Doesn’t matter. America will be voting “Anyone but Obama.”
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
ZEB wrote:
DBCooper wrote:
… she deserves absolutely no credibility as a political force in this country.
Neither did Obama, but he got it anyway. Do you know why? He was the mainstream liberal media darling.
And Palin is the darling of the mainstream conservative media. So how do the two really differ? [/quote]
The mainstream liberal media is much larger than the conservative media. As I’ve stated repeatedly in the past, that’s one of the reasons that he was elected. The good part is that in two years time Obama has peaked the interest of many independents and conservative democratic voters in the conservative media. Now that his popularity is at an all time low, 40% or so by some polls. You can expect even more conservative shows will be popping up.
Anything else I can help you out with?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
ZEB wrote:
DBCooper wrote:
… she deserves absolutely no credibility as a political force in this country.
Neither did Obama, but he got it anyway. Do you know why? He was the mainstream liberal media darling.
And Palin is the darling of the mainstream conservative media. So how do the two really differ? [/quote]
The mainstream liberal media is much larger than the conservative media. As I’ve stated repeatedly in the past, that’s one of the reasons that he was elected. The good part is that in two years time Obama has peaked the interest of many independents and conservative democratic voters in the conservative media. Now that his popularity is at an all time low, 40% or so by some polls. You can expect even more conservative shows will be popping up.
Anything else I can help you out with?
[/quote]
The only part of the mainstream media that is larger than the conservative media is the Internet news segment. CNN gets twice as many unique hits per day as FoxNews, but it’s 48,000 to 24,000. Bill O’Reilly gets thirty times more viewers for a one-hour period than CNN gets hits in the whole day. The same with the blogosphere. About half of the top twenty political blogs are conservative. FoxNews is still the fourth most popular news website (this excludes Google and Yahoo), is by far the largest cable news network, conservative talk show hosts make up the top three or four spots across the nation and the largest newspaper in the country is moderate to conservative. So remind me again. How does this make the media largely liberal? Help me out with this.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
… she deserves absolutely no credibility as a political force in this country. [/quote]
Neither did Obama, but he got it anyway. Do you know why? He was the mainstream liberal media darling.[/quote]
Hang on a minute, Palin has executive experience running a state that is bigger than a lot of countries. Obama did not have any executive experience when he became president. His inexperience became very obvious when he panicked and shut down all oil exploration in the gulf for six months. Because he has no experience to guide him all he can do is turn to his Marxist leftist ideology. So based on experience she should have more credibility than Obama.
Then there is the matter of support. The Democratic party will not support use of the military unless it is for some bleeding heart left wing cause like Kosovo or something that is extraordinary and blatant like Pearl Harbor which highly unlikely to happen. Just by virtue of the fact that he is a Democrat when he entered the White House Obama credibility as a statesman was compromised. That is why the Iranians have ignored his groveling, because any negotiations he engages in with them do not have a credible threat of force for them to consider. That is why they have proceeded to produce enough enriched Uranium that they can now make an atomic bomb.
Palin or McCain would have been able to make a credible threat of military intervention that they would have had to take seriously which would have given them an incentive to negotiate. So Palin would be much more credible than Obama has been.
[/quote]
Really? A large state? She was a governor, which means she governs people, which means she governed about 680,000 people. That’s it. Gavin Newsom “governs” San Francisco as the mayor, a city of more than 800,000. Does that give him more executive experience than Palin because he’s done it longer and over more people? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly doesn’t qualify him to be the next President. Wyoming and Vermont are the only two states with smaller populations than Alaska’s, so where governing is concerned, she basically acted as the glorified mayor of a medium-sized city with little racial or political diversity that simply has a huge sprawl. [/quote]
Alaska is as big as the East coast of the US. Between Oil, natural gas and coal the state produces a significant portion of our energy supplies. Alaskan fisheries produce a substantial portion of our food. San Francisco is insignificant by comparison. A governorship has more in common with the Presidency than any other job. A governor role in relation to the legislature is the same as the President to congress. A governor chooses state supreme court justices. And state’s National Guard gives them control of military forces.
