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Who are the "high ratings" liberal commentators?

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  • #46
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    I don't particularly like Obama. He's far too war-hawish
    He's hawish on EVERYTHING!
    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

    Comment


    • #47
      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
      You'd think the Republicans would be the first to want to pass laws tightening up on campaign financing then, wouldn't you?
      If the media wasn't in the tank for the democrats, maybe.
      The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

      Comment


      • #48
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        I think that US allies should get together and influence US elections for the benefit of the US and the world. But US patriots flip their lids at the thought of foreigners having any influence on US elections.
        Wow --- the US should stay out of other countries' business, but THEY should work to rig US elections!

        I hope that sounded better in your head.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #49
          Originally posted by lao tzu View Post
          I'd mention you clearly don't understand liberals — since when did liberals stop giving even the goofiest oddballs a hearing, but then I'd have to mention you clearly don't understand how call-in talk radio works — never heard of the mute button, but then I'd have to mention you clearly don't understand the difference between comedians and satirists — and we'd be at this all night, so let's just keep it short and sweet.

          I'll take your political commentary seriously the day after you learn how to put arithmetic ahead of your ideology.

          Which, judging from the years I've been nagging you to do so, ain't gonna be any time soon.
          I used to do information research for a radio talk show part time for about a year. Yeah, I have no idea how they work If you want details I'll PM you.

          My point was that far too few liberals are used to having nearly everything they say challenged. This was why myths like domestic battery is the nation’s #1 cause of birth defects; more women are abused by men on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year and an entire slew of misinformation about gun control got unquestionably accepted and routinely repeated by the media. They never bothered to do even a cursory investigation which would have revealed that the claims were balderdash. They never pressed the people making the claims. They just accepted them on face value.

          In contrast, conservatives and to a lesser extent libertarians are used to being asked to back up what they say. Often even the most general statements. While that does not mean that they can all do so it prepared many of those who became successful talk show hosts to handle callers who challenged them.

          The lack of this experience was quite a problem for many of those with a more liberal political and social outlook who tried their hand in this venue. And it was evident. They often got frustrated. They often thought of a response and gave it after a commercial break. They just didn't do a good job.
          Last edited by rogue06; 02-24-2015, 09:20 AM.

          I'm always still in trouble again

          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
            I used to do information research for a radio talk show part time for about a year. Yeah, I have no idea how they work If you want details I'll PM you.

            My point was that far too few liberals are used to having nearly everything they say challenged. This was why myths like domestic battery is the nation’s #1 cause of birth defects; more women are abused by men on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year and an entire slew of misinformation about gun control got unquestionably accepted and routinely repeated by the media. They never bothered to do even a cursory investigation which would have revealed that the claims were balderdash. They never pressed the people making the claims. They just accepted them on face value.

            In contrast, conservatives and to a lesser extent libertarians are used to being asked to back up what they say. Often even the most general statements. While that does not mean that they can all do so it prepared many of those who became successful talk show hosts to handle callers who challenged them.

            The lack of this experience was quite a problem for many of those with a more liberal political and social outlook who tried their hand in this venue. And it was evident. They often got frustrated. They often thought of a response and gave it after a commercial break. They just didn't do a good job.
            Would you think that liberals would be less likely to call a conservative talk show host, than conservatives would to call a liberal talk show host?
            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
              Would you think that liberals would be less likely to call a conservative talk show host, than conservatives would to call a liberal talk show host?
              Liberals would call in to challenge and debate. Conservatives to agree. The person I'm familiar with was far more likely to put those on who disagreed. He thought it was far more interesting and there was already one person saying what he was saying.

              As for numbers... It seemed about 50/50. That was callers. I don't know about listeners.

              I'm always still in trouble again

              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                Wow --- the US should stay out of other countries' business, but THEY should work to rig US elections!
                If we were to have a scale from 0 to 100 measuring non-intervention to uber-busybody, then I would rank current & historic US interference in other countries at 100, and current Western interference in US politics at 0. There's plenty of space in between for a happy medium.

                The US has plenty of scope to tone its interventions down, preferably by an order of magnitude or two. Other countries could stand to show a little bit of interest in the politics of the world's greatest superpower who keeps invading other countries and who is in massive denial about climate change despite being one of the leading contributors. As a citizen of one of US' allies, I would be much happier if my country wasn't currently in the process of deploying troops to Iraq on America's behalf, and instead was spending that money to decorrupt US politics and stopping multinational corporations controlling US politicians and by extension the rest of the world.

                If the media wasn't in the tank for the democrats, maybe.

                What constantly surprises me about the US is that the media takes the Republicans seriously. The media doesn't bother to challenge them on facts and simply reports "Republicans say X, Democrats say Y". US media seems to have totally dropped the ball and shows no general interest in actually adding any facts to their stories like "Y is true, X is false, Republicans lie blatantly yet again." In very few other countries in the world are the media so totally asleep at the wheel that they would let politicians get away with constant factually false and stupid statements like they do in the US. The various US fact-checking organisations seem to consistently find that Republicans lie about 75% of the time, whereas the Democrats are truthful about 75% of the time. But you wouldn't know that from the way general US media presents things - you'd assume that both side's views were equally valid. It's always amusing to see when Republicans travel to other countries and get interviewed by media there, and in the course of the 5-minute conversations the foreign journalists quickly realize they're talking to delusional morons and they can't hide their amazement and contempt.

