Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

I'm back! At least for a short time. I'll address this last post quickly as my schedule doesn't allow me much leisure time since I'm out of town this entire week.

Don't ever believe the New York Times on anything. They specialize in looking for statistics that make Republicans look bad, always ignoring statistics that make them look good. The Enquirer is a better source than the Times these days with far leftists Pinchy Sulzberger and Bill Keller in charge. Remember when the Times blew the lid off of a terrorist financial tracking program that was wildly successful? Even major Democrats tried to keep the Times from publishing. The main reason Bill Keller said what finally made him decide to do so was because Bush had ticked him off. National security was not even considered. Wow, what great journalism! Not.

What the Times always wants to ignore is that Republican presidents are usually left with an economic mess left over by the Democratic president. The first three years of the Reagan presidency were essentially the price we had to pay to get out from under Carter's misery index where inflation was over 21% and unemployment at 10.7%. The Reagan tax cuts plus the tight money policy by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker essentially saved the economy. Remember the term, stagflation? It was made just for Carter's presidency. If you discounted that part, the latter part of the Reagan presidency blew away anything that happened in the 1990's. Clinton's economy never exceeded 6% growth while Reagan's did in two consecutive years. With a much smaller population and over a smaller period of time (about 5 years), the 1980's created over 20 million jobs while the 1990's generated 22 million jobs. Reagan's 20 million also included the 2 million lost during the deep recession of 1980-83 so he had a deep hole to dig out of in less time. Reagan didn't have the benefit of being handed a nicely growing economy like Bill Clinton did.

Bush was left with the economic mess of the dot com bust. Clinton rode the 1990's by essentially doing nothing. He came close to killing the economy with his tax hike back in 1993 as he was handed an economy growing at 4.6% by the former President Bush. After his tax hike, the economy nearly dipped into recession, growing by a measly 0.7%. The next year had near zero growth. It was pure luck that the dot com boom began early in his watch, saving the economy from recession, the beginning of which strangely coincided with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995. You probably forgot that the first two years of the Clinton administration had nearly zero economic growth, most likely due to this tax hikes. But then the dot coms started up. With that kind of "irrational exuberance" of the dot com boom where stocks routinely went to $200 or more without having any revenue or profits (I know because I even bought two of them, ugh), even Carter would have looked like an economic genius with what Bill Clinton had to work with.

Then when things started to go sour in 2000 when people finally figured out the New Economy was a mirage and that revenue and profits actually mattered, Clinton didn't lift a finger and left it to his successor to dig us out of an economic hole. If Gore had won, he would have had to dig out of the same economic bust that his boss would have left him.

The Times likely didn't factor in Jimmy Carter's incompetence, the dot com boom, and the bust plus the economic factors of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Nothing similar to those happened in the 1990's. Clinton had everything going his way including the peace dividend, hard earned by the Reagan and Bush administrations, and the dot com boom. Daffy Duck would have been a "great" president then. The Times also didn't bother to mention that the gap between the rich and poor widened greatly during the 1990's as it always does in periods of economic prosperity. The growth of high tech in the 1990's further widened the gap. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as everybody's benefitting. I don't blame Clinton for that at all despite his populist talk that he would narrow the gap. He didn't. Only the far left seems to care that somebody else is getting rich too.

Historically the times when the gap narrows is during the time of economic recession and depression where everybody suffers but even then, only rarely as the rich are able to weather recessions better. From those people in the study you cited, it seems the respondents would prefer recession as long as the rich didn't get richer.

I will have to blame Ronald Reagan for one thing. He underestimated the impact of tax changes and the power of tax incentives during the Tax Simplification Act of 1986, essentially negotiated between Democrat Dan Rostenkowski and Republican Bob Packwood and heavily pushed by President Reagan. This was the bill that eliminated most deductions but brought the top tax rate down from 50% to 28%, also bringing down all other rates as well.

The cost of this "revenue neutral" tax simplification was the savings and loan (S&L) crisis of the early Bush presidency. It was tax simplification that created the recession of 1990. S&L's had made bad investments in real estate because of tax incentives, leading to lots of unoccupied commercial real estate being built without any accompanying need. With the tax simplification eliminating tax incentives, the market essentially collapsed, leading to many bankruptcies of the S&L's and the fall of the FSLIC (Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp). That was eventually merged into the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp).

Well, Roger, if you tell me that I am wrong whenever I quote the New York Times because the New York Times is invariably wrong, then I suppose it is going to be hard for me to keep this discussion going.

I wouldn't say that the Enquirer is very reliable. I remember from the 1980s that the Enquirer reported that when the king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, was courting his wife-to-be, Silvia, in the early seventies, he sometimes didn't attend his official duties. So instead of being present at an opening or other he would send a stand-in instead. The stand-in in question was a well-known Swedish TV reporter, Sven Lindahl, who just pretended to be the king... and not a single one of all the loyal royalists who had gathered to catch a glimpse of the king (and who had invariably seen Sven Lindahl on TV, too) ever noticed any difference!


A young king Carl XVI Gustaf.



Yes, they looked similar, but surely not identical. Would you Americans have noticed a difference if a man who resembled George W. Bush, but who clearly wasn't him, had made an official appearance and claimed to be the President?

