How many Democratic Senators will Lose Their Seats?

Daryl wrote:Perceptions of media bias seem to change depending on which team you back. In Australia the conservative side (particularly government members) are convinced that our national broadcaster (ABC) is strongly biased to the left or progressive side. I will attach a link below to an exhaustive article compiling a number of independent surveys that all show it to be either neutral or slightly biased to the right.
The actual details will doubtless be boring to our US friends here, but I am including it for those who want to verify my comment, and possible some may be interested in the various methodologies.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/databl ... -australia

Incidentally our conservative party (equivalent to Republicans or Torys) call themselves Liberals. The most obvious of many lies they propagate.

I preface my comments stating that I am agnostic about media bias in Australia. My only experience regarding such bias relates to yours and some of your countrymen's responses to Fox News in the US. That alone predisposes me to believe the non-liberals' claims. That predisposition doesn't move me to delve deeper.

I absolutely agree that perception of bias is affected by ones own political biases.

Consider me guilty as charged. Anyone who is not to the right of Atilla theHun and Ghengis Kahn is an effete liberal.

However; anyone doing "objective" research that purportedly demonstrates that the media is neutral or biased to the right is themselves biased.

A prime demonstration of this occurred during one of the Obama vs Romney debates regarding the Obama adminstration's mischaracterization of the Beghazi attacks as a spontaneous response to a movie that Muslims would find offensive ( if they had ever heard of it) rather than an organized terrorist attack. Romney was castigating Obama for this blatant lie when Glenn Eifill the moderator interjectedto assert that Obama was correct. It was of course technically true (Obama had used the word "terrorism" only once) but utter BS n context of the more numerous administration statements and subsequent persecution of the filmmaker. The fact of the matter is that the media are so profoundly biased that they are incapable of recognizing it.

You like most of the foreigners as well as some Americans on this forum suffer from the same
problem. Your own political biases affect your perceptions of reality so profoundly that you simply can not recognize the possibility that your perceptions might be in error. In your case, your perceptions of reality in the US are based primarily on reported summaries by Australian media based primarily on the reporting of American lamestream media that is itself profoundly biased. How else can one explain your insistence that the TEA Party that had ZERO political power in 2008 was somehow responsible for the abysmally stupid policies of the US government during the critical 2008-2011 time period when all of the bailouts, stimuli, and "Continuing Resolutions" in lieu of a formal budget were passed. While I am tempted to conclude that you are either being intentionally dishonest or have shit for brains, it is probable that your perceptions of reality are so profoundly effected by your own biases that you simply can not recognize objective facts.

Daryl wrote:Perceptions of media bias seem to change depending on which team you back. In Australia the conservative side (particularly government members) are convinced that our national broadcaster (ABC) is strongly biased to the left or progressive side. I will attach a link below to an exhaustive article compiling a number of independent surveys that all show it to be either neutral or slightly biased to the right.
The actual details will doubtless be boring to our US friends here, but I am including it for those who want to verify my comment, and possible some may be interested in the various methodologies.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/databl ... -australia

Incidentally our conservative party (equivalent to Republicans or Torys) call themselves Liberals. The most obvious of many lies they propagate.

Fly, I've never said "How else can one explain your insistence that the TEA Party that had ZERO political power in 2008 was somehow responsible for the abysmally stupid policies of the US government during the critical 2008-2011 time period when all of the bailouts, stimuli, and "Continuing Resolutions" in lieu of a formal budget were passed". I have said that the sort of package deal that the Tea Party people are reported to favour; of virtual anarchy, creationism, ultra low taxes and services, and fundamentalist religion to my biased perception is weird and stupid.
Plus the whole point of my last post was to say that we are all biased one way or other, & interpret what we read through our own prisms.

Here is the key quote from your posts that demonstrates your rather profound ignorance and prejudice.
. I have said that the sort of package deal that the Tea Party people are reported to favour; of virtual anarchy, creationism, ultra low taxes and services, and fundamentalist religion


Limited Government does not equal "virtual anarchy". The key policy debate centers on what percentage of the GDP should be devoted to government. The TEA party generally supports more than 1/4 but less than 1/2. That is not anarchy.

