People are ******ed, but the media has a job to do and doesn't do it (the way it should), so I have no problem with blaming the media in this instance.

But I don't blame the media for all of it, either. I just blame it for being part of what's wrong as a whole.

Conflating some of these issues, one could argue that since free market isn't creating a media outlet that is successfully presenting news of the world in an unbiased, useful way, that this is precisely the sort job the government should be doing instead, to make sure it "gets done".
However, I think most of us can agree that a government run media is almost certainly going to fail horribly (is there an example of a successful government media?).

I find this interesting.

CBC in Canada is (currently) meeting what some people would consider successful state-run media:

- Not a shill for the Government (at least until the Liberals get back in power)
- Supports art nobody in their right mind (or with a concern for profit) would pay for

I, otoh, think it should be blown up. But it does pass the biggest smell test for Government media - it's not a propaganda machine.

That totally depends on your definition of "success."

All Government-run media sources are nothing more than propaganda machines. But they're generally very good at doing that job.

OK, maybe not all. I was unaware the CBC was Government-run.

Reducting that thought ad absurdum, we should probably have government control a lot of other things that aren't performing optimally. Sterilizing poor and/or unfortunately pigmented individuals so they won't be a drain on our optimal society would be a good start. There are 40,000 freeway deaths each year and we know for a fact that reducing the speed limit to 40 would eliminate at least 3/4 of those so really we need a Federal Speed police to enforce this. And outlaw alcohol, tobacco and all firearms.

As a matter of fact, just stay in your goddamn house, shut the **** up and do as you're told or we'll kick the crap out of you and toss you in a dungeon of anal rape until you conform. Otherwise, the terrorists win.

Well, Government owned and funded. It has permanent (and I mean permanent union style ) staff and management

What free markets are you talking about, the last time I checked ****, ****, **** couldn't even be said on TV. It's a government regulated market and politics is heavily involved in it indirectly as well (for example most papers follow certain political party agendas).
And how can you expect that any government would ever be interested in "presenting news of the world in an unbiased, useful way"

irony calibration imo

I get your point, but you know it's not the same thing. We are making things better for people. Our goal isn't to kill innocent civilians and say we are following orders. But i get your point -- if you are truly against the war, you do have a right to protest it. If the media portrayed the good we did in Iraq as much as they show the casualities, i think more people would be more supportive anyway.

regarding the media:

the major network news shows should try to be unbiased. They are not, but again, i dont think the govt or anyone should regulate them to be.

I don't even know what unbiased is supposed to mean. People can not be unbiased. I can't, you can't, I don't know why we think that newspeople can. What we can expect of people is not to actively push an agenda on us while pretending to be impartial.

For any event, any two people see two different things. There is no such thing as "what really happened." There is a guy who will tell you what he saw, and there is a guy who will tell you what he wants you to hear. Bias colors the first, the second is pure agenda.

mets,

how many civilian deaths would it take for the war to be unacceptable? Two hundred thousand? Six? Six million? I'm seriously asking.

Yep. Amp's points about bias are part of any journalism class worth a damn thing. And the second paragraph is evident in any two different stories about a sports game, they will always take slightly different paths in describing the same game.

I dont have an answer

I guess my main questions are, With Russia invading Georgia. Is Georgia still going to realistically vie for a national title. And will this somehow give the Falcons some sort of weird sympathy from the rest of the NFL? Will Matt Ryan win Rookie of the year?

*thunk**thunk**thunk**thunk**thunk**thunk**thunk** thunk**thunk*

Owwwwwwwwwwww my head ...

I'll take a shot at reviving the thread with a relatively safe topic. Post your electoral college predictions. Closest prediction wins a cookie.

This will be determined by totaling the electoral votes from states called incorrectly -- lowest error total wins. In other words, if you predict the right electoral numbers but get a bunch of the states wrong, you lose. Use http://www.270towin.com/ to put it together, screenshot, post.



Predicting that the three closest swing states will be Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, in that order.

Right now, I'd still favor Obama to win about 52-55% (not popular vote, but likelihood of winning). I'd primarily attribute that to three things: McCain's convention/Palin bounce is starting to fade as predicted at fivethirtyeight, the likelihood that the economy takes center stage with Lehman, Lynch, and AIG all in the news (which always favors Democrats), and a superior voter registration and get out the vote machine.

Given that near-coinflip, obviously I think it's a tight race. I think either way, the popular vote will be very tight. I do think that if McCain wins, he almost certainly wins by a slim electoral margin, whereas I think Obama has about a 25% chance of winning by 40-50+ EVs. The reasoning is that I think OH, VA, FL, NV are all still winnable but unlikely; however, I do think that if those do flip to Obama, at least two or three of them do (most likely OH, VA, NV -- my hopes are lowest in FL); if the economy truly becomes the key issue, all three of those are very gettable for Obama.

But obviously the map I posted is the prediction I think is most likely, with Colorado being the key swing state this year.

MadTown,

What kind of cookie?

Bad economies favour the Democrats? Or bad economies favour the non-incumbents?

My electoral map probably looks like Madtown's right now, but honestly at the moment it looks very very close to a coinflip in several key states.

Here's something kind of interesting and wacky. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a blog. He decided to commission a survey of economists about which Presidential candidate would be best for the economy. I'm not sure if the results are as useful as I would have hoped for because the sample is pretty biased in favor of democratic economists. He claims that this is a reflection of a basic fact that the majority of academic economists are democrats or independent. I don't know if that's true. In any case, it's kind of interesting. Here is the link.

CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/...omy/index.html

im assuming he means non-incumbents. cause if he means bad economies favor democrats that is so LOL

Democrats are favored in polls on the economy historically. This is conventional wisdom, and certainly not a controversial statement. Please cite something if you think this is incorrect.

And notice, I'm arguing that it favors Democrats politically. It's pretty clear where I stand on which party/candidate would be better for the economy, but that's not what I was arguing. That's specifically what I was trying to avoid with the "hey let's make electoral predictions" post, actually.

pumpkin cookie

When I look at that graph, from a quick browse, it looks like strong economies favour the incumbent, weak economies favour the non-incumbent party. It seems that the way it has worked out over the last 16 years (an odd number, imo) that slightly favours the democrats. A strong economy for 6 years in the 90s, Bush the 1st in charge during the early 90s recession, and the recent downturn...

The reason I'm expressed surprise at your statement, is bad economy strongly favours whatever party is not in power in Canada, with a lean towards the Conservatives, not the Liberals (equivalent to Republicans/Democrats respectively).