Pangloss

So you would expect racists to admit to being racist? If I had $ for every time a racist has sworn not to be racist I would be a rich man.

I wasn't suggesting that that figure spoke to the accuracy of the assessment, I suggested that it showed a difference in perception between two groups of people.

Deplorable, sure, but how would it be actionable? I don't see how that's illegal.

Voter intimidation is governed by federal law. But I think you mean just that his comment wasn't actionable because he wasn't actually threatening Moon, right? I agree that it's more insulting than directly threatening, but like I said it's probably not the only comment that gentleman has made to people at that polling place today. Reporting the incident gives the authorities a reason to investigate. Other people may have had trouble with that person or at that polling place.

If nothing else, authorities could be positioned in the area in an effort to reduce the problem.

Churches do their best to tell their members who to vote for. This is the most disturbing thing to me.

Is it less disturbing when a labor union does it?

I tend to agree with that, Pangloss. I see a lot of that where I live. The Tea Party group is quite horrid in my opinion. And most of them have the intelligence of a doormat.

 

Of course it's fallacious to generalize, but... I've only met one intelligent Tea Party-er.

So you have met one intelligent person who identifies with the tea party movement. I would suggest that you've met at least one other reasonably intelligent person who identifies with the tea party movement, but we'll set that aside for the moment.

How much time did you spend encountering tea party groups "where you live"?

The reason I ask is because I think this group -- SFN members -- is being hypocritical in condemning the influence of Fox News on conservatives while accepting and even supporting the exact same influence on itself in condemning the TPM based on biased news accounts and the left-wing blogosphere.

Evidence: 61% of tea party opponents say that racism has a lot to do with the TPM. Only 7% of supporters agree.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050405168.html?hpid=moreheadlines

I agree. I'd be interested in hearing how you've "gathered" that opinion, AJB.

Regarding the incident, I think it's deplorable and I think you should have called the authorities. Even if you couldn't prove it, similar reports would have produced an actionable account. And it's not really very likely that you're the only person he said that to, is it?

The poll question is intended to get a broad view of "lean", so please pick a category closest to your view, even if it is not entirely accurate.

Note: This thread is about US politics. Sorry for not saying that up front (thanks John Cuthber).

So Moontanman, do you agree with AJB's assertion that Tea Party groups are homophobic and racist?

On another note, two-time Pulitzer winner and former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll had this to say about the subject a couple of days ago:

When the British Broadcasting Corporation recently came under conservative criticism for allegedly tilting to the left, its managers conducted a review. They concluded that the BBC's reporting of particular stories was not typically biased against conservatives but that news subjects of concern to the right, such as immigration and business, were disproportionately neglected. A course correction broadened the BBC's audience and political support. NPR might benefit from a similar self-examination.

He's mainly focused on why increasing NPR's funding would be a good idea, but I thought the above quote was an interesting take on the bias issue. At any rate, the whole article is worth a read:

Why Fox News should help fund NPR

I think that patronizing and dismissing conservatives is what's gotten liberals into the mess they're about to experience over the next 24 hours.

I didn't say I would vote for those people over all other candidates. Every one of those names is either too wishy-washy or too connected with the religious right for my taste. But I'd vote for them over Obama right now -- that's the only question I was answering.

Just wanted to be clear. It's annoying enough to be accused of being a partisan for the right with my voting record, but you asked a comparison question and I wanted to answer it.

Are you going to respond to what I just said?

your indicating Palin, would take the Country too far right or since "bring me back to the Obama Camp" (wasn't aware of that either) his policies have been okay with you.

I'm saying that given a choice between the two I'd take what I perceive to be the lesser of two evils in Obama. If the election were held tomorrow... well I'd probably demand to know why the election had been moved up. But then I'd vote for Obama. But if anybody but Palin were on the GOP ticket, I'd probably have to vote for them.

I'll ask you this; Give me three Republican Names, you (or anybody reading this) would vote for over Obama? To be honest, in hind sight, I'd have voted for McCain, whomever was the VP. For some reason, maybe not accounting for mixing moderating duties and discussion (difficult), that you favored family traditional value, Individualism and protecting the Constitution...

Romney, Crist, Jeb, maybe some of the Republican governors.

While we're at it let's make radio astronomers pay for their spectrum, too, or auction it off if they can't ante up.

That's not a valid comparison, and seems to be another attempt to use ridicule as an argument.

I do not support or advocate charging beneficial services for their airspace. I'm saying that IF we decide that NPR and public radio are no longer beneficial, which I believe is supported by some pretty good arguments, we would have the added benefit of being able to sell off the airwaves for some pretty good cash which we could apply to the debt.

But the underlying purpose of managing frequency access is avoiding crosstalk, which obviously doesn't apply to radio astronomy, which only receives signals rather than transmitting them, except for the odd experiment here and there.