If you would pay attention, you would notice that the TEA party is a POLITICAL organization not a religious organization. Many members of the TEA party are Jewish, agnostic or atheist. Even among Christians and Jews who believe that God created the universe, most are NOT young earth creationists who believe that the. Universe was created a few thousand years. Most are Old Earth creationists that believe that God created the universe billions of years ago with inherent, finely tuned fundamental physics that enabled the evolution of life with some periodic, divine guidance. Charles Darwin himself fell into this last category.

"Ultra Low Taxes" seems to imply that anyone who opposes confiscatory taxes. Have you actually read Weber's books, particularly War of Honor, where Weber reveals the debates within the SKM about their tax rates?

You finally end your tirade with a redundant reference to "fundamentalist religion."

The simple fact of the matter is that you are not merely ignorant or even an ignorant bigot. You are an ignorant, hate mongering bigot who repeatedly cites his profoundly distorted perceptions of objective reality to demonize people who you choose to categorize as your political enemies.

Unfortunately; this anti-Christain and anti-Jewish bigotry (you seem to be the type of guy who would eagerly get down on his knees to demonstrate his submission to Muslims) seems to be very pervasive amongst America's alleged allies. It is this unrelenting hostility towards my religious beliefs and traditions that motivates me to embrace neoisolationism. I sincerely wish that Roosevelt had not manipulated events to involve the US in World War II by imposing an embargo on scrap steel and oil exports to Japan. It would have been very soul satisfying for the US to simply observe without interfering as the Japanese subjugated Sydney, Melbourne and other Australian cities the same way they brutalized Nanking.

Daryl wrote:Fly, I've never said "How else can one explain your insistence that the TEA Party that had ZERO political power in 2008 was somehow responsible for the abysmally stupid policies of the US government during the critical 2008-2011 time period when all of the bailouts, stimuli, and "Continuing Resolutions" in lieu of a formal budget were passed". I have said that the sort of package deal that the Tea Party people are reported to favour; of virtual anarchy, creationism, ultra low taxes and services, and fundamentalist religion to my biased perception is weird and stupid.
Plus the whole point of my last post was to say that we are all biased one way or other, & interpret what we read through our own prisms.

namelessfly wrote:...snip not worth repeating...

Fact is that post is more or less troll bait encapsulated in media sound bytes.

Numerous times it has been pointed out that all of those apply to hardly any of the Self Proclaimed "Taxed Enough Already" people. Not sure how any of it really applies to the TEA Party caucus in the House. I don't vote for the caucus but my representative and senators.

The paraphrase I read recently, "You can lead a child to knowledge but you can't make him think." Applies here.

A better response might have been, "So you haven't been reading anything that has been posted that is contrary to your world view. How nice."

Some things are just not worth the blood pressure response. Or the risk of banning or whatever. Fanatics are not just of the religious varieties. <shrug>

Relax and enjoy the day,
T2M

Your snip was definitely worth repeating.

I should not allow myself to be goaded especially by intentional trolling. However; it has been my experience from personal contacts with various foreigners is that they truly are hostile to Americans in general and politically conservative Americans in particular. Given the history of the US repeatedly saving their miserable asses, this bigotry and hostility is beyond unforgivable. We can not undo the mistakes of the past but we can choose to not repeat them. I can not cite any particular event that is likely to be catastrophic for Australia, but there are a number of plausible scenarios that could become a reality if the US were to renounce the treaties that obligate us to defend these ingrates.

May be the Chinese would be willing to forgive a few Trillion dollars worth of Obama's debt if the US were to declare open season on Australia and New Zealand?

thinkstoomuch wrote:

namelessfly wrote:...snip not worth repeating...

Fact is that post is more or less troll bait encapsulated in media sound bytes.

Numerous times it has been pointed out that all of those apply to hardly any of the Self Proclaimed "Taxed Enough Already" people. Not sure how any of it really applies to the TEA Party caucus in the House. I don't vote for the caucus but my representative and senators.

The paraphrase I read recently, "You can lead a child to knowledge but you can't make him think." Applies here.

