Could we include parallel universes as one of the options?
- Doppleganger

Sure, why not.
Lets make it super-broad for you...

How do you think life on earth came to be?

Sure, why not.
Lets make it super-broad for you...

How do you think life on earth came to be?
- Feeling Glucky?

Well I kinda lean towards the theory of abiogenesis.

Well I kinda lean towards the theory of abiogenesis.
- Doppleganger

Ok, and how do you think we came about that abiogenesis?

- the_cause2000

That's a pretty accurate representation of these discussions

yes. as per usual.
- kicksave856

Hard to believe it* was even questioned.







*Parallel Universes

Democracy is a form of Communism, aka Community, Collectivism, Statism. It is Majoritarianism and that is why the left wing progressives embrace that term the world over. I reject Democracy. Again, do you believe in the power of the state, or that of the individual as sovereign? Using democratic principles to elect a representative govt, that is bound by a set of rules, a constitution with certain protections to ensure the rights of the individual against the interest of a passionate majority does not a Democracy make. Liberty is understanding that no majority can ever take away the rights of the individual regardless of popularity of the idea.

There are more English than French, so lets get em! Let's revisit that slavery thing. Why not go after the rich who don't pay their fair share. There is no limit to this thinking. This is not liberty.

The 2% payroll tax increase clips $16.37 a week from take-home pay. … That’s the equivalent of losing all the 2012 gain in weekly earnings in one month.

Democracy is a form of Communism, aka Community, Collectivism, Statism. It is Majoritarianism and that is why the left wing progressives embrace that term the world over. I reject Democracy. Again, do you believe in the power of the state, or that of the individual as sovereign? Using democratic principles to elect a representative govt, that is bound by a set of rules, a constitution with certain protections to ensure the rights of the individual against the interest of a passionate majority does not a Democracy make. Liberty is understanding that no majority can ever take away the rights of the individual regardless of popularity of the idea.

There are more English than French, so lets get em! Let's revisit that slavery thing. Why not go after the rich who don't pay their fair share. There is no limit to this thinking. This is not liberty.
- Doppleganger

BAN GAY MARRIAGE!
NO ABORTIONS!

BAN GAY MARRIAGE!
NO ABORTIONS!
- Feeling Glucky?

- watsonnostaw

fukin Pikey

Everybody who's written or blogged about climate change on a prominent website (or, even worse, spoken about it on YouTube) knows the drill. Shortly after you post, the menagerie of trolls arrives. They're predominantly climate deniers, and they start in immediately arguing over the content and attacking the science—sometimes by slinging insults and even occasional obscenities. To cite a recent example:

What part of "we haven't warmed any in 16 years" don't you understand? Heh. "Cherry-picking" as defined by you alarmists: any time period selected containing data that refutes your hysterical hypothesis. Can be any length of time from 4 billion years to one hour. (frank) off, little man!

It was reasonably obvious already that these folks were doing nothing good for the public's understanding of the science of climate change (to say nothing of their own comprehension). But now there's actual evidence to back this idea up.

In a recent study, a team of researchers from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and several other institutions employed a survey of 1,183 Americans to get at the negative consequences of vituperative online comments for the public understanding of science. Participants were asked to read a blog post containing a balanced discussion of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology (which is already all around us and supports a $ 91 billion U.S. industry). The text of the post was the same for all participants, but the tone of the comments varied. Sometimes, they were "civil"—e.g., no name calling or flaming. But sometimes they were more like this: "If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot."

The researchers were trying to find out what effect exposure to such rudeness had on public perceptions of nanotech risks. They found that it wasn't a good one. Rather, it polarized the audience: Those who already thought nano-risks were low tended to become more sure of themselves when exposed to name-calling; while those who though nano-risks are high were more likely to move in their own favored direction. In other words, it appeared that pushing people's emotional buttons, through derogatory comments, made them double down on their pre-existing beliefs.

In the context of the psychological theory of motivated reasoning, this makes a great deal of sense. Based on pretty indisputable observations about how the brain works, the theory notes that people feel first, and think second. The emotions come faster than the "rational" thoughts—and also shape the retrieval of those thoughts from memory. Therefore, if reading insults activates one's emotions, the "thinking" process may be more likely to be defensive in nature, and focused on preserving one's identity and pre-existing beliefs.

The study did not examine online climate change trolls directly—but there is good reason to think that the effects of their obnoxious behavior will, if anything, be worse. As the researchers note in the paper, compared with climate change, relatively few people know much about or have strong feelings about nanotechnology. When it comes to climate change, in contrast, "the controversy that you see in comments falls on more fertile ground, and resonates more with an established set of values that the reader may bring to the table," explains study co-author Dietram Scheufele, a professor of science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If commenters have stronger emotions and more of a stake, it stands to reason that the polarizing effect of their insults may be even stronger—although, to be sure, this needs to be studied.

The upshot of this research? This is not your father's media environment any longer. In the golden oldie days of media, newspaper articles were consumed in the context of…other newspaper articles. But now, adds Scheufele, it's like "reading the news article in the middle of the town square, with people screaming in my ear what I should believe about it."

