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meanwhile the US is going into Pakistan on raids without their permission.

that is such a black and white answer. None of us can really pretend to understand Georgia/Russia and most can say it's a lot more delicate than we could admit. That statement is just absurdly dumb. Why are we puffing our chests with Russia? We could seriously screw over some allies that depend on their energy exports.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 11, 2008 -> 09:05 PM) Policy wise, yes, they have a fair amount in common. Not everything though. But in terms of management and leadership style, and personality, I think they are quite different. I think they are very much the same in management, they both get dominated by the people they put around them.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Sep 11, 2008 -> 06:34 PM) Who stopped the bridge from being built? Congress, largely.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 10, 2008 -> 08:09 PM) I try to get out, and you drag me back in! If you would have read the story, it says it was her first year vs his last year. So apples to apples. AD, I really wasn't trying to be snarky, maybe my eyes failed me, but I couldn't find the link so I thought you'd forgotten. I must've missed it, they can be tricky sometimes.

Let's look at this F******* campaign that McCain has ran. For the past month, what ads has McCain ran that listed anything he would do? I haven't seen any (i'm in a battleground state) What ads were just shallow attacks on Obama not having substance? about half What ads were just completely FALSE, not politik misleading half truths, but categorically false ads about Obama? About half. What ads did Obama have on McCain? Two ads about how McCain would run the economy, using McCain's own words in political fashion. Whad ads did Obama do showing how Obama would run his presidency? About 3/4s. So, you all complain about how individual Obama supporters in workplaces and messageboards have annoyed you so much with Obama. Well I have the same complaint with McCain, except it's his actual campaign that is doing the sleaziest, most irresponsible ads I've seen. That Bush ad with the wolf? I hated it because I thought it was just scaring America to fall in line. BUt alternately, it had no falsehoods, and was implying that Bush will protect America. The Kerry windsurfing ad? Took actual things Kerry said and brought it against him. Hell the Willie Horton ad contained undeniable truths, but linked them in a political way to a candidate. Now McCain's ads are WORSE than Bush. Isn't that something? McCain, who wanted to run an honorable campaign about the issues, has not ran on the issues since June, has not even ran AGAINST Obama's issues, just Obama's character. And in the end, what does that show about McCain's character. This is Obama-Keyes pt. II. A man running a completely sleazy campaign. And I hope it sheds as much light on McCain's lack of character as it did on Keyes.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 10, 2008 -> 02:55 AM) Just in travel alone, according to the story linked here, she spent $93,000 compared to $463,000 (!) by the old guy. That right there cut out alot. She was also entitled to take a per diem for her kids. what's the time frame on this alpha, because if it isn't a 18 month to 18 month comparison it is moot.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 10, 2008 -> 11:55 AM) She WAS on his pac. Just like Obama WAS on Ayers board. She helped a corrupt politician run for the very office he will be corrupt in. Obama wasn't on a board giving new ideas for Ayers to build bombs with. Just a dumb comparison.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 06:37 PM) it's too bad this election is going to get nasty. i actually like Obama and won't really be all that disappointed if he ends up winning (even though i do have issues with some of his economic policies and increases in spending). well when you accuse Obama of wanting to teach kindergartners about sex, an out and out lie, you forfeit any possibility of a clean campaign. I used to think I liked McCain more than the other candidates, but now I'm not so sure. He's backtracked on anything he's accomplished the past 8 years, he's probably more of a warhawk than Bush, and quite possibly stupider. An unbelievable combination.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 04:46 PM) The Democrats fear mongering, bumper slogan campaigns, and mass marketing hasn't done jack for them. yeah we're not very good at it.

btw I specifically chose the NY times because you consider it liberal.

well, here. Scan through. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/ti...=0&s=newest DO NOT PICK EDITORIALS. Scanning through, I just find that this was my main argument about the real liberal bias in reporting. I think journalists in general are biased towards the poor and underreported. In reporting, I don't think it's "THIS ISN'T WORKING, LOUSY REPUBLICANS" usually it's "If you are going to have this program at least make it do what it's supposed to do" (solve problems). Rarely do these articles mention political parties, if at all, and these are hyper regional. Usually the main players you see are the governor or Bloomberg.

