jryan

I told you men were not supposed to fly, and 9/11 proved it!

Of course, we could also look at nickle and cadmium mines as evidence that we shouldn't use batteries....

How is the control changed by anything here? I don't see the difference between government information coming from a person or a website — it's still the same source. The press does not constitute an independent source of information. They are a conduit, except they are no longer the sole conduit.

So would a president covering-up an inconvenient inquiry finding while reporting the exact opposite on his personally controlled website be a transparent act?

I am saying that specifically controlling the information that goes to the press and limiting there ability to ask tough questions simply opens an enormous pathway to abuse for any administration.

Furthermore, they lose control by not being the sole conduit. Information can be made available that the MSM deems "not newsworthy" because they are interested in ratings, and so is not available to the average person, or that someone might miss because they didn't see the news that day. But they control they exert is always less than the control the administration had in choosing what information to make public.

If he provided the information online while not severely limiting traditional access then you would have a point. But that is not what this administration is doing. This administration is reducing traditional media access while publishing "data" which is really their side to every story.

I still see part of this as the media whining because they are no longer an indispensable part of the information distribution system. "Media access" and "openness" are not synonyms.

They are indispensable, Swansont. How would you know when the government provided information is not correct? The are the definition of the bias reporter. The media is essential because, biased or not, it is at least somewhat loyal to the story, and it gives varying details that the administration alone would not release willingly.

I think that the first step to solving illegal immigration is to allow legal immigration. As it is, we have numerical quotas (not just quality control). Why not tighten the quality controls and loosen the numerical quotas? As a bonus, that way anyone here illegally is also has other issues, so that they'd have very little support from citizens.

 

Of course, much of the opposition to illegal immigration also opposes legal immigration, even when they frequently say they don't. Finding the truth is as simple as suggesting an expansion of legal immigration.

Your first paragraph is good, your second paragraph is false.

I'll stop equating conservative and republicans as soon as you stop equating liberal and democrats. The bill was proposed by the republican administration.

I don't auto equate the two. Also your assertion was not policy led by Bush, it was CONSERVATIVES led by Bush. Hell, you can't even claim Republicans led by Bush. The Yea Votes are dominated by liberal Democrats. And even funnier is that one of the liberal Republicans that voted for the bill is now a Democrat!

So your assertion was completely wrong.

I think that it's more about the press's reaction to how the White House is handling things. They are complaining about less access to the president, and equating it with "openness." But is it? Was the pledge to be more open made to the press, or to everyone?

 

Alternate headline: Information Made Available Online, Reporters Get Pissy at Being Bypassed

You're missing the point I think. Are you comfortable with letting the Administration, any Administration, take such control of over what information gets out to the people?

It seems to me you are putting a dangerous amount of trust in the Executive branch.

What? The conservatives led by the Bush administration are the people who championed amnesty for illegal aliens not the liberals.

You're confusing "conservative" and "republican", and liberal with who knows what.

Here is the actual vote tally for the Bush Immigration Reform bill:

110th Congress bill S. 1348 in the Senate

"Yea" votes include Feinstein, Kennedy, Reid, Obama, Biden...

The total "Yea" votes went 37 Democrat to 8 Republican. That isn't republican OR conservative... let alone conservative Republicans.

Now on to the Nay votes: 39 Republicans and 11 Democrats.

This is hardly shaping up to be the "Conservative led by Bush" you claim it was... it looks more like, if anything, the LIBERALS led by Bush.

You mean something like this?: http://filext.com/

I think there may be some trouble writing a program that can determine the exact application the file is connected to since file extension nomenclature is not strictly policed. As such you will have file types with the same names that are actually completely different formats.

To really determine the root application you will need to get in and read the files themselves and match it against a structure database in the same what a virus scanner sniffs out infected files.

No, of course not. I just didn't really appreciate you swinging the "lefties are hypocrites" bat so early in the thread, especially since nobody had espoused an unreasonable position.

Sorry, I just caught this statement and had to laugh. Are you kidding? Your first post in this thread was equating this law with Nazi Germany and the Nazi's treatment of the Jews!

What about this?

 

http://www.data.gov/open

 

Federal agencies are putting more and more of their data online.

That's not the point, though. What we are dealing with here is how the White House handles questions about the data they provided, or didn't provide.

