Ah,
finally get the time to go back to this.
MayheM wrote:I don't mean to paint it black and white... And sure Beck acts up, but he is calm more then he is like the clip you showed above. Sure he is passionate about his beliefs, and no one should have a problem about that. My values and my beliefs are the ones he talks about on the show. God and family are the most important things in my life. And i do believe this country is the greatest nation ever established. I am not saying we have not made mistakes of the years because we have. But seldom does a nation as powerful as we have been stand for what is right rather than invade and control and take others rights. We have deviated from that in the past decade. We should not be the world police and responsible for saving everyone.
Well, first off, I don't think anyone disagrees that being passionate about your beliefs is a good thing. What people disagree with are mostly his arguments, and even though passion is good, going crazy is something else and shouldn't be alright in serious, factual debate etc. I don't think what the US has ever acted as anything else than the world police (going back as far as the spanish american war and "liberating" the philippines), but that's off topic and begging for a flame war. I applaud you for not advocating that stance though.
MayheM wrote:In my defense I spend almost every day around people who assume everyone around them is a liberal and like minded. I hear my beliefs bashed daily. I heard one music teacher tell a group of other teachers he found out one of his students was a republican and he was trying to decide if he should kick him out of the school orchestra. Granted I am sure he meant it in jest, but is that even something to laugh about? We are all entitled to our own opinions. Mine line up pretty well with Glenn Becks. Not on everything, but enough to keep me watching. I have learned not to trust those who point the finger of blame at the other party and refuse to take blame ownership themselves. That is why I am pissed at both parties. The Democrats point fingers and say everything is Bush's fault, but the last two years of Bush's second term the Dems had control over the house and Senate and that is when the economy started to tank. The Republicans blame the Dems for all the spending while they themselves helped Bush overspend. I am not saying either one side is to blame I am saying both are to blame.
I agree; everyone should take blame where it's due, no one is above the law or rightful criticism. My problem with Fox news or for instance Glenn Beck is that they claim things which are contradictory and seem intentionally misleading and those things not being questioned, regardless whether you agree with they opinions or not. Feeling the government should do this or that is alright, but when you make a baseless assumptions all the time in the name of serious journalism or debate, you disqualify yourself from that debate. Glenn Beck and Fox News in general do that continuously, and there are many examples.
MayheM wrote:But to get back to the original topic of the thread. Lets take a look at Senator Bunning. This week he stood up and blocked the jobs bill. He was hounded by the media asking why he was blocking it. He was simply asking congress to follow a law they enacted and to be sure it is paid for and not lumped onto the debt. The congress passed the "Pay Go" bill not to long ago and since passing it had not followed it. He stood up and held them to it. Finally someone got the politicians to do what they said they would do. Now I do not know if Bunning is a stand up guy, this is actually the fist time i have heard of him. What I do know is what he did was right and the media demonized him for it.
Just a quick note on that specific thing, and how I perceived it. I think it's a bullshit move to cut unemployed benefits
after just 30 days of unemployment. I agree that balancing the budget is important, but rather on a larger scale than this. If those people don't get to find a new job within those 30 days, they're fucked and maybe homeless. Then they are even less likely to get a job,
which again
weakens the economy, and in a recession! It's like saying "we haven't yet balanced the budget so unfortunately we can no longer finance the street lights during the night" (or insert some other vital thing payed for by taxes). This bill had been drafted by reps
and dems, and he was the only one against it. Then he complained that he didn't get to go home to watch his sports game on time. Silly unlucky people, poor him. This was an acute issue, and though I agree about having to balance the budget, is simply too important to dwell on.
About the response in the media, see below.
MayheM wrote: The media is bias and are trying to help further the agenda of one specific party. They will hold back some stories and focus on others. In many cases those stories paint those who oppose Obama and his ideas as the bad guy, and they focus as little as they can on the corruption those who support Obama are involved in. just looks the the health care bills special interest provisions. Cornhusker Kickback:In exchange for Nelson's vote on the $871 billion health bill -- the key 60th vote needed to overcome unanimous Republican opposition -- Democratic leaders guaranteed the federal government would pay the full price of expanded Medicaid coverage in Nebraska.I asked a room of people what they thought about that a week after I heard about it on Fox. Not a single person heard about it. They all read the new your post, the Local San Francisco Paper, watch MSNBC, and CNN and not a single one of those sources picked up on that story? Is that even the slightest bit odd you you guys? In my opinion that is front page freaking news. It should be everywhere!!! The mainstream media is seemingly working for the current administration. I am not saying all reporters who work for those places are bad. I am sure there are some who do not tow the party line. But like the education system, the majority of people in the media are liberals. And even when something the left does is wrong, they just overlook it because the other guy is the bad guy...
Yes, the media is biased, and this seems to increase in all western countries and I
hate it. But this is more so the case of Fox news than the liberal side of the media; they state less facts (for instance the Obama q&a was cut short when they apparently noticed he refuted several claims their network had made over time). I don't think you can trust any network anymore, not blindly. Sure, those networks you cited are biased to the left, and they are mainstream. I would not confine myself (or watch them at all) to them. However, Fox is
bigger. More people trust Fox. And they are
biased too, if not more so. It makes me cringe, honestly, because I think people should question everything, especially if they happen to agree with what they are hearing, because your opinions may be used to exploit you.
I respect you, really I do, and I don't mean to talk down or anything. But I think you should research more of what for instance Glenn Beck says. Sometimes, he makes me cringe. He is against public spending, but saying he educated himself in a public library. Or how progressivism is apparently always bad, but that "movement" is what lead to public libraries. Or equating communism to evolution(presenting it as some sort of virus)... it's hate mongering and empty catch phrases, and that can be logically elaborated. Nothing is per se evil, and nothing as general as "progressivism" (which strives for betterment and change) or conservatism (which strives for conserving what is good?) is evil in itself. People who claim these things and make
errors such as these, cannot be deemed competent.
In this day and age it becomes ever more important to use as many sources as possible to inform yourself, and check up on the logic and objectivity of those sources.