I think it would be interesting to live in a time where a candidate's military service, or lack of it, and his religion, or lack of it, is considered *completely* irrelevant as a qualification for holding political office.

We sweat that crap WAY too much in the US.

At least Bush's intelligence isn't going to fade.

Not the way he keeps it hidden.

Watch the PBS nightly news as an example of integrity with a decidedly "liberal" bent. Nonetheless, responsible journalism.
Then look at the numbers.
As long as the networks are selling commercial time the programming will be designed to attract the maxium number of viewers. Whatever that takes.
Programmers don't get paid to promote be "fair and responsible". They get paid to attract viewers,----lots of them. Their job depends on it.
So you get a latter day version of the medicine show. The guy in the stovepipe hat, loud vest and frock coat. He's the porgrammer. His job is to draw the crowds and sell the snake oil. "Fair and responsible" has nothing to do with that.

Watch the PBS nightly news as an example of integrity with a decidedly "liberal" bent. Nonetheless, responsible journalism.
==========
I don't see that PBS is decidedly "liberal". They tend not to get involved in selective reporting to the extent the others do because of the way they are funded. They have also come under a lot of pressure from lobby groups in recent years and have modified their content to the right a bit to appease them. Example (Tucker Carlson). Cancelled programming on PBS has occurred far too often due to lobbyist threats in recent years. PBS is also one of the few places you can get the BBC which has been effectively blocked by the other so-called news media channels.
The only truly informative TV station left is C-Span. They most often let you just listen to the House floor discussions (for example) unedited so that you can hear both sides of a discussion and use your intelligence to decide who you think is right. Things I hear on C-Span discussed on the house floor and later watch on network news channels make me often wonder if they are discussing the same thing I saw. And that includes PBS at times.
And in terms of Bush's military record John I only used it because it was the example used in this thread and none of you seemed to understand the whole picture because of the media and how they handled the story. RStein seemed to get it though. The John Kerry Swift Boat smear got free publicity by the media when it broke despite the fact that there was less uncontested evidence than the later story regarding Bush. Bob Novak of CNN spent an inordinate amount of time trying to defend the Swift Boat allegations and invited John O'Neill on Crossfire more than once. Of course poeple don't realize that Bob Novak's son, Alex Novak, is director of marketing for the book's publisher, Regnery Publishing, Inc. In addition, Robert Novak is a trustee of The Phillips Foundation, along with Thomas L. Phillips and Alfred S. Regnery. Phillips is chairman of Eagle Publishing, Inc., of which Regnery is a subsidiary. Alfred Regnery is a director of Eagle Publishing and, according to Eagle's website, is "president of Regnery Publishing, Inc." Eagle publishes the Evans-Novak Political Report, which Novak edits.

I also included the Newsweek misinformation because is is more recent. Pick some other impression you have of what is happeneing that is controvercial and I'll take a shot at it. It will be invariably skewed to the right because that is where the media is coming from and the media is allowing the country to go in a direction that IMO is disgraceful to we as human beings and so-called spreaders of democracy.

And in terms of George Bush's intelligence it would be a bigger problem if he were making any of the decisions for the country. He hasn't and doesn't. People like John Bolton have been making the decisions (like the preplanned invasion of Iraq). The Republicans skirt that issue in terms of his being a truly bad UN appointee by claiming that the issue is that Bolton can be "tough" and "difficult" and that is what we actually need in the UN because after all we are the daddy there and the rest of the world are irresponsible children. They go around the real objection which is that Bolton is one of the PNAC members which include Rumsfeld, Cheney, Abrams, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, press members of the Weekly Standard (owned by Ruppert Murdoch who also owns Fox news and the NY post), James Woolsey, and a host of others who had so much confidence that the media would NOT point to their OWN website that they have left MOST of the incriminating letters they wrote and speeches they made to the Clinton administration still on their political think tank website. And guess what, the media in fact does NOT point to it to support the notion that the invasion of Iraq was pre planned since the nineties by these people who now run the white house and the civilian portions of the pentagon and defense department. All that group needed was an excuse to get the Congress to go along with it and 9/11 provided that golden opportunity especially when it was combined with a few more lies (which the media allowed them later to blame on the CIA) The buck stops "there" has never been tolerated in the history of this country. The media has allowed that to change.
John

LOL -- That was a good one. Certainly everyone knows what C-N-N stand for, right?

Communist News Network

C-Span?
That's the raw stuff.
Good if you can spare the time to watch.
We depend on journalists and news organizations to do that for us,---and "report" what they see.
The point of this thread is the fairness, or lack thereof, with which they do that.
And I'm saying money dictates whether that's a major consideration with the commercial networks.
And let's not for one moment think the BBC doesn't have an agenda because it's non-commercial. Every newsroom does.
Even if the reporter tries to be fair and responsible his/her take can be skewed by a producer's vetting and editing to get reports to conform. And that producer is a producer because he has proven himself as a champion of that organization's agenda,---BBC, CBC, PBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, CTV. That's how your move up the ladder.
Rebels are beaten down.
Oh yes they are.
Responsibility and fairness in the media,----largely a myth.
You can't legislate it, and as long as there are people, reporters, eidtors, anchors, with varying opinions,---you'll get different takes on the same story. Even the voice intonation of an announcer can change the slant of a story. The eybrows of a TV anchor can say more than the words..
The best we can do is thougtfully digest and discern.
Freedom of the press isn't perfect.
But imprefection is not a good reason to muzzle the town cryer!
He will have his say.
We need to learn what not to believe.