So if you dismiss me out of hand because you think I quote a source which you describe as per definition unreliable, more so that the National Enquirer, I guess it is not meaningful for me to continue this discussion. Because, after all, if everything I quote from the New York Times is wrong per definition, then you don't ever have to ask yourself if anything that I believe in because I have read it in the New York Times could be right.

Ann

The Times isn't what it used to be. Their standards have slipped. I think because modern communications have really hurt print media.

But still, at least they're better than Fox News. I mean, those guys have had to claim that actual facts are biased in order to support their right wing agenda. In a way, I feel sorry for them. It's gotta be tough trying to be fair and balanced when reality itself is biased against you.

I haven't posted in this thread for a number of reasons, but I've found it interesting to read (or at least skim) many of the posts, so thanks to everyone who participated so far for the interesting discussion

Now that I do post, however, I have to do it completely off-topic.

Paul, you just killed me with the quote above. It's positively Daily Show-esque, I'd say (and on a good day, too). Great line

Eva

Roger, I don't expect you to agree with the New York Times. Why should you? You are a conservative and they are liberal. Why on earth would you agree with them?

But - I expect you to tell me why and how you think the New York Times is wrong. I expect you to dissect their arguments and explain to me why you think that those arguments don't hold up under close scrutiny.

But of course they do that. Specialize in looking for statistics that make Republicans look bad, and ignoring statistics that make Republicans look good, I mean. I expect the New York Times to do that. They are liberal, after all, so I expect them to show me the statistics that support their view. I don't expect them to eagerly serve up the statistics that support the Republicans.

Are you telling me that Republicans don't do the same thing, Roger? Do you seriously think that conservative media always give "equal time" to liberals? Don't conservative media ever present the kind of statistics that make them look right, while at the same time ignoring statistics that support the liberals?

If you think that conservative media never do that, think again. And if you think that you never do that, think again. You and I have had a discussion about median income in America. You have said that median income is up in terms of dollars, and I have said that median income is down in terms of purchasing power. I don't doubt that you are right when you say that the median American family earns more dollars now than during the Clinton years, but I also believe that this same family can't buy as much for their income now as they could during the Clinton years. This is an example of when conservatives and liberals present a bit of statistics - in this case, statistics about median income - and paint radically different pictures of reality with the help of it. Yet both pictures are right. However, I will insist that in this case, the liberals are "more right" than the conservatives, because what really matters about median income is not how many dollars you get but how much you can buy for them.

I expect liberals to show me the statistics that support their point of view. I also expect conservatives to show me the statistics that support their point of view. And then, when both sides have presented their evidence to me, I want to try to decide which side has got the strongest case.

Let me return to something else you said:

It seems to me that you make two points here: one, that the economic boom that happened during the Clinton years happened because of the IT boom and was not Clinton's doing at all; and two, that the bust that followed was all Clinton's fault. So the boom was not his doing, but the bust was all his fault. I don't know, but this line of reasoning just seems unfair to me.

I agree, however, that the general economic boom in the mid and late nineties had a lot to do with the enormous IT boom. It is easy to forget, now, how totally revolutionary the new IT technology seemed to be. I remember that it seemed like we were entering a new era altogether. That is certainly how the new technology was described in most Swedish media. I knew a lot of guys who suddenly got very well-paid IT jobs during the nineties. Computers seemed like a cornucopia of job generators: more and more and more IT people were wanted everywhere.

I agree that Clinton had nothing to do with this fantastic boom. Was it his fault that the bubble eventually burst, then? I think there are really mitigating circumstances here. Because the IT technology seemed so revolutionary and so completely new, it was easy to think that old economic rules did not necessarily apply to it. Compare it with the present bubble, the housing bubble and the banking crisis. What is new or revolutionary about housing and banking? Why would anyone truly believe that house loans could suddenly generate enormous wealth? It seems obvious to me that there was no reason to believe that people's homes would suddenly turn start laying golden eggs. Bush had no good reason to believe that houses could generate unlimited growth all by themselves. Clinton had a so much better reason to believe that the new, amazing IT technology could just keep generating more and more and more jobs.

As to whether the Clinton tax hikes really hurt the American economy, I guess that the only way we could really know that is if we could turn back time and "play history" all over again, this time making it unfold without the Clinton tax hikes. Would the American economy have been stronger during the Clinton years if he had not raised taxes for the rich? Only such an actual experiment could really tell us.

I agree. Yes, the American economy was on its way down when Clinton left office. I clearly remember that. Gore would have had to try to deal with the economic problems, one way or another.

I also firmly believe that American history would have unfolded very differently if Gore had become President. For one thing, I'm absolutely convinced that Gore would never have attacked Iraq. The reason why I'm so sure of that is that I remember so clearly how flabbergasted everyone was when Bush announced that he planned to attack Iraq. My own right-wing local newspaper had, up till then, never breathed a syllable about Saddam being any sort of global threat. But once it was clear that Bush was definitely going to attack, my newspaper started rooting for Bush to remove this horrible international menace. My point is that the attack on Iraq was all Bush's own idea (and probably the idea of a few of his cronies, like Cheney), and if Gore had been President, he just wouldn't have thought of attacking Iraq in the first place. So the war wouldn't have happened, and the huge cost of fighting the war wouldn't have happened either.