I love this because it was the line I hated most and disgusted me people cheered. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail...mock_the_c.html Obama to Palin: 'Don't Mock the Constitution' By Peter Slevin FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- Sen. Barack Obama delivered an impassioned defense of the Constitution and the rights of terrorism suspects tonight, striking back at one of the biggest applause lines in Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech to the GOP convention. It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights." Obama had a few problems with that. "First of all, you don't even get to read them their rights until you catch 'em," Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. "They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later." If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government's sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed. "My position has always been clear: If you've got a terrorist, take him out," Obama said. "Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take 'em out." But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus. Calling it "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'" The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, "because we don't always have the right person." "We don't always catch the right person," he said. "We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president." Obama turned back to Palin's comment, although he said he was not sure whether Palin or Rudy Giuliani said it. "The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years." He finished with a dismissive comment about his opponents. "These people."

Another Alpha Dog post with no examples.

I don't know, I think you see blogs helping. Papers lack resources now. tribune losing a bunch of good writers. Watching TPMs coverage of the US Attorney scandal was an exhilarating experience, though didn't mean much since nobody cared about Bush anymore. I like Carlotto Gall's coverage. I think Mr Genius would hate her Afghanistan article recently, but I see no reason when you are seeing a first hand account, why you should need sources just to say what you already saw.

QUOTE (Chet Lemon @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 04:22 PM) Don't liberals have an affinity for government-funded programs (e.g. food stamps, americorps, TANF, etc.)? From what I have observed in media, there are hardly ever any positive stories reporting the accomplishments of such programs. The media has shown a passel of stories presenting solely negative aspects of these programs over the years. I think journalists in general are both critical of everything the government does but on the other hand seeing the problems of all of these programs first hand and moreso want them fixed to help solve these problems.

All senators home base is their home state and they travel on gov't dime. Congressman too. If they stayed in Washington year round they would never meet with constituents and would be considered to have potomac fever. It is in our best interests to pay for these trips. This is a dumb topic, and it pertains to everyone in the conversation (all actors in the topic not the posters)

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 01:31 PM) Expectations play a huge part of that. The media really didn't think the convention would go as well as it did for the republicans, and the bump was alot bigger than they thought. never in their wildest nightmares did they expect to ever have to report that Obama and McCain were TIED! So to them, its news. Keep expecting the floor, occasionally you get hit by the ceiling. (Not you, the media) But they were statistically tied two weeks ago? And With Obama's bump he went up 9, with McCain's he went up a couple different numbers, but i believe 3. It just doesn't make sense to cover it like that, unless you accept that it's in the media's best interest to have a close race, and that is why they report it like this.

Okay, so obviously we've had disagreements about whose controlled the media narrative. I contended a month ago, that since Obama won the primaries, he's had more coverage, but less positive coverage. I argued also that in trying to be fair to McCain, the media has been unequivocally taking his media claims and not reporting on things that they would on Obama (negative) Obviously, the disagreement was over positive coverage. Where you guys felt not adequate coverage was given to some Obama scandals, like Rezko, which you feel still isn't dead. I'd like the media to tap into McCain's advisers, personally, especially Randy Scheunemann. BUt too my POINT, I think an example for me of the media trying to compensate for their more Obama coverage is their coverage of polls. All of the "why isn't Obama ahead by more" polls. Well, then so post convention, they said "where's the bump" and Obama got a bump and people called it a bump. Then now McCain gets a bump, and news stories are going crazy about how the RACE IS TIED, MCCAIN IN LEAD, i mean many of these came int he weekend where McCain always does better, its post convention where historically there is always a bounce, and other factors. But now you'd have us believe that McCain just suddenly became Usain Bolt.