To be sure, we all retain the option of not reading the comments. Which, in light of the latest research, is looking smarter than ever.

OMAHA, Neb. (CBSDC) — Hundreds of Wendy’s workers are seeing their hours cut back because of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

WOWT-TV reports that nearly 300 employees at 11 Wendy’s locations in the Omaha area will have their hours reduced to 28 hours a week because the franchise owner says he can’t afford to pay his employees health care.

“It has a huge effect on me and pretty much everybody that I work with,” employee T.J. Growbeck told the station. “I’m hoping that I can get some sort of promotion because then I would get my hours, but everybody is shooting for that because of the hours being cut.”

Gary Burdette, vice president of operations for the local franchise, told WOWT-TV that he can’t afford to keep the fast-food restaurants open if he has to pay for his employees’ health care.

The president’s Affordable Health Care Act requires businesses to pay health care for employees that work more than 32 hours a week.

The Supreme Court ruled the health care law was constitutional last summer during a contentious debate.

Republicans have been masterful in going on virtually any media outlet to lie about actually caring about the deficit, but no one is calling them out on it.
There is a constant refrain from conservatives that President Obama has not laid out a plan to make cuts in spending to address the deficit. Friday was just the latest version of it, but it’s nearly constant on all media outlets.
Is the media’s collective memory so bad that they can’t remember back just a year ago…or even a week?
Obama tried to sweeten the man-made fiscal cliff “crisis” with chained Consumer Price Index, or “chained CPI,” on Social Security and was rejected. Not by those in his own party who were rightly upset that he was offering an unnecessary concession, but by Republicans who didn’t think it was enough.
As if that is too much to remember, during the last man-made hostage negotiation on the debt ceiling, Obama offered a $4.1 trillion dollar “grand bargain” that Speaker John Boehner walked away from. Again, his proposal would have had Democrats howling with rage had it passed, but Republicans could have taken it. Instead, it would have been seen as a win for Obama at a time he was up for re-election–and they couldn’t have that. In addition, it wasn’t an ideologically pure win for Tea Party “conservatives” so, no deal.
As we head into this next “man-made” fiscal crisis, Republicans are saying that Obama is unwilling to cut spending, which is made up out of whole cloth and divorced from reality, but the media is all playing along.
Obama keeps saying he wants a balanced approach, and he keeps offering options, but Republicans won’t accept anything less than effectively dismantling the social safety net and zero taxes on the rich and corporations, therefore, Obama is “unwilling” to make tough decisions.
Republicans hold up the Ryan budget as their offer to cut spending, as if it won’t explode the deficit. Once again, they are lying and nobody seems to want to point it out.
Just remember as we head into this next “crisis,” which is totally manufactured by right wing Republicans who helped create this huge debt problem though unpaid spending on two wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, Medicare part D and policies that created the worst economy since the Great Depression, you can tell when they are lying; their lips will be moving.

When Florida’s Rep. Allen West, an imposing and muscular Tea Party hawk, was voted out of office on Election Day, the whole nation won a small but important victory.

The black politician brought diversity to the far right, but it failed to help him against Democrat Patrick Murphy.

A shrill descendant of Joe McCarthy, who liked to count the number of supposed Communists in the House, this hurler of big lies finally conceded two weeks after the election, all the while claiming that “there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results,” which of course could not be proven.

But when the final count was complete, West had actually lost by a bigger margin than initially thought. It’s anyone guess, however, when he will stop talking about “questions” raised by the voting process.

Most Americans probably know that voter fraud is a Fox News specialty, a favorite demented talking point deployed by Sean Hannity and his fraudulent crew. It is another example of what the Daily Beast’s David Frum calls a misleading “entertainment complex” that has lulled the right into a false sleep.
In fact, it was the GOP that engaged in chicanery at the ballot box, trying to pass voter ID laws that would have likely prevented minorities from voting. But you weren’t going to hear about that on the network of Roger Ailes.

Now, the loons are finally being run out of the party — or, at least, out of office.
The big waste of GOP money on candidates like West, Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana (not to mention good old Mitt Romney himself) rose into a mushroom cloud of massive disaster.

Unlike the cloud predicted by Condoleezza Rice if we did not wage war in Iraq, this destructive cloud came up in a very illuminating way.

But while the radical right is on the run, it’s far from dead. Its lies have sunk deep into the national consciousness, as evidenced by a recent meeting of Georgia Republicans at which they listened to a seminar lasting four hours about how President Obama — who was compared in one graphic caught by cameras to the totalitarian murderers Mao and Stalin — and the UN were using mind control to influence honest Americans.

Rachel Maddow rightly blasted this “nonsense” on her show, comparing it with a comment by the leader of the Maine GOP, who was surprised that “dozens of black people who came in and voted” in “some parts of the state.” Later, this bizarre true believer defended himself by saying he isn’t racist because, you see, “I play basketball every Sunday with a black guy.”

