Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Not surprising, the liberals hate the president & the right as much as liberal democrats do. The democrats have failed to lead by legislation so they depend on the liberal press & liberal judicial system to enforce their agenda. In that light, why should we be surprised at the lack of this coverage? I wouldn’t be surprised to find this is the feeling of all military personnel toward democrats.

Perplexed

sorry, “the liberal press hates”
Perplexed

liberal judicial system

Now the judicial system is “liberal,” too?

How do you figure?

From the referenced article, there was no press coverage that heard this exchange as opposed to the Rumsfield public question and answer. That’s a pretty big diffenence.
Oh yeah, and there may also be a difference between the subject of body armor and verbal statements.

Anyone have any idea why the press might be liberal? I mean I guess what you’re saying is that if they didn’t publish this, it must mean that they intended to literally ignore it.

I guess Fox is liberal as well. I can’t seem to find this in any of their stories.

Mattlaw,

You should Robert Byrd thinks of the liberal court system.
But you likely wont find it reported in the liberal media…lol

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050721-115719-6891r.htm

No offense, but I place little stock in Byrd or his opinions.

I don’t have a problem with Bush’s court pick, and I’ve heard great things about him.

I still don’t see evidence of an overwhelmingly “liberal” court system. Take the Supreme Court—how many of the current justices were placed there by Republican presidents? Seven?

Chops,

You are correct about the double standard.

I doubt you will see the Kennedy or the Byrd story on network nightly news..lol

Just a few weeks ago Byrd was praised by the liberals as the last great American, now he’ll become the new Zell Miller.lol

Just a few weeks ago Byrd was praised by the liberals as the last great American…

Really? Where?

Mattlaw,

Where ? are you joking?

Try every single news outlet as he stood with Kennedy and Schumer to defend the stupid filibuster rule. You don’t follow news?

You said he was praised by “liberals” as the “last great American.”

Hyperbole, on your part? I’m new to this board, but is no one ever expected to back up their assertions with facts?

MattLaw:

Since you are new to this board, we might explain the rules: You can say anything you want & no one cares about proof!

Seriously: if the Supreme Court does not have a liberal side to it, then why all the screaming & crying from the left concerning Roberts being too conservative?

The Supreme Court is not the only judicial system of the land. Would you consider the 9th circuit court to be liberal, conservative, or neither?

Perplexed

Mattlaw,

http://ryandamron.blogspot.com/2005/03/would-someone-please-slap-muzzle-on.html

IS molly Ivans and the NYT liberal enough for you?
You have to register at NYT to read her drivel.
I honestly doubt that anyone not living in a cave didn’t see the liberal senators pileing the praise on Byrd for several days on TV.

Since you are new to this board, we might explain the rules: You can say anything you want & no one cares about proof!

Fair enough, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to take such factual assertions seriously if they can’t be backed up with evidence.

Seriously: if the Supreme Court does not have a liberal side to it, then why all the screaming & crying from the left concerning Roberts being too conservative?

Most of the complaints are coming from special interest groups, not Dems or “the left.” Are some liberals complaining? Absolutely. So are some conservatives (see: Ann Coulter).

The Supreme Court is not the only judicial system of the land. Would you consider the 9th circuit court to be liberal, conservative, or neither?

I can certainly see why the 9th circuit would be identified as more “liberal,” and the Supreme Court has a definite liberal bloc.

Many have called O’Connor a “swing vote” on the Court. If Roberts ends up offering a predictable “conservative” vote, then the “swing vote” will belong exclusively to Kennedy.

There is more than one “conservative” interpretation to the Constitution, it seems. Thomas is not always on the same side as Scalia. Scalia voted against allowing the states to set their own policy on medical marijuana, though O’Connor and Thomas did not. In my opinion, both Thomas and Scalia abandoned their conservative vision of the Constitution in Bush v. Gore.

Still others have not made conservatives happy, at all (Souter). One’s opinions can change when they no longer need the support of a political party.

http://ryandamron.blogspot.com/2005/03/would-someone-please-slap-muzzle-on.html

Would Someone Please Slap A Muzzle On This Bitch?

Obviously someone interested in intelligent discourse!

“One’s opinions can change when they no longer need the support of a political party.â€

You are correct & I believe the reservations from some conservatives, like Coulter, are because a few of those who were nominated by republican presidents became liberal after being confirmed.

Perplexed

Mattlaw,

That was the only link I could post that shows where you can REGISTER to the NYT to read the article by Ivans.

If you care you can finds tons of other articles about what I posted.
Please find your own links if you really care, something tells me you dont.

