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Bolbi

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Jul 11, 2009
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If you're reading this, please leave a quick reply! Just wondered how many people actually visit the Politics forum, since there aren't any other messages here. Are there any techies even interested in politics besides me? I'm hoping to get this section active!
 

"overshocked"? Your post doesn't make much sense, dude! More like shell-shocked. Looking at your system specs, I'm guessing you game too much. :pfff: I'm serious here. Is there anyone else interested in discussing politics ?
 
Not really, most gamer politics center around DRM and other usless garbage forced down our collective throats. Or just laughing at the Crapple fanboys.
 

You're right, I'm afraid. The stuff you mentioned doesn't really interest me. I don't even have an MP3 player. And enough laughs have already been directed at the "Crapple fanboys" to fill hundreds of WD's latest 2TB hard drives. (I have to say that I'm not an Apple fan either. But I don't want to start that again.)
 
Maybe we are looking at it in the wrong way. Maybe it's not really Politics like with government but politics like in a business sense.

For example, how do you guys feel about the politics behind the Foxconn (foxxcon?) situation. I think it's pretty f'd up and no company has the right to "interrogate" their employees, unless honestly it is in their original contract to work with said company.
 
Although I think that falls on Crapple, it's their fault for going with a company that has Draconian buisness practices (Ie most Chinese companies). Hell they torture their entire populace (well same with N. Korea)I don't know, maybe the Japanese just laughed at em, and said we have phones that do that and more for 1/2 the price.
 
I just think that politics tends to be a bit of a touching subject. And on most forums that I have been to where the conversation turns in the direction of politics (whether business in nature or GOP vs Democrat) it just seems to break down in ad hominem attacks on each other with no real discussion.
 
I'm heavily into Politics, but as was pointed out above, if you think AMD vs. Intel degenerates into name calling and juvenile behavior, it doesn't hold a candle to what happens with Dem vs Rep. I think most people (me included) have a hard time understanding how people can have such an extremely different point of view without some "ulterior" motive or just plain stupidity. So it becomes "you're evil" or "you're an idiot". Even though both parties at times take positions just because its in opposition to what the other party wants, even though it can be the exact same thing their party argued FOR just a few months ago.
Every now and then there will be a thread in which an AMD fanboy will argue against facts and data, or a dual core proponent will argue that dual cores are "better" than quads.(I admit I got sucked into one of those) But for the most part we can easily dismiss that as brand loyalty or unwillingness to change, and don't have the same passion as we do with our politics because we believe that is in the area of things that REALLY matter and affect our everyday lives.
 


I've looked in here a bunch since this area opened up but haven't seen anything. There are tons of techies interested in politics- just take a look at Slashdot. 95% of the people there are statist Europeans and American college students trashing "USians" and George W. Bush. Most of the other 5% are libertarians who take aim at the PATRIOT Act and The Chosen One's policies. I am certain that if you start a discussion here, people will participate.
 


I'm not allowed to make political comments here, especially since I'm a moderate. I draw fire from both sides, but mostly the left since they love to scream and ridicule concepts they can't logically argue against.

There are a lot more Rosey Odonells (noisy leftists) than their are Rush Limbaughs (noisy right-wingers). But beyond those generalizations, I'd anger the wrong people to argue specifics here.

If you'd like to take the argument somewhere else, send the invitation :)
 

---
Just want to say/tell to Crashman, that Jan 01, 1970 -is a Thursday!
But in a politic discussion -it could easyly be a Tuesday :)
Thanks for your help Crashman
 



Hmmm...not sure I agree with that. Crazy right wingers have pretty much all of AM radio, All of Fox news, Part of CNN, And most of the south and midwest. Where the crazy lefties have MSNBC, Part of CNN, Most of Hollywood, and the east and west coast....seems like a pretty even split to me.... and which side seems illogical depends on your own point of view as I had stated above. Its really hard when you REALLY believe in something to try to understand the other point of view. It just doesn't make sense in your head, so makes you judge the other point of view as illogical. This isn't always the case in politics, since a lot of games are played where an honest person can see their own party is being idiots and contradicting themselves at times. Just watch the Daily Show...Jon Stewart makes a living off politicians who contradict themselves...Both Dem and GOP.
Its sort of like believing in God...those who do can't wrap their heads around those who don't...and vice versa. I'm always up for a good argument based in logic, but when it comes to religion and politics those are few and far between.
 