Even some on the right are starting to realize that the Republican Party will simply implode if this keeps up for another election cycle.

For example, Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative-as-ever Weekly Standard, recently said a shocking thing that must have scared the bejesus out of Rupert Murdoch’s shock troops: “It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think.”

He is right, of course, though you won’t ever hear Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and his posse in the Senate admit as much. Their only goal is to make Obama look weak; to make sure he achieves nothing of which he can be proud — even now that he has won his second term.

Things keep getting bad for our national liars. The rednecks of all colors may end up being asked to leave the party, and then we might have a real political debate that engages in ideas, not factoids.

Now that would be the change that refreshes.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.co...e-1.1206028#ixzz2HaSIMxN0

The basic Republican lie about taxes is that money (or wealth) is taxed. It’s not.
What is taxed is instead the transfer of money (or wealth). There’s a big difference.
When you buy something, and the sale is taxed, what’s taxed is the transfer of your money to the vendor – not the money itself.
When a wealthy person dies and an estate tax is triggered, what’s taxed is not the wealth but the transfer of that wealth to the person’s heirs.
When a worker is taxed on the income he receives from an employer, what’s being taxed is not the wealth that is earned but the transfer of that wealth to that worker, from that employer.
If the person happens to be self-employed, he’s being taxed on the net income that has been transferred to him by his customers, after deducting his expenses to his suppliers.
Similarly, when a corporation’s profits are taxed, what’s taxed is that corporation’s net income, which has been transferred to that corporation by its customers, after deducting the corporation’s expenses, which the corporation has paid to its suppliers.
Republicans vociferously deny all of this. They claim, for example, that stockholders are “taxed twice on a corporation’s income – first at the corporate level, and then at the individual level.”
But instead, those are actually not monies at all that are being taxed – two separate transfers of money are being separately taxed – and a corporation isn’t ever taxed on its money (such as Republicans presume).
And they similarly claim that when a very rich person’s wealth is subject to an estate tax (which they lie and call a “death tax” even though fewer than 1% of people are rich enough for their estates to trigger any tax when transferred; so, this “death tax” applies to only very few “deaths,” and death is never really taxed), the money is “being taxed twice,” because (supposedly) “it” was taxed “while it was being built up” (when actually “it” had not been taxed at all), and then is being taxed “yet again” as it goes to the children or other heirs.
The only major exception to this transaction-basis of taxes is “property taxes” – the tax paid each year on real estate one owns. But that’s not a federally applied tax anyway, so it’s irrelevant to Republicans’ assertions in the ongoing federal tax-debates.
What is the purpose of all these Republican lies? All of these lies challenge some form of tax – specifically, a form of tax that covers a wealth-transfer that, not coincidentally, the wealthiest 1% have purchased the Republican Party in order to fight and argue against. It’s their only “moral argument” against taxes on the top 1%.
But does a typical car-salesman argue that there is some type of “moral principle” that should prevent him from being taxed “yet again” on income that came to him via his employer’s sale of cars to customers? Does he say “That’s double-taxation” on the money that went from the customer to the dealer to this employee?
No (not unless he’s a fool, or else a liar himself). Ordinary people aren’t as crooked as the propaganda-makers of the Republican Party are (and need to be). Then, why do the few extremely wealthy people complain against the estate tax by using basically the same ridiculous false reasoning?
And why do corporate stockholders use that very same fraudulent reasoning when arguing against taxes on capital gains or dividends (“It’s double-taxation!”)?

Rich people, and their political agents, do this because there are enough suckers out there who will believe such lies.
Honest individuals don’t lie about taxes.
And intelligent individuals don’t believe the lies about taxes – and they reject the liars who peddle those lies.
The only way to stop fraudsters from fraud, or to stop Republicans from their lies, is to punish them with defeat for doing it. That would put the Republican Party out of business.


Read more: http://www.businessinside...axes-2013-1#ixzz2HaSnHPL6

They built that: how a Republican lie turned into an alternate universe
The GOP's scorched-earth rhetoric about government has completely warped their actual grasp of economic reality

On 17 July, President Barack Obama spoke at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Virginia. It was a typical event for an incumbent president who is seeking a second term. In his remarks, he offered his vision of government's role in spurring entrepreneurship and creating jobs in the United States:

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the internet so that all the companies could make money off the internet."

This is all fairly boilerplate rhetoric – a basic recitation of how Democrats view the role of government and its interplay with the private sector. But in this statement, there was one phrase that Republicans have grabbed on to like a famished dog with a new bone:

"You didn't build that."

That single phrase, taken out of context by Republicans, has become the GOP's symbol of Obama's supposed contempt for the free market and entrepreneurship, and for his socialist assault on America. Sure, it's a misleading lie to cast it that way. But in the hands of Republicans intent on furthering their vision of the free market as a fragile institution whose success relies on as little interaction with the federal government as possible, it quickly became a stand-in for all that is wrong with Obama.