Maybe an example would help explain my point:

If the Bush presidency had a website filled with justifications for attacking Iraq, but omitted all the evidence for NOT to attack Iraq, and they also screened press day questions to limit anti-invasion questions, would that be considered a transparent presidency? I would say no it's not transparent even if the data on the official page was all true... and even if the president was on talk shows every other day answering questions form a pre-approved lists.

Why would the press be unable to corroborate or object to information provided on a web site?

I'm sure they could investigate independently without speaking to the president or the press secretary. I'm sure many do (and they probably work for News Corp )... but you are not really measuring the same thing. But even that would only be investigations into data that the Administration sees fit to mention on Government Websites... which you know is not the entirety of the purpose of the press.

It is also the definition of controlling the debate.

I wouldn't consider an Administration to be transparent because tax forms are easier to access online, for instance, or because they have a propaganda site promoting their latest bill proposals.

The press may be critical, but internet-savvy citizens find the government more open because of the information available on the web

 

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/04/pew-americans-dig-government-websites-but-not-the-government.ars

 

[W]hat is perhaps most interesting about the Pew report is that respondents who went online or interacted with the government online tended to have more positive attitudes towards Capitol Hill and the White House. Forty-three percent of government data users reported seeing the federal government as "more open & accountable" than it was two years ago. Thirty-three percent of online users who didn't interact with government sites still reported the same assessment.

That's not a comfortable trade off as the public has no real resource to challenge the administration on the information it provides outside of the press. If the press is not there to corroborate the administration's narrative then what value does the Government provided information really have?

Remember that early last year Helen Thomas tore into Gibbs over the way that the Obama Administration handles town hall meetings. It was a rather revealing bit of back and forth as to what the reporters have to deal with on a daily basis.

While Obama does more one on one interviews it should be noted that these are mostly controlled interviews rather than the extemporaneous Q&As that are the bread and butter of White House reporters.

Thomas' complaint was that Obama was having all reporters submit questions in advance, and then call on the reporters with questions he wanted to answer. Also remember that when Obama was called out for referring to a list before calling of reporters -- accused of picking favorites -- it was defended by the administration as him getting to know everyone's name. Turns out he was just referring to the sheet of approved questions. The press Q&As became a mockery of their original intent... which is probably why he doesn't do so many of them anymore.

Edit: Also, here is the video

Edit 2: Now that I found the video I realize it was about town hall meetings, but still applicable.

When we observe the universe, we tend to see things that change.

I never said we don't see things that change. You have changed physiologically since yesterday, does that make you a different person?

Can you explain this connection ???

I've already done that, you should read it.

Its a metaphor. Rights mean dick without government enforcement. Telling the native indians, "so sorry, you had these rights" after they were slaughtered is meaningless. We agree to abide and enforce these rights as a society, they are not found in nature.

You ignore that the movements to enforce these rights over the generations have been driven by religious people such as Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and many others.

I wouldn't go down the path of atheistic governments and their track record on enforcing human rights, if I were you.

IMO, all we have is humanity. Rather than live within the boundaries of our environment, we try to rise above it. Nature is harsh and so we fight. We know that we will lose in the end, so we try to appeal to the guy in charge.

I disagree. I think our dominion over nature is fairly well established. We have the ability to destroy our natural environment and still live rather well. We could overtake wild animal populations with domesticated ones, and populate the entire globe.... and we could eradicate ourselves just as easily.

It is this great power that is limited by powers higher than ourselves (real or imagined). I also find it rather interesting to view the governments of the 20th century that attempted to rid themselves of religion and God and establish a common humanist morality... not only did they become the most monstrous nations in the world with regard to human rights, but they also have the worst environmental records among all nations.

Don't get me started.

 

Harris from 3:30 - 5:30

 

Harris

 

Hitchens

 

Carlin

Please do start. If you accept my assertion that God is used as an unchangeable source of the rules by which humanity must live (be he real or imagined) the 10 Commandments become common sense. If I say that gravity is created by "God", it doesn't invalidate gravity. Things still fall.

Society also follows a set of laws that history shows us can not be changed, but they are harder to see at times as we can temporarily break these laws with seemingly no lasting harm. Unfortunately, as these laws become more commonly broken, societal collapse ensues.

