Timewaster's Guide Archive

OReilly isn't a straight Republican, but he is very conservative.  Usually when I see him belittle or disagree with a Republican, it is for not being conservative enough.  For example, I haven't watched him in a while (I don't avoid it, but I'm never around when he's on), but I would be willing to bet that he's belittled a republican on his show about the 700 billion dollar fix for being too "big government", which is a conservative standpoint.

Conservatism comes down to the argument between Big Government and Small Government, generally.  This gets muddled when the "conservative" party wants laws against abortion, for example.  But, yeah, the more conservative you are, the less national government interaction you want running society.  We really shouldn't use "conservative" for "republican", but we do because it is convenient.

Again, and I can't stress this enough, it wouldn't matter if OReilly went easy on Palin or not.  He tends to not go easy on anybody, I'd agree with that.  Because he tends to shut down anybody who remotely disagrees with him as stupid.  The thing is, his reputation (my reputation, Iago, my reputation!  I've lost my reputation!) is conservative, and THUS the PERCEIVED outcome of the interview is that he went easy on Palin, whether or not he did.  Rather, if you can get yourself to the opposite end of the independents and grab a few with an interview with a liberal journalist, and then get bonus points for "being attacked by liberal media", it is a strong move.  She probably should have gone on BOTH, but her party, at least up to this point, has been trying to keep her from being too exposed for whatever reason.  If you can only pick one, I think the move they made had solid strategical reasoning behind it.

I did call OReilly ultra-conservative, in a much earlier statement.  Knowing my opinion about somebody may make it easy to misconstrue what I say.  But that is not what I was saying recently.  It's all about reputation.

That being said, I'm ultra-liberal (by the same logic that OReilly is ultra-conservative), because I believe that government involvement in regulating capitalism is a good thing, and I like limiting capitalism and the idea of government help to those who need, under restrictions. That being said, I don't agree with all (or even most) democrats on a lot of issues, and I am not a democrat.  The same, but opposite, ideas can be applied to OReilly.  He could be harsh on Republicans because he's farther conservative than them, just as I am with democrats.

You don't want your candidate to be on a show with somebody who has a reputation like OReilly.  He would make her look good because he's so blatantly conservative, but any undecided voters (who are who they need to appeal to) could very easily see it as Palin being SUPER conservative being a show with a reputation for being conservative (whether or not it is).  Undecided voters are usually very moderate, so you want to show yourself as moderate.  If you're a conservative, you try to find a liberal source to put your message on, hope to grab some  voters, then you can also take advantage of the victim card and say you were attacked by "liberal media", turning moderate voters against the liberal side.

The problem is, even without editing techniques making Palin look stupid, she often comes across as uninformed or as a question-dancer, refusing to answer questions she doesn't know the perfect "party" answer to.

I don't think it was a bad day--if it was, her party would have her doing a lot more interviews.  It's pretty clear they consider her too incompetent to handle the media en masse, or too inexperienced.  Either way, Biden screws up a fair amount with the facts and he's all over the media, which shows, I think, how much more faith the Democratic party has in their VP than the Republican party.  For whatever the reason, I don't think you should ever pick a candidate you see as incapable of handling parts of the job--it looks like, because of how little they're putting her out there, that they just picked her because they wanted the demographics they thought she'd bring in.

And it's definitely true that if they put her out there more, her major screw ups would carry less weight.

I don't think that being an executive in a state geographically and culturally separated from the Union, the entirity of which has 2/3rds the population of DETROIT CITY, and not even five times the amount of people as Salt Lake City.  I mean, Salt Lake City's urban population dwarfs the entire population of Alaska by 200,000 people. And Utah is not a highly populated state (it's a moderately populated state at #34), nor is Salt Lake City a highly populated city.