Thought is was Chicken Noodle News!

"I don't understand your thread here. Stewardship for political leaders means..."

When you make a call for stewardship then make a distinction between stewardship and the ideaology that Ayn Rand promotes (the two set in opposition), what other conclusion am I to draw than you are asking for the politicians to be the peoples keeper. That's dangerous and wrong. Politics and government are not the same thing...politicians are not government. Anyone remotely familiar with social contract theory should be able to spot the difference immediately and understand the purpose of each.

"The latter means making sure that education is available for those who can do something with it, even if they don't come from wealthy families."

That statement presupposes that intellect is the byproduct of ability. It's a fundamentally flawed statement. It also divides people into classes where certain groups are afforded more opportunity than another and is one reason why middle class America continually gets the shaft. It's the reason I can get my minority girlfriend into a graduate program with a 3.2 GPA but I cannot get into the same program because I'm white, male, and not a first generation college graduate (it took my mom til she was 41 to get her BSN)...even with a 3.87 GPA. Why is that? My disabled dad lost everything when Enron collapsed, He never made enough to send all five of his kids to college..thank goodness he made sure my mom went.... I joined the USMC right out of high school, got out, went to junior college, am finishing up my undergrad at a Consumer Reports top rated private university (at a cost of about $24k per year)...So you'll please forgive me if I have no pity for those who sit around and say they never had a chance at an education. I made my education available because of my proven ability...Education can be had...those who whine that it needs to be more available don't want to work for it and I don't exactly relish the idea of footing the bill for that sort either.

"It means not squandering hard-earned tax money on corporate welfare (such as donating $4B to oil companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, where they keep 100% of the profits)."

But what if they need it? The education issue suggests that you believe the money should be made available to people because the never really had a chance...You've already used need and a right to make a claim of the government and now you want to change the rules? But what if those $4 billion went to protecting the oil workers jobs? You're logic is starting to fall apart....

"It means not letting China take over all American manufacturing just to lower store prices on consumer goods for those fewer and fewer Americans who still have jobs left."

Well, you can't have it both ways...If you don't want to spend money to save jobs in industries like big oil then how are those unemployed oilworkers going to buy the overpriced American made products because you blocked lower cost imported products. And yes...they will be overpriced because we've got this little thing called unions in this country and things like labor costs must be figured into the cost of products. Unless of course you expect a company to spend $10 to make a product and sell it for $2...Uh oh...looks liek we're gonna have to redirect that $4 billion slated for the oil industry to save this industry right?
See why you're on a slippery slope?

"It means doing something about our increasing dependence on foreign oil...leaving American tax payers with having to roll the tanks on every continent at great expense just to fill up our massive fuel tanks.]"

Please tell me you don't really believe that...No...it means getting Detroit lobbyists out of Washington (hell, all lobbyists for that matter)...it means letting those companies sink or swim and don't bail them out when they get in trouble. It means letting the cost of gasoline skyrocket because it's ironic to piss and moan about the cost of gasoline while you drop $50 a pop filling up that oversized SUV. When people stop buying those beheamoths because they cannot afford to drive them, Detroit will be forced to adapt to the marketplace if they want to survive...no government intervention needed. Like I said before...you can't have it both ways. It's not the job of the government to regulate the cost products we consume...a free marketplace does that naturally when allowed to. As for rolling tanks in other countries...do you honestly believe that is cheaper that if we'd just said, "Hey Saddam, we don't care what you do and it's none of our business, we just want to buy your oil..." You can bet your ass he would have done that. But now you've got a host of people over here screaming about how we are supporting a dictator....we've got cheaper gas though....Like I said, you can't have it both ways...That's the result of political stewardship.

"It means not pissing away $600B (current GAO estimate if all goes well...) of hard-earned tax money on a two-bit dictator who was never in a situation to even pee on our pant legs."

I'm sorry, I thought you believed that this guy had us by the short and curlies over oil? I thought this was the guy who took over Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. He would have been in control of a hell of a lot more oil resources then. Like I said though, we could have just bought the oil from him because who cares as long as I can fill my tank right? But then....I thought Clinton Tomahawked this guy because he was part of a proven plot to assasinate Bush Sr.....can't have it both ways (did I say that already)

"And it certainly means explaining to those turkeys who advocate a super strong military (the current strength being deemed insufficient at only that of the next 26 countries together) but shelter their income out of the country to avoid paying any tax at all."

Yet these turkeys are the ones whose stewardship you want...That or they're in their pockets.

