WSJ "Obama speech most dishonest in decades"Follow

Standard & Poor's did it because they're skeptical of a deficit reducation agreement coming out of Congress that passes both chambers and gets a presidential signature. It's not really a Democrat thing or a Republican thing but rather a "general tone in Washington" type thing.

S&P's own reasoning has nothing to do with this at all. Go ahead, claim you understand the S&P better than the S&P understands themselves, that'll sound really reasonable!

Don't you ever get sick of spinning so much? I mean nauseous, specifically.



Edited, Apr 18th 2011 5:07pm by bsphil

Those among the wealthy who don't use the loopholes rarely object to legislative attempts to close them. It's a safe assumption that anyone crying tears over legislation to close tax loopholes is either a user of those loopholes or a parrot.

I won't call you a **** if you won't call me a Commie. Let's agree that 1930s totalitarian doctrines don't have to be our only options here.

Huh? There's a massive difference between getting some of the tax money you paid back from the government and actually having a portion of your operation subsidized by the government. Fox News didn't cost the taxpayers anything. On the contrary, as a for profit business, it generated tax revenue. Please tell me you didn't think this was a serious response?



But the assumption behind any argument about a news source being biased is that their bias will influence people's opinions about various things. So if a news source is biased to the right, the people would be misinformed in ways which will tend to make them believe in or agree with ideas that are in line with political ideas on "the right". But if 30+% of Fox News viewers vote Democrat, then either Fox News isn't that biased, or they're not doing a very good job misinforming people.

I mean, what's the point? What do they gain with all their misinformation if a larger percentage of their viewers still vote Democrat than the percentage of NPR listeners vote GOP?



Ok. But who decides what constitutes "misinformation"? I would assume that if there is a heavily unbalanced political demographic viewing/listening/reading a given news source it is because of one of two reasons: The news presented is slanted such that it appeals to an unbalanced demographic group *or* the news is presented in such a way so as to gradually slant the views of their audience so that they become an unbalanced demographic group.

If the "biased" news source doesn't result in a demographic audience that is shifted towards that bias, then they're kinda doing it wrong, aren't they?



Or the study in question happened to have the same single view bias which NPR has and thus NPR did very well. That really only shows that NPR presents fewer viewpoints and that those viewpoints happen to align with the questions on the study. It doesn't tell us anything about which is less biased. In fact, one could argue that the study indicates that NPR is more biased since the answers given by their viewers were more consistent.


I suspect that what you (and the study in question) are labeling as misinformation is more accurately called "presenting multiple opinions". I'd go into length about why it's better to allow and even encourage those differing opinions, but I'm trying to be somewhat brief here.

I really liked the clothes.

Actually, I'd wager a bet that a majority of the US debt was caused by using deficit spending to pay for an unnecessary war in Afghanistan and an unnecessary war in Iraq. Which makes me wonder, would you actually rather see education, health care, medicare, etc. go to **** because you want to see dead muslims?





I have a couple questions for you varus.

1. What is communism?

2. What is socialism?

3. What is the difference between these things?

4. What is the problem?

Care to explain your incomprehensible confusing views on something you clearly know absolutely **** all about?




What makes you think you have the highest standard of living in the world? I'll go out on a limb and name Sweden, Canada, and England as having a higher standard of living. Just because your country seems to love thinking it's better than everyone else doesn't make it true.

I don't even know why I bother. You'll never make sense, or pick up a book that wasn't written by someone like Bill O' Reilly, or open your mind to see things from other perspectives. I'd try to explain things using logic, but I figure that it would be lost on you. All you care about it status, pretty, expensive, useless ****, and the Republican Party.

Hell, the Republicans could suggest concentration camps for all people of arab descent, and you would jump on that bandwagon with all the energy of a 1930s **** Party member, just because it's your party and no matter what, even when they're wrong, they're right. You're not even intelligent enough to be anything other than a mindless drone, doing and saying whatever you're told by the all-seeing, all-knowing leaders of the party. And I feel so, so very sorry for you. You'll die dumb, ignorant and alone, just like most of the other idiots on this increasingly barren rock. So **** you, sir.

I'm all for pride in your birthplace, but some people are goddamn idiots about it.

Can't all be from New York, just deal with it the best you can.

This reminds me, my sister-in-law got accepted to NYU for grad school...she is going to south florida. What the hell is that?

I heard New Zealand's birth certificate is a fake, but that's another thread.