|
|
| Posted: 12 Sep 2007 18:16 |
|
|
|
Registered User
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 247
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Okay, cite your source. August had the honor of having the greatest loss of Iraqi lives since the invasion, as I pointed out above.
So if violence is down from THAT, I'd hardly call your assertion a success story. I'd call it being lied to by Fox News.
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 16:23 Last Edited By: Tim |
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
I'm working on too many replies, how about you find the percentage of violence in iraq for us. I bet you know just where to look.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 18:18 |
|
|
|
Registered User
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 247
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
|
Sorry dude. I'm at work. You're the one who made the claim. Why can't you go to the place from which you got that data?
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 20:01 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
I heard it on Fox news. I know I heard it so that's good enough for me. You don't believe me or fox news oh well I'm not scouring the net for it. It's silly that you don't believe anything on Fox news any way.
I don't believe everything I hear anywhere, but stats you can usually trust to a certain degree unless there is missing information. Not sure how you could doctor a claim of less violence though.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 20:36 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Oh, and I meant for that to sound more tactful, but my allergies are acting up.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 22:42 |
|
|
|
Registered User
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 247
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
|
Quote:
Not sure how you could doctor a claim of less violence though.
I just told you. August had one of the most brutal attacks I've ever heard of in any war. About 1,000 people were affected by that explosion and about 400 of them died- all in one day.
ANYTHING would be a drop in violence after that.
The reason I didn't go trolling the internet and doing your homework for you- as I so often do when you refuse to read things like the 9/11 commission report, is because I knew it came from Fox News.
Quote:
It's silly that you don't believe anything on Fox news any way.
Why would I? They're unabashedly partisan. I try to research every piece of news against another source. Fox is usually just an interesting curiousity, because so much of it turns out to be propaganda. Would you believe what Air America told you? or Michael Moore? I hope not.
Seldom do I hear of you going somewhere else for information. I don't think there is a single true thing about this statement:
Quote:
I don't believe everything I hear anywhere, but stats you can usually trust to a certain degree unless there is missing information.
That sounds like a wrong answer choice on the LSAT.
You have got to question these people Tim. If you really care about your country, to say nothig of yourself, you will go looking for some objective information.
|
| Posted: 13 Sep 2007 22:51 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Heres some good news http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upiUPI-20070913-084219-17 ...
Quote:
you refuse to read things like the 9/11 commission report, I'm not refusing I read what I can in the time I have. I've saw docs on it, and quite a few news casts. The 9/11 report isn't the end of all knowledge you know.
Quote:
Why would I? They're unabashedly partisan. Comparing Fox news to say MSNBC I found that there is just less liberal commentary. Less Bush bashing etc. I don't find any twisting of the truth. Michael Moore is a bad example. That guy appears to me to write facts as it suits him.
Quote:
You have got to question these people Tim. Ok, give me some examples of Fox getting something factually wrong, and prove it. I don't see any difference myself except as I said it's not hard to listen to them because they don't act like liberal fanatics like that hardball guy on msnbc. Dude ticks me off with his bs sometimes.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 14 Sep 2007 00:43 |
|
|
Registered User
|
Posts: 4725
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Fox and MSNBC tell the facts. Both of them. I promise.
The only problem with either is that they are news entertainment, they entertain to sell ad space, and sell ad space to particular markets. To sell to those particular markets they must keep particular viewers by showing particular shows and stories.
Fox tends to go right, MSNBC leans to the left, and I personally believe CNN is the closest thing to an impartial center. News stations on the radion do the same thing for the same reasons and so do newspapers. Any three papers report the same story and give three different perspectives-hardly impartial. The dollar is king once again. Long live the king.
The best bet to get at actual 'facts' is to maybe check multiple sources and see who is saying what. After that, it's your responsibility to make up your own mind. I take plenty of shots at O'Reilly but the man is entertaining and intelligent while being a fascist and merchandising whore.  Fair is fair. MSNBC being totally grim on the war and trying to destroy the president with absolute prejudice over it is not impartial either.