LOL, Who listens to AM radio? All of Fox News? If you think "all" of Fox News is more than 90% to the right, your problem is your perspective. IE, you're viewing things from so far on the left you can't actually see the middle.

Fox & Friends, probably 60% right. Bill Orielly, probably 70% towards the right. I'm pretty sure those are their most popular programs, no? If you haven't watched the programs, you wouldn't know the difference between an Orielly and a Hannity.

So, what you're saying is that two formats that fewer than 50% of the nation uses between them, make up at least an equal voice (screaming wise) to all other TV channels, most print news, 70% or so of political internet content, FM radio, most of satelite radio, and most professorships?

OK, thanks!

Edit: I can't listen to AM radio because of all the hate, coming from the right-wing versions of Janeane Garofalo
 
Speaking of showing your perspective.....wow....So I would put O'reilly as far right as I would put Oberman far left. He is a wacko who is a right wing propaganda machine who claims "no spin" WHEN ALL HE DOES IS SPIN. Oberman is left wing propaganda machine, but at least he doesn't claim to be impartial. I think you've already shown your true colors by your last two post, and they seem pretty red.
According to Rush 20 million people listen to him every day. LOL...I don't believe it, but there are probably that many idiots in this country who will go along with all of his drug addled hypocritical rants.
So you are one of those that thinks the "media" is controlled by the left. Not true at all, just right wing propaganda machine at work. The latest survey of editorial boards across the country showed a fairly even split. Yes, the left has the ny times, but the right has the wall street journal. And the Times hired Bill Crystal of all people to write editorials....I don't see WSJ doing the same thing to balance out their editorials.
Network Television is about as balanced as you can get. They just want a good story, and could care less about who it screws. I didn't see them washing the Clinton scandal under the rug. They ran with it for all it was worth. It can be argued that they cut G. W. Bush all sorts of breaks in the lead up to the War. If they really had a bias they could have nailed his administration with a little investigative reporting...but they don't really do that. That just report what they think will get the most ratings and could care less about which party is looking good. The only example I can think of is Dan Rather, who got canned the one time he actually stuck his neck out on a biased story.
The internet? Are you the only one who didn't emails full of lies about Obama? There are just as many right wing sites as there are left wing. I think you forget just how equally this country is divided politically. That is why our elections are almost always 50/50. To claim bias in the media, and there are more biased left wing nuts than there are right wing nuts shows your own bias. You just don't notice the right wing nuts as much because you tend to agree with them more...
if you think fox and friends and O'reilly are only partially toward the right show me the 30 - 40% of the time they agree with the Democrat line or disagree with the Republican talking points of the day.
 


Not quite. Crazies do have a bit of AM radio as much of AM radio is low-power evangelical religious radio stations, some of which are decidedly kooky. There are a few talk radio programs on some of the big AM radio stations like KMOX in St. Louis and WSB in Atlanta, but a lot of talk radio is on lower to medium-power FM stations today rather than staticky old AM. Fox does tend to lean conservative, but there are only a handful of guys that are real right-wingers. Sean Hannity is one and Mike Huckabee is another. CNN doesn't have anybody that's even close to being a conservative any more after Glenn Beck left for Fox, and Beck is not so much a right winger as he is just a complete goofball. MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and almost all of Hollywood are quite liberal. The real division between right and left is urban vs. not urban rather than geographically, although the South and most of the Rocky Mountain states tend to be more conservative as a whole and the Northeast, Great Lakes region, and the West Coast are decidedly liberal. The Midwest is very much split between urban and not urban as far as to beliefs as most Midwestern states are "swing" states that are only a few percent in favor of either party in most of the recent elections.



There are a few major differences between Olberman and O'Reilly. Olberman was an anchor while O'Reilly is a host of an commentary program. You would expect Olberman to not obviously portray biases since he is an anchor, while O'Reilly can say whatever he wants as it is specifically billed as commentary and not as news. Olberman in my opinion is farther left than O'Reilly is to the right as Olberman was absolutely gushing about Obama (the whole tingling feeling going up his leg) while O'Reilly is a bit more reserved in his praise of people.

I think you've already shown your true colors by your last two post, and they seem pretty red. According to Rush 20 million people listen to him every day. LOL...I don't believe it, but there are probably that many idiots in this country who will go along with all of his drug addled hypocritical rants.
Click to expand...

