conclusions. So with no data consensus, I go by what I see and what I hear and based on conversations with colleagues. I think that there is a fairly even balance, when you look at things aggregately, that may tilt left or right depending on atmospherics. From 2000-2004, news coverage (in the aggregate) was decidedly conservative. 2006 seemed to be a VERY liberal media year, when looking at things aggregately. But this "all eggs in the basket" boogey man stuff is naive and lacks nuance.

Not sure what you're saying? "I am not worried about the deficit; it's big enough to take care of itself."

Not with respect to my point about media bias.

Agreed. He won't. But he'll make a lot of people clap and a lot of people boo. That dichotomy, like Bush, but unlike Clinton and Bush I, will define his presidency.

No. I'm actually for the pipeline construction - even in this instance. I'd be for TransCanada building it if there was an adherence to environmental SLAs in whatever statement of work that they have with the government. They shouldn't be able to pollute carte blanche. But we need more efficient mobilization. "Answer form" is somewhere in between. As it stands now, the WH has it wrong and so does the Right.

Exactly - he is not saying that building a pipeline, ipso facto, will have deleterious environmental consequences. He is saying that the pipeline, as currently envisioned and proposed, would have such an adverse impact.

There is no "liberal media bias," not in traditional news outlets and especially not in cable news. For every Dan Rather, running bs stories about Bush, you had John Stossel on ABC, making bs comments about Clinton, and trumpeting tort reform. For every story slanted in one direction, you'll find another outlet that slants in the opposite direction...enough that it becomes a zero sum game. "Liberal media bias" is the product of a weird and degenerative slippery-slopishness that is now a self-contained entity unto itself. All that crap is just boogeymanism...so that an audience can preemptively tune out a story without ever having to hear the merits.

http://journalstar.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/mike-klink-keystone-xl-pipeline-not-safe/article_4b713d36-42fc-5065-a370-f7b371cb1ece.html "Let’s be clear — I am an engineer; I am not telling you we shouldn’t build pipelines. We just should not build this one." I thought that there was a second guy...and there may well be. I was watching CNN a few nights ago and there was a gentleman discussing the pipeline. I was working on a project simulataneously though and didn't catch the name.

I already mentioned Dudley Manlove! Duh! (But it appears that D.B. Cooper was forgotten) This would be obvious unless you were endeavoring to unilaterally change the request in order to fit an altered vision of what should have been asked, or what was misunderstood to have been asked, or some contrivance in-between. Duh!

I can oblige your request for persons of media moment. Let's see, there is Nancy Kerrigan, Dudley Manlove, Rutanya Alda, Paula Jones, Hardy Amies, and Carrot Top. That is no doubt an on-point response to your question. You Tube Video: The guy second from the right is also someone of consequential media moment. And then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?l=yfs-KGPDCVXsMdB And before this becomes too convoluted, ieatcrayonz took this off-topic.

It's never a bad time to highlight the ills of drinking and driving. Its relevance spans any and all post topics, subject matter notwithstanding.

As a second point, I think that people underestimate the psychological impact of MAD. It really is more diversionary than one would think at first blush.

They all do it. He is just as politically accountable to big money interests and lobbyists as the next politician. His "change," at least with respect to the operational side of Washington, was bull ****. There is little transparency. It's kind of unfortunate. But then again, if you voted for him under those pretenses, then you probably deserve to be dissappointed.

I know right! And to think that he would have the audacity to do that when the U.S.S.R. faciliated those missles being placed only 90 miles from the continental U.S. just last week. /Sarcasm It's not about conservative and liberal; it's about common and sense. Respectfully submitted for your perusal, a Kanamit... http://www.pragueproject.org/2011/03/23/the-true-legacy-of-reagan%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98star-wars%E2%80%99/ From the very beginning, Reagan had in mind that SDI would catalyze the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and that sharing a missile defense with the adversaries of the United States would play a role in that process. http://armscontrolnow.org/2011/06/10/why-sarah-palin-is-wrong-about-missile-defense-cooperation-with-russia/

Warned for what? Maybe they were warned. Ask and ye shall see....weirdo. Oil pipeline...horrible political calculation. Union folks hate it. They're more likely to sit than the enviros because the "lesser-of-two-evils" consideration. Jobs - I think 5500-8000 is what most are predicting. Not the 20,000 that the Canadians are suggesting, but meaningful nonetheless. Environment - probably disastrous...if you're in to that kind of thing. A couple of whistle-blowers are on record as saying that internal docs suggest an acknowledgment of deleterious environmental impact. 150% of what? - amount over investment. (To DCTom)