Kap I'm going to comment on that in the media bias thread, I'd like your thoughts.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 01:25 PM) Her appointee isn't her. Unless she was part of the decision. And while I certainly think that the kits SHOULD be free, this was an unfunded state mandate. $12,000 a year is not a small number for the Wasilla Police Department. Not saying that the chief's refusal was good - it wasn't - but I hope people realize that the money isn't insignificant for a department like that. I don't like Palin, and I think in the long run, she will end up making a lousy VP pick. But unless she herself participated in the decision to charge for the kits, then I think this is a stretch. And before someone says it, a mayor does NOT necessarily have the power to tell the police chief how to do their job. It depends on the way the city/locality's charter is set up. eh, when you run millions in debt what's 12 grand?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 06:51 AM) I suppose voting for the candidate TV tells you to is more of a Democrat thing. I have an amazing ability to watch even keith Olbermann and still not like Harry Reid! Or watch FOX news and still think GW sucks No, but throughout our history the free press has been vital to our democratic process. It has been the engine to educate our voters about making an educated choice. So say then, by the way Alpha Dog talks, that there was a time of a "very" good press. The one he speaks of that used to do who what when where that clearly our current press never does anymore. The professionalization, if you could call it that, of journalism didn't really start taking hold until the 1920s and so then maybe WWII gave us our first view of our classic journalists. If I keep hearing from you how bad the press has got, that means it used to be good, no? SO when did this shift occur? Around the 80s? Post watergate maybe. And but so the press gets very liberal. Our Cronkites are gone. Despite this gigantic asset that the democrats have, they get dominated in the white house for 12 years, lose their senate majority a few times, then lose their forty year majority in the house? And for 12 years that majority, they also get another 8 years in the white house. And the beginning of this "liberal press" just happens to coincide with goldwater and conservatives strategy of claiming a liberal media? Something doesn't add up here, mr. genius. Despite all the efforts of the newspapers to attach every scandal to a republican and never let anyone know about any democrat scandals, like when they ignored Clinton for all those presidential years with travelgate and gategate and plantgate, the republicans were THAT GOOD, that it didn't matter.

Aww yes, from your years of watching the little twitches and manuerisms to subliminally trick America into voting for a GOP congress for 12 years and Republican Presidency for 18 of the last 24.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 9, 2008 -> 04:40 AM) Same could be said of any of the major 3 network anchors. FOX news with Hume is biased the same way the major 3 are, it's mainly in language used when covering certain topics and which issues are emphasized. And Democrats whine about FOX news plenty. If the big 3 networks had news coverage like FOX Democrats would go fricking crazy. No, you drive me crazy with this. Keith Olbermann is equal with the following: Bill O'Reilley Sean Hannity Lou Dobbs Jack Cafferty Rachel Maddow Chris Matthews Joe Scarborough Britt Hume would be equated with Wolf Blitzer, Andrea Mitchell and the like.

Well, I gave up long ago. To me there is a large difference between Olbermann's job and Hume's job. I don't think there is any question that when people turn into countdown they see it as an editorial show, whereas Hume's was passed off as a news hour. Perhaps MSNBC should've treated the conventions differently, ala CNN, where his role would've been no different than a Donna Brazile, and MSNBC providing a moderator between the different opinions. The difference b/w MSNBC in my opinion, is MSNBC has Maddow and Olbermann in addition to Scarborough, undoubtedly more a conservative voice, and a fairly strong one. Whereas Fox has Alan Colmes as their liberal. There isn't a liberal in the world who likes the guy, and so they set up this puppet posing as the voice for liberals. And so anyways, MSNBC finds two liberal personalities that people like - and obviously, besides demographic differences the reason there has been so many more successful conservative personalities than liberals is talent - and their ratings go up during the primaries, and then all they are too liberally biased and need to correct. The vast majority of the day is good news on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell does a pretty decent job and seems to take her job seriously. As for Matthews, I think he should've been punished after the primaries for blatantly sexist comments towards Clinton. Even as I grew to disdain her towards the end, just ridiculous comments from him.