I think your true colors are showing through in that post 😉

So you are one of those that thinks the "media" is controlled by the left. Not true at all, just right wing propaganda machine at work. The latest survey of editorial boards across the country showed a fairly even split. Yes, the left has the ny times, but the right has the wall street journal. And the Times hired Bill Crystal of all people to write editorials....I don't see WSJ doing the same thing to balance out their editorials.
Network Television is about as balanced as you can get. They just want a good story, and could care less about who it screws. I didn't see them washing the Clinton scandal under the rug. They ran with it for all it was worth. It can be argued that they cut G. W. Bush all sorts of breaks in the lead up to the War. If they really had a bias they could have nailed his administration with a little investigative reporting...but they don't really do that. That just report what they think will get the most ratings and could care less about which party is looking good. The only example I can think of is Dan Rather, who got canned the one time he actually stuck his neck out on a biased story.
Click to expand...

There are university studies that confirm that as a whole, the media is more biased to the left than to the right. Nobody really controls the media as you have at least some outlets of differing opinions in just about every medium, but overall, the media tends to be more friendly to the left.

The internet? Are you the only one who didn't emails full of lies about Obama? There are just as many right wing sites as there are left wing.
Click to expand...

Forget the proportion of right wing vs. left-wing sites you see on the Internet as being indicative of Americans' views. There are more than just Americans on the Internet and a lot of foreigners get interested in U.S. elections and get into U.S. politics on their websites. Plus, there is astroturfing. It is easy for one person to make thousands of pretty similar websites and spam existing websites with their views in an astroturfing attempt, which would throw off your count.

I think you forget just how equally this country is divided politically. That is why our elections are almost always 50/50. To claim bias in the media, and there are more biased left wing nuts than there are right wing nuts shows your own bias. You just don't notice the right wing nuts as much because you tend to agree with them more...
if you think fox and friends and O'reilly are only partially toward the right show me the 30 - 40% of the time they agree with the Democrat line or disagree with the Republican talking points of the day.
Click to expand...

In my experience, the liberals tend to be much more vocal with their views than conservatives. I doubt very many will disagree with that assertion. Thus a small number of liberals will make as many letters to the editor, calls into radio shows, and biased news stories as a much larger group of conservatives. Since the election results show the country is pretty much split down the middle, a roughly equal number of liberals and conservatives will have with the louder liberals predominating in the media, which is exactly what the study I linked to above showed.

I'll give you one big way the Fox guys differed with the Republicans. They absolutely hate the TARP bailout, even though Bush and Bush's Treasury secretary Hank Paulson started it. If you watch the Fox and Friends guys and girl in the morning, rarely a morning goes by without them hammering on the bailout.
 


Like I said, you have to listen to Oreilly, then listen to Hannity or Limbaugh, to understand that Oreilly is the voice of moderation on the right.

Of course, the way you've talked you've never listened to a full show, at best hearing just the snippets people use to shout the guy down.

It's like the libs using the birthers to discredit everyone right of themselves, including libertarians who, when honestly libertarian, just want to keep the government out of their lives.

Remember that this guy who stands for the extreme right to you, doesn't argue in favor of restricting first term abortion but dispises abortions that occur when the fetus is old enough to survive outside the womb. And he doesn't support the death penalty. That, as opposed to the farthest left who think it's OK to stab a baby in the head as it's being born, or the farthest right who believe it's OK to enforce capital punishment on the weakest of evidence.

You see, if you don't see the extremes, you become blind to the middle. I feel sorry for you.

Edit: I've heard enough from Oreilly to know that the side he most supports is...his side. This is the guy who rants "See, it was the speculators driving oil prices up, just like I said from the beginning (plays an archive clip of himself)." He of course ignores the fact that he spent months blaming the oil companies almost exclusively before finally jumping the bandwagon against speculators.

The right-wing view on oil speculation and price fixing is...get ready for this...its a free economy, make money while the sun shines and let the losers worry about the damage. Doesn't sound much like self-congratulatory Oreilly eh?
 
"I'll give you one big way the Fox guys differed with the Republicans. They absolutely hate the TARP bailout, even though Bush and Bush's Treasury secretary Hank Paulson started it. If you watch the Fox and Friends guys and girl in the morning, rarely a morning goes by without them hammering on the bailout."

Now that Obama is in office they complain about it and call it his bailout plan. When Bush was in office they didn't say much, if anything bad about it, and many conservatives even supported it publicly. But the conservatives are not alone in this type of behavior...many liberals switched positions when the administrations changed, too.