And so, the Republicans made "We built that" the theme of Tuesday's convention proceedings. Speaker after speaker hammered on this theme, accusing Obama of disrespecting small business. But they did so with almost a wilful sense of hypocrisy. For example, Delaware lieutenant governor candidate Sher Valenzuela attacked Obama for the line despite the fact that, just a few months ago, she gave a detailed speech to a business group about how they could do a better job getting government contracts.

The shining example, however, was Phil Archuletta, a New Mexico businessman whose business makes outdoor signs – in part, for the federal government. Archuletta's chief complaint against the president was that Obama's stimulus bill had made it harder for him to win government contracts – an odd message for an evening dedicated to the notion that small businesses need government to get out of the way.

Democratic partisans were busy tweeting out the fact that Obama has signed multiple pieces of legislation providing tax breaks for small businesses, but such "facts" simply bounce harmlessly off the GOP's protective truth shield. Indeed, if there is one overarching takeaway, not only from the sessions so far at the Republican convention, but also from the last year of political campaigning, it is that Republicans not only toil in their own narrowly and misleadingly constructed world, but really are just making stuff up.

There were plenty of instances on display last night, beyond the "you didn't build it" meme. The most pernicious and racially-coded example is the oft-repeated claim by the Romney campaign that Obama, by granting waivers to states, has gutted the work requirement of the welfare reform bill (passed more than 15 years ago). The charge has become a crucial element of Romney's attacks on the president, even though, as many independent fact-checkers have pointed out, it simply isn't true. It's another lie; and yet, it was repeated last night by former Democratic Congressman Artur Davis, and again, by failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who went a step further and accused Obama of creating a "nightmare of dependency".

These are the big lies; but there are so many other ones that it's almost impossible to keep track. For example, speaker after speaker denounced Obama for running up $5tn in debt. While budget deficits that have increased the national debt have occurred during Obama's presidency, only someone who believes history began on 20 January 2009 (when Obama took office) can think he is fully responsible.

As this handy chart, put together by the folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the debt is a result of a confluence of factors: the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decline in tax revenue from the economic downturn, Tarp, and – very slightly – recovery measures put in place by President Obama. Republicans have completely washed their hands of any role and any responsibility for America's ever-increasing red tape – and it should be noted that the budgets of both Romney and Ryan (when he served in the House) would, because of massive tax cuts, further explode the deficit.

Republicans also decry the president's jobs record and they certainly have a point, but again, to blame Obama for 8% unemployment is to ignore the fact that Congress exists: it has regularly blocked any and all job creation measures ever since Obama's stimulus bill, which did create about 2.5 million jobs.

Then, there are assertions like keynote speaker New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's claim that Americans are "overtaxed", even thought the tax burden on taxpayers is at its lowest point since the Truman administration – and Obama has repeatedly cut taxes as president. Indeed, as Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) said to me:

"Republicans say they value low taxes and hard work but fought until the 11th hour against the only tax levied directly on work: the payroll tax."

But all of this is at pace with a conservative worldview that considers government to be nothing more than malevolent interference with the smooth operation of the private sector – except when it's not. "Jobs don't come from government," said Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz last night, a view that basically sums up GOP economic thinking. But if you listened to Republican governors on Tuesday, you might have found yourself surprised to discover that, in their states, the government has played an oddly integral role in spurring job creation. If you listened to Mary Fallin, governor of Oklahoma, extol the virtues of the energy industry in her state and bemoan "more government, bigger spending and more regulation", you might never know that the oil and gas industry is deeply reliant on – and spends millions lobbying for – tax breaks from the federal government.

One can believe that government should play a less direct role in the workings of the private economy – clearly, this is a defensible notion. But to listen to Republicans harping on Obama's "you didn't build that" line is to hear a party that views "government" in the most simplistic imaginable terms. This isn't a governing philosophy; it's a caricature of how the economy actually works.

To be sure, it's hardly unusual for political rhetoric to take liberties with the truth, or to stretch an argument to breaking-point, but with Republicans today, the issues runs much deeper. Very simply, the way they talk about what the federal government does or should do, and about the role of spending, taxation and regulation, is more than just a compendium of lies: it describes an alternate reality.

In the GOP's defense: at least they can argue they built that.

• Editor's note: this article originally identified Mary Fallin as governor of Nebraska; this was amended to Oklahoma at 12.30am on 30 August 2012.

• This article was further amended on 3 September 2012 to clarify Thomas Schaller's affiliation.

The racist nature of the Republican Party's most effective lies
America's media could expose Romney's pattern of pervasive lying, and the racist subtext that runs through much of it.

The following is what Mitt Romney now claims, as the centrepiece of his most recent efforts to make inroads in the all-important swing states. It is also a flat-out lie - and Romney knows it:

"On July 12th, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare cheque."

That's from a Romney ad that top Romney ad strategist, Ashley O'Connor, called "Our most effective ad", saying "It's new information". False information, as it turns out, which fact-checkers have roundly criticised in no uncertain terms. PolitiFact rated Romney's claims as "pants on fire" lies, while the Washington Post's fact checker gave the ad four Pinocchios - its highest rating for mendacity, and FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Centre agreed that Romney's claims were false, stating bluntly, "A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted 'a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements'. The plan does neither of those things."

