Trent

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why are we giving people checks to cash? why not pay the bills for them? instead of giving them the check have them bring in a bill and the gov pays their bills up to x amount amonth.

Because making it harder to abuse a system is either racist, elitist, or disenfranchising. There is a magic number out there that is the percentage of people who are misusing a system that determines when something should be done about it. Welfare hasn't reached that yet. Oh you'll never know the number... "they" will just tell you when it is a problem and as long as they get votes from not doing something about it... it'll never be a problem.

Nevermind. The media is totally fair and balanced, except for Fox. Have a good Halloween!

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How much of the "welfare" section would be buying plasma TVs for worthless lazy people who refuse to work?

You didn't see that drill-down section in there? It's right next to the section that goes to not buying plasma screens for worthless lazy people who refuse to work.

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Just as legit concerns over McCain and G. Gordon Liddy and McCain and Iran Contra are written off by McCain supporters.

By all means, that stuff should be looked into and given attention as well!

How much of the "trash" is handled by the major media? How much of that "trash" is put out by the McCain campaign? How much of that "trash" is true or partly true? 14 of the 45 trashes have some element of truth to them, according to the totally impartial snopes.

Oh, and some of the "trash" was stuff that could have been seen as a positive for Obama... you know, little stuff like he has a healing touch. Lol.

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I agree, and that's unfortunate. Like the "carved a B into her face" hoax, such extremists marginalize the people with a legitimate issue they want to discuss.

Yep.

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?? If someone accuses McCain of being an illegal alien since he was not born in the US, does that mean that the media has a responsibility to provide coverage on the issue? (And, since you feel that balance is important, surely they would have to give 50% of that time to an expert who can prove he is an illegal alien.)

That one seems to be stretching, I agree. But there are legitimate issues, associations, donations, etc that seem to get blown off as "just smears" when they are things that really would keep you out of a government job any other time.

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The news media filters and rejects the more absurd claims as a matter of course. Sometimes they do it explicitly and publicly (as with the FOX reporter discussing Obama's desire to destroy Israel) but more often manifests itself as a simple "that's bullshit, we're not covering that."

Of course, the BS filter is thicker for one side than the other seemingly. Especially in the case of the wardrobe and makeup BS that made front pages.

What did you think about the methodology statement about the study? Does that change how you see it?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

... has some worthwhile info and charting for those who are interested. Takes a little more work than just reading an article, but the numbers break down pretty easily. Of course, of interest for this thread would be the Welfare section of each year's budget.

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Here's an example. You write one reviewing his 30 minute infomercial. And whether you support the material in it or not, there was no negative campaigning.

Compare that to trying to write an article about a McCain speech not mentioning negative campaigning. If you did so, conservatives everywhere would be up in arms, complaining that "there was NO MENTION in that article about the latest AYERS scandal, or AYERS stuff, or anything about AYERS! Bias! Favoritism! The media doesn't want you to know the Truth about AYERS, Obama and AYERS!"

That doesn't appear to be how they decide what is negative and what is positive.

From their methodology...
Tone Variable
The tone variable measures whether a story’s tone is constructed in a way, via use of quotes, assertions, or innuendo, which results in positive, neutral, or negative coverage for the primary figure as it relates to the topic of the story. While reading or listening to a story, coders tallied up all the comments that have either a negative or positive tone to the reporting. Direct and indirect quotes were counted along with assertions made by journalists themselves.

In order for a story to be coded as either “positive” or “negative,” it must have either 1.5 times the amount of positive comments to negative comments, or 1.5 times the amount of negative comments to positive comments (with an exception for 2 to 3, which is coded as “neutral”). If the headline or lead has a positive or negative tone, it was counted twice into the total value. Also counted twice for tone were the first three paragraphs or first four sentences, whichever came first.

Any story where the ratio of positive to negative comments was less than 1.5 to 1 was considered a “neutral” story.

Apparently the news media only gives the people what they want (negative stuff, as you say) when it's against McCain.

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The anti-Obama smears are getting so bad that even FOX News commentators are calling McCain supporters a little nuts. And when FOX News starts saying something's over the line - you know you have a problem.

The problem is, some things that are legit (opinion of course) are just being written off as "smears" by Obama supporters. These "smears" would be of interest to the government if you were applying for a job with them, why shouldn't these things be called into question?

Now some of it's trash, of course. But so are all the nonsense front page stories of Palin's wardrobe and makeup...

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Again, I have to ask, how do you write a positive article about the McCain campaign?

How do you write one about the Obama campaign? Just say hope and change and ridicule any criticism, even if it's legit?

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His chosen theme is negativity. Simply covering a speech will come off as negative.

Wouldn't it come off as negative for the other side then? Unless the article or story was something along the lines of "McCain came off as a crotchety old man..." or something.

Look, McCain is not my favorite guy as a conservative, but to say that he's more deserving of negative criticism is silly and it's just an opinion.

Clearly many people just think the media is right for loving Obama. I guess this study doesn't mean anything in the case that people really think that the other side has no merits at all and deserves all the negative mentions. That's all opinion though and hardly portrays the media as honest and impartial.