Gore probably wouldn't have lowered taxes for the rich. If anything, he might have raised some "green" taxes. What overall and long-term effects this would have had on the American economy is something we can only speculate about. One thing is clear, however. The last time Swedish media were so full of economic worries as it is today was in the late eighties, after there had been a 16% Dow Jones plunge (or something like that), and the right-wing government in Sweden had given us Swedes our own housing and banking bubble. Do you still think that the present economic woes in America are all Clinton's (and Carter's) doing, Roger?

Ann

Actually, Eva... credit where it's due. I think Jon did say something along those lines a couple of years back.

Glad you appreciated it (and the thread in general), anyway.

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He's got my vote!!

Teej, you should post those in the motivational poster thread too (if you haven't already).

I already did what you asked. I mentioned all the things they didn't bother to mention. Their premise is that supply side is bad, Clinton is good, but don't bother to explain all the circumstances surrounding their statistics. Given a good economy to start with, imagine what Reagan and Bush could have done. Now give Clinton a bad economy to start with and see what those tax hikes would have done to a faltering economy. Instead of zero growth, we'd have probably gone into recession. We'll never know for sure, but the Times did not present a level playing field. By mentioning the economic circumstances at the time, they would weaken their argument.

You've also acknowledged a bias in their reporting. So why bother using evidence presented by people you've even admitted are liberal and have an agenda against conservatives? Seems like a no-brainer.

At least Fox News has a ton of liberals on staff. I can't name more than one conservative on any of the "main stream" TV media like CNN or MSNBC. I even gave an example of how conservative Carl Cameron nearly sunk Bush's chances of election by reporting on the DUI arrest three days before the 2000 election. Roger Ailes, once Rush Limbaugh's boss, even crowed about that scoop that nearly put Al Gore in the White House. A network, biased only toward conservatives, would have sat on the story or published it after the election. I'm still waiting for any of the major news networks to report on the finding of 500 WMD warheads in Iraq. Somehow I doubt I'll ever see it. The motto of the rest of the media is "We won't report so you can't decide."

Fox doesn't pretend to be unbiased. They claim to have both viewpoints. The major media don't even admit there are viewpoints. They admit they have a lot of conservatives like Sean Hannity or Brit Hume. They also have a number of prominent liberals like Alan Colmes, Greta van Susteran, Neil Cavuto, or Susan Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's ill-fated 1988 campaign. Nobody can figure out exactly what Bill O'Reilly is. They report both sides of the story including the liberal viewpoint, not just one like the other networks. Because liberals are only used to seeing their viewpoint on the major news networks, they suddenly see a conservative viewpoint and believe that Fox is exclusively a right wing bastion.

Back to tax cuts, the supply side tax cuts were intended to fix bad economies. Clinton nearly killed a growing economy with his first two years of near zero growth following a healthy 4.6% growing economy before the tax hikes. The retroactivity of his tax hikes even made things worse since it didn't allow people to react to the tax hike. Furthermore, Clinton had campaigned on a middle class tax cut, but immediately broke that promise by raising taxes on everyone, including the poor, the most egregious being the increasing of Social Security income subject to taxation. Before the tax hike, only 50% of Social Security income was subject to income taxes. After, it was 85%. I'm sure you were all for that, right?

I don't blame Clinton at all for the dot com bust. I don't blame Bush for the sub-prime lending mess now. Neither situation was in their control. What I do blame Clinton for is doing nothing afterwards. Once the dot com bubble bust, Clinton essentially kept saying everything was good but didn't lift a finger as he watched trillions of dollars of wealth vanish.

Bush, on the other hand, even if I don't agree with his methods, proposed the tax rebates which won't work. Given a Democratic Congress, that's probably all he could get. It's a band-aid on a potentially gaping wound. But at least he's trying. Clinton didn't bother, preferring to leave the mess to his successor. Remember, I'm the one who gave Bush a D for his handling of the economy late in his administration with an A for early in the administration. Clinton got an F for early in his administration for nearly killing the economy, a B in the middle when he signed the capital gains tax cut the Republicans passed, and an F for late when he didn't bother to do anything when the dot coms went bust.

BTW, after Clinton signed that capital gains tax cut, the Treasury got a windfall of capital gains revenue after forecasting a fall in revenue because of the lower rate.

And since I suppose that you usually watch Fox News, since they will give you both viewpoints, I also have to assume that you are well acquainted with the liberal charge that median income in the United States is down in terms of purchasing power. Then you have presumably also heard how the conservatives refute the claim that the median American has become poorer. So, Roger, what does Fox News say about that?

If these 500 WMD warheads were a major find, if they were more than what you could expect to find in, oh, Pakistan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, then it is in the interest of conservatives to insist on the importance of this find. If they don't keep insisting that George W. Bush was right about the presence of WMDs in Iraq, how can you expect less conservative media to try to drive home this point? Roger, I have a suggestion. There are, if nothing else, several talk radio hosts who are very popular, and who have millions of listeners. Swedish radio recently broadcast a sample of such a talk radio show, where a man was trying to explain his liberal views and the hostess responded by laughing derisively while the man was talking. I'd say that that talk radio hostess was making her conservative viewpoint clear very forcefully, but in a completely unintellectual way. Instead of listening to the liberal person, she was, metaphorically, spitting in his face.

I think this woman should be very glad to promote the view that 500 WMD warheads were found in Iraq. And if she doesn't want to say it, there are other talk radio hosts around. What about Rush Limbaugh, for example?