The Romney campaign has pushed back hard, essentially saying, "take a hike, this is working for us". The exact words, from O'Connor: ''Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."

But it's not just the fact-checkers and political reporters in general. Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough weighed in as well:

"I've been looking for a week-and-a-half to try to figure out the basis of this welfare reform ad, I've scoured the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, I've scoured... the ad's completely false. It's just completely false.

"And I'm pretty stunned."

Not only that, but Romney himself is on record requesting exactly the sorts of changes that Obama signed off on - only on a broader scale, applicable to all states, and signed into law, not just an executive order. In 2005, the Republican Governor's association sent a letter to Congress on the subject of re-authorising so-called "welfare reform", continuing the process along the lines that Republicans supported. It touched on several different issues, one of which was "state flexibility", about which the governors wrote:

"The Senate bill provides states with the flexibility to manage their TANF programmes and effectively serve their low-income populations. Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programmes are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work."

The letter was signed by four Republican candidates for president this cycle: Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry and, of course, Mitt Romney, who were all Republican governors at the time. They were making a traditional conservative states' rights argument.

But now, when Obama has signed an executive order providing just this sort of flexibility (yet another example of his deeply-ingrained bipartisan instincts), Romney is turning everything on its head, portraying Obama's willingness to go along with Republican ideas on "welfare reform" as the exact opposite: a divisive move to "gut" the process, return to the "bad old days", and play to his base - which probably never even heard of the waivers until Romney started making an issue of them.


Inside Story: US 2012 -
Obama hounded by conspiracy theories
This isn't the only lie the Romney campaign has pushed and pushed hard - not by a long shot. But it is the most revealing, because of its clear racial subtext, as well as the Romney campaign's in-your-face refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and its proud citing of the ads' effectiveness.

Many media critics - and working journalists as well - have taken note of how the Romney campaign seems to have entered new territory in the boldness and pervasiveness of its lying, so much so that an open debate is breaking out about what can be done.

This has been the subject of several posts at the Press Think blog of NYU professor/leading media critic Jay Rosen, most recently, ''You're not entitled to your own facts' vs. That's your opinion. Kiss my ad".

There are two deeply troubling aspects to this debate: First, the assumption that nothing can be done about systematic lying is historically false. Second, the abstract nature of the argument distracts from the concrete, racist nature of Romney's most effective lies.

The lie superhighway

In the piece just mentioned, Rosen highlights the widespread media perplexity about how to deal with massive campaign lying, but this perplexity is itself perplexing, since the media has already proven that it knows very well how to deal with campaign lying - a point that Media Matters' Jamison Foser forcefully made in a column titled "Privileging the Lie" from September 2008.

Foser began by responding to the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, talking about the McCain campaign's frequently-repeated false claim that Sarah Palin stopped the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" boondoggle, and explaining McCain's success in steamrolling the truth with the claim that "the electorate doesn't seem to penalise campaigns for deliberately distorting the record of their candidate and their opponent".

This claim is provably false, Foser pointed out: in the 2000 election, Gore's propensity to lie, exaggerate and otherwise distort the truth was a major media story theme - one of the top two themes in coverage of Gore, according to a Pew Research Centre media analysis covering 2,400 stories between February and June 2000.

A story in the Columbia Journalism Review explained, "[R]esearchers found that a whopping 76 per cent of the coverage included one of two themes: that Gore lies and exaggerates or is marred by scandal. The most common theme about Bush, the study found, is that he is a 'different kind of Republican'."

The impact this had in November was huge: in exit polling, voters citing personal honesty as a top concern - the most-cited personal quality by a large margin - favoured Bush over Gore by a whopping 80-15 margin in exit polling.


In-depth coverage of the US presidential election
Of course, the notion of Gore as a wild-eyed liar was itself a whopper of epic proportions. Gore never claimed he "invented the internet", for example, only that he played a key policy role, which pioneering internet architects have said is true.

In September 2000, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote a public statement defending Gore's role and reputation, saying, among other things, "As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high-speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship."

Thus Gore's marque "lie" of the 2000 campaign was actually the truth - though the media never seemed to notice.

But regardless of the terrible reporting in this case - possibly the only way such a real-life experiment could have been run - the record clearly shows that presenting a candidate as a habitual liar definitely does have an effect. The press is not powerless to deal with the pattern of systematic lying and deceit - it only has to sharpen the basic reporting skill of recognising when lies are being told... and when it's being sold a bill of goods.

Hence, all the handwringing that Rosen refers to is itself based on a pants-on-fire lie - the lie of media powerlessness. The real press weakness is that - thanks largely to decades of right-wing intimidation - it will never go after a Republican for systematic lying the way it went after Gore for imaginary and invented lies. If the press were to go after a Republican, it would certainly face intense right-wing push-back, but the impact of such reporting would be real and substantial.