[quote]
Offering up her governance of a state that is a tiny, tiny fraction of the country’s population as a qualification for the Presidency is laughable, especially when taking into account that she resigned from office in the face of a massive amount of ethics complaints and investigations. If Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman wins the gubernatorial race in California, the nation’s largest in terms of people (and also extremely diverse both politically, economically and racially) are they suddenly the most qualified of all the governors to become the next President by virtue of the size of the state that they governed? Was the size of Texas, both geographically and population-wise, what gave Bush credibility as a candidate in 2000? [/quote]
Obviously you haven’t been paying attention to the news. Because after 9/11 they were discussing doing the very thing that you say is laughable, amending the line of succession to the Presidency to include Governors. Why? Because the present line of succession only includes a few people in the federal government in Washington DC. So if a nuke or some other WMD were used in Washington everyone who is in the present line of succession could be killed and we would have no national leadership and no designated person who could immediately take over. So it actually makes sense to some people that the Governors should be included. It also makes sense that amongst the governors the order would be decided by population of their state.
I don’t know what racial diversity has to do with it, but Alaska does have it’s own share of diversity. The state is known for having it’s own indigenous people the Eskimo. So now I am going to point out that Todd Palin is part Eskimo, which means Sarah Palin’s kids are also part Eskimo. So how does that have any affect your “diversity calculations”? Or is it just some BS you through out there because you couldn’t think of anything better.
[quote]
But again, I’m straying from the point I am trying to make and the questions I want to hear answers to. Are you a supporter of Palin and if she is on the ticket, will you vote for her? If so, why? What about her, without mentioning Obama, appeals to you on a level such that you think she would make a GOOD President, not a President that isn’t Obama or liberal, but a GOOD President period. Or is a good President’s only qualification that he/she be conservative?[/quote]
I’m not a big fan of the religious right and I think the majority of people feel the same way. I think Palin’s appeal to the religious right and her image as one of them makes her a polarizing candidate. I think that would spur people who could be coaxed away from Obama to vote for him.
So my take on Palin is this. She is dangerous. Because she could garner enough support within the Republican party to be their candidate. But once it came to the general election she wouldn’t stand a chance.
The big hurdles for her are ideology and psychology. Ideologically being religious right puts her at an extreme that can be galvanizing. The next big liability is being a woman. Say what you want to equality and all that, both men and women tend to view men as the more commanding of the genders and able to be a leader.
Another psychological hurdle is height. Even between men a taller man is seen as exuding a more commanding presence. It is not just a coincidence that many of our presidents have been tall men. Washington 6’2", Lincoln 6’4", Kennedy 6’, Johnson 6’3.5", Nixon 6’, Carter 5’9.5", Reagan 6’1", Bush 6’2", Clinton 6’1", Bush 5’11.5", Obama 6’1". When they have televised debates and they bring the candidates together to shake hands, at 5’5" Sarah would be at a real disadvantage without even opening her mouth.
I think she would be a better president than Obama has been. I think she could win the Republican nomination but when it came to the general election it would be much harder for her. Plus the media assault would be unmerciful.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
ZEB wrote:
DBCooper wrote:
… she deserves absolutely no credibility as a political force in this country.
Neither did Obama, but he got it anyway. Do you know why? He was the mainstream liberal media darling.
And Palin is the darling of the mainstream conservative media. So how do the two really differ? [/quote]
The mainstream liberal media is much larger than the conservative media. As I’ve stated repeatedly in the past, that’s one of the reasons that he was elected. The good part is that in two years time Obama has peaked the interest of many independents and conservative democratic voters in the conservative media. Now that his popularity is at an all time low, 40% or so by some polls. You can expect even more conservative shows will be popping up.
Anything else I can help you out with?