Read or watch multiple sources and make up your own mind.
__________________But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
|
| Posted: 14 Sep 2007 16:43 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Well it's like when the President said he wanted to make lectures for money after his term was over. That's the fact. He said. Maybe that's all that needed to be said, but that harball nut made it sound as if Bush was making money off of the dead for thinking of doing the same thing the last two presidents have been partaking in. Just because we have a war on has nothing to do with Bush's personal plans for the future yet hardball made it sound terrible that Bush would even think of ever making money after leaving office, and I say if that's the case then Clinton should make money either. People died under his adminstration as well. Maybe not as many, but who told the hardball guy he had the magic number of deaths required to determine whether or not a president couldn't make money after he becomes a private citizen. Just stupid stuff like that irritates me. That's why I watch fox more because i don't like to be irritated. But having said that I flip back and forth during commercials which are also very irritating.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 15 Sep 2007 17:02 |
|
|
|
Registered User
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 247
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
|
Quote:
The best bet to get at actual 'facts' is to maybe check multiple sources and see who is saying what. After that, it's your responsibility to make up your own mind. I take plenty of shots at O'Reilly but the man is entertaining and intelligent while being a fascist and merchandising whore. Fair is fair. MSNBC being totally grim on the war and trying to destroy the president with absolute prejudice over it is not impartial either.
Read or watch multiple sources and make up your own mind.
Precisely. Both MSNBC and Fox ARE chasing markets and giving their slant of the news. As you mentioned, both give their version of the popular story as well. I watched Sean Hannity the night of Bush's speech and he would not let go of the ad that Moveon.org posted regarding General Petraeus. Meanwhile we had just heard the President address the American people on totally unrelated matters.
To be fair however, I will fully admit that most o the MSNBC staff has obviously written Bush completely off. Of course, that might be for good reason.
Which is why people can watch TV they like all day long, but they also need to challenge themselves with opinions different from their own.
If you hear something you don't like, that might be you learning...
(But I still can't stand CNN because they will spend an entire day discussing a trash can fire in Idaho before they'll cover an important long range topic. Cooper's show is decent, but I'll watch it on podcast before I'll try and find it in between Wolf Blitzer and Larry King's interviews with the guy who lit the trash can on fire.)
Back to the point however, multiple sources can teach you a lot about HOW your news is brought to you and WHY. For instance, the repeated assertion that the level of violence has decreased is altered dramatically by how that violence is measured.
From the Economist:
Quote:
"The number of Iraqi civilians dying violently each month has fallen by 45% since December, when sectarian killing reached a peak. It has fallen by 70% in Baghdad, where most of the extra troops are concentrated. (However, measured from March, when the surge properly got under way, the reductions are marginal.)"
Then there is the actual tallyingof deaths.
You CAN spin a number all sorts of ways.
But I think the real problem here is the focus on how well the surge worked or didn't, or the notion that troops will be brought down to a pre-surge level. The real focus needs to be on "Is there an exit strategy?" This has been the case since the war began, it remains the case and it will probably be the case 5 and 10 years from now.
The surge was in fact, a surge. It was the crest of a wave. It was us throwing everything we had at Iraq. The reason we don't just do that all the time is because we don't have enough troops to sustain such a thing forever. We are now headed for the downslope of the wave, according tot the President. Expect things to get ugly.
Second, of course the President is going to say that everything is rosy with Iraq. When have we EVER heard otherwise from the guy? It has always been that, "we're making progress, we're making progress." So honestly, I watched his speech, but it wasn't really news.
At the end of the day, John McCain nailed the problem when he said our forces had to play "whack a mole" with the enemy, noting how such a strategy doesn't work. I think I heard Bush say during his speech that "Along with Iraqi forces, they have captured or killed an average of more than 1,500 enemy fighters per month since January". This number hit me as profound. 1,500 people a month- and an untold number we did not get. Saddam's army had 400,000 when Bremmer disbanded it.