MattLaw -

Thanks for coming to this board! I hope our less factually-inclined members haven’t scared you away. In reality, facts are very important here at Watchblog, because there are some smart folks (and some folks with too much time on their hands) who will shred you if you don’t use facts.

Byrd was indeed a posterboy for Dems last month during the filibuster thing. He got a lot of airtime, and was praised as a great compromiser by his colleagues, and was held up as someone with the best interests of the Senate in mind. It is indeed disingenuous for liberals to jettison him now if they suddenly disagree with his “moderate” opinions and “great respect for the institutions of government.”

Ms. Schwamp -
It’s true that the Rumsfeld story got more press because the media was there. But that’s part of their job: to be there. They didn’t see fit to cover Kennedy and Akaka’s meetings with their troops, because they assumed nothing would happen. In Iraq, on the other hand, they made things happen, by planting questions with soldiers. I in no way mean to cheapen the soldier’s asking those questions - I think it’s great that our Secretary of Defense has to face his lowest employees - but the media should have been just as active and interested in what was going on when Senators who have been bashing Guantanamo actually went there. No reporters went; even the WashTimes’ story comes from unnamed officials, and is denied by Akaka’s office (though, tellingly, no-commented by Kennedy’s).

Byrd was indeed a posterboy for Dems last month during the filibuster thing. He got a lot of airtime, and was praised as a great compromiser by his colleagues, and was held up as someone with the best interests of the Senate in mind. It is indeed disingenuous for liberals to jettison him now if they suddenly disagree with his “moderate” opinions and “great respect for the institutions of government.”

I agree, and I seriously doubt that the Dems will…I believe Byrd is the longest-serving member of Congress, no?

“Moderate” opinions for Bryd are not anything new, and I don’t find these comments (taken from a book he authored, it appears) surprising in the slightest.

mattLaw,

I would bet that most of the right didn’t bother reading the whole statement that Byrd actually made, but insted chose to have the statement translated for them by Rush, and Hannity.

“Liberal bias” in the press is a right wing myth, intended to discredit and intimidate the mainstream media. It proves that if enough people repeat the same accusation, it starts to be taken for the truth, even if it isn’t true. I challenge you neocons to prove your claim with objective evidence, from non-partisan sources. I don’t think you can do it, because I’ve looked and have found little or no evidence.

Take the story (or lack thereof) used as a basis for this thread. Chops’ complaint is that the mainstream media didn’t give the story as much emphasis as he wanted it to have. Is that proof of liberal bias? No, it’s only proof that the press didn’t share Chops’ bias.

Then there’s the fact that neocons only complain about LIBERAL bias. Not ANY bias - just LIBERAL bias. This brings up three points:

Just because people believe something to be true doesn’t make it so. The majority believed the earth to be flat for several eons. Did that make it so?

“Liberal bias” in the press is a right wing myth, intended to discredit and intimidate the mainstream media.â€

You live in a dream world. The mainstream media is responsible for their discredit. The reason the big 3 on TV & the mainstream newspapers are losing subscribers is because of their blatant untruths. We have much more access to world news now than we did when NYT, ABC, CBS, & NBC controlled what was given to America. The reason for the rapid rise of talk radio & Internet blogs is because people have an alternative news source. Rush Limbaugh alone has 20 million listeners every day & there are others with an audience almost a large.

“It proves that if enough people repeat the same accusation, it starts to be taken for the truth, even if it isn’t true.â€

I assume you mean the talking points of the democrats. If you hear one liberal democrat say something on the news, you can bet your welfare check all the rest will say the exact same thing over the next few days, or at least until someone else is under attack.

Perplexed

I assume you mean the talking points of the democrats. If you hear one liberal democrat say something on the news, you can bet your welfare check all the rest will say the exact same thing over the next few days, or at least until someone else is under attack.

…and are you suggesting that the bulk of Republican politicians operate in such a completely different manner?

Why result to personal attacks and generalizations? I realize they’re a common theme on the board…

Perplexed,

I assume from your response that you have no empirical evidence of bias. Thanks for helping to prove my point.

As for your implication that I’m on welfare, what are you trying to say? Is that intended as an insult? If so, I suggest you read the top of this thread. It says “critique the message, not the messenger.”

If it wasn’t intended as an insult, please explaing the logical connection between being on welfare and not finding the press to be biased.

Liberal Bias?
I’m sure people in the Republican Party can easily agree among themselves that the media has a liberal bias. That’s the problem. It’s an easy route to groupthink, especially in times when the Republican party is making controversial decisions along party lines. Support for the policy becomes the defining political litmus test, and even producing verifiable facts about the doings of the government can become evidence of liberal bias.