The proliferation of falsity

What's more, if the American press has any interest at all in defending the reality-based Enlightenment tradition on which America was founded, this is a fight it should welcome. As Foser explained, there are three ways the media can cover false political claims: They can ignore it, they can adopt it as the basis of their reporting, or they can centre their reporting on the spreading of falsehood. Foser is clear about which option is best:

"The first option privileges the lie by allowing a candidate to run around saying things that are not true - but at least it does not help spread the lie further.

"The second option - even if it includes mention of the fact that the claim is false - privileges the lie a great deal by helping the candidate spread the false claims...

"The third option punishes the falsehood. If you think the media's job is to bring their readers and viewers the truth, this is obviously the best of the three options."

In the 2000 election cycle, the press adopted the third option with respect to Gore. The only problem was, there were no actual falsehoods involved. What's more, the falsehoods alleged were mostly divorced from any policy.

Gore's comment about his role in advocating for creation of the internet was typical: The comment was made once, not in a campaign context, and was never connected to any policy matter during the campaign. This was a far cry from the McCain campaign's repeated lies about Sarah Palin and the "Bridge to Nowhere", or the Romney campaign's high-profile welfare lies today.

If the media is serious about adopting Foser's third option, and doing the job of bringing people the truth, then it's important to not just get the right lie, but also to provide context for understanding it, to explain how it connects with everything else - past, present, and future.



This brings us to the second problem with the insider debate about reporting on Romney's lies: While many seem to be struggling with the problem of Romney's lies in the abstract - Rosen calls it "the post-truth campaign" - there's something terribly concrete going on here that cries out for a much higher level of urgent attention, if not outrage.

That is the fact that Romney's lying seeks to divide America, primarily along the lines of race. His welfare lie works in concert with other racial lies as well - such as the voter fraud myth used to justify voter-suppression laws in numerous GOP-dominated states. And, of course, Romney tries to cover his tracks with a classic example of projection - throwing out the accusation that Obama is the one trying to divide America.

The racism involved is not subtle, for those with any sense of history... or politics. This is neatly laid out in a story by Ron Fournier (distinctively not a member of the "liberal media") at the National Journal "Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card":

"Why ignore fact-checkers? First, internal GOP polling and focus groups offer convincing evidence that the welfare ad is hurting Obama. Second, the welfare issue, generally speaking, triggers anger in white blue-collar voters that is easily directed toward Democrats. This information comes from senior GOP strategists who have worked both for President Bush and Romney. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

"Furthermore, a senior GOP pollster said he has shared with the Romney camp surveys showing that white working-class voters who backed Obama in 2008 have moved to Romney in recent weeks 'almost certainly because of the welfare ad. We're talking a (percentage) point or two, but that could be significant'."

The race for voters

There is nothing new about this. Republicans have been doing this consciously and systematically ever since Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy in 1968 - and they stumbled into it inadvertently four years earlier, when Barry Goldwater, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, won only his own home state, and five Deep South states, four of which Democrat Adlai Stevenson carried just eight years earlier, while winning a total of just three more Southern and border states.

The almost total reversal of the electoral maps between 1956 and 1964 proved prophetic of what was eventually to come. Republican strategist Lee Atwater explained in a then-anonymous interview in the early 1980s:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'African American, African American, African American'. By 1968 you can't say 'African American' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."

This is the historical context behind Romney's welfare lie, and much more of modern Republicanism as well. The Tea Party movement - the motivational spine of today's GOP - is a direct descendent of this racist political strategy, despite numerous (arguably honest, if naïve) protestations that its members are "not racists", sometimes even using language echoing the disingenuous 1960s claim that "some of my best friends are black".

But this rebuttal, centred on self-reported conscious individual attitudes, misses the very point that Atwater highlights - the political appeal of cutting taxes and cutting government derives from two connected reasons: its racist appeal and its deniability as a racist appeal.

This isn't spit-in-your-face racism, but it's still racist in its impact and implications - and for good reason. It comes out of an ideology steeped in racist attitudes for over 200 years. The idea that there's suddenly no racist connection is belied by recent polling data, as well centuries of history, both of which ought to be included in reporting that follows Foser's third option of calling out political lies.

Roots in the south

In fact, as Robin Einhorn makes clear in her book American Taxation, American Slavery, the anti-tax "small government" tradition in American politics comes directly out of the Southern slaveholding system, which always opposed a vibrant public sphere and popular control over matters of government taxation and spending.

Both of these were potential threats to the power of wealthy slave owners, and were commonplace in Northern colonies like Massachusetts, where the Boston Tea Party took place with a very different agenda: the agenda of representation and democratic self-determination rather than taxation per se.


Fault Lines - Politics, Religion and the Tea Party
While the slave-holding South practiced a variation of feudal politics commonly practiced for millennia, the more prosperous and forward-looking North invented something new, specifically American and genuinely exceptional: the high-tax, increasingly industrialised north developed the American System of public infrastructure investment, tariff protections and a centralised banking system, which I wrote about in my early August column, "What Romney's Lies are Trying to Hide".