A better response might have been, "So you haven't been reading anything that has been posted that is contrary to your world view. How nice."

Some things are just not worth the blood pressure response. Or the risk of banning or whatever. Fanatics are not just of the religious varieties. <shrug>

Relax and enjoy the day,
T2M

My parents lived through being occupied by Japan in WWII. I am here today because the US decided that good men will not stand idle in the face of evil. Every society will have its free loaders and socialists who continue to tempt good men (and women) to do nothing when evil arises.

Don't be tempted 'Fly.

Btw, I was cheering as I read your post. Until that last part. Yes, we should raise our threshold for military intervention. We should never ignore evil or do nothing when we recognize it.

namelessfly wrote:Your snip was definitely worth repeating.

I should not allow myself to be goaded especially by intentional trolling. However; it has been my experience from personal contacts with various foreigners is that they truly are hostile to Americans in general and politically conservative Americans in particular. Given the history of the US repeatedly saving their miserable asses, this bigotry and hostility is beyond unforgivable. We can not undo the mistakes of the past but we can choose to not repeat them. I can not cite any particular event that is likely to be catastrophic for Australia, but there are a number of plausible scenarios that could become a reality if the US were to renounce the treaties that obligate us to defend these ingrates.

May be the Chinese would be willing to forgive a few Trillion dollars worth of Obama's debt if the US were to declare open season on Australia and New Zealand?
]

PeterZ wrote:What does any of this have to do with my post?

T2M's post suggests that TEA part folks have a better scientific knowledge base than the average. My post suggestsed that conservatives understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives.

Well where should i start...

First of all, your basic mistake is doing a bunch of assumptions, i´m neither liberal nor conservative.
Regardless if using US strange definitions or the definitions from just about everywhere else.

PeterZ wrote:I posted my comments because of what you posted. Whether I care a whit about Sweden is irrelevent. Whether I know jacks**t about Sweden is also irrelevent. I wrote nothing about what groups you belong to or even if the two of us shared anything in common. All of that was irrelevent to my earlier post.

And your next failure is the fact that just because you´re ignorant, you assume the same is true for others.

PeterZ wrote:What isn't irrelevent is that you asserted the TEA Party as a group was stupid. Evidence suggests that as a group they are not. That you hold that view is not based on fact. That means you hold that view through faith and prejudice.

Assumptions again. No, i hold that opinion based on experience. You can find "evidence" that goes my way just as well.

And maybe i should add that your so called evidence, isn´t. Do read how the "investigation" was done, and then compare that to what level of error and skew it will introduce, based on statistics.

PeterZ wrote:Even if I was an ignorant talking donkey and you were an actual angel, had I presented the argument above it would still be valid.

Except your belief in your "evidence" is far greater than deserved.

PeterZ wrote:Both of these studies suggest that your assertion that TEA party activists are simply stupid is incorrect.

Ah yes, i should probably have used the word insane or possibly idiotic rather than stupid i guess, as their main problem tend to be of the delusional kind.

How about some nice examples?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0xJuFGtCgI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vrXJ5-EuoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y

On the other hand, no, they´re -ing stupid as well.
My personal experience goes perfectly along the same crap as in those vids.
Ignorance, hypocrysi, illogical... Less than 1 in 20 seems to have a brain of their own.
Or the ability to use it.

Even the neocon fools doesn´t come even remotely close to that bad.

So no, i will not be expecting the average teapartier to be well-read, on anything.
These are people that in general believes lots of things that are outright delusional to the level that they could probably make good use of professional psychiatric help.

PeterZ wrote:As for our 85% leftist press

Like i said, delusional.

And seriously, if you take a realistic definition of "leftist", i doubt even 5% of US media can be described as "leftist".

Tenshinai wrote:
First of all, your basic mistake is...
snip

Conversing with a bigot. I shall remedy that error.

Funny that you call me a troll. Look at what I wrote in reasonable language, no swearing or personal abuse; then look at what you ranted about me and my country.
You do seem to have forgotten that after you were banned for such behaviour previously I was the one who started the campaign to get you readmitted to this forum.
Try to be nice and mature, not vitriolic.