"It's time for a new era."
Nope, it's time to remember an older one. One where the phrase "make money" wasn't a bad thing. One where out leaders could say what they mean instead of tapdancing over political correctness leaveng people like you and I wondering just what the hell they said. One where if you could do it better, faster and cheaper, you wouldn't have the government swooping in to smcak you down on the premise that you might harm the established players...that includes freeing up trade of restrictions and protective tarrifs that end up only raising prics over here but allow industry and market stagnation. It means letting the educational cream rise to the top...not using govenment mony to fund anyones education...ever wonder why skilled labor is in such short supply but a person wity a Bachelors degree can't find a job these days? Consider how America has diluted it's workforce. Consider the notion we have nowadays that intelligence is the product of ones ability to posess a printed sheepskin. That's sad...

"Long live Edmund Burke, the founder of conservatism. He was an intelligent man who saw things very clearly, and I think he would refuse to be associated with today's "conservative" party in the U.S."

Edmund Burke is long dead...Yes, he was intelligent but he was not the end all be all. Considering his scope of the world, he believed in relaxed trade restricitons (you seem to advocate the opposite), did not believe in natural rights and believed that things came to pass by divine sanction. If you really know Burke and have read much of him, you know what I'm saying is true. Based on these tenets, it looks like todays conservative party is much more in line with Edmund Burke than you are! You are promoting a social ideaism that it much more in line with Karl Marx than Burke (whom Marx criticized in Das Kapital as a "bourgeois stooge" of the wealthy English class). You sound as if you are prescribing to Burke's notion of an "organic state" and letting his notions of equality and it's subversivness of nature go by the wayside. I'm no expert on Burke, but I think you are missing a lot...

James Green

"politicians are not government."

Well, in our system, politicians make up our government. We elect them to do a job for us. To make decisions that are hopefully best overall for the country/state/city etc.

CD: "The latter means making sure that education is available for those who can do something with it, even if they don't come from wealthy families."
JG: "That statement presupposes that intellect is the byproduct of ability."
No, it doesn't. And school grades do not correlate to intelligence (proven many times).

Where on earth do you get the idea that I am promoting affirmative action? That's the opposite of education access based on ability.

The most recent quarterly reports from the oil companies show record profits, no poverty there.

And why on earth did you think I'm a fan of unions? They have given me nothing but trouble, and I think they have killed off several major industries in the U.S.
Still there are cases where I understand people had to organize to get any kind of fair treatment.

JG: "looks liek we're gonna have to redirect that $4 billion slated for the oil industry to save this industry"
Are you advocating major government support for ailing industries?

Of course the oil crisis will take care of itself if pump prices especially are allowed to rise, as people will quickly adjust and look at the fuel economy next time they get a car. Plenty of data on this in Europe, where even trucks get 60-70% better gas mileage. As the federal government is currently running a massive deficit, it might help to use slowly increasing gas taxes to fix this (so we don't become dependent on foreign bailout in the future).
The Democrats recently suggested reduced gas prices, this is populist BS of the worst kind. But who cares, there is nobody home there anyway.

The Kuwait threat was dealt with quickly in 1991, a total non-issue since.
Worse is that the stupid assault on Iraq generated so much badwill worldwide and especially in the Middle East. This may only make those countries more eager to sign major oil contracts with China (which is also not picky about human rights problems in the Arab world).

JG: "It means letting the educational cream rise to the top...not using govenment mony to fund anyones education...ever wonder why skilled labor is in such short supply but a person wity a Bachelors degree can't find a job these days?"

Are you against resident rates at State Universities? If so, don't waste your money running for office. A recent study finds that California will have a 30% shortfall in university-educated people in a few decades. This is because the well-educated baby boomers are leaving the job market through retirement. This is a problem that needs to be solved, in whatever way. Politicians can say "oh, the market will fix this", but if that doesn't happen production slows down pretty good.

New era or old era? In the end it's all the same.
What's happened before will happen again, as those who have failed to learn from history are repeating past mistakes.

I'm amazed at your assumptions about what I thought based on my previous post. Either I'm not a very good communicator, or you are projecting something from past experience that is not valid in this case. I'm open to both possibilities.

It seems at least possible that we agree on more than we disagree on.

"Consider the notion we have nowadays that intelligence is the product of ones ability to posess a printed sheepskin. That's sad."

I really agree with you on that.

I have worked more extensively with about a dozen Ph.D.s. Some of them when I went to school, some I worked with at various companies, one Ph.D. I worked for for many years, and some that I hired as employees or consultants.

I thought that only one of these was particularly intelligent, and he wasn't working in the field he got his Ph.D. in...

As a corollary, the smartest guy I have ever seen in computer programming was self taught. When the company I worked for had a problem getting a releasable version of an ultra high performance mail server (many many millions of messages per hour), they had to choose between giving the existing 12-man team another two years to get it ready, or giving this guy a bonus for working 7 days a week. He finished a fresh write from scratch in 90 days, and there was only one bug found which was quickly corrected, because the code was so clean.

Many years ago, I had a problem with assembly line testing of computers taking too long. The test program had been written over three months by a team of normal competent M.S. engineers, but was too slow for quarter-end shipments. The same guy took a look at the code, threw it in my waste basket and came back 3 hours later with a version that took 5 minutes to run instead of 30 minutes, and in that time it did two additional tests that we always wanted to do but had skipped for time reasons. One bug, fixed immy, then it was put in production and it lasted for a year.