If none of these conservatives want to insist that Bush was right about the presence of WMDs in Iraq, then I am certainly not going to believe that whatever was found in Iraq was any sort of major find. Indeed, I'm not going to believe that these supposed WMD warheads were any kind of WMDs at all, most certainly not the kinds that Bush made the world believe in when he justified the Iraq war. Of course it goes without saying that Saddam had extremely dangerous poison gas in the past, since such gas was demonstrably used against Iraqi Kurds in 1988. Saddam had the capability to commit genocide with gas in the 1980s, which he proved to us beyond all doubt. We don't even have to discuss that. The question is, did he have the capability to commit genocide with gas in 2002, or in 2003? As long as Fox News and others won't demonstrate to us that he did, why should I believe it, seeing that all other media deny it? Seriously, Roger. This is exactly the kind of point that it is up to the conservatives to prove. They do not lack the platform they need to broadcast their proof, assuming they have it in the first place. If for some reason they choose not to press their point, don't ask me to believe it!

I know that you have replied to this before. You said that the conservatives didn't want to call too much attention to Iraq in the first place, since the war is unpopular among many Americans. Well, tough luck. Only a few days ago it was five years since the war started. Swedish media were full of the claim that no WMDs had been found in Iraq and that the war had therefore essentially been for nothing. It must be in the interest of the conservatives to use their big influential media like Fox News to insist that WMDs were indeed found and that the war was justified. If Fox and others won't make such a claim, and make it loudly and clearly, don't blame the liberal media, which are against the war, for not making this claim on their own.

Ann

I found this article in Today's New York Times. It is by Paul Krugman, and in it he compares what the three presidential candidates, McCain, Clinton and Obama, have said about domestic issues. According to what Krugman says, McCain wants to save the economy by lowering taxes for the rich and leave struggling homeowners to fend for themselves, whether or not they are able to do so:

According to Krugman, Clinton instead stresses the need to aid individual homeowners in trouble:

Obama strikes Krugman as a lot more cautious than Clinton, and a lot more unwilling to commit himself to the idea of helping individuals in dire financial straits:

This is how Krugman sums up the three candidates, how they are portrayed in the media versus what they stand for in reality:

You may or may not agree with Paul Krugman's assessment, and you may or may not take offence at his choice of words (McCain "panders shamelessly to right-wing ideologues", for example).

But I thought this comparison between the three candidates was interesting, all the same.

Ann

Ann, believe the WMD's or not but the report comes straight out of the Iraq Survey Group's report regardless of whether Fox News or CNN reports it or not. Or do you not believe the ISG report? That is the original source of the report on 500 WMD's found. Fact is fact, regardless of the reporting. My original point anyway is that the news media cannot be relied upon for any facts. The New York Times definitely cannot be relied upon for facts or truth. You even admit that yourself.

I also emphasize the ISG report said that Saddam was poised to resume full production just as soon as they could get bribed France and Russia to kill the UN sanctions, which according to that UK Telegraph article I mentioned earlier said was nearly about to happen. There was a reason for that oil-for-food program scandal that reached all the way up to Kofi Annan's son. The UN was about to capitulate. So even if there were only 500 found now, many more were on the way. Even Democrats will admit that, though they won't advertise it.

BTW, many conservative talk show hosts (I mean real conservatives, not the left of Democrats conservatives in Sweden) in America were touting the report of WMD's, especially Rush Limbaugh. If you didn't hear it when it was news about 18 months ago, then there's not much I can do about it.

Even if some people believe it was a waste, there have been many benefits of the American invasion. Lebanon and the Palestinians saw the example of democracy and took it themselves. Freedom was starting its sweep through the Middle East and even in the Russian republics that remained in bondage. Remember the Orange, Rose, and Cedar Revolutions? Even Walid Jumblat of the Druze in Lebanon directly attributed the American invasion as the reason for the Cedar Revolution. Jumblat is no friend of America.

It was only when Democrats kept insisting we had lost the war and the mainstream media started to parrot that line that the democratic movements stopped in their tracks. Even now while we're winning, having swept al Qaeda out of Anbar and other provinces and Sunni groups turning against al Qaeda and allying with America, Democrats still say we're losing and want to get out now, throwing away all the lives that have already been lost. I find it odd that people continue to object to a war where the main opponent is al Qaeda, regardless of the venue. Would they rather al Qaeda come to our shores to fight them or would they rather have us kill them by the thousands there? The left's logic completely escapes me here. We've got the perfect killing fields to kill al Qaeda and people would rather we leave? Huh? What better position can we be in to destroy al Qaeda as they desperately are trying to prevent the spread of democracy, knowing it is their death knell if it takes hold. If Iraq is really a diversion from the War on Terror as so many on the left insist, then why is al Qaeda fighting so hard and committing so many resources to stopping us? If it were a diversion, they'd leave Iraq to us and move ahead with plans to attack America and her allies instead. So why is it al Qaeda understands what our own left does not?

When we do finally destroy al Qaeda (isn't that the whole point of this war anyway? Does anybody actually object to our destroying al Qaeda even if it happens to be in Iraq?), the advance of democracy will resume and the threat of terrorism will subside greatly. That was the whole point of the War on Terror. Destroy the supporters of terrorism and foster an environment where the breeding grounds of terrorism dry up. Rather, the left would rather play defense, leaving al Qaeda to continue recruiting and plotting without hindrance and letting them strike before we do anything in return. Now that kind of mindset will only get us all killed.