By the way, I don't have access to youtube where I am, so feel free to explain briefly the assertions in the video if you think they represent your beliefs.

Merged post follows:

No means to be offensive here, jryan, but which 10 commandments? The original 10 commandments were in hebrew. And they weren't precisely what you said here.

I'm aware of these varying divisions of the 10 Commandments, mooeypoo. That doesn't change my point. It simply combines or separates my 10 points into a different conglomeration of my same 10 points.

I'll address a few of your non-organizational points now.

Your interpretation is personal, jryan. The context makes it clear to me that this is about a jealous god demanding his subjects be loyal. It's about power.

Or a parent demanding that children obey safety rules. As I pointed out in my original post, these rules are simply establishing the God's authority for establishing the rules that are to follow.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work;

but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates;

for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

This is about worship. It's about remembering how God is almighty and created everything and took a day off. He's quite explicit in explaining this 'rest on the sabbath' law, even though Christians seemed to ignore this one too.

Wait... people don't follow rules? NO WAY!

You will find many Christians don't follow other ten commandments as well, but I would guess you would still agree with the commandment over the individual Christian, right? I would argue that those Christians that break the other commandments have really failed to follow the earlier commandments (Jewish 1-3, Catholic 1&2 etc.).

Once you are stealing and screwing your neighbor's wife you have put many things above God in your heart.

The rest is mostly objection on my format, which is meaningless to debate.

The one final point is your statement concerning Deutronomy, which I also know. I am using the Ten Commandments as an example -- as I made clear in my original post.

I guess I'm going to have to read some Ayn Rand. From what I've read of her on Wikipedia she was an objectivist that wasn't particularly fond of libertarians.

 

Your last sentence though...it occurs to me that some of the deals I make with the rich leave me feeling better, like we both got a good deal - like Taco Bueno or 2x4's from Home Depot. Whereas all of my deals with government are bad ones - I never walk away with a damn thing, other than some piece of paper to complete a bureaucratic pie or a stickie to put on my license plate.

 

I would certainly say the rich, middle and poor are far sight better than government.

All encounters with Government where you don't walk away in hand cuffs are good encounters!

You are the one making an assertion: "creator being" is equivalent to "survival instinct." Unless that is demonstrated, saying "those are not necessarily equivalent" (the only assertion I've made) is literally just a statement of fact.

And again, I am saying that they are equivalent in their function while you are saying they are not equivalent because they don't have to be equal. Your argument is not a counter to my statement.

We could also argue that "sub" and "grinder" don't have to mean the same thing... but in practice they are the same thing.

Further, it is pretty easy to imagine them as separable, so I would even say that "they are not equivalent" isn't a particularly bold statement. Suppose there was a conscious being that created our universe. Suppose that being is dead. You see?

Sure it's easy to imagine them as separable, but that is not my argument.

Note that none of these statements are the same:

 

"Creator being is not necessarily equivalent to survival instinct."

"Creator being is not equivalent to survival instinct."

"A creator being cannot also be a survival instinct."

"The creator being is not also the survival instinct."

The first is all I'm really willing to say, since neither "creator being" nor "survival instinct" have been coherently defined in this discussion, IMO. You can define each in terms of the other, but then you may as well just say "flargaloo" is defined as "poppinsmoot" and vice versa.

And if the actual use of flargaloo and poppinsmoot were the same then that would be true.

For instance, imagine all the different descriptions and attributions commonly associated with the human endorphin response. While the attributions and descriptions differ from cause to cause, in reality they are all really the same physical response. You could say that "Love at First Sight" is not the same thing as "Runner's High" while they are both actually the same physical response.

I am saying that the differences in attributions to the various aspects I listed above are all from the same source as they are all accomplish the same purpose.

Rofl! KILL THE POOR!!!!

 

Great post.

Couldn't we just eat their babies?

 

If it makes you feel better you can all call me a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile.

I'd NEVER call you sadistic! (*ba dum bum*)

Thank's folks! I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses!

What assertions?

You have made two assertions there for which there are no control or method to verify, but you are stating them as a given truth.

My suggestion in my previous post is that such assumptions can not be made, and it is worth considering that all of those seemingly disparate items I listed may simply be the same thing as their function in the actual observable world are the same.

Okay. I've added the relevant quotes above for context.