[/quote]
The only part of the mainstream media that is larger than the conservative media is the Internet news segment. CNN gets twice as many unique hits per day as FoxNews, but it’s 48,000 to 24,000. Bill O’Reilly gets thirty times more viewers for a one-hour period than CNN gets hits in the whole day. The same with the blogosphere. About half of the top twenty political blogs are conservative. FoxNews is still the fourth most popular news website (this excludes Google and Yahoo), is by far the largest cable news network, conservative talk show hosts make up the top three or four spots across the nation and the largest newspaper in the country is moderate to conservative. So remind me again. How does this make the media largely liberal? Help me out with this.[/quote]
Sure thing, always glad to help out another human being. In your Internet travels look up the following liberal media and try to figure out how much combined influence they have:
CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, New York Times, Time and Newsweek magazines. And add to that prestigious list every single pop culture magazine that pushed for Obama. That means the many, many womens magazines from Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes & Gardens to the more hip mags that explain to women how to have an orgasm, ha. I even remember Men’s Fitness had an issue just prior to the election with Obama on the front cover. Funny I thought, I read this magazine each month and there was never an issue devoted to McCain. In fact, one only had to walk past a large news stand and count the number of Obama covers vs those of McCain. It was easily better than 2 to 1. It’s like that with every single magazine that is not exclusively called “conservative.”
That is a lot of pull my friend. At this point in time I think it’s a safe bet that the liberals still control greater than 65% of the media. The good news is that conservatives are indeed catching up, not there yet, but catching up.
Anything else I can help you with, just ask.
Sifu:
Your assertions about Alaska stray from your original point, which is what I came down on in the first place. The point you tried to make is that Palin has executive experience because she has served as governor of a large state. Yes, that state is large geographically, but that’s it. The state may be a large supplier of energy for this country, but as governor, Palin actually has very little direct influence on the energy supplies. The Alaska Permanent Fund is controlled by the legislature, not the Governor, and this is the committee responsible for doling out oil profits and determining when/how the profits are put back into the state’s economy. It’s been this way for more than 30 years.
Also, Alaska may be a large producer of oil, but not the oil that we use. Virtually all of the oil we use in the U.S. comes from either Mexico, Saudi Arabia or Canada. Foreign imports account for about 65% of the oil used in the U.S. The rest comes from the U.S., but not just Alaska. And Alaska’s oil production has been steadily declining since the mid 80’s. Natural gas is their big thing, but we only get about 23% of our energy usage from natural gas.
And what is Palin’s role in all of this? Virtually nothing. She passed a one-time windfall tax and has taken a couple steps to increase the drilling for natural gas, but so what? How hard is it to get more natural gas drilled for when a huge percentage of the state’s income comes from energy production? Her only real political opponents have been environmentalists.
Also, I never inferred that governors are not preeminently qualified to be Presidents. Many governors would probably make great Presidents, but Palin is clearly not one of them. But you offered up defense of her credentials that centered around the size of the state she governed. But that state is 5x less densely populated than the least densely populated state in the lower 48 (Wyoming). State size is not an indicator of a person’s potential for success at the national level.
And there is little political diversity in Alaska, so working with the legislature was not very challenging for her. The state has a grand total of three reps in Congress. The legislature has been dominated by Republicans for almost twenty years. Each member of the House represents about 17,500 people, none of which represent a very diverse district given that the state is 70% white and 15% Native Alaskan. In California on the other hand, each rep represents about 450,000 people. Most districts, especially along the coast, are extremely diverse. My point is that governing over Alaska hardly represents the same sort of challenge that governing other states does and the size of the state from a geographical standpoint has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on any governor’s chances for success as President. Especially when we’re discussing a state with a population density of 1 person per sq. mile. Their entire economic structure was in place long before Alaska even became a state and all any governor up there really has to do is keep the gas pumping out of the ground. She was good at that, just like EVERY OTHER governor before her.
So tell me again now, how does her governorship, which ended in shame, pre-qualify her specifically to be the President? I understand how governors in general are qualified, but they are not equally qualified, nor are they qualified on a hierarchical basis centering around their state’s size, either geographically or population-wise. What I don’t understand, what NOBODY has been able to explain to me in a satisfactory way (including Palin herself), is why Palin of all former governors is best qualified to be President.