BTW, I have not watched Fox News in about eight months, nor any other televised news so I haven't got a clue what they're saying now. I basically watch maybe two or three TV shows a week and that's it. I don't really have the time for it.

Paul Krugman is a die-hard liberal. I would be surprised if he said otherwise about a Republican. Keep in mind I am not a big McCain fan either, but he's a lot better than Obama or Clinton. Nobody else stands a snowball's chance of winning but those three.

All right, Roger. I stand corrected.

I agree with you that the media can't always be relied on. Not infrequently, they simply get their facts wrong. Sometimes they just don't bother to check their sources, sometimes they are just sloppy so that they accidentally misquote their sources, and sometimes, they get their facts wrong because they only search for the facts that would support their own point of view. It is even possible that they occasionally misquote their sources deliberately because they cheat deliberately.

But are you telling me that whatever the media writes is wrong? Are you telling me, in particular, that whatever the liberal media writes is wrong? Are you really saying that? That is an extremely serious charge, Roger. What would you say if I claimed that conservative media lie about whatever they report?

This is a very, very serious charge, Roger. You say that I admit that the New York times can't be relied on. And yet you see that I quote the NYT relatively frequently. Are you saying that I know or strongly suspect that the facts that I quote from the NYT are wrong?

For your information, Roger. I don't quote anything that doesn't strike me as reliable.

As for those 500 WMDs that the Iraq Survey Group found in Iraq. I have already pointed out that Iraq most certainly did have WMDs in the eighties, since Saddam used such weapons to commit genocide on Iraqi Kurds. But a few years after that Bush Sr. attacked Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait. I believe that Bush Sr. also imposed sanctions on Iraq and sent inspectors to Iraq to make sure that old WMDs were destroyed and that no new ones were built. I certainly know that Bill Clinton upheld those sanctions and sent more inspectors there. Because of that, the question is not so much if parts of WMDs were found in Iraq, but whether or not they were functional, or could easily be made fully functional. Could Saddam use those 500 WMDs to attack someone?

Tell me this, Roger. I subscribe to a daily newspaper which I would describe as rather right-wing. You might very well describe it as bleeding-heart leftist. Well, take it from me: I read that paper every day, and believe me, my newspaper defended the Iraq war as long as it possibly could. First it told us that Iraq really was a terrible threat to the world because of its WMDs. Then it rather stopped talking about the WMDs, as if it didn't believe in them anymore, and instead it talked about how important it was to bring democracy and liberty to Iraq and the Middle East. Nowadays my newspaper sounds a bit embarrassed when it talks about the Iraq war. Its message these days is that the war was justified, because it was right to try to bring democracy and liberty to the Middle East, but unfortunately Bush botched the war because he conducted it so badly.

To summarize, however, my newspaper has been a rather staunch defender of the Iraq war. And yet it has never claimed that any WMDs were found in Iraq. Why hasn't it, Roger? It must be in the interest of my newspaper to prove itself right. If functional WMDs had indeed been found in Iraq, the war would have been pretty much justified right there and then. If functional WMDs had been found in Iraq, why would my newspaper keep that information from me? As a newspaper, it has pledged itself to bring me important news about the world. And as a newspaper which supported the Iraq war, it should be very interested in proving to its readers that it made the right assessment about Iraq from the start.

This is why I don't believe that those 500 WMDs in Iraq were functional when they were found, Roger. Because if they had been, my newspaper would have jumped at the chance to tell me so.

This is one method I use to try to assess the trustworthiness of news. In whose interest is it that this news becomes well known? If I come across something that seems well-researched, and which gives me sources and statistics to prove its point, but which presents facts that are completely new to me, I start by asking myself if it is reasonable that this could be true and yet widely unknown. If the facts that are presented are embarrassing to powerful interests, to governments, to important players on the world market, to wealthy institutions and established ideologies, then I might suspect that those mighty players may have helped suppress these facts, because it is not in their interest that the facts become known. Of course, I have no right to suppose that anything that would be embarrassing to those who are in power must be true just because of that. But if the facts are true and if they are embarrassing to those who are in power, then it makes sense that those powerful people would at least not use their own TV channels and radio stations and newspapers and magazines to spread and broadcast these embarrassing facts. And that goes a long way to explain why these facts are mostly unknown.

Let me give you an example. A few years ago a left-wing newspaper in Sweden claimed that poverty has increased in India in recent years, even though Indian authorities claim that poverty is down. The Swedish article said that this is because Indian authorites have changed its definition of poverty. Previously, a poor person was defined as someone who couldn't buy enough food to get himself or herself a certain amount of calories every day. Poverty was defined as the inability to give oneself a sufficient daily amount of calories to stay healthy. However, in recent years, Indian authorities changed its definition of poverty so that it now means making less than a fixed amount of money, of rupees, every day. But, according to the article, the new definition of poverty does not take purchasing power into account at all. Indeed, according to the article, food has generally become more expensive in India, and hundreds of millions of people who are defined as "not poor" because of the number of rupees they make, can't afford to buy a reasonable amount of food for their money. By the old definition, they were poor. By the new definition, they are not. So we have a situation where, according to the article, the Indian authorities define more people as "not poor", while in reality a growing number of people aren't able to feed themselves.