If Palin is considered to have "executive experienced" in a way that is applicable towards the presidency because she led such a state, then the mayor of every major city in the US is about as prepared--and many of them have been in office for longer than Palin.  The fact of the matter is the Senate works with the Executive branch and the judicial branch, and what each does affects the other.  McCain and Biden are both much more appropriately experienced than Palin, and I would say Obama is as well because he has the background for political office.  Palin has a BA in journalism.  Obama has a degree in political science with a specialty in foreign affairs.  Palin governed the 3rd least populated state in the Union and has touted as a show of character her experience playing high-school basketball.  I'm sorry, she does not have the educational background or the Washington background that Obama has.

Also, the fact that Palin has been quoted as saying things which McCain has called inexperienced, stupid, misinformed, etc. before it was Palin saying them shows that, according to her own running mate, she does not understand the concepts behind their own platform.

I expect Biden to say his great-grandfather defeated the British with the help of the Russians in 1845.  I really do.

This is scattered because I'm rushed and must go.  I'd like to flesh out my thoughts better, but I can't for now.

Mod:  I edited one of my sentences to make sense.

I agree entirely on the fact that McCain and Obama were about even (I missed a portion of the economic section, though, in which I heard Obama did very well), and I would agree with how you described their strengths.  I watched the debate on PBS, no scroll, so I didn't catch what fox or CNN were saying during the debate.  I switched to fox about ten minute after the debate ended, and I immediately saw huge bias towards McCain, which did end up dissipating after another ten minutes or so.

If memory serves, immediately after the debate CNN's anchor (I don't remember who it was) said the debate appeared to be about even, in just the manner that you just described it.  They didn't undercut McCain, but they did word several of their interview questions in ways that seemed underhandedly liberal to me.

Like I said before, I think that CNN and Fox are both more biased than you seem to think, maybe that's me over exaggerating the point because it disgusts me so.  However, I would say CNN is slightly less biased than fox, not necessarily during normal broadcasting, but definitely because of fox's ridiculously biased editorial sections.

I will say that if I had listened to the debate on the radio, I would have probably placed the candidates at dead even near the end.  But Obama handled the television much better.  McCain refused to make eye contact with Obama, and that made him seem shady (a friend of mine said, with a chuckle, it made him seem racist--but sadly, there are those out there who would actually think that).  McCain also spent almost the whole time talking to the mediator instead of to the camera, and I don't think he ever spoke to Obama directly, he always said "What Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand is..."  Because of that, Obama seemed much more charismatic and he seemed to know what he was talking about, even though it is really irrelevant to how much he ACTUALLY knows what he is talking about, because he handled the camera, mediator and McCain more appropriately.  McCain needs his people to give him some lessons on how to handle the cameras or everyday viewers are going to undercut him points he should be getting (in fact, that's just what happened when fox interviewed their test group of "everyday people" after the debate--most the them gave it to Obama, despite the fact that those of us who really listened usually split it closer down the middle).

Despite the fact that appearance has no merit in judging ability to govern, it's really important in these debates.  After all, we all know what happened to Nixon.

I don't think I ever claimed to be impartial.  In fact, I'm sure I've said, though maybe not on this thread, several times that everybody has a bias, and all media has a bias.  I don't know those two reporters.  However, I don't think two liberal reporters make up for an blatantly conservative staff, anymore than two conservative reporters would make up for a blatantly liberal staff.  (And I came back tonight expecting to see something about MSNBC, I will admit I overlooked that station along with the other handful of NBC news cable stations because I don't watch them.  My mistake, I apologize). 

CNN is pretty liberal, I would say it is less liberal than Fox is conservative (I think that if you watched them both after the debates tonight, it would be a good example.  CNN phrased most of its questions to frame Obama in a positive light, although not going on to say Obama was a clear-cut winner.  Fox, however, not only declared McCain the winner, but said that everybody thought Obama would run circles around him in this debate.  In fact, the opposite was true, as McCain has a more foreign policy experience.  Most the experts that I saw on both stations that were not clearly parked in one camp or another, or the ones that wisely pointed out their bias and attempted to judge the debates with it held as much at bay as possible, said that the debate was essentially a draw.  Both Candidates made good points and both made mistakes, both having a very different speaking and debating style.)