All you’ve done Zeb is explain to me that Obama was on a lot of magazine covers. And why wouldn’t he be? He was running in a highly anticipated Presidential election during a crucial time in our history, but above and beyond that, he was the first black to run for the position. Of course he’s going to be on a bunch of magazine covers. But I don’t remember Men’s Fitness specifically pushing him as a candidate, and I know exactly what Men’s Fitness issue you refer to. I also highly doubt that these pop mags you refer to were preaching to people who weren’t already in the choir. Rolling Stone hardly is known for its conservative fanbase. Many of these pop mags are either advocating someone they were already going to vote for, or pandering to the least represented segment of society in the voting booths.
Plus, these mags are obviously going to put the first black Presidential candidate on their ocver regardless of party affiliation. If George Bush was on the cover of a magazine, does that make it a conservative magazine all of a sudden? Besides the amount of people these mags reach pales significantly compared to how many people are reached by Fox and hosts like Hannity or Limbaugh.
And since when is Time a major player in the media world anymore? Their circulation is down every year, probably barely above 3 million by now. Same with Newsweek, which never had the same clout as Time to begin with. 1.5 million circulation in the U.S. and shrinking rapidly. Look, I don’t doubt that the media is liberal to a large extent. But look at who the major players are in the media world and specifically where people go to get their political news of the day. They go to TV, radio, the newspaper and the Internet. And they mostly go to the TV and the radio. Glenn Beck gets more listeners everyday on both his radio show and his TV show than will ever read Newsweek in an entire year. On TV and radio the major players are all conservative.
For instance, the top radio personalities in the country are, from top to bottom: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Dave Ramsey, Laura Ingraham and Neal Boortz. Except for Ramsey (whose show is centered around personal financial advice) all of these people are conservatives through and through. Boortz gets more than 5 million listeners every day and Limbaugh gets more than 15 million. These hosts combined have WAY more reach than Newsweek or Time combined have EVER had. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Limbaugh alone gets more listeners than every magazine and newspaper you mentioned put together. That’s more in one day than those periodicals get in a year!
And what about cable news networks? Who has the two most viewed shows on the air? FoxNews of course. O’Reilly and Hannity own those spots, but six of the remaining eight spots also belong to FoxNews hosts. It’s consistently in the top ten for ratings amongst ALL cable channels of any kind and has even held the #1 spot. They get anywhere from 1.8 million to 3.5 million viewers a day, which is as much as seven times what CNN gets and five times what MSNBC gets. It’s more than both of them combined. Not only that, Fox ended 2009 as the highest-ranked cable channel period other than USA.
But Fox also dominates ABC, NBC and CBS, as evidenced by a comparison of their ratings during the last election, when Fox got more than 7 million viewers whereas The Big Three got anywhere from 5 million to 5.9 million viewers. And it doesn’t end there either. FNC is viewed in Canada, Ireland, France, Italy, Brazil, Australia and the UK, as well as 33 other countries. If current trends are any indicator (CNN is rapidly closing headquarters in many international locales) FNC will soon pass CNN as the dominant international news channel.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget The Wall Street Journal, the largest newspaper in the country and now owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch, although its nothing like FoxNews. Hell, expecting me to believe that Fox is “fair and balanced” is like expecting me to believe that North Korea is a Democratic People’s Republic. And although I beg to differ that the New York Times is a liberal outlet, for the sake of argument let’s say that it is. So what? It only reaches about 800,000 people now and their website gets roughly the same amount of daily hits that Fox gets.
So again, please explain to me how this constitutes a largely liberal media. I need help comprehending your assertion and I am hereby asking for it.
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
Larger audiences=larger revenues/profits=greater influence and control over what content reaches people.
Or am I misunderstanding your question?
Mufasa
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
The amount of people a particular media outlet reaches is a direct representation of its clout. If you have twenty magazine that are hardline liberal, but their total circulation is only 2 million, they simply do not impact the opinions of people to the extent that a show with 15 million listeners reaches. There may be more liberal media outlets, but the fact is that there are way more conservatives than liberals getting their political info from the media. To a large extent, the size and scope of an outlet determines how legit people view its opinions/stances. According to a recent Pew Report, FNC has the highest “trust rating” of any news channel on the air.