It was conceived as a way to strengthen national bonds, across regional and occupational divisions, as well as strengthening the national economy as a whole. It's this American System, first fully articulated by Henry Clay, which forms the political foundation for Obama's policy proposals, and trying to label them as Marxist radicalism instead merely repeats the long history of Southern slave-owning elite misrepresenting Northern politics to advance their own narrow interests and make them seem broadly popular.

The Republican demonisation of Obama today is thus historically a piece with the Southern demonisation of Martin Luther King, Jr as a "Communist dupe".

Quite the opposite of today's Tea Party movement, the American System was a true ideological descendent of the original Boston Tea Party, conceived in direct opposition to the British System of laissez-faire capitalism, and dedicated to giving the American people control over their long-term economic and political destiny.

As I wrote in that earlier column, Obama may be too much of a laissez-faire neo-liberal to be a true son of Henry Clay, but he still retains crucial elements of Clay's vision, not least a desire to bind warring interests together, and to invest in America as a whole. But Obama's opponents - Mitt Romney now first among them - are still bitterly opposed to Clay's vision of national unity and prosperity based on strong public institutions that facilitate individual success and private enterprise.

A press that truly sought to inform the public would make all this plain. It would thus give us the "great debate" about the future of America that many had expected, particularly when Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. It would also lead to a landslide Republican defeat, because what the GOP actually stands for is incredibly unpopular, particularly once its intentions and history are made plain.

And that, in part, is why the press America actually has will never come close to doing its job, any more than it did during the run-up to the Iraq War. But even a few baby steps in the right direction could prove crucial in determining the election in November. Moreover, if racist lies come to carry a consequence, that will help to shut them down. Why would any self-respecting journalist not want to see that happen?

Paul Rosenberg is the senior editor of Random Lengths News, a bi-weekly alternative community newspaper.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

CABLE NEWS RACE
TUES JAN 8 2013

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,523,000
CMDY DAILY SHOW 2,108,000
MTV SNOOKI 2,085,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,049,000
FOXNEWS FIVE 1,918,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 1,861,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,776,000
CMDY COLBERT 1,541,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,231,000
MSNBC MADDOW 983,000
MSNBC MATTHEWS 942,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 854,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 866,000
CNN PIERS 797,000
CNN COOPER 452,000

CABLE NEWS RACE
TUES JAN 8 2013

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,523,000
CMDY DAILY SHOW 2,108,000
MTV SNOOKI 2,085,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,049,000
FOXNEWS FIVE 1,918,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 1,861,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,776,000
CMDY COLBERT 1,541,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,231,000
MSNBC MADDOW 983,000
MSNBC MATTHEWS 942,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 854,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 866,000
CNN PIERS 797,000
CNN COOPER 452,000
- Doppleganger

Conservative Media Lie To Conservatives Because That's What Conservatives Want
—By Adam Serwer| Thu Nov. 8, 2012 9:50 AM PST
105

Unskewed polls Dean Chambers predicts the outcome of the 2012 election.
On Election Night, I tweeted that Republicans shocked about Mitt Romney's loss Tuesday should be angry at a conservative media that misled them about the former Massachusetts' governor's chances.

In the waning days of the race, much of this manifested in raising doubts about the polls and comical exaggerations about the possibility of a Romney landslide. Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that "everything except the polls points to a Romney landslide," but the problem went beyond mavens like Limbaugh to afflict more well-regarded political analysts like Michael Barone and George Will. The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost wrote, "I am not willing to take polls at face value anymore. I am more interested in connecting the polls to history and the long-run structure of American politics, and when I do that I see a Romney victory." Analysts like Karl Rove—who through his stewardship of outside spending groups had a clear financial interest in giving upbeat assessments of Romney's chances—were given prominent perches to hoodwink the viewers of Fox News and the readers of the Wall Street Journal. And as Media Matters' Simon Maloy documents, Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post's pro-Romney blogger, expressed a far less sanguine view of campaign events after the election than she did when she covered them in real time.

The problem goes beyond the conservative media, however—even Republican-leaning pollsters like Rasmussen and Gravis Marketing proved poor predictors of the final outcome, while results from some Democratic-leaning firms like Public Policy Polling were actually closer to the final result than traditional powerhouses like Gallup.

All this has reopened the debate about "epistemic closure," the term libertarian writer Julian Sanchez used* to describe the closed universe from which conservatives receive their information, in which those who deviate from the official party line are deemed apostates who are to be excommunicated. Erik Kain, writing at Mother Jones, says this is in part a business model: "There's big money in controversy, and controversy is what the Glenn Becks of the world do best."