Poverty in India, as it was defined before. What the definition of poverty in India means today. (Yes, I agree that the pictures are exaggerated.)

In whose interest would it be that these facts become known? Clearly, it would be in the interest of the poor people of India. Well, what platforms do the poor people of India own from which they can make their needs and concerns widely known? Do they onw TV channels? Radio stations? Big newspapers and magazines? I severely doubt it. Those who do own big important media, do they want to make it known that poverty is growing worse in India (assuming that it is, of course)?

No. They don't. There is a large and growing and increasingly affluent middle class in India. They must be happy about the economic situation and development in India. Why would they want to call attention to increasing poverty among the lower classes in India? So if it is indeed true that poverty is increasing in India, then there is a good reason for why this fact is not widely known at all. It is not in the interest of those who control the media to call attention to it.

But just as it is not in the interest of those who control the media in India to call attention to the growing poverty there, so it is indeed in the interest of all those who supported the Iraq war to insist that functioning WMDs were found in Iraq, if indeed they were. Therefore, if my own pro-war newspaper won't tell me that there were functioning WMDs found in Iraq, I am most definitely going to assume that there weren't any.

Roger, you said this:

Well, I frankly don't believe that France and Russia would have killed the sanctions against Iraq, most certainly not after Bush and Blair started claiming that Iraq could launch nuclear missiles at European capitals within fifteen minutes.

I didn't hear it because my pro-war newspaper didn't tell me about it. And if my newspaper didn't repeat what Rush Limbaugh said, I guess that must be because they didn't find his claims at all convincing. I certainly don't mean to imply that my local newspaper would have disbelieved the Iraq Survey Group, only that my newspaper didn't find the ISG's finds significant.

Lebanon is a special case, because there are large groups of Christians there who aren't even oppressed. To the Christian Lebanese, the Iraq war was an inspiration. All in all though, things have certainly been much worse in Lebanon than they are now, but they have also been better. And Palestine? People in Gaza voted for Hamas. Is that a shining example of the blessings of the Iraq war?

Wow. Imagine that democratic movements in other countries have so little faith in themselves that they will just lie down and die the moment they can read in the New York Times that the United States is losing in Iraq.

Is it possible that other things about the United States may have influenced democratic movements in other countries negatively and made the United States look less like an inspiration? Could Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo have something to do with it, or the killing of civilians in Iraq? What about Bush's veto against prohibiting torture against prisoners of war? Oh, sorry, I remember - they aren't prisoners of war, are they, they are just illegal combatants?

(Right now they said on my radio that another American soldier who had been charged with the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005 had been acquitted by an American court. The message to the world seems to be that if Americans kill people of other nationalities, they will not be punished for it.)

The way that you use the expression "the killing fields" makes me think of a raging American military sweeping the countryside of another country, killing every living thing they come across.



You say that America needs to do this because America needs to defeat Al Qaeda. But the problem is that Al Qaeda isn't cut off from the rest of the world. It isn't separate from the rest of the world. Yes, Al Qaeda is really pretty much separate from the rest of Iraq, because this terror organisation has no roots there: they were never in Iraq before the United States lured them there by attacking that country. But Al Qaeda has roots in other countries. It has roots in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco, among other countries. What makes you think that the families and brothers of those Al Qaeda terrorists that you kill in Iraq will not take up the fight themselves and take it elsewhere?

The situation in Iraq is not good at all. What we have seen is not so much the growth of a democratic society as a society fracturing under the the stress of ethnic cleansing. Sunnis, Shias and Kurds are increasingly unable to live together. Also, while Iraq used to be a relatively secular society, it is now a society where Islam and Islamism plays an ever more important role.

The situation has become particularly precarious for women. Recently a Swedish reporter returned from Iraq and reported on Swedish television that more and more Iraqi parents keep their daughters home from school, more and more Iraqi women are bullied into leaving their jobs, and more and more women are murdered for breaking Sharia rules. Recently New York Times reported that two female principals of important Iraqi schools had been murdered. Yes, I read it in the New York Times. Is it untrue because I read it in the New York Times? No, Roger. It is still true, even though it was the New York Times that reported it.

It's not as if all the world is peaceful except Iraq. There is a lot of bad stuff going on in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example.

You are telling me that as long as America does not give up in Iraq, its war on terror is going to be very successful. What can I reply to that, Roger? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I remind you that many years ago when I debated with a Communist, he insisted that Communism would succeed wonderfully in the future. All I can say about that is that when somebody's chief argument is that the future will prove him gloriously right, he makes it impossible for his opponent to have a rational discussion with him.

Ann

Just a thought, but...

When you get to the point in an argument that you're both quoting sources that the other side is expressly not prepared to trust, maybe you've gotten as far as you're going to get? Maybe it's best to call it a day before things get too personal? Agree to disagree, and move on?

Ann, I'm sure Roger did not intend to imply that you were lying or deliberately quoting untrustworthy sources.

Roger, a blanket dismissal of anything that comes from as old and prestigious a source as the NYT is a little extreme, don't you think? They've had more than their share of recent troubles, and their viewpoint doesn't agree with yours, but that's no reason for the level of contempt you've been showing for the entire institution and anything that comes out of it.