So how does this make the media largely liberal? How can cable news media be considered liberal when the clearcut dominant force in terms of viewership is blatantly conservative? How can the radio media be considered liberal when most people who listen to radio shows are listening to conservative hosts? How can the print media be considered liberal when the most widely read periodical in the country is conservative and the overall readership of any one of these liberal periodicals doesn’t reach a fraction of what FNC reaches?
The point is that, based on the statistics, most people who get their news through the major media sources (radio, newspapers and TV) get it from conservative sources, not liberal ones. So when Rolling Stone bashes Palin, it doesn’t reach nearly as many people as when Limbaugh bashes Obama (on a daily basis) on his radio program, and as such doesn’t carry the same national impact. If the liberal media is capable of erroneously slanting people’s opinions toward liberal agendas, then conservative media is just as capable. But conservative media has the opportunity to slant way more people’s opinions than liberal media does.
Shit, even these pop mags that Zeb refers to can’t have that much of an impact amongst the youth, their main demographic. Half of their readers either aren’t old enough to vote or probably don’t vote if they are. On top of that, according to a recent article in the New York Times, there are more people under the age of 25 who self-identify as conservative than at any other point in the last 100 years.
Because of all this, I truly believe that the notion of a wholly liberal (or dominantly liberal) media is in many ways a mythical fabrication of those who simply want to discredit anything other than their own viewpoints as heavily-biased. There most certainly is a liberal media, but it is in many ways much smaller than the conservative media.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
Because if the biggest liberal media pundit has no audience, they’re not the biggest liberal media pundit.
Unless they are, which would be hilarious. But that’s not the situation we find ourselves in.
Damn, DB…
Then it’s GOT to be that “Ladies Home Journal” that’s swaying elections!
(Damn them!)
Mufasa
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Damn, DB…
Then it’s GOT to be that “Ladies Home Journal” that’s swaying elections!
(Damn them!)
Mufasa[/quote]
The only segment of the media that isn’t dominated by conservatism is the Internet and blog sites. But so what? The most popular political blog site on the web (which isn’t liberal or conservative) is still the 7600th most popular blog on the Internet.
CNN, MSNBC and the “liberal” New York Times websites all get significantly more hits per day than Fox’s website, but it means nothing. We’re talking about tens of thousands of hits per day versus millions of listeners/viewers regarding radio and TV. CNN’s 50,000 hits a day (compared to about half that for Fox) doesn’t mean a thing in terms of the “liberal media” when Limbaugh alone reaches 15 million listeners five days a week.
Shit, of course Fox’s website is going to lag behind the rest of the Internet news sites; all their potential readers are right here on this site.
This HAS to be the issue that did it!
(Damn…!)
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
One other thing: what leads you to believe that Palin and McCain would have made threats to intervene in Iran with the military and what about McCain and Palin (specifically Palin) makes you think those claims would carry enough credibility to spark negotiations? In fact, what makes you think that military threats will spark negotiations at all? [/quote]
You have a point there in that McCain didn’t inspire a lot of hope that he would use the military either, but he was more promising than Obama. The best person to have done that was Bush. But when the Democrats took over the congress the first thing they did was insist they would not support the use of the military to stop Iran from acquiring nukes. What they should have done is let Bush clean house and then after that Obama could have gone on his apology tour.
[quote]
Furthermore, are you aware of what sort of intricate geo-political forces are work here that cannot be attended to with an instrument as blunt as “credible threat of military intervention”? Here’s a fucking newsflash: most Iranians do not hate America at all. They do not trust America as the provider of freedom, but they certainly do not hate us. Also, Iran is not a thirdworld country whatsoever. Do they approach our level of quality of life? No, but Iran is still a highly advanced society whose culture goes back thousands of years. And they are well aware of this and are very proud of this. Long before Western Europe was of any significance to the world, Iran was the center of one of the most successful, advanced cultures/civilizations the world has ever seen, and they know this. Iran is not Afghanistan or Somalia. [/quote]
Here is where you are falling into a common trap. You are over complicating and over intellectualizing this. People like you have it in mind that since you need to be a physicist to fully understand how a nuclear weapon works then you must also be a physicist to understand nuclear policy. It is bollocks. As destructive and scary as they are a nuke is just another weapon that is used for fighting or intimidating.