The Computer Science Ph.D. I also had on staff at that time could never have done this, but fortunately he had some other strengths.

Is it possible that a great deal of the problems we are facing today is the result of a problem with the medium through which we receive our news and view of the the world?

Is it possible that a medium which gives us less than 300 lines (typical H-resolution) is showing us a world which appears much simpler than it is? Is it possible that the need to keep things "moving" on this medium is keeping most discussion of complicated issues to under 18 seconds?... And as a result, we're not listening to each other?

Is it possible that we need both the "liberal" and "conservative" viewpoints to make this country work? Is it possible that the framers of our Constitution understood this, and took great pains to preserve that concept? Is it possible that, because the world appears much simpler, that we're not taking the time to listen to those who actually know or understand a subject?

Is it possible that an elected President and his staff is also getting this "simplified" view of the world, and is not listening to those who urge caution and understanding of complexities, because they confiict with their view of the world. Is it possible the "loyal opposition" has stopped being loyal or effective, because they only see their own simplified view of things?

Is it possible that the people we call "reporters" on this medium, can't or won't do an effective job of reporting, because there is no time or need to cover in issue in any detail? Is it possible that people are hired not to be "reporters" but to be "performers"?

CG "CD: "The latter means making sure that education is available for those who can do something with it, even if they don't come from wealthy families."
JG: "That statement presupposes that intellect is the byproduct of ability."
No, it doesn't. And school grades do not correlate to intelligence (proven many times)."

My point in that long winded monologue is that barriers are not so big to the person who want an education bad enough. Simply making funding for college available does not guarantee that it's money well spent. Those who have intellect and ability do not need to rely upon the government to provide it for them. The will find a way (as I believe I have). Like the old saying goes: "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." Education is available. But it's not easy. And it shouldn't be. No amount of availablity will give worth of education to a person who will not put forth the effort to obtain it had the government not been there.

CD "Where on earth do you get the idea that I am promoting affirmative action? That's the opposite of education access based on ability."
How are you honestly able to separate yourself from it if you really believe it is the responsibility of the government to make education available in the first place? It's just another way of trying to have it both ways. Especially since AA focuses on "underprivaliged" individuals, minorities, women, etc. It's all about making opportunity and education available. If what you really want is educational access based on ability, keep the government out of it! Don't meddle! Don't go out looking for people to make education available to! Those people best able to utilize education will see its value, find a way to get it and know best how to use it. Those people must be willing to take the first steps by themselves..that's how you find the people worth helping...

CD "The most recent quarterly reports from the oil companies show record profits, no poverty there."
First, whose records? Second, I'm not referring to the oil company, I'm referring to individual workers.

CD "And why on earth did you think I'm a fan of unions? They have given me nothing but trouble, and I think they have killed off several major industries in the U.S.
Still there are cases where I understand people had to organize to get any kind of fair treatment."

Never said you were a fan of unions but you must acknowledge the phenomenon in American industry. Who screams loudest about protecting American jobs from foreign manufacturers. Like it or not, when you hint at trade restrictions or protective tarrifs with the purpose of protectinf American jobs and wages, you inevitably must deal with the existence of unions. Think of the big ones in the news recently...steelworkers, textile workers, auto workers...the big ones. No one has a right to a livelihood...only the one they earn. When the government shelters one group, they expose another...Think textiles...if you were in the garment industry, why on earth would you want to buy textiles from an American company whose workersget paid a guaranteed wage resulting in a product costs 50% more than a comparable foreign material...So you advocate that the government provides the illusion of choice by allowing the imports but tax them to parity? An why? To protect the job of someone who wants to do the same work for more money?! Well, call me cold and ruthless but I say hell know. If you can't compete then get the hell out of the way but don't use the government to become a barrier to the way I do business!

CD "JG: "looks liek we're gonna have to redirect that $4 billion slated for the oil industry to save this industry"
Are you advocating major government support for ailing industries?"

It's sarcasm....I was commenting at your iniial suggestion of not giving money to the oil business but look to prop up another industry by protecting it from foreign competition. The result? You have a bunch of out of work oil employees who cannot but the products of the industry you propped up. Another result? You now have a failing industry you protected from foreign competition. Of course I don't believe in government support of ailing industries....By the same token though, I don't believe in the government protecting an ailing industry from foreign competitors...How do you propose to same them then?

CD "The Kuwait threat was dealt with quickly in 1991, a total non-issue since.
Worse is that the stupid assault on Iraq generated so much badwill worldwide and especially in the Middle East. This may only make those countries more eager to sign major oil contracts with China (which is also not picky about human rights problems in the Arab world)."

It's not just about badwill...if that was our only problem, it could have been minimized by just buying the oil and minding our business. But then you have to deal with a ton of screaming liberals whowould complain about how the US supports tyrants while they pump their gas...so the US is stuck between a rock and a hard place...there's no easy, one-word answer. I for one am all about developing alternative energy sources and then sitting back and watching OPEC ty and eat that oil when they finally realize that they needed us far worse than we needed them. That's something noone seems to realize...They are just as dependant on us....moreso even..than we are upon them. It has nothing to do with our capacity to produce oil (which we actually do have quite a bit of but it is cheaper to buy from overseas) but rather out industrial and agricultural ability. Everyone talks about how America would stop if we couldn't get oil....Actually the world would pretty much stop. The Middle East would slip back into the dark ages.