It’s a cyclical argument in the making, when the authority of the GOP talking points and not verifiable facts becomes the gold standard for interpretation of the news.

Everything that doesn’t favor the party is treated as illegitimate. The facts don’t benefit the party, the facts are spun as doubtful, the party members take up that interpretation, and reject the story the facts imply, causing those who take other views, whether partisan or factual to press their case, which further encourages that rejection because those views don’t benefit the party and are “obviously” meant to discourage and deceive the party faithful. the failure to report an event become evidence of bias, whether or not other factors of newsworthiness are involved. As long as an interpretation and not a grounding of real world facts dictates what is believed and disbelieved, there is no escape, not even rationality, for valid arguments can be made with unsound premises.

We trade putative liberal bias for actual Republican prejudice. Only, they justify it by sayin that they’re open about it. Which is another vicious circle, which justifies heavily slanted news coverage not in the name of facts, but in the name of the perceived integrity and honesty of the Republican perspective.

In the end, the only way to escape even partially from these vicious circles is to keep it primarily about the facts and their implications. As long as we filter for political implications before factual ones, we’ll always be lead astray. We should be willing to admit the facts, even when it hurts us. Otherwise, we participate in the psychotic break of political power from real world results.

How can we prevent the excesses of our parties if our perspectives on the facts that judge their policies revolve around the furtherance of their political power?

MattLaw:

I am suggesting that the democrats & liberal press operate in unison.

Generalizations: time or space does not permit me to reference the liberal bias of the press & the collusion between the press & the democrats.

I was not suggesting you were on welfare, at least not to my knowledge. It was a joke, kind of like “you can take it to the bankâ€, although nothing is actually taken to the bank. You guys are entirely too serious & uptight.

Perplexed

Chops, it’s not just that the media supressed this story of soldiers confronting Democratic senators while amplifying the Rumsfeld incident.

Don’t forget that in the Rumsfeld incident, it was a soldier who was stationed in Kuwait, had never seen battle, and who was coached and put up to his remarks by the same reporter who wrote up the story.

The rot is even deeper than you’ve said.

ElliotBay -

Chops’ complaint is that the mainstream media didn’t give the story as much emphasis as he wanted it to have. Is that proof of liberal bias? No, it’s only proof that the press didn’t share Chops’ bias.

Huh? I’m not complaining about the slant or lack of coverage. The mainstream media (wire services, etc) have shown a great deal of interest in holding the Bush administration to its word (which is good - that’s the media’s job), but very little interest in holding the Democratic opposition to their words.

Stephen, Elliot, MattLaw -

I find it interesting that the principle argument liberals can bring to this post is the standard unwinnable big-picture argument about whether the media is biased to the right or to the left, or split.

Is there anything any of you can say that explains away the failure of the media in this particular situation? As I’ve said a few times now, I don’t fault the media for being critical observers of the administration, in fact I applaud them. I’m just asking for equal time calling Dems on their failures.

Perplexed,
Aside from re-stating your opinion that the press is biased (and now adding that it’s somehow in cahoots with the Democratic leadership - are you gonna add that the liberal press was on the grassy knoll in Dallas next?), you have not produced one single fact to support your claim.

I hate to confuse you with the facts, but try a few of these on for size:

You wanna convince anyone, show us the facts.

In my opinion, the only ‘liberal’ media left is the Hollywood Entertainment industry, small indie papers and the ‘net, while the ‘mainstream press’ is overwhelmingly owned and operated by conservatives (Murdoch, Rev. Moon, et al). The only reason Hollywood entertainment remains liberal is because that’s what the marketplace consumes. The instant the marketplace no longer consumes the very media that the right so often complains of as too ‘liberal’ the producers will change content to meet demand. Fox is a prime example. They are the logical progression from the polemics of Limbaugh into a video medium - the predictable love-child of Rush and CNN - and all three pure entertainment at this point. Think it’s a coincidence that ‘Desperate Housewives’ is more popular in Texas than it is in Mass.? The classic Big 3 are no longer relevant because they continue to try to please all viewers in an age when individual cable channels can please sizable minorities and split viewership.

Elliotbay - Your points on the Neo-con’s (emphasis on ‘con’) perspectives as they relate to bias are well presented and couldn’t crystalize my own thoughts better. Thank you for that.

The reason for the rapid rise of talk radio & Internet blogs is because people have an alternative news source.

