People who don't do their homework....

really piss me off. I was reading a letter to the editor in the Minneapolis paper tonight. This guy said in part that

If the current Congress does not act to extend the law, it will expire just as the 2003 Republican Congress wanted it to expire. If this raises the taxes of the wealthiest taxpayers, it seems to me that the cause rests with the originators of the law in 2003, not current lawmakers.

Of course, i wouldn't expect an Obama supporter to dig a little deeper to find out why. No, they just spout the same endless garbage.

The FACT here is that the tax cut bill was passed via budget reconciliation. As such, the bill has to end in 10 years in accordance to the rules on budget reconciliation.

I hate it when people can't get their facts straight! Then the loony Star-Tribune has no problem printing uneducated garbage like that. It helps their voter base. It makes one look silly (I have a better word) when someone calls them on their slanted and misleading opinion. And that's exactly what i did in the comments section. In fact, i used some of my comment right here.

Sounds just like one of those op-ed pieces about Europe you post in here.

Har de har har.

For your information, that letter writer was totally incorrect. Many op-ed pieces can be partially correct. Most journalists do their homework. That's the difference. A letter writer who is just a rank & file citizen versus a person writing a piece when that's what they do for a living.

You can disagree with op-ed or opinion pieces and that's fine. That's why i post what i do. Peole then debate those pieces.

But back to the point here.....

No comment other than what you said, huh?

Most of the op-ed pieces you posted on Europe had large holes in it and false information.

And no, no more comment. Those leftists just don't know what they're talking about, they should model themselves more after the extreme hillbillies in eastern KY!

That's all fine and dandy. Let's leave it at that.

Would you like it if i said that those leftists should model themselves more in line with Castro or Chavez?

Pfft. It's just rhetoric. Everyone uses it. It may not be right, but it's the way that it is. And in being fair, there was a time when the media just reported the news. Unfortunately those days are over. While technically the stuff that passes as "news" nowadays might have some facts, it can usually be twisted to serve whatever purpose the author wants. All the TV networks do it now and more and more newspapers are doing it.

i_luv_miley wrote:Pfft. It's just rhetoric. Everyone uses it. It may not be right, but it's the way that it is. And in being fair, there was a time when the media just reported the news. Unfortunately those days are over. While technically the stuff that passes as "news" nowadays might have some facts, it can usually be twisted to serve whatever purpose the author wants. All the TV networks do it now and more and more newspapers are doing it.

What's rhetoric?

TexasBlue wrote:

i_luv_miley wrote:Pfft. It's just rhetoric. Everyone uses it. It may not be right, but it's the way that it is. And in being fair, there was a time when the media just reported the news. Unfortunately those days are over. While technically the stuff that passes as "news" nowadays might have some facts, it can usually be twisted to serve whatever purpose the author wants. All the TV networks do it now and more and more newspapers are doing it.

What's rhetoric?

Simple answer - it's spin. It's the author (of an article for example) putting his own "take" on things. I raised that because you two were talking about opinion pieces. Opinion pieces are, by definition, rhetoric. There may be "some" truth to what's being said. But it's being "presented" in a way that is colored by the author to fit his own views. As I said, it's what IMO all news has become - and most politics as well. There used to be something called "journalistic integrity", but I fear those days are gone. By the way, both sides are guilty.

But when an opinion pieces states facts like who pays more in taxes, that's not opinion to fit a view. It's fact based on IRS or Dept of Labors stats.

TexasBlue wrote:But when an opinion pieces states facts like who pays more in taxes, that's not opinion to fit a view. It's fact based on IRS or Dept of Labors stats.

But even "facts" can be spun to fit whoever is spinning them. For example, it's when one "side" (conveniently) leaves out (usually important) information that may weaken their position or strengthen the others. We see it all the time in the news as well as in politics. That's rhetoric.

I understand. But when you look at the op piece i posted today, President Obama's Tax Piracy, there's numbers that can't be spun. They're IRS numbers.

TexasBlue wrote:I understand. But when you look at the op piece i posted today, President Obama's Tax Piracy, there's numbers that can't be spun. They're IRS numbers.

But the article was written by someone. That's where the spin could come in. I agree that it's more difficult to criticize those numbers (using the IRS example), but the reader has to be smart enough to check things on their own. And nowadays - especially with so many (fooking) news outlets (on TV, in print, and the Internet), finding the actual facts becomes a lot more difficult. And most people don't want to do that. Hence, the spin usually wins.

True.

I tend to look for things like that. But there's been times i posted an op piece that was geared towards Europe so that our Euro friends here could disseminate it.

The problem with a lot of those pieces, as i_luv_miley says, is that they are often skewed beyond recognised fact. We never really discuss the points of the article or the event surrounding it, because we are always quibbling over little points that have either been misrepresented or misunderstood by the American writer. I often do not recognise the country I was born in in a lot of these articles because the writer doesn't understand the events themselves. This is the major problem with opinion pieces.

i_luv_miley wrote:

TexasBlue wrote:But when an opinion pieces states facts like who pays more in taxes, that's not opinion to fit a view. It's fact based on IRS or Dept of Labors stats.

But even "facts" can be spun to fit whoever is spinning them. For example, it's when one "side" (conveniently) leaves out (usually important) information that may weaken their position or strengthen the others. We see it all the time in the news as well as in politics. That's rhetoric.

It is even worse for reporting scientific issues in mainstream media.

I like to discuss the point in these op pieces myself.

I guess i could just post news that we already have heard.

What i like posting (also) is op pieces that expose shit that politicians and the media have ignored. Major news orgs here conveniently ignore certain things. When they're exposed, i like to gloat.

TexasBlue wrote:I like to discuss the point in these op pieces myself.

I guess i could just post news that we already have heard.

What i like posting (also) is op pieces that expose shit that politicians and the media have ignored. Major news orgs here conveniently ignore certain things. When they're exposed, i'll like to gloat.

This point of selective coverage is one of the surest signs of the mainstream media's bias. Look at what they DON'T cover, i.e., most of the mainstream media did not report on the 600-700 thousand people who turned out for a conservative event in our nation's capitol. And the very few that did, lied about the turnout and the message.

On the other hand, liberal meeting in the same place that was significantly smaller and was largely comprised of union workers who were forced to attend was covered widely in print and on the evening news broadcasts and characterized in the most glowing of terms.

This is why the mainstream media are losing audiences in droves. Now that there are alternative outlets for news, people are getting wise to the scam that is our mainstream media.

Yeah, people rail on about the Tea Party and supposed spitting on a congressman (which has been debunked already) but ignored Ken Glasby, a conservative black man who was beaten by an SEIU union thug. The media never showed it on the news. But man, if that had been a Tea Partier beating a liberal union member, it would've been on within the 1st 5 minutes of the newscast.

This is why i watch the network news each night. I can find bias every night.

Heck, just last night they were back to demonizing the TP on ABC News. Not much mention on how bad Obama's numbers keep falling. Nope. And then people have the audacity to bitch about Fox News.