CD "Are you against resident rates at State Universities? If so, don't waste your money running for office."
What?!!

CD "A recent study finds that California will have a 30% shortfall in university-educated people in a few decades."
Yeah, but doing what kinds of jobs? Another usefull statistic is the unemployment rate among college graduates which is higher now than even the high school dropout unemployment rate. Don't believe me? Google it...it's easy to find.
http://tinyurl.com/2975a
Heck, read this one:
http://tinyurl.com/bxbsz
My comments about this is based on the assumption that making education available will lead to a good job when you get out. It ain't necessarily so!

CD "Either I'm not a very good communicator,"
I may not be the best either...

I believe that govenment exists to protect natural rights. Our elected officials are supposed to act as agents of government, not politicians. Politics should never be a livlihood because it invites corruption. My take on a politician is that he uses people's lives as a means to his end by invoking the government as his sanction. Unfortuantely we are seeing the Peter Principle at work nowadays. Our elected officials nowadays make decisions based on their own political survival. It's a Pandoras box that has been open for too long.

James Green

"barriers are not so big to the person who want an education bad enough."

There are at least three kinds of people in the world: those who are always able to take their own iniatives toward solutions, those who need to be helped to get to the solutions, and those who can't be helped no matter what (because they lack aptitude, or they are lazy, or for a number of other reasons.

When I talk about making sure that educations is available to those with the ability to do soemthing with it, I am primarily talking about the second category. In this category, there are lots of people who will not start their own companies, but they will make great employees at a level commensurate with their education. I am saying that in this case, it may be in the best interest of society to make sure that for example university education is truly available to those who can't afford the real cost of tuition. WIth the caveats I outlined above, if say the government funds the difference, it will more than get the money back in increased income taxes. And then, if companies are able to do more with better educated employees, everybody wins.

IMHO, the function of government should be to fund things that are best done cooperatively: defense, roads, justice, etc. are natural choices. Also education when needed, although I'm really angry over the deeeeep problems in today's school systems.

The current boss of Los Angeles Unified School District (one of the largest in the country) said after 90 days on the job, "I have 1,000 administrative employees who are working very hard to do the very best they can for our kids. Unfortunately I also have another 1,000 administrative employees who are working really hard to prevent the first 1,000 from getting anything done."

It's a nightmare, and there is plenty more.

You are talking about affirmative action, I'm not. I was never in favor of it, I think it's bad for society.

I am not clear if you're advocating that the government should give handouts to oil companies to keep employment up. I'm not. I saw this in ship building, where governments in many countries were paying companies 100X per year to pay an employee 50X for doing no useful work, and in the end the company had to close anyway.

When a country becomes dependent on other countries for oil, ships, textiles, foods or financing, it creates a very unhealthy situation that in the past usually led to war. I think we have a terrible situation with China right now, and if not checked we'll have to go say "pleeeeeze" a lot more often than today's cocky politicians would like to admit. The end result: "All your base are belong to us!" (inside joke).

Wars are not good for employment either. A 70s study showed that if a certain amount of money was allocated to military spending, government projects or private enterprise, the number of government jobs were 50% higher and the number of private sector jobs was double compared to the military spending.

There are two immediate problems with unemployment: lost income taxes and the cost of unemployment support. Sticking our heads in the sand like the Bush administration does and saying "well, after six months we won't be providing them any more unemployment support so we will no longer count them as unemployed" doesn't solve any problems. This kind of fake accounting has brought down many governments.

Education has never been an employment guarantee, as those inclined towards humanitarian studies found out a long time ago, and more recently there seems to be an excess of computer geeks graduating, so they have to flip burgers for a while.

I agree with your statements about the political class (it's a "class" because they see themselves as different from ordinary people).

I don't think it's been this bad since the 1970s.

While both of you raise valid points, they are only as valid as the source of information and I maintain that media reform is the number one problem facing the United States. With the copious flow of misinformation coming from a media today that serves the administration in the Republican party because they ultimately work for HUGE corporations that pressure them to do so the single motivating factor that drives political decisions is ABSENT. That motivating factor is PRESSURE. With one dirty hand washing the other, the only result can dirty hands. If any of you believe that what you don't know doesn't hurt you, then there isn't a problem. In 1985, there were 50 companies who owned media outlets. That (unlike one posters statement that you can't legislate the truth) was REQUIRED by an FCC law designed to prevent mergers that would ultimately discourage diversified reporting. Ronald Reagan changed all that by finding fault with that law and seeing that it disappeared and began the first in a series of ownership relaxation rules that have resulted in today's roughly five corporations owning everything. Why do you think when Reagan died, the media spent a week turning Ronald Reagn into the greatest president that ever lived. It was Reagan who started the slippery slope of filtered news you receive now for the betterment of big business. They each have been allowed to own even more of a percentage of the media by a new tactic. You see, with this group of so-called Conservatives they hide such changes within defense and supplemental defense and homeland security budgets. That way, if anyone spots this garbage (as Kerry did for example) that person can be falsely smeared for being against the defense budget or body armor or some other lie. They know the media won't point to the truth, but rather just allow the pundits to say the lies unchallenged. Or have two opposing views of dubious nature speak. Or start with the person telling the truth, let the liar rebut it with more lies, move on to the next question startying with the person telling the truth of course, and so on and so forth ending with the final word by the liar. This was the methodology used by the media in the last election and the one before it and of course it worked very well.