Yes, because now people have a choice of media outlets and choose those that feed them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear ( which IMO is hard fact first, followed by sharing of the various perspectives, and building of consensus). People now have opinion and polemics passing itself off as news and balanced reporting. And now people have an outlet that allows the individual to reach a vast like-minded audience, and to do so practically anonymously. No one right in your face in person if you are too over the top (as it might at say a town hall meeting with your neighbors, where community standards and mutual respect would usually check emotion and level the tone of debate), and so the top just keeps getting lower - on every side of the aisle. This doesn’t make any of the vast avalanche of information actual ‘news’ however. ‘News’ would report facts devoid of spin, and those are few and far between in any media these days.

Chops-
What if it’s not a failure? What if this is a non-story? What if it’s not news that some soldiers don’t appreciate the calls to shut down the Gitmo prison?

In measuring meaning, it’s always useful to measure the surprise value of the news. Much of the news about Rove is surprising, because there is information there that changes the overall picture. Here? What’s the story? People working at a controversial prison say they don’t like their portrayal.

Learning that Rove worked on the statement that George Tenet gave, admitting the falsity of the Sixteen Words is a surprise which changes things. Learning that people working at a base that’s got a bad reputation for human rights don’t like that reputation? That’s elementary logic, and often part and parcel of any statement defending the prison in articles about the controversy. Whatever can be left unsaid should be left unsaid. People don’t need to be fed their opinions by the mass media.

Which is your problem right here. You assume we need active balance, but you forget that active balance is a bias in and of itself. One party, especially one in power, can generate much more news and material than the other, especially when they screw up. What’s more newsworthy, the actions of a president, or the statement of the rival candidate in the other party? They are not of equal value.

Republicans have put themselves in the spotlight by winning a majority and a presidency together. Since they are the leadership responsible for governing this country, they will attract more attention than their counterparts. Since they’ve been screwing up something fierce lately, they’ve been the focus of attention for that reason to. The attention compounds itself.

Also, the GOP has proclaimed itself our nation’s best defenders. What has more news value: a slip of the tongue regarding an non-classified CIA agent, or an intentional leak high in an administration, concerning one who’s role as a CIA operative was covert? Which would you devote more attention and energy to? Some, politically motivated, would claim equivalence, but aside from the spin, there is none. One is more serious, and therefore more newsworthy.

In short, stop reading politics into everything. Be observant of the facts rather than wary of their slant.

Chops
Correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m sure you wil), but weren’t you arguing that failing to give as much coverage to the “Dems in Guantanamo” story as to the “Rumsfeld gets chewed out” story is a double standard, and, by implication, furhter evidence of liberal bias in the press?

You mentioned double standards, so let’s talk about that. Conservatives lambasted Newsweek for using an anonymous source, but you’ve just referenced a Washington Times article that depends on … an anonymous source. Why was it wrong in the one case but right in this case?

As for “explaining” this “failure” - I don’t see the need.

I’d also consider the source when it comes to the Washington Times.

I’m a lot further right in my thinking than center, but I still question the Wash. Times.

Ynot, what does the source have to do with the story here?

Do you think that the Washington Times made up a story about American soldiers raking Democratic senators over the coals? Do you think it’s not a story that should have been told and that the Washington Times should have joined the rest of the media in not mentioning it.

Does any serious person think that if a group of Republican Senators were chasitised in public by a group of American soldiers it wouldn’t be front page news in 99% of the newspapers in this country?

Sanger-
This piece only has news value if you’re looking to stick it to some Democratic Senators. You think with all the folks out there defending what’s being done at Gitmo, making these same points from the editorials, columns and blogs, that sitting on a story like this is some great strategy to supress the opinions of the soldiers?

Y’all don’t need that much attention or that much agreement. Your message is getting out. If it is to dominate or linger, it will do so based on its persuasiveness, which will become moot if there are any major scandals out of that place in the years to come.

Sanger,

yes, I do have doubts about this story’s veracity.

No soldier’s named, the inevitable “Pentagon Officials” and the time honored ‘No comment from so-and-so’s office.

I’m sure that if the Times were there, or even if someone wrote them about it, that at least one name could be given to verify the story.

Don’t you?

I hear a lot of complaining about liberal media bias. But what’s the explanation? Let’s hear the conspiracy theory of how applicants for newspapers are screened for their politics.

If there is a liberal bias, those on the right should be asking themselves why there positions are so consistently at odds with reasonably intelligent, informed, honest, working class citizens.

Run, hide, there may be some truth coming:

Donald Rumsfeld said last year that the images in question are “hard to believe,” and that what they show “can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane.” And here’s what Lindsey Graham, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, said of the pictures after they were screened for members of Congress last year: “The American public needs to understand we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience… We’re talking about rape and murder — and some very serious charges.”