I'm going to have to disagree with that. It's product has to be popular not good, to get the audience to attract advertising bucks. Also cheap, to make a profit. And just like we fill our food with salt, sugar, fats, preservatives, artificial colors, artificial flavors, substitutes, etc that make the product cheaper or more popular, but not necessarily better, I expect the same would be true with broadcasting. The profit motive is all well and good when the objective is profit, but what about when it is not? As pointed out, a lot of the alternatives to NPR are other publicly funded sources.

Prove that NPR is "good", and not just popular with a certain audience. Seems like the same problem to me.

All the Republicans I know always vote republican and all the Democrats I know always vote democrat... every time. This is only what I've noticed, but it seems that partisanship isn't an interesting trend in the US politics, it actually IS US politics. I know SO MANY people that don't even know what conservative or liberal means, they don't know who their state's senators are, etc. All they know is they are a Republican/Democrat and they take that to the poll. The small amount of Independents always have the deciding vote because no one else cares. When they do care it's because they think it will affect their bank account. Boo American Voter, Boo.

That's very true, and that's why I posted those stats from Sunday's Gallup Poll. At the moment it appears that 67% of the American public is going to cast an "automatic" vote for their usual party. The remaining 32% are casting aside the usual party affiliation and trying to change the system. Those numbers aren't completely reliable, but I think they support your point.

Right now that's hurting Democrats almost exclusively, but in two years who knows? I'd love to see the rejection rate double, triple, quadruple -- whatever it takes to get the message across.

BTW, an hour ago I saw Debbie Wasserman-Schultz standing on a street corner holding a sign and waving at passers-by. She didn't have to do that; her Republican opponent has almost zero chance of winning. Maybe the message is already getting through.

Interesting points.

I understand that NPR doesn't operate radio stations.

If the stations had to pay for their licenses they wouldn't have as much money to pay NPR. NPR has no other outlets. Therefore NPR is part of a vertical integration. This is analogous to the commercial model. If those licenses were no longer free (and maybe moved above the protected 92 mhz line, allowing us to sell 88-92mhz to Google or AT&T for billions), the stations would have to sell commercial air time. In order to sell that commercial air time, its product has to be good. That would force NPR to compete with other products the station could be selling. One of those products could be a commercial NPR-like news service.

Ok, I apologize.

I agree with the above.

If the cost is the issue, okay, I think it's valid to complain about cost, but it has to be weighed against benefit and that's not something that's easily dismissed with a wave of the hand. If he were flying to Australia every weekend for a round of golf that would be a valid complaint. But justifications for this trip have been provided. We can't know if those justifications are completely valid, but we can't know if they're invalid either. Therefore we have to trust that they are and that the people we put in charge will handle things appropriately.

And everyone knows this. So this story is actually just politicizing something for the sake of building anger, and when you do stuff like this you support bascule's case that Fox News is misleading voters who don't know what they're doing when they get to the polls. It's making things worse, and I can't support it.

Mostly because NPR doesn't have any access to airwaves at all, because it doesn't broadcast. They don't need licenses to not broadcast.

Exactly -- it's part of the government's protected model. Just like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are part of Newscorp's commercial model.

--------

This author is suggesting that we strip away that protection and create a market for NPR-like news broadcasting, with high ethical standards. He thinks that market could grow and help us deal with the problem of lowbrow, focus-on-sensationalism outfits like Fox News and CNN. I think he has an excellent point.

But I'm not convinced that he has made his case regarding competition. It seems to me such a company could start right now if they really wanted to. If the people at NPR are sincerely dedicated to the news they should welcome the additional outlet, and if the commercial outlet is successful it will be able to entice more talent with better money and win over market share just fine.

You can trot that out as if it makes you fair and balanced like Fox News, but voting for Kerry over Bush and Obama over McCain doesn't impress me whatsoever.

 

I actually ended up voting for Doc Miller, but that's more indicative of how screwed up our local politics is:

So... to summarize, you're saying that voting for Democrats half the time is not enough, Republicans are screwing up the country, anybody who thinks otherwise is being hoodwinked by Fox News, and you're frustrated and can't understand why not everyone agrees with you.

Hey, whatever floats your boat.

Now Democrats and progressives are attempting to blame Republicans and Fox news. What a joke. Independents aren’t buying it.

Indeed.

All in all American politics remain a clusterfuck and the country continues to place ideology over facts, including the moderator of this forum.

Oh, I'm placing ideology over facts, am I? Is that what I was doing when I voted for Barrack Obama over John McCain in 2008? Is that what I was doing when I voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush in 2004? Is that what I was doing when I voted for a Democrat for Senate in 2008? Is that what I was doing when I voted for a Libertarian dweeb who's name I can't even remember for the House in 2008 because he was the only other name on the ballot besides my 6-term Republican representative?

When's the last time you voted for a Republican, bascule?

You come back and start a partisan rant and then you bash me for stating my opinions, and by and large I took it, not because I had to but because I LIKE having you here. But I don't know what to tell you -- I won't shut my mouth just because you don't like what I have to say. I will promote a diversity of opinions on this forum, even if it means having to continue to start threads from a conservative perspective and fight for the few conservative posters we have.