There are basic rules and concepts of fighting that remain unchanged no matter what the scale of the fight is. The reason why is because no matter what kind of a weapon you are dealing with be it a fist or a nuke the one constant in all this is you are dealing with human decision making motivated by human nature. But because of the sophisticated technologies involved people lose track of the fact that warfare involves dealing with aspects of human nature that haven’t changed since caveman times.
Because liberals think they are intellectually superior are the most prone to over intellectualizing and losing track of the basics. The thing that they are the worst at is the art of fighting without fighting. How you carry yourself can do a lot to avoid a fight. If you carry yourself and speak in a manner that is self confident you are more likely to be able to talk your way out of a situation than if you carry yourself like you are fearful or tell an adversary that can’t face them on your own or you are afraid of a bloody nose.
A few months ago when I watched Hillary Clinton say that America cannot handle Iran on it’s own it was painfully obvious that in their lives her and Obama have never had to stand up to a bully. They gave never stood up to a bully and told him I’m not afraid of you, I’m not afraid of getting punched in the face. If they were threatened they kissed ass or they ran to a protector.
[quote]
The fact that Obama is tiptoeing around the whole “Iranian thing” shows that he understands very well the highly intricate inner workings of the Middle East regarding this particular issue. He is well aware that Iran has a long, storied history of revolution and that if they were to rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah, it would not be the first time in the last hundred years that they have enacted major, sweeping political change via revolution. [/quote]
Tiptoeing? He has been in office twenty months and done nothing to stop them except bull shit trying to get sanctions. It is way too late in all this for sanctions to stop them now. He is merely going through the motions of acting like he is doing something because he figures people are too stupid to see through his charade.
If Ahmadinejad gets a nuclear weapon regime change in Iran will no longer be an option for anyone including the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad is a twelver. The Ayatollah Khomeini had them banned because even he thought they were nutjobs. What makes you think they would get as close as they are to bringing back the Mahdi and getting rid of Israel only give up with out a fight? Did you not see Ahmadinejad’s people gunning down unarmed protesters protesting the election results last year? He is not going to give Iran back to the Iranian people without a fight. If he has a nuke on a missile and there is a revolution against him I would expect his final act before he fell would be to launch it at Israel then wait for the Mahdi to appear.
[quote]
But he is also aware that Iran still remembers well what happened to the only truly democratically-elected prime minister in Iran’s history, Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh was overthrown by the CIA in order to put the Shah back in power and maintain easy access to oil for Britain and to keep it out of the hands of Russia. The Shah’s horrific regime after Mossadegh’s departure is what inspired the Iranian Revolution in the late seventies. The Iranians remember all of this, and although they want Ahmadinejad out just like we do, they want to do it themselves. They remember what happened the last time we removed a political power for them and they do not trust us as a result. [/quote]
If you don’t know history you should not come on here making stupid remarks like this one. Especially since I am the one who eviscerated that lie the last time some idiot posted it here. The last democratically elected PM of Iran was Mossadegh predecessor, Sepahbod Haj Ali Razmara who was PM from 26 June 1950 â?? 7 March 1951 when he was assassinated by a Fadayan-e Islam follower of the Ayatollah Kashani (Ayatollah Khomeini predecessor).
Two months later the national front Party that was led by Mossadegh but controlled by the Ayatollah Kashani picked Mossadegh as prime minister. Mossadegh’s “election” was a coup-d-tat carried out by the Ayatollahs.
[quote]
Obama understands this and he also understands why any sort of military intervention would undermine any chances of legitimate democracy spawning in Iran. He understands that, if the example of the Ayatollah in 1979 is any sort of indicator, a military intervention could very well result in an even more hardline, fundamental, radical Islamist regime than is what is in place now. [/quote]
Obama doesn’t understand this any better than Jimmy Carter did because he believed the same bullshit you just repeated about Mossadegh. Get a clue, Ahmadinejad with the bomb will end any legitimate chance of democracy in Iran. Because he will be able to start a nuclear war with Israel before he goes out and take them all with him.