For example:
Yesterday, on NBC's Meet the Press Tim Russert interviewed RNC Chairman Ken Melman regarding the Downing Street Memos. Melman stated that the Downing Street Memos "have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it," including the 9-11 Commission and the Senate." Tim Russert did absolutely nothing to challange that lie despite the fact that neither the 9-11 Commission nor the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence even addressed the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence.
"Tim, that report has been discredited by everyone else who's looked at it since then. Whether it's the 9-11 Commission, whether it's the Senate, whoever's looked at this has said there was no effort to change the intelligence at all." When Russert noted "I don't believe that the authenticity of this report has been discredited," Mehlman reiterated: "I believe that the findings of the report, the fact that the intelligence was somehow fixed, have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it." That lie was good enough for Russert despite the fact that the lie was easy to refute.

The Senate Intelligence committee's report examined the creation of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the intelligence community's most comprehensive and authoritative statement about Iraq. But the committee decided at the outset not to investigate the Bush administration's use of intelligence, including public statements by administration officials, in the first phase of its investigation.
Russert also failed to correct Mehlman when he made the misleading claim that the Bush administration "is the first administration ever that has funded with federal dollars embryonic stem cell research. In fact, Bush's stem cell policy replaced a less restrictive set of rules issued by the Clinton administration, though those rules had yet to take effect.
What's really funny are the so-called "liberal" steadies on the news cabarets like Colmes, Begala, Ron Reagan Jr, etc. Their job is to be very well paid to act as sterile whipping posts for the big boys like Hannity, Novack, etc.
"What do you do for a living?"
"Me? Oh, I play a liberal on CNN?"

John

The news is generated, produced and spun for the masses mostly by corporations (ABC, CBS, CNN, etc). By the same token, automobile car makers do the same thing (GMC, Toyota, etc). Just like car makers are known for lying about crash tests or reliability, so to is the news in regards to accurracy. Think about folks, you are getting/letting the corporations GIVE you the news as if that should be an everyday, normal thing. We are constantly bombarded with propagandistic messages by the media everyday, and our brains get tired of deciphering what is true and what is not. Question authority!

"It's impossible"
-Perry Como

Sorry,---needed to inject a little levity.
Think it's both responsible and fair to do so.

I maintain that media reform is the number one problem facing the United States.

Not lawyers? Love those lawsuits. Not healthcare? This was priority #1 for Clinton in his first administration. Not national security? While I think the government has been over-reacting the past four years, 9/11 was quite real and we probably all know someone that died.

With the copious flow of misinformation coming from a media today that serves the administration in the Republican party because they ultimately work for HUGE corporations that pressure them to do so the single motivating factor that drives political decisions is ABSENT.

The media serves the Republican party??? You really must be kidding. Fox news, OK, but the New York Times? Washington Post? CBS? PBS? Even if you neglect all the studies showing "bias" of various media outlets, I can't think of one study -- not one -- that shows any of the media concerns that I've named to be in any way conservative, and certainly not tied to the Republican Party. That's an assertion I've never heard before.

One final note: Do you really think there is any difference at all between the Republican party and Democrat party? I'll be darned if I can see any. This country is absolute ripe for a third party. The fact that total idiots like Perot and Nader can grab big blocks of votes shows how desperate people are to get away from the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum that these two parties have become. If some maverick with real credentials, who didn't believe in space aliens, came along and ran under a third party banner, that person would stand a very good chance in a general election. What's more, that press that you think is in the back pocket of the big parties would be cheering that person on for all they're worth. They sure did it for Perot, and it cost Bush I his second term. They did it to a somewhat lesser extent for Nader, but still plenty enough (if they hadn't, we'd be now complaining about President Gore).

But back to my main point: The "mainstream media" is controlled by the Republican party? Even Oliver Stone wouldn't buy into that one. Also, the idea that Republicans are linked to "big business" and Democrats are not is ludicrous. In Silicon Valley, business contributions to the Democrats outruns donations to Republicans (by a lot). Also, the Bush administration has been tougher on corporate crime than any administration in the past twenty years. Just ask your friend that works at Arthur Andersen (oops, the DOJ put them out of business); ask Martha (oops, still under house arrest); ask Bush's old friend, Key Lay (oops, awaiting trial). Let's see, during the eight years that the Democrats controlled the executive branch, who actually got prosecuted and sent to jail?

[Edited for grammar mistakes.]

9/11 was quite real and we probably all know someone that died.

Nope. I know people with family in Iraq though.

If some maverick with real credentials, who didn't believe in space aliens, came along and ran under a third party banner, that person would stand a very good chance in a general election.

Then what was wrong with Michael Badnarick? He barely pulled in a few hundred thousand votes.