Ideology can place blinders on everyone, of course—I don't know how many liberal friends I've tried to talk out of their affinity for rent control—but the incentives for misleading one's audience are not evenly distributed across the left-leaning and right-leaning media. The Romney surge after the first debate didn't translate to a widespread liberal belief about systemic bias among polling firms, for example. Much of the conservative media is simply far more cozy with the Republican Party than its Democratic counterparts (as exemplified by the numerous Fox hosts and contributors who moonlight as Republican fundraisers), which makes necessary detachment difficult. Having an opinion isn't an obstacle to good journalism or analysis, but no one wants to derail their own gravy train. Departing from the party line, particularly if one does so in a manner that seems favorable to Obama, would be to reveal one as an apostate, a tool of liberalism. There were independent-minded conservative analysts who diverged from this trend, but few were listening to them.

I think the business model theory works, but I would suggest that the problem lies not just with outlets like Fox but also with their audiences. That is, I think my original tweet, blaming the conservative media for misleading the readers who depend on them, doesn't capture the fullness of the problem. Conservative media lies to its audience because much of its audience wants to be lied to. Those lies actually have far more drastic consequences for governance (think birthers and death panels) than for elections, where the results can't be, for lack of a better word, "skewed."

Perhaps that will change. Dean Chambers, the gay-baiting proprietor of Unskewedpolls.com, one of the alternate universes conservatives retreated to in order to reassure themselves of a Romney victory, told Business Insider that Scott Rasmussen, the owner of a Republican leaning polling firm "had a lot of explaining to do." He's not the only one.

cut n' paste fest 2013

cut n' paste fest 2013
- kicksave856

It's a DEBATE!

Conservative Media Lie To Conservatives Because That's What Conservatives Want
—By Adam Serwer| Thu Nov. 8, 2012 9:50 AM PST
105

Unskewed polls Dean Chambers predicts the outcome of the 2012 election.
On Election Night, I tweeted that Republicans shocked about Mitt Romney's loss Tuesday should be angry at a conservative media that misled them about the former Massachusetts' governor's chances.

In the waning days of the race, much of this manifested in raising doubts about the polls and comical exaggerations about the possibility of a Romney landslide. Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that "everything except the polls points to a Romney landslide," but the problem went beyond mavens like Limbaugh to afflict more well-regarded political analysts like Michael Barone and George Will. The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost wrote, "I am not willing to take polls at face value anymore. I am more interested in connecting the polls to history and the long-run structure of American politics, and when I do that I see a Romney victory." Analysts like Karl Rove—who through his stewardship of outside spending groups had a clear financial interest in giving upbeat assessments of Romney's chances—were given prominent perches to hoodwink the viewers of Fox News and the readers of the Wall Street Journal. And as Media Matters' Simon Maloy documents, Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post's pro-Romney blogger, expressed a far less sanguine view of campaign events after the election than she did when she covered them in real time.

The problem goes beyond the conservative media, however—even Republican-leaning pollsters like Rasmussen and Gravis Marketing proved poor predictors of the final outcome, while results from some Democratic-leaning firms like Public Policy Polling were actually closer to the final result than traditional powerhouses like Gallup.

All this has reopened the debate about "epistemic closure," the term libertarian writer Julian Sanchez used* to describe the closed universe from which conservatives receive their information, in which those who deviate from the official party line are deemed apostates who are to be excommunicated. Erik Kain, writing at Mother Jones, says this is in part a business model: "There's big money in controversy, and controversy is what the Glenn Becks of the world do best."

Ideology can place blinders on everyone, of course—I don't know how many liberal friends I've tried to talk out of their affinity for rent control—but the incentives for misleading one's audience are not evenly distributed across the left-leaning and right-leaning media. The Romney surge after the first debate didn't translate to a widespread liberal belief about systemic bias among polling firms, for example. Much of the conservative media is simply far more cozy with the Republican Party than its Democratic counterparts (as exemplified by the numerous Fox hosts and contributors who moonlight as Republican fundraisers), which makes necessary detachment difficult. Having an opinion isn't an obstacle to good journalism or analysis, but no one wants to derail their own gravy train. Departing from the party line, particularly if one does so in a manner that seems favorable to Obama, would be to reveal one as an apostate, a tool of liberalism. There were independent-minded conservative analysts who diverged from this trend, but few were listening to them.

I think the business model theory works, but I would suggest that the problem lies not just with outlets like Fox but also with their audiences. That is, I think my original tweet, blaming the conservative media for misleading the readers who depend on them, doesn't capture the fullness of the problem. Conservative media lies to its audience because much of its audience wants to be lied to. Those lies actually have far more drastic consequences for governance (think birthers and death panels) than for elections, where the results can't be, for lack of a better word, "skewed."

Perhaps that will change. Dean Chambers, the gay-baiting proprietor of Unskewedpolls.com, one of the alternate universes conservatives retreated to in order to reassure themselves of a Romney victory, told Business Insider that Scott Rasmussen, the owner of a Republican leaning polling firm "had a lot of explaining to do." He's not the only one.
- Pecafan Fan

Wow, Left wing progressive Adam Serwer and Mother Jones claiming the Conservative Media "lies"............I"M SHOCKED!!!!

Now don't tell the Huffington Post is the standard bearer of the "Truth"!!