[quote]
I should give Palin the benefit of the doubt, but she’s given me no reason to. I highly doubt that Palin has any concept whatsoever of what is going on in Iran and how it relates to what has happened in Iran ever since oil was discovered there 100 years ago and how this relation will undoubtedly shape the future of Iran. [/quote]
She would not need to. Unfortunately this is far to advanced for her to be relevant. By 2012 they will have nukes. According to the IAEA they already have enough %20 enriched Uranium for one nuke. The beginning of putting fuel in the Busher reactor on August 21st should have been the redline that would have triggered military action if we were going to use that to stop them. Obama is already resigned to the idea of the Iranians having nukes. Obama is just bullshitting us to save face.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
Larger audiences=larger revenues/profits=greater influence and control over what content reaches people.
Or am I misunderstanding your question?
Mufasa[/quote]
Audience isn’t a factor when weighing the bias of the media overall. Such would be a question of whose bias is winning an audience. Not of which bias is most prolific.
[quote]Otep wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
Because if the biggest liberal media pundit has no audience, they’re not the biggest liberal media pundit.
Unless they are, which would be hilarious. But that’s not the situation we find ourselves in.[/quote]
Let’s make up our minds. Are we discussing the bias of the potential audience? Or, which bias is most widespread in mainstream media sources? They’re not the same thing.
Sifu, your grasp of international relations, especially regarding the “nuke” problem in Iran is alarming. I understand the whole “carry a big stick” thing, but it’s an overly simplistic solution to a complex issue. Just because you cannot wrap your head around it, does not mean that the issue is being overcomplicated.
Believe me, Ahmadijenad would like nothing more than to force us into a militaristic stance and then force us to reveal our bluff. He’s a fucking wackjob who doesn’t deal with rational thought very well. But he understands one thing very well: the Iranian people will rally around him before they rally around a leader handpicked by the very country that undermined the closest thing to a legit democracy they have ever seen.
The fact that his cronies were killing protestors in the streets is a clear signal that Iran is close to enacting the changes that we want to see there all by themselves. If we were to try to accelerate this process through militaristic methods, we would only set back the process already in motion by decades. The ramifications that we would deal with in the long run would far outweigh any benefit we would get from intervening in Iran in the same way we have done in Vietnam or Iraq.
Also, Iran may be approaching nuclear capabilities, but they are not anywhere close to developing a delivery system. I’m not trying to downplay the threat that a nuclear-capable Iran represents, but military intervention will only remove one immediate threat and create a much longer-lasting one. Similar in many ways to the one we have faced in some shape or form from Iran since 1979. The only way the threat of military intervention should be used is if it is aimed at provoking a full-scale revolution within Iran and by Iranians as a preventive measure.
Iranians as a whole have little interest in nuking Israel off the face of the Earth because they fully understand that they will be the next ones wiped off the globe if this happens. Sure there are the hardliners over there that don’t care about that kind of shit as long as Israel is destroyed, but they are no more representative of the collective Iranian viewpoint than racist rednecks who want to publicly lynch Obama are of our distaste for his administration.
You watch: as Ahmadijenad comes closer and closer to nuclear armament, the Iranians will take care of him for us. This is how it should be. THIS is how democracy works. It can’t be forced upon a nation through violent means. In case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t really that great at successful regime changes over the last thirty or forty years, and especially not in the last 8-10 years.
Think about it: how would we react here if the Chinese kept demanding that we remove Obama from power because we have nukes, and then rolled in here with their Air Force and ground troops to do the deed for us. We’d fucking flip out! As unpopular as Obama is here, we would hit the roof that the democratic process had been bypassed by a foreign power. We would hardly canonize Obama as a result, but we certainly wouldn’t turn around and thank the Chinese.
If they rolled in here, I’d be the first fucking insurgent on my block to go out and kill some Chinese soldiers, even if I hated Obama with a blinding passion. And I wouldn’t trust any leader that the Chinese tried to prop up. They crave democracy in Iran and they are more than capable of putting it into place themselves if given the chance.
It’s a tight rope to walk: hope that it happens before Iran becomes a legitimate nuclear threat. But we have to walk it because military intervention would fail. Shit, we’d have to pull a ton of troops and resources out of Afghanistan to do so effectively, and that would leave a void there that many proponents of invasion of Iran don’t even acknowledge.