So FOXNew
s is not in the tank for McCain then?

How would you quantify someone's worthiness of negative coverage then? Let me guess...

Very witty! Congratulations!

Democrats keep that stuff in the freezer. Start looking there!

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The flaw in your analysis of their data is that you assume each candidate is equally worthy of positive (or negative) coverage. They are not.

So YOU say.

Those are funny. The first one is great!

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I see that some of those banks that were in such bad shape they needed a taxpayer bailout, are now paying dividends to their stockholders. Tell me THAT is not redistribution of wealth.

Well that's what happens when the government bails companies out. That's why it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Did the Democrats not want the bail out? I recall that quite a few did think it was a good idea. So did a bunch of Republicans. They were wrong. Stockholders are placing a "bet" on a company when they buy stock. If you bet wrong, you lose. They should have lost. If the government wanted to buy out a company, they should have just bought it when the prices bottomed out on it after they DIDN'T pass a bail out.

I think the records have all been re-set. I just wonder where all the money really came from.

Well, MSNBC is the very obvious worst offender. If you page throught the links on the right there, you'll see where they get into other networks, which, like you said, aren't as bad as MSNBC (but who could be?). It also shows some comparisons to media as a whole which is very very skewed to Obama's side as well.

Here is there methodology if you want to see how they came to their conclusions. http://www.journalism.org/node/13441

What I don't know is if research from this organization is normally respected or is it viewed as right wing? I know just based on this study people will say it is, but has that always been its reputation?

If you don't want to read a PDF...
http://www.journalism.org/node/13436

Now let's all discredit the study QUICK!! Can't have this!!

Lol, yes. At 2 am I was. How about 3 million giving $200 each? I don't think so. How do you really really account for him getting double what most campaigns have ever raised?

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I'd like to see you persuade 2 million people to send you money. You can't even persuade your fellow skydivers that you're correct.

It's pretty common knowledge that you can divide any number by 200. Funny how that works. Do you really think that 300 million people gave him $200 each?

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I guess not. Neither does a utility bill.

That's why a state or federal ID with photo should be required.

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Sure. Are you implying that someone else might find it and vote in your name? I suppose that is possible. In the grand sceme of things, it would be pretty hard to influence the outcome of an election by going around looking for lost voter registration cards. It would be a lot easier just to deny those cards to certain people in the first place.

So if I lose it, then I lose my "simple" ID that you claimed we had in a registration card. So then I can walk into a polling station and just tell them I'm anyone registered in the district and vote? Maybe it doesn't happen much, but why not nip it in the bud?

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Totally and completely irrelevant. If I issued people "Dan G Check Writing Registration Cards" then yes, I would take it as ID for someone writing me a check. Since I do not, I do not.

So you wouldn't accept a registration card as ID. Fair enough.

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Why? Apparently you are concerned with widespread voter fraud from people claiming they are someone else. It just doesn't happen. The risk is too great for the reward. On the other hand, restricting access to the roll by a political party can have great reward with essentially no risk.

It is completely reasonable to require ID for voting. Saying that there isn't enough fraud to worry about it is ridiculous. If there's a crime out there of which only some small, statistically insignificant number of people are convicted... should we just have not made it a crime in the first place?

It really, REALLY doesn't take much effort to get an ID. About the same as getting yourself registered and getting to a poll.

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Right. Your free voter registration card is a great example of a simple ID. Somehow I bet you want more.

Does it show that you are that name on the card? Can it be lost? Would YOU take that as proof of ID if someone wrote you a check?

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I disagree about the requirement to provide a government issued picture ID on election day. Screening for eligibility should be done during registration and the proper roll created.

Yeah, then they should have to proove that they are the person who was registered and deemed eligible to vote when they come into the polling station. Simple.

Clearly we can blame this all on republicans. Doing so will get people elected and then they can solve all of our problems, like Hugo Chavez did for Venezuela.

Gass in my area is at or below $2 gallon. It was almost 4. If Bush made it $4, he must have also made it $2 again. People here said he did it, or does he only get blamed when things go bad?

Just kidding. I know the answer.

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I used to be one

A kitten?? NO WAY! You shoulda left that part in the quote. It'd be funnier.

Anyway, if they do hate law enforcement people, that's their problem. I don't think they do, they just like to argue.

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So in this case, it was better that the innocent victim of a shooting was unarmed. (I actually have no problem with that angle, but I have a feeling there are some people here who might object rather strenuously to that opinion.)

Not better. You asked if it would have been preferable. It would have been preferable if it never happened, but I don't think that him actually being armed or not would have made the situation any better for anyone.

No. Then we'd have 2 people shooting it out and possibly killed. As it stands, we have one guy that was accidentally killed. It also would have made it even easier to understand why the officer may have felt threatened. Instead of something that may have looked like a rifle, it would have been one.

Hypothetically, if the guy had shot the officer because it was dark and he saw someone in his yard running towards him with a weapon... I'd be saying the same thing. It's terrible and a very unfortunate accident and I understand how it might have happened.