                I think what happened in the US was three things. Firstly, the Bush administration attacked the media as "unpatriotic" whenever they questioned anything the administration did. Secondly they played the media organisations against each other, saying "we, the government are the source of lots of your stories, and if you annoy us and make us dislike you, then we'll take all our big stories to the other news organisations and you'll never have any scoops and will go out of business. But you're a team player, right?". Thirdly, they played up the conservative base to scream "bias" whenever the media called BS on anything Republicans said, and increasingly media organisations began to get paranoid about getting accused of bias. I guess at a certain point "Republicans lie for the 1000th time, get their facts wrong for the millionth time" stops becoming headline news. But the results of the media letting their lies go uncorrected is that a lot of voters start believing them.

                So the solution that many of the media have therefore opted for is to report both side's views without any form of judgment, bringing it to a "Republicans say X, Democrats say Y" format. This is okay if the viewer is an expert on the subject matter and can therefore draw their own conclusion about who is actually right. But the vast majority of the time, the viewers are not experts and need more factual information from the media before they can draw any conclusions. Thus the media's failure to supply facts brings an implicit "who's to know what's really true? There's no reality, just dissenting partisan opinions" kind of thinking to the whole political dialogue. All the media then becomes is a vehicle for conveying partisan opinions to the public, which has the result of making viewers increasingly partisan, because the media is essentially giving the viewers no new information only more and more partisan opinions.

                But this is why the Daily Show with Jon Stewart is so big now. Its focus has increasingly become about getting laughs out of the systematic failures of US media, the idiocy of the Republican party, and the lies of Fox News. Both the Republicans and Fox News are basically clown-shows at this point and all the Daily Show needs to do is show snippets of them, point out some basic facts, and viewers laugh because Fox News and the Republicans are so wrong and so dumb on a constant basis that it's absolutely hilarious. The Daily Show does 4 shows and week and somehow Fox and the Republicans manage to supply enough imbecilic snippets on a daily basis to give the Daily Show plenty of clips to show everyday. Whenever they need additional material they simply turn to CNN and look at what an absolutely terrible job CNN is doing at trying to be a news organisation. (Of course Jon Stewart's most famous swipe at CNN was managing to get its Crossfire program cancelled as a result of his appearance on it during which he explained they were destroying America by presenting politics as partisan without including facts)
                Last edited by Starlight; 02-24-2015, 02:03 PM.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • #53
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  You'd think the Republicans would be the first to want to pass laws tightening up on campaign financing then, wouldn't you? But they're the ones who have unanimously blocked such laws. So at the end of the day the Republican senators must believe that Republicans stand to gain more than Democrats from secretive campaign funding.
                  Rather, I think the reason is that Republicans tend to support freedom a little more than Democrats do.

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                    What constantly surprises me about the US is that the media takes the Republicans seriously. .
                    Are you surprised that I don't take YOU seriously?
                    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      I tuned out Starlight after his bigoted implication that all ~27 million Texans must be KKK supporters.
                      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                        I tuned out Starlight after his bigoted implication that all ~27 million Texans must be KKK supporters.
                        Yeah, that was just dumb beyond belief.
                        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                          I tuned out Starlight after his bigoted implication that all ~27 million Texans must be KKK supporters.
                          Such a claim is religious on the face of it. Some Texans are neo-Nazis after all.


                          I'm always still in trouble again

                          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            If you all are ever up early in the morning enough to see these two fellows (one's liberal and one's conservative) get interviewed



                            There are times when I claim them as my cousins and times when I slouch down and turn red at familial gatherings.
                            A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
                            George Bernard Shaw

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                              I tuned out Starlight after his bigoted implication that all ~27 million Texans must be KKK supporters.

                              In case anyone here takes your absurd misinterpretation of my position seriously, let me make absolutely clear that my point was:

                              In regions that have a history of discriminating, persecuting, and denying civil-rights to minorities, you would think they ought to learn from that history, and not repeat the same kinds of mistakes. But instead we see Christians in these regions today doing their best to repeat the mistakes of their history by discriminating against gay people as best they can. Apparently they have learned nothing.
                              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Originally posted by Starlight View Post

                                In case anyone here takes your absurd misinterpretation of my position seriously, let me make absolutely clear that my point was:

                                In regions that have a history of discriminating, persecuting, and denying civil-rights to minorities, you would think they ought to learn from that history, and not repeat the same kinds of mistakes. But instead we see Christians in these regions today doing their best to repeat the mistakes of their history by discriminating against gay people as best they can. Apparently they have learned nothing.

                                That's just wrong on so many levels.
                                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                                Comment

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