 

 

I think bascule suggested that... informally... we as a group should ask that posters use multiple sources when opening a thread. He referenced some of the bias we've seen out of a specific group to give clarity for his reasons for making this request.

 

Others are welcome to come to their own conclusions. Mine? I think you are unnecessarily misrepresenting his position and being a bit of a horse's ass.

No, bascule suggested, informally, that we use multiple sources when using a News Corp source. Had he simply made the suggestion that all new threads multi-source ALL stories then there would be no issue. In this case bascule is instead asking that we multi-source stories from a news source that bascule doesn't agree with. Which is rather ironic given the bias inherent in the suggestion.

The suggestion that we multi-source ALL news stories was made by someone else, and I could almost agree to that but for a few problems. I'll spell those out here as I think the latter suggestion is more worthy of discussion.

When it comes to multi-sourcing a news story, it may be worth considering that in many many situations you will find multiple news sources all reporting on the same AP or Reuters article. I would say that posting a NYT and Fox story on an AP report would not be sufficiently multi-sourced. Nor would it be sufficient to post an original piece in the NYT that is then reported on in the Washington Times or Washington Post.

If you want to truly multi-source a given news story they should be actual independent reports.

I would also ask for a moratorium on single sourcing blogs as evidence as well.

In fact, the only thing that should be single sourced is opinion, or sites that themselves provide a large spectrum of sources in their reporting. The good sites I would suggest are: Politico.com, OpenSecrets.org, FactCheck.org and RealClearPolitics.com. All of those sites, off the top of my head, do a pretty good job of providing a selection of news from many different political persuasions.

Let me put it this way. There could be such a thing as a creator being, without there being a universal "survival instinct," and vice versa. There can be aspects of the universe that do not change with time without there being either of those things. Is "soda exists, but pop does not" a coherent statement?

So how do you know that your assertions are true?

Newsday (owned by newscorp) has already seen this happen.. It's very annoying when trying to get local stories since they're the biggest Long Island-based newspaper.

 

I refuse to pay for this mentality, though.

 

I'm all for banning Newscorp purely on these grounds.

Well, therein lies a wholly different issue that essentially renders this thread moot. If New Corp plans to put it's news behind a pay wall then nobody will be linking to News Corp sources anyway.

The NYT and WP have had varying success with these pay wall formats, but I think they have been mostly abandoned. I think the NYT still uses a pay wall for some articles and archives, though.

Those things are all synonyms. Do you think "survival instinct" and "creator being" are synonyms in the same way "soda" and "pop" are?

That is the crux of my argument, yes. In practical real-life terms they are all the same thing.

Yes I do know what you mean. Thanks for handling my adolescence so calmly.

 

And don't let the rich bashing bother you too much. I tried to include the better result of killing off the poor. As much as your assumptions are challenged, you would do well to challenge theirs.

Well, see, my thoughts aren't assumptions as we have all of history with which to judge such strategies. I see plenty of fine economic counters to the premise of that thread, and have registered my judgment of it's repugnant nature several times. If someone wants to challenge my belief that the whole idea is reprehensible I suppose they can challenge me.... but in this case half of that thread's premise falls into the "toothfairy" category for me and others have handled the economic side already.

Merged post follows:

Nobody here has suggested any such thing happen, jryan... Not even close.

I guess you didn't read the OP then, iNow. Because bascule has clearly stated that News Corp articles are bias (read: conservative bias) and should therefor not be allowed to be used in to start a thread by themselves without other bascule-approved news sources included.

The whole topic of the thread is predicated on bascule's view that News Corp is a bias source, and that there are sources that he prefers we all use instead.

Now you tell me what you think bascule said.

Next we can debate the philosophical differences of between sandwiches, hoagies, grinders and subs.... followed by pop, soda, coke and soda pop.

They must all be different things, apparently, because they have different names.

I have written an article on dentistry by toothfairies. If you can't show why toothfairies can't clean and whiten teeth, then you must accept the content?

You know what I mean, but I will make an exception that any article discussing toothfairies can be ignored without discussion... but it should still be allowed to be posted. I'll accept non-empirical proofs as well.

But the whole notion of limiting discussion topics to only bascule approved sources is almost as obscene a thread topic as murdering rich people to save the economy.