I hope you stick around.

My only consolation is that the political logjam we'll see in the next two years might be enough to convince Joe Sixpack that the Democrats were actually accomplishing things and voting Republicans back into power was a horrible idea. I hope this helps Obama get re-elected. Of course Joe Sixpack could continue the present trend of retardation and blame Obama for the political logjam voting Republicans back into power created.

What I think you're missing is that that's the ONLY possibility. It's not even remotely conceivable that Republicans can cut taxes and cut spending. It's simply not going to happen. We might as well expect a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica, containing the sum total of knowledge of every sapient species in the universe, to drop into our laps tomorrow. They're GOING to fail, and the people are GOING to turn out congress in even higher numbers next time.

Well... that is, unless President Obama manages to score a real economic recovery.

The Gallup poll out today suggests that it's not about putting Republicans back in charge, it's about throwing out people in power. I've started a new thread on the subject here.

Gallup today released it's final pre-election poll. The headline tomorrow will be the continued enthusiasm gap and the overall lead favoring the GOP. But I found something much more interesting in this story from Politico:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44468.html

Among all registered voters, Republicans have only a 4-point lead in the latest Gallup survey. But the poll found that the likely turnout of voters will include 35% of Americans identifying as Republicans, 32% as Democrats, and 32% as independents.

 

Both parties will win support from more than 90 percent of their based voters, Gallup reported. The election outcome will be shaped by a huge GOP leaning among independents, who favor the Republican candidate by 59 percent to 31 percent, Gallup found.

In other words, it's really just business as usual for Republicans and Democrats. GOP voters are a little more mobile at the moment, but not that much. The tale of the tape here is the vast increase in independent voters, and their inclination to vote against incumbents.

This should be heartening for Democratic supporters, because it means that they're not really favoring Republicans per se, it just means that they're fed up with not being listened-to. Democrats have NOT been responsive to centrists. Democrats have NOT compromised. Democrats have NOT put the welfare of the country over ideology. And the result of that error is that they're about to be replaced.

Now Republicans will find themselves in exactly the same boat, with exactly the same problem. They cannot continue to do nothing and stall Obama, because they will be in charge and just as responsible for fixing problems as the President and Democrats are.

So what will happen in two years? I predict that the President will be re-elected, and that an EVEN HIGHER number of House and Senate members will be thrown out of office. This year may break the record set in 1922 -- if the economy hasn't turned around I'll bet we break it again in 2012.

What do you all think?

Last week Sarah Palin confirmed her interest in the 2012 GOP nomination, and probably did more to sway independents to move back to the Democratic party in that statement than anything Democrats have done in the last 18 months.

Palin this week told "Entertainment Tonight" that if a candidate she feels is sufficiently conservative does not emerge, she would feel moved to run. "If there's nobody else to do it, then of course I would believe that we should do this."

 

The comments came the same week as an ABC News/Washington Post poll that showed 39 percent of registered voters view her favorably and only 27 percent believe she is qualified to be president.

This article at Politico has some interesting angles on how various interests in the Republican party want to stop her.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44449.html

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Right now Sarah Palin is the one thing that would stop me from voting Republican in 2012 and bring me back into the Obama camp. I am always open-minded right up to election day, but I'm pretty steamed at Democrats right now, and I'm not alone.

What do you all think? Is this new Palin threat for real? Is she going to cause trouble for the GOP? Can she win?

The logical flaw is the continuing mistake of equating NPR with public broadcasting.

Then you should have no trouble with NPR being forced to sell its product on the open market and compete with private companies.

"Censor them but not me" is hypocrisy.

He didn't say that. Not once in that article did he say the government should continue giving money to private companies.

In fact, according to his Wikipedia bio, he considers Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Milton Friedman amongst his "intellectual and ideological heroes". Hm, what do you think his opinion about the federal government giving money to private enterprises is?

In fact he speaks out directly against government money going to news organizations:

The president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, has emerged as a leading voice for pouring more government money into news gathering. How badly would that chill the capital markets for those who dream of privately funded news gathering, completely independent of oversight by Congress? My guess is that the effect would be a great deal more significant than those who have not been out trying to raise such capital might imagine.

 

That would be entirely consonant with the school of economics known as public choice theory, which views the government as having its own economic interests and the state as not a protector but a competitor of private enterprise.

Gee.

Advertising budgets would not magically expand; the same pie would likely be just cut into smaller pieces and all commercial broadcast companies would see their profits go down.

It's possible.

The perceived inability for that programming to compete in the 1960's has melted away in the era of cable TV. It's really not a stretch to think that they could be one more competitor, taking that much money away from Fox, et al., if their funding got cut off.

I think that's a fabulous idea! Let them switch their model to advertising, which is hardly that different from the corporate sponsorships that comprise most of their present income anyway, take away their free access to airwaves and buy a license like anybody else, and then absolutely, by all means, let them compete. Sounds like a great plan you have there!