So say for the sake of argument, that Saddam's army are the only people we're still fighting- leaving out all he other people the Bush administration let into the country by not securing the border.
Then how does it take to capture, kill or deter 400,000 soldiers, 1500 at a time? At that rate, we can get it done in 267 months. How long is 267 months? About 22 years.
Like I said, this is assuming none of them love America- the force that beat them. or maybe they'll just all kill each other first, but I don't think that is part of our goal... right? This is also assuming that no one new showed up to fight us. This is also assuming that no one decided Al Qaeda was totally right about us, once we invaded their country. Soooo, roughly only 18 years to go, if we could maintain surge levels (We can't).
Honestly, I'm not in favor of anything other than a measured pullout, after trying some genuine political strategy first, such as sectioning off the country the way Joe Biden has described. We somehow need to get the international community involved so we can have some credibility.
But none of that will happen until 2009, and maybe not then, if the D's don't get a crack at this. Until then, with our troops working hard and Iraqi politicians either on vacation or being blown to bits- we've got one thing standing in our way of actually changing gears: our bonehead President. I don't think you can impeach as a mater of sheer practicality, but we ought to look into it.
|
| Posted: 15 Sep 2007 20:42 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
I think the news would be neater if they had regular news which was just untainted facts and nothing but the facts without anything missing, and news magazine shows that are clearly marked as conservative or liberal before you watch. I mean come out and say what you are if you are going to report from your own personal position.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 16 Sep 2007 02:11 |
|
|
|
Registered User
|
Posts: 4725
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Only one problem with that label.
The 'conservatives' will all have the same package of views and standpoints-let's call this column A. The 'liberals' will all have their personal package called column B. Neither group would be allowed to veer even slightly away from their appointed package.
O'Reilly would sound exactly like Limbaugh on every possible facet of any conversation that arose while Al Franken and Rosie O'Donnell would be part of the other clone group.
Only one solution to finally start solving some of this country's problems.
Remove ALL titles
No more republicans and democrats, no more liberal and conservative, no more wings.
Topic by topic, each individual cuts out the bullshit and posturing and actually thinks for themselves. Just because two people went to the same school, in the same neighborhood, and went to the same church, does not mean they should think exactly the same on other topics. Any two people from an extremely wealthy neighborhood or another two people from a poverty stricken tenament may have exactly opposite ideas on education, healthcare, social programs, pollution, government spending, whatever.
If those neighbors can think in opposite terms on subjects while being in duplicate surroundings, how on earth can parties and groups make sense in this day and age? Get rid of em and start actually doing something in government to make this place what we claim it is. End of story.
__________________But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
|
| Posted: 17 Sep 2007 16:19 |
|
|
|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 4786
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
I almost agree in getting rid of parties, but not conservative and liberal identities. The party system kind of seems corrupted at this point in history, but I like a politician to give me a general sense of where they stood. It helps to hold them more accountable of their actions. If they aren't afraid to stand up and call themselves conservatives they have taken the first step to getting my vote.
Somehow though a part of me says there is probably some other unforseen consequences I'm not seeing to doing away with the party system.
__________________Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
|
| Posted: 17 Sep 2007 16:56 |
|
|
|
Registered User
|
Posts: 4725
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
The politicians can answer direct question without hiding behind the shield of a supposed title.
"Where are you on education reform senator?"
"I'm a conservative"
Sound familiar?
Would it not be better to have them say exactly what they think is wrong and right on a topic in their own individual voice, instead of the expected answer because of that title? If you limit looking at topics to one side or another, you will only have the answers to those two sides instead of an individual's response. Removing conservative and liberal(or other titles) from the equations makes every response a solution or not a solution and nothing more or less.
There would most certainly be consequences-politicians would have to be responsible for thinking for a change.
__________________But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
|
|