As far as your argument about Mossadegh, that too is laughable. Mossadegh was overwhelmingly elected as Prime Minister by the majlis, the Iranian version of a Parliament. The people never got to vote for him directly, mostly because Iranian democracy was so new and underdeveloped at the time. The majlis appointed him, despite pressure from the Shah, because he was enjoying 90% approval ratings amongst the people.
Had Iran been able to develop their version of democracy as much as we have, he would have been democratically elected by an overwhelming majority by the people. As it is, he was elected through the democratic process that was in place in Iran at the time and enjoyed the sort of popularity no Iranian leader has approached since.
The majlis were first democratically elected to office in 1950, but Razmara was not the popular choice but rather the Shah’s choice, whereas Mossadegh was elected by the majlis despite the Shah’s personal objections. The Shah did not intervene in this case because to force the majlis to elect anyone but Mossadegh would have been the end of him, due to the immense popularity Mossadegh enjoyed amongst the people.
The majlis elected in 1950 represented the first democratically elected Parliament in Iran and Mossadegh represented their first choice for Prime Minister that was not swayed directly by the influence of the Shah.
Instead of getting your Middle East history from wikipedia, try an actual scholar on the subject, like Michael B. Oren or Stephen Kinzer. In fact, I highly recommend Kinzer’s “All the Shah’s Men” if you want a book that will explain in detail the historical implications of a potential Iranian invasion/regime replacement at the hands of the U.S. Armed Forces.
But maybe you should stick to wikipedia: they say themselves plenty of times that Mossadegh was the first democratically-elected PM in Iran. Go to the page “1953 Iranian coup de etat” or to Mossadegh’s page. If wikipedia is a valid enough source for you, then you must accept it when they repeatedly refer to Mossadegh as the first democratically elected PM.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
According to a recent Pew Report, FNC has the highest “trust rating” of any news channel on the air.
[/quote]
Speaking of Pew…What do you guys want? A media echo chamber for defeating Republican Candidates?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Otep wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we comparing audiences when determining the size of either a liberal or conservative media?[/quote]
Because if the biggest liberal media pundit has no audience, they’re not the biggest liberal media pundit.
Unless they are, which would be hilarious. But that’s not the situation we find ourselves in.[/quote]
Let’s make up our minds. Are we discussing the bias of the potential audience? Or, which bias is most widespread in mainstream media sources? They’re not the same thing.[/quote]
The level of bias is hard to gauge amongst both the audience and the sources. But keep in mind one thing: ClearChannel, which has clear conservative leanings, owns most of the media outlets in the country. They own a huge percentage of the am/fm stations and have the single largest amount of influence in advertising on TV and radio.
But the bias level of the sources can be examined to a certain extent. Watch CNN and then watch Fox. Which one comes across as more slanted/biased. Listen to Limbaugh then listen to Ronn Owens (he’s the most popular talk show host in the Bay Area, one of the few who beats Limbaugh head to head). As liberal as Owens is on many subjects, he doesn’t begin to approach the level that Limbaugh’s conservative leanings do.
Open up Cosmopolitan and then open up the Wall Street Journal and tell me which one is more slanted (sorry, bad example. I couldn’t resist). Watch Anderson Cooper and then watch Glenn Beck and tell me which one is more biased. Read Palin’s blog mentioned in the Vanity Fair article then read the Huffington Post and tell me which one is more slanted.
All I’m talking about is which media sources have the most influence on people’s opinions regarding political issues. To me the answer is simple: whichever outlets have the largest amount of viewers/listeners/readers have the largest opportunity to influence opinion. In almost every outlet, conservative opinions reign supreme, not liberal ones.
So I have a hard time understanding how the liberal media outlets, such as Ronn Owens and his 500,000 listeners, have a larger influence on levels of bias than someone like Limbaugh and his 15 million listeners.
Hell, even if the liberal outlets do slant their shit more heavily than the conservative ones, it still doesn’t have the same impact when one outlet reaches 3 million and the other reaches 1 million.