I didn't ever mean to accuse you of getting your news from fallible sources--I don't know where you get your news (well, now I do).  My point was, I think, what your point was (originally), and that is that there is a huge slant to our media (both to the right and to the left).  I also don't think you usually need to look up the facts from multiple sources to figure out where biases lie, it seems pretty obvious most of the time. 

I love Bill O'Reilly.  I think he's one of the most entertaining things on television.  He will start out a topic with a statement such as ""Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment"  (actual quote from 03/23/01). This statement clearly states what side he is on, then negatively slants the other side before giving any actual facts about the issue.  Sure, sometimes he says things that help a liberal side (rarely), but when he does he almost always tries to use it to help a conservative end and/or is only doing it to make himself seem like a credible news source.  Heck, I even saw him defend Obama once.  But even if you argue that he takes a left side sometimes and ignore his rationale for doing so, when he does, he does so in a way that still favors one side blatantly and giving the other side of the argument the air of a retarded monkey.  That is not a credible news source.  It is an entertaining news source, but it isn't credible--at least not on its own.

I somewhat over exaggerated the case when I said I've never seen anybody on fox agree with a democrat (twas a hyperbole for sure), but it is highly slanted.  That being said, I don't pretend like CNN is much better in the opposite direction (that's why I split my news time about 50/50 between, a poor attempt to even the slant I'm receiving.  It doesn't work, which is why the internet is handy.  And even then, I'm still getting huge slant both ways and I have to figure it out for myself, which I should have just done originally after one broadcast and not wasted my time.  But, oh well, I'm a glutton for punishment).

The fact is, however, that Fox News, just like any other news source, has a bias.  They also have more editorial shows that are HIGHLY biased and air themselves as a credible source of information.  In addition, they tend to show biased clips of speeches (as I saw a bit of after the debate--going so far as to completely cut of a rational response Obama had made to make it look as though he was caught off-guard and unaware by McCain) and show biased ticker information (again, good examples tonight--it kept flashing "both sides believe they have won the debate", then explained the positive factors that McCain's camp used to believe they had won the debate.  They did not follow by giving the positive points that Obama's camp used to judge his merit, despite the fact that other stations, such as CNN, showed both).  I'm not saying CNN, or any other news source, is unbiased.  But Fox is very biased, CNN is also pretty biased, and I don't even watch MSNBC because, like you've said, what I've seen is a complete joke.  But considering it is biased (even if you think it is the most middle ground station, which I clearly disagree with with, you would agree it is biased), and its mother corporation is biased, and its mother corporation is the largest news corporation in the world, I'd say there is plenty of right-wing biased media out there.

I think it is sad that the complaint many people have is, "there isn't enough right-wing biased media out there" and not "there is too much of too biased media out there."  I'm not saying that is necessarily what you are saying, but it is what a lot of people say.

Well, I agree a person's record should be taken into account when we're thinking about making him or her our leader.  I also think that Obama and Biden do not have great records, from what I have seen, nor does McCain, and Palin doesn't even really have a record to speak of.  Oh, she's been in politics, and you can disagree, but I don't see anything she's done as material for being president, which is really the position I weigh her up against, since McCain could keel over any day.  That being said, I'd rather have somebody who, when he or she is uninformed or neutral on a subject to not blindly take sides for the sake of being seen as a strong decision maker.  It is better to not make a decision as a senator when you do not think you have been informed to the point of having enough information to process (whether it be Obama, McCain, or anybody else, I actually respect more than most traits the ability to say "I am under informed and will withhold my opinion until I know enough to responsibly take a side").