And I apologize for my similar dismissal of Fox News. My primary exposure to it has been either people I agree with mocking and dismissing it or people I disagree with using it to uphold their views. I don't watch it myself, for various reasons, so I've let my judgment be colored by such secondary opinions.

And this thing with the WMDs? Here's the deal, as far as I know: There was a cache of weapons (and scattered weapons components) left over from the first Gulf War (when it looked like we might invade, but... maybe I shouldn't get into that). No evidence that there was any intention to use them, or even that they'd been touched in over a decade. (Including when we actually did invade.) Fox News made a big deal of it, no one else seemed to care.

You can argue that some people should have made a bigger deal of it (while making too big a deal of other things), you can argue that others made too big a deal of it (and maybe not enough of a deal of other things). But whichever side you want to argue for, the other side has already made up their minds about it. So, again... Maybe it's time to agree to disagree?

Is there anything productive to add, or have we said enough for now?

Paul, thanks for calling a brief timeout. I agree that I spoke harshly, maybe too harshly, in my last post.

I wholeheartedly agree. Roger, I don't think that you have ever spoken to me less than respectfully. I don't for a moment think that you meant to imply that I was deliberately lying. I think, rather, that you were telling me that I should know better than to quote the New York Times, because the NYT is always lying. I don't consider that an insult of me, but I do consider it a more or less blanket dismissal of everyone else who thinks that the NYT is a good source of information. That in itself is very troubling to me.

Personally I have changed both my political and my religious views radically during my lifetime, and I know what a dizzying mental landslide that is. But having changed my own views like this has told me that there is more than one way of looking at things. Admittedly, it is very easy, when you have changed your views, to contemptuously dismiss everything else you have believed in before. I have definitely been guilty of of this kind of personal rigidity and condemnation of others myself. If some of you think that I am radical now, you should have heard me twenty years ago.

One thing that I think that I have learnt is that even though I firmly believe that I am right about the things that I believe in, others may be right about other things. I am not willing to back down from the positions I hold. Those of you who have watched me bitterly attack "death-of-Lois" fics must know what I mean. I do believe in the things I believe in. I know why I think the way I do, and I know what my reasons are. I believe in my own beliefs. I believe in them so strongly that I am depressed every time a death-of-Lois fic or video is even posted on these boards. But much as it pains me, I have to admit that those FoLCs who post them and who read them and watch them - most of them females, too, which pains me even more - these FoLCs have their own reasons for liking to see Lois dead, at least in some fics and some videos. Their reasons for liking those fics and videos are different from my reasons for hating them. My reasons are still right. But the other FoLCs' reasons are right, too, at least for them.

This is my point. We all have our own reasons. We all have our own points. I believe strongly in my reasons and my points, and I would dearly love to convert others so that they believe in the things I believe in, too. But I have to admit, nevertheless, that others have seen things about life and the world that I haven't seen myself. My reasons are right, and I have the right to believe that my reasons are the best. I have the right to believe in what I believe. But I shouldn't allow myself to think that people who disagree with me are wrong by definition. I shouldn't allow myself to believe that they don't have a point. Because they do. Everyone does, except the stark raving lunatics. And I'm not so sure about them.

So, Roger, if you want to take to heart just one of the things I said during our discussion, then please believe in this. Don't tell yourself that liberals are wrong about everything that they believe in. Because frankly, they are not.

Ann

Ann, you're right that I don't intend any disrespect on your part. You're right that I fully distrust anything the New York Times says. Even their own ombudsman says they are far too left wing and have too much of a leftist agenda. It's his job to try to steer the Times to a non-partisan mode. He's failed miserably at it. The Gray Lady has lost her luster and I think it requires the removal of Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger (granted, it's hard to get rid of the owner) to restore that luster.

The Times is the worst of the bunch with MSNBC being a close second and CBS third in the list of most untrustworthy sources. I usually respect what other sources say, such as ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, or the Chicago Sun-Times for example, though I know they are heavily biased and still look at what they say with a jaundiced eye, but the Times has proven to me that they cannot be trusted when they so cavalierly disrespect national secrets and inject politics into even their most non-political reporting. When the front page is tough to discern from their opinion section, then it's time to move on. You'll find most conservatives do not have a shred of respect for the NYT.

Conscious or not, most of the members of the mainstream media are solidly liberal. It's hard to divorce your own opinions from your news reporting and it's nearly impossible not to make the journalistic mistake of including all the evidence supporting your opinions or leaving out all the ones that don't. I would not say these reporters are deliberately lying. I would accuse them of having their political opinions heavily coloring their reporting, though.

The National Journal, a non-partisan organization, did a survey of people in the media. The discovery they had was rather shocking. A full 93% supported Democratic candidates while only 7% supported Republican candidates over the last several elections while the general public has been close to 50-50. While only a third were registered Democrats and fewer than 3% were registered Republicans, the vast majority were registered as Independents, I'm guessing because reporters are supposed to be "objective" and therefore should not have a partisan voter registration. Hey, Sean Hannity was a registered Independent and we all know where he stands. When more than 9 out of 10 people you hear or read about have opinions on the left, it's hard not to expect bias.