"In my experience, the liberals tend to be much more vocal with their views than conservatives."
As I have pointed out, if you lean conservative you are more likely to notice liberals being vocal than you are someone espousing views you agree with. I obviously lean the other way, so my perception is different. There are wacko fringes of both parties. ie, the birthers who are everywhere at every town hall meeting, every talk show, ect...and on the other side you have the wackos who think Bush planned 9/11. I think recent history might show more loony behavior by the fringe elements of the party with the least power. Right now its the GOP. For the last 8 years it was the Dems. You have more to complain about when you feel like you have no power to change the things going on you hate.

"There are university studies that confirm that as a whole, the media is more biased to the left than to the right."
I'm surprised this got published. the methodology is flawed. Simple mentions, without context, compared to ADA scores really tells you nothing. Rush mentions the NAACP and ACORN more than anyone, but I can guarantee he isn't speaking favorably of them when he does. If anything, this methodology should be reversed.

"There are a few major differences between Olberman and O'Reilly. Olberman was an anchor while O'Reilly is a host of an commentary program. You would expect Olberman to not obviously portray biases since he is an anchor, while O'Reilly can say whatever he wants as it is specifically billed as commentary and not as news. Olberman in my opinion is farther left than O'Reilly is to the right as Olberman was absolutely gushing about Obama (the whole tingling feeling going up his leg) while O'Reilly is a bit more reserved in his praise of people."

I think you have Oberman confused with Chris Matthews. Although neither claim to be anchors. The anchors on MSNBC are on during the day. All the evening shows including Matthews and Oberman are host driven shows. The only time they are given host duty is when there is an evening debate or election night, ect when the whole crew comes out with Uncle Pat (Bucchanan). Matthews had the quote about the chill up the leg, but that is just one of his many man crushes. He said similar things about Rudy, and he really, really liked McCain and said almost as many embarrassing things about him. "I absolutely love this man, he is a true hero and deserves to be president"...his problem is verbal green grass squirts.

"CNN doesn't have anybody that's even close to being a conservative any more after Glenn Beck left for Fox"
Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace might not be conservative in the traditional sense...but some of their nonsense feeds the fringe elements of the conservative movement.

ahh...this post is getting too long. I guess I go back to my main point. Your perception colors your view of who is crazier and louder. But I at least know this, and try to be fair to the majority of people who have a different point of view than mine...I might not understand it, but I don't try to judge them on it unless they are veering off into "dangerous" speech that promotes bigotry and intolerance.
 


Crazier...I don't want to see a crazy competition between Limbaugh and Moore, but I really have to turn on AM radio if I want to hear Limbaugh.

Like the Acorn people picketing AIG over bonuses, but not even issuing a statement about Fanny Mae bonuses which came later, and were bigger. Their stance against AIG was political, if it were about right and wrong they would have stood against Fanny too. I consider picketing to be a great amount of noise.

But like I said, it's a wide world from one wing tip to the other, you have to be closer to the center to see how far out each side goes.
 
@Crashman....
I doubt we are really that far apart in many ways. I used to listen to O'Reilly a lot back in the day, but I just got fed up with his ego, politics, and the fact that any time he got proven wrong he would shut off the guests mike. He is basically a school yard bully with a talk show. Overall he is not AS far right as Hannity or Rush, but he is far enough right he can never see a good idea from a Democrat.
Its funny you say that about abortion and the death penalty. Almost the exact same thing I say. I try to make it simple...once brain waves start there can be no abortion (except medical emergencies). We call someone dead when brainwaves stop, so why not call them a "life" when they start? I always thought it was odd most pro-lifers are also pro-death penalty...where is the disconnect there? Here is where I get really liberal all over you...I think all life should be protected, including animal life. But I don't think throwing red paint all over someone makes a point very well...it just causes them to go out and buy another fur coat and more animals die. I agree with the sentiment, not the actions of the extremist.
LOL...i did use the birthers to make a point, but also mentioned liberals have their extremist idiots also....I could have used almost any Rush quote, its just that the birthers are being very vocal right now, and that is where this discussion began.
Like I said, we are probably not that far apart, other than you can be entertained by O'reilly and might agree with some of his points, where as I cannot stand the man in any way....but if your point is he not as extreme overall as Rush, I do agree with that.
 


DVR is the key...you just skip past the stupid stuff and get your 10 minutes of entertainment per program.
 


Ad hominem attacks... You into logic, too?
 
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