You wanna know why it's not front page news?  Because the system is broken.  It is broken, it is wretched and it has been twisted out of shape.  That is why we have a party system (especially a two party system), that is why the media is irresponsible and doesn't tell us what we know, that is why somebody can lose an election because of how he looks on TV (starting with Nixon and working on up.  In fact, in the Nixon-Kennedy debate, those listening on the radio said Nixon won almost unanimously, but those watching on TV said the opposite), that is why a person who does not receive the popular vote can go on to win an election and reign for eight years, and that is why we are still playing into corporation's hands at our own expenses in every sector, and that is why right now our brilliant leaders have decided the best move is to take $2,000 from every household and hand it to corporations with "no bars held, no questions asked" instead of using that money to, say, provide health care for needing children or homes for those with none.

You can be upset with the system, but generally Republican candidates want to keep the system as static as possible (hence the nature of being "conservative").  Unfortunately, generally Democratic candidates don't do much to change the system.  Which brings us back to the system is broken.

Also, very few people want equality, I bet you yourself are included in this (at least at some level, and I, too, am sure that I am guilty).  People want to be equal OR GREATER THAN.  They want their issues at the forefront and they want their side to win, and equality isn't enough but it is a start.  Is it terrible?  Yes.  Does every major (and probably every minor) social movement do it in at least factions? Yes.

A great example of records being distorted which is pretty disgusting is an ad that is currently going around here that essentially says McCain will support a tax break for companies shipping jobs overseas.  Except the tax break is designed to encourage companies to bring the jobs back overseas, and Obama supports the same legislature.  Ridiculous that people can get away with that, especially since I know this add is rioting hundreds of thousands of Democrats into fevered, drooling dreams of Obama for president across the Midwest (maybe the nation, I don't know far the ad is being run).

Also, to be fair, FOX is REALLY, REALLY conservative (going so far as to put polls up about "who would be more likely to cheat at cards, Bill Clinton" or some other democrat), and it is owned by the third largest media outlet in the world with cable news programs (only outdone by the ever powerful AOL Time/Warner with CNN and Viacom with CBS and the faux news shows on Comedy Central).  But the "mother corporation," News Outlet, owns the more News-Oriented media than any other company in the world--if I'm not mistaken, which if I am recalling correctly, I am not.  These are figures I learned in early 2008, but I'm pretty sure they hold up now.

Every boom (.com boom, for example, or the current real-estate boom) has a crash.  You can't really blame any person for the crash (be it Bush or Clinton) in 2001--that is what happens when too many people invest in the same thing.  It happened with gold, it happened with banking, it happened with stocks, it happened with .com, it is happening with real-estate.

Clinton had a monotone cabinet too, I think, and I think it's a disgusting failure for any president to surround himself with minds just like his.  However, whatever the reason, our country was in better shape almost all of Clinton's leadership than Bush's.  Blame it on the situation if you want, but I was accused of disliking Bush simply because I like Democrats (which I maintain is untrue), but it seems like there's a lot of Clinton hate here for the opposite reason.  Like I said, he wasn't a perfect president (who was?); I think he was much better than Bush.  And a large portion of our society would agree with me.  That doesn't make me right, but it doesn't hurt my argument, either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy.

Also, considering it has come out that people hired into positions (low and high) under the Bush Administration were asked about their political views and if they think Bush has been doing a good job, often looking into seeing if applicants were registered Republican, I'd say his administration has overstepped its bounds.  Somebody's political stance should be irrelevant if they are qualified for a job, and if anything, finding people who have been unhappy with your performance can lead to better leadership through useful criticism.  All presidents, neigh, all people surround themselves with those who agree with them, but Bush's administration has definitely taken it farther than I can think of it ever going, and far beyond the limit of acceptability.

A republican president may usually help, but it certainly hasn't this time.  We can't say (as far as I know) that the .com plummet was Bush's administration's fault, but the current drop certainly has at least a percentage of fault with the administration.

I don't think I am being spied on.  I think it's a crime that my leader would endorse the legality of inhibiting civil liberties.  End of story--I don't care if you've been suspected of a crime or not, without due process, no person should be stripped of any liberty.

Bush has done some alright things, too.  He's been a great president for Africa, so I hear.  But his successes are far overshadowed by his failures.