Third party candidate with a "very good chance" in a general election? The press cheering him on? He was lucky to get ON TV. FOX showed him for a few minutes. CNN didn't even mention him. 0 hits on their website.

No, the R's and the D's have things locked up tight from top to bottom. Except for the Internet of course, but give them time.

The trouble with a 3rd party is the same trouble it's always had. Nobody will take a chance with their vote, to vote for a loser, so most people always fall back on there typical ways and choose between the two most popular, while they wait for somebody else to throw their vote away on the loser.
Every other politician says what everyone wants to hear, just to get included with the same two lame parties, selling out to do so. If they're doing a good enough acting job, it won't matter, you'll accept it.
And what do the few people that do take a chance do? They throw away their vote on Ralph Nader and think they've done the right thing. (making most everyone else think that these are the few wackos that throw their vote away on a "Nobody".) (tongue in cheek, here)
So, the general consensus is, if you're a wacko, you'll take a chance on a 3rd party. Nobody wants to be associated with wackos.
I'm afraid most people do not use their own judgement to make these decisions, they choose a popular "choice" to avoid "looking like a wacko" by choosing the least popular decision. Then use everyone elses arguements to support their choice. You can almost always read everyones defense comments in some news column somewhere. You won't get any original thought explaining there stance. I'd guess probably less than 5% really understand what's going on and another 40% can BS pretty well, to sound convincing.
You want some new blood? Force the two parties to legally have to change their names from Democrat and Republican to new names, every year. In about 20 or 30 years, the majority of people will start getting mixed up and then maybe you can inject some new blood.
Let's face it, no matter what, you're going to get either Turkey or Ham for Thangsgiving and if you try to suggest anything else, you're going to look wacky.
People have been successfully conditioned to respond better than Pavlovs dogs.
Now HEEL, Slaves.

I maintain that media reform is the number one problem facing the United States.

John,

I would say that media reform affects all these issues. How do you get a rational debate about any of these issues with a dysfunctional media. The number one media bias is to the dollar. Unfortunately this begets sensationalism, fear mongering, wall-to-wall national coverage of trivial issues, superficial coverage and a lot of other ills.

The second bias is the desire not to be appear to to have "liberal bias" which manifests as a desire to be evenhanded and value "objectivity," over the truth. There's a reason for this. This is because starting with Nixon the political right in the US developed a strategy of attacking the media. Spiro Agnew was the original point man on this calling the press "nattering nabobs of negativity." They built up institutions and funded magazines and think tanks and above all pushed the meme of a liberal press. And they succeeded. Reporters and publishers and editors got to know they would get pummeled by watch-dog groups that they began to bite their tongue and write "He-said, She-said reports." As long as you report boths sides quotes, you don't have the obligation to say which side is lying. As a pundit once said, if the White House came out tomorrow and said the Earth was flat, the headline in the papers the next day would read: "Shape of the Earth--Opinions Differ."

The meme of a liberal press is so effective that as the media moved from the left to the right, it wasn't noticed. As cable news channels have moved to right, it wasn't noticed. The Washington Post is an excellent example. Who gave Ken Starr better coverage that the Post during his investigation? The Post was his favorite place to leak to. Recently, its editorials supported Bush all along the way during the buildup to war in Iraq. It is a more conservative paper under the Donald Graham than it was under Katherine Graham, but people still think it's the same paper it was during Watergate.

Another interesting example is the NY Times. Whitewater was built a NY Times report that had the timeline of events wrong. When the RTC, the organization dealing with the S&L debacle, issued a report that cleared the Clintons (and by implication said the Times had it all wrong) the waited a couple of weeks to report on it. They did summarize the report on Christmas Eve. Recently while the Times reported on Republican foreign policy realists like Brent Scrowcroft saying the war was a bad idea, I would bet that more exclusive reports about Iraq's WMD appeared in the NY Times than any other paper, particularly in the reporting of Judith Miller. She reported that Iraq tried to buy several thousand aluminum tubes that could only be used for a centrifuge for enriching uranium for building a nuclear bomb. She reported that Russia shipped Iraq a virulent form of smallpox. During the war, she was embedded with Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha, the group searching Iraq for weapons and wrote several reports of WMD discoveries. All of these stories turned out to be wrong. All of these stories served the administration. Dick Cheney used her report on aluminum tubes on Meet the Press to build support for the Iraq War Resolution in Congress. Her report might helped tip the balance. It was the only piece of physical evidence we had. Bush mentioned it at his speech to the UN. The IAEA thought the tubes were ill-suited for centrifuges because to make them work, you would have to cut them which would weaken them. The tubes were more suited for conventional artillery rockets which is what Iraq claimed they were for. Another piece of evidence we turned over the IAEA was shown to be a crude forgery within 24 hours. The tubes story was wrong and when the Times finally looked into it over a year after the war started, they found that in order for the tubes to be used for a centrifuge, you would have to change the shape, width, and weight and you would have to completely remove the special anodized coating that Iraq requested for the tubes. Moreover, intelligence analysts in the US Dept of Energy (the guys who know how to build nuclear weapons) argued this since June 2001, or before 9/11!. Moreover the tubes matched the design of Italian artiliery rockets that Iraq used purchase from Italy in the '80's.