I've been watching the media for decades now, always listening to the slant on the news that is presented and more often than not wanting to throw something at the television wondering why they never tell both sides of the story. My own research goes through a number of liberal sources including the far, far left in the Democratic Underground (now that's fun to read!) so I usually know what both sides are saying. Simple observation over the years is what leads to the cynicism of so many on the right that the media is not to be trusted.

I do have to say it's entertaining sometimes to watch reporters such as Aaron Brown or Judy Woodruff. Every time they announce that a Republican has won an election, you can see the annoyance in their expressions. That's one of the reasons I used to watch CNN on election day. Too bad Judy Woodruff retired. She was very entertaining.

The issue of WMD's is a perfect example of media bias. The presence of WMD's would naturally make people on the right want to express them forcefully while those on the left are quick to dismiss the discovery as "not news" since they aren't considered large stockpiles. Why your Swedish source didn't report it, I don't know. I'm guessing because they didn't bother to read the ISG report. Most reporters are too lazy to actually check sources and just go with the popular reporting, whether it's because of the 24/7 news cycle or something else.

The American news media focused entirely on the first part of the ISG report saying that Saddam had no active WMD programs as justification that the war was a mistake. That becomes the template for all reporting. Anything disagreeing with that template has to go through a higher threshold before it can be used. Hence the complete disregard of the second part of the ISG report that clearly stated Saddam had used diverted proceeds from the oil-for-food program to covertly continue low-level research on his WMD programs and secretly stockpiling the base components for chemical weapons while waiting for the day when the sanctions would be removed whereupon he would resume full production. The media ignored it because it didn't fit their template of "No WMD, war mistake."

Paul, I don't believe things have become heated or disrespectful. Ann has never shown anything other than respect and she expresses her opinions well. Just because I disrespect the New York Times and openly mock them is no reflection on my opinion towards Ann. I hope nothing I've said reflects anything but my high regard towards her. I don't bother to debate people otherwise.

On my use of sources, I rarely use sources the left feel are untrustworthy such as Fox News unless they are the only major source of reporting. In all the cases I've used them, I've only put them up as an example of how something is reported by Fox News but not by other major news sources or how even a "right-wing" source will do things counter-productive to a right-wing agenda, such as Carl Cameron's near upset of the 2000 elections. I'm not about to use sources such as the Washington Times or Newsmax.com or the Free Republic because I know the left will dismiss those sources out of hand. I try to steer towards more objective sources like the National Journal or the Annenburg Institute. The New York Times, CBS, and MSNBC fall in the same category for people on the right as completely untrustworthy sources. Dan Rather, anyone? Anyone trust a thing he has to say these days?

Things in general have not become heated or disrespectful, but they were starting to head that way. Ann's comments in the post above mine indicated to me that she was starting to take things (in particular, your comments about the NYT, which is clearly an important source to her) personally.

I still think you've been a little extreme in your dismissal of them, but I'm not in the mood to fight over it. (Or, really, to keep fighting over anything in this thread.)

But that's me. If the two of you are enjoying the discussion, and if things are on a civil track, then do continue.

Ann wanted to know why I'm asserting she admits the New York Times is biased against Republicans. This is the direct quote from her. So when a source is admitted to be biased, I'm not sure why I should accept what the source says.

Right wing sources also try to bias things in their direction. That's why I go out of my way to avoid using them as sources. I know which sources the left feel are untrustworthy so I don't bother to quote them with the exceptions I outlined above: when I'm using them as an example of media bias. I've not asserted Fox News as a source of fact since I know no one on the left will believe them, only that they will report what leftist sources will not. On the issue of the 500 WMD, my example was not to use Fox News to say that people should take their word for it. My use of Fox News was that they reported that portion of the ISG report while the mainstream media would not. It is a significant difference.

The very first thing I do when I hear something interesting on a right wing source is to immediately search left wing sources for their take on things. More often than not, I won't even find a mention. When the left makes up over 90% of the media, it's very difficult for the right to get their viewpoint across without being drowned out by the liberal media. It's no mystery to me why WMD or the second half of the ISG report has not been successfully advertised and why the Bush Administration basically didn't bother. They knew it would be futile since the mainstream press had already made up their minds. The Administration basically admitted defeat by saying they'd already fought that battle and lost. Two outraged Republicans in Congress tried to get the news out but were effectively muzzled by the media by being given the cold shoulder.

It seems each time Fox News is mentioned here, it gets ridiculed for being wholly unreliable and biased towards conservatives and therefore to be discounted entirely. Granted you regretted it later, Paul, but even you ridiculed Fox News for having a right wing agenda with "reality biased against them." And I know Ann doesn't believe they are "fair and balanced." I don't take any offense at that but merely note it to not use a source like that when debating liberals. Why bother using a source that is immediately discounted?

Yet a double standard exists that says the New York Times must be accepted as a valid source when most conservatives consider the Times as no better than a rag lining the bottom of a bird cage. Many conservatives even consider them to be traitorous. I've heard jokes about why bin Laden has the cheapest intelligence service in the world. All he has to do is go out and spend a dollar on a copy of the New York Times every day to read about all the detailed steps and secret programs the Bush Administration is using against him. I'm sure you've heard those jokes.

And no, I don't use the National Enquirer as a source. It's a joke to make a point. I'm not sure if I've even ever read it outside the occasional glance at the front page headline while in line at the supermarket.