How did the Times play these stories?
Judith Miller's tubes story that wrong was on page one.
Two weeks later the arms control group, ISIS, issued a report that many US nuclear experts disagreed with the Administration was saying in the Judith Miller story. This report was correct was not reported in the NY Times. (The Washington Post had a small story on page 18).
The report from the IAEA in Jan 2003 that was also correct was on page 10 in the NY Times.
The idea that the NY Times is monolithically liberal or is the vanguard of the liberal agenda in the US is simply not accurate.

Think about the Jayson Blair scandal. Now think about the Jack Kelley scandal. Which got more attention? Which was more serious? Jack Kelley's deception was far, far greater than Blair's, but Blair got way more heat for it. That's because Blair worked for the NY Times which has institutional enemies and smugly calls itself the paper of record. Kelley works for USA Today which doesn't arouse hatred like that. Blair was a lowly daily reporter who plagiarized and lied to his boss to hide his drug use. Kelley was a star reporter, a five-time Pulitizer nominee and a finalist in 2001 who plagiarized and lied to enhance his fame and was held up as a role model. (He used to give speeches before the Evangelical Press Association {He lied to them too.}.) He claimed to talk to Jewish settler vigliantes, claimed to see a Palestinian bomber right before he blew himself up, claimed to see heads rolling down the street with they eyes still blinking after that bombing, claimed to talk to a Pakistani who unfurled a picture of the Sears Tower and said, "This one is next." That is, he lied about some of the most important, most emotional issues of our day, but I bet Blair got 10 times the coverage.

When you talk about about the liberal media, that means you are not talking about talk radio and cable news which of course are hugely influential in driving out discourse. Right before Richard Clarke's book came out Dick Cheney went on the Rush Limbaugh show and straight up lied about Richard Clarke, saying he didn't know much, that he "wasn't in the loop" and that he was moved off the terrorism beat. That is something that didn't exist 15 year ago. Because back then, there was a Fairness Doctrine and if you said something like that on the radio, the opposing side was able to come on give a rebuttal. The journalistic institution of "He said, she said" is ill equipped to deal with one side flat out lying. Or should I say, it would take courage to point out that one side is flat out lying. When Clarke's book came out, the whole first chapter was about the government's response on 9/11. Far from being out of the loop, Condoleeza Rice let him coordinate the response as the President was not in Washington and Cheney was moved to a bunker. She could have been the coordinator, but she knew it would be faster if he did it. That is to say, he was the loop. At the 9/11 Commission when Rice was asked, under oath, to confirm Cheney's lies, she would not.

If you think the media in this country is liberal, ask yourself about the Downing Street Memo. Have you seen a lot of coverage of the Downing Street Memo? Has your local news covered it, your local paper? Have you even heard of it?

Another instance was 2002 when the national conversation was shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. Does anyone remember being puzzled by that? We had not captured the man who organized an attack that murdered 3,000 Americans, but all of a sudden an adversary who did even control the north and south borders of his country was deemed our biggest threat? I couldn't understand where that was coming from. Why were we shifting the focus away from Bin Ladin? It didn't make any sense to me at the time. Now that more of the facts are out, I think I know why it was done. It doesn't make it easier to swallow.

In terms of the differences between the Republicans and Democrats. Democrats are the ones who bring the deficit down. Republicans increase the deficit. They like to borrow and spend. This is because the Democrats' financial policies, like a lot of their other policies, are based in reality. Ironically, Republicans are still the ones who people associate with fiscal prudence. Like the idea of liberal media, once an idea takes hold, it's often very hard for facts to dislodge it.

The trouble with a 3rd party is the same trouble it's always had. Nobody will take a chance with their vote

I don't think everyone is brainwashed - I think we just need something like instant run-off voting so people can put the guy they really want as #1, and then use their #2 or #3 choice on the guy that actually has a chance. Right now people are stuck using their only vote as a defensive weapon. So the D's and R's spend all their money finding those issues that will secure a defensive vote which is the biggest reason that political debate is a joke when the major parties are involved.

I like to ask this question:

"What percentage of the population is it OK to ignore? 5%? 10? 20?"

In the US, it's OK to ignore X percent of the population because we don't have proportional representation. Our system of electing "leaders" hasn't changed in over 200 years, which makes us about the only Western "democracy" still clinging to an antiquated election system.

3rd party? I'd love to see it. Even more so, I'd love to see 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th parties---other parties the major parties would HAVE to deal with if they wanted to get anything done. Right now, the Dems and Reps don't have to deal with other parties, EVER. With proportional representation they'd have to. With proportional representation, 3rd Party X might only get 10% of the vote---and therefore 10% of the seats in Congress.

In a nation of almost 300 million, 10% is 30 million people. Should those 30 million be ignored? If so, why? Because "that's the way our system is set up?" Sounds like an exclusionary system, dunnit?

Of course, proportional representation would require a major overhaul of the Constitution.

So we're back to turkey or ham.

Not only for Thanksgiving, but for EVERY *%$#@ meal, forever and ever, amen.