Shenanigans are certainly a problem when they crop up. In 2000 it seemed all of it had to do with attempts to not count ballots by valid voters, and none of it to do with people voting under false names, so voter ID wouldn't protect us from that.

But I don't understand your claim that the electoral college lessens the problem of shenanigans, it actually amplifies it. Because a truly massive scale of fraud is required to sway an election by popular vote when there are 100 million voters, but a much smaller scale is needed when it comes down to a few counties in a single swing state.

Honestly, the absolute biggest problem with the electoral college is the fact that entire states are forced to vote as a block. Even if we were to keep the electoral college in place, complete with enhanced voting power for small states, we could still improve it tremendously by just having each state distribute it's electoral votes by the proportion that went to each candidate. Then you still wouldn't see legal battles that could sway entire states, but you would see third party candidates like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader actually pick up some votes.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.
The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.

The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

This lack of accuracy is one of the great tragedies of WW2. There was an effort on the Allied side to concentrate bombing raids on military targets, but as described here, real life conditions made targeted strikes little more useful than indiscriminate bombing, especially since many of the raids before air supremacy was achieved over mainland Europe had to be conducted at night, and so less discriminating policies were installed. There was, even at the time, controversy over the usefulness of bombing civilian targets, and maybe cities would have been targeted to some extent even if bombing precision had been better, but the woeful inaccuracy of bombers unfortunately gave a lot of support to the proponents of total war - style bombing raids. Such raids continued even after air supremacy was achieved, which - in hindsight, admittedly - was not optimal for the war effort, but the procedure was established and difficult to change.

Thus, Dresden.

"99%" is the % of people who are losing under the corporate-run system. Whether you know it or not, whether you support their efforts or not, everyone not in the top 1% of earners in the country is making less than their fair share of profits from our combined labour. It's not a poll of support. The number is accurate. Just like the reaction number "the 53%" is accurate in that it represents the % of people who pay income tax in the States. It doesn't represent the % of people who support their point of view.

Also, you didn't say if you could name anything that Cenk consistently says or has said that's factually incorrect. Got anything?>> ^chilaxe:

@messenger said "There's nothing in your link about why "99%" is an inaccurate number."

The people who are saying they represent 99% actually think they're representing 99%.
It's good as a slogan, but the poll discussed by the San Francisco Chronicle found only 37% support the movement.
We can claim to represent anybody we want to, but if they don't agree with us and they don't feel we're representing their interests or the interests of society, that claim seems to contain large inaccuracies.

@messenger said "There's nothing in your link about why "99%" is an inaccurate number."


The people who are saying they represent 99% actually think they're representing 99%.

It's good as a slogan, but the poll discussed by the San Francisco Chronicle found only 37% support the movement.

We can claim to represent anybody we want to, but if they don't agree with us and they don't feel we're representing their interests or the interests of society, that claim seems to contain large inaccuracies.

Funny, as I watched this before sifting it, I was wondering how accurate the pundits that I like are, Cenk in particular, and how egregious their errors are, and if they're repeated again and again in subsequent broadcasts.

My gut feeling is that on the whole Cenk is much more concerned with accuracy and correcting his rhetoric when it's false than, say, anyone on Fox News. That said, I have no motivation to go and try and find Cenk's mistakes. If you know if any, especially any particular message that is false that he keeps hitting again and again, I'd certainly be interested.

P.S., There's nothing in your link about why "99%" is an inaccurate number.>> ^chilaxe:

The problem with ideologues criticizing others' intellectual rigor is that ideologues themselves always lack rigor (throwing stones in glass houses).
Cenk should count the number of intellectual inaccuracies in his own videos, including that every time we say 99% we're decreasing our mental accuracy.
Sowell is also surely using empty rhetoric when he says the message of the protesters isn't clear; their message is the same as that of all protests from the left for the last 40 years.

The problem with ideologues criticizing others' intellectual rigor is that ideologues themselves always lack rigor (throwing stones in glass houses).

Cenk should count the number of intellectual inaccuracies in his own videos, including that every time we say 99% we're decreasing our mental accuracy.

Sowell is also surely using empty rhetoric when he says the message of the protesters isn't clear; their message is the same as that of all protests from the left for the last 40 years.

@NetRunner

1. "What I mean by "life isn't fair" is that people are not always wrong when they feel that way. Some people are right to feel that way."

For people who care to be successful, it is always wrong to try to quantify how unfair life is. Business books always advise against it. Ycombinator's unofficial motto is, wisely, "Strap on some plums."

Herman Cain emphasized drive and proactivity instead of a victim world view and that's why he was able to contribute to society in ways more advantaged "victims" are generally unable to.



2. "Giving poor and disadvantaged people a break is the liberal position. Do what we can to equalize income, and improve the quality and pay of jobs at the bottom of the payscale."

If liberalism cared about bettering people's lives, why do Maddow and TYT never educate their audiences with the kind of career intellectualism that would actually better their lives?

How effective is 'promoting outrage' really? Unskilled workers are becoming less valuable each year everywhere in the world, and the next US president has good odds of being a Republican.


3. "The problem isn't the study itself, per se, it's how the wider world will use it."

The problem is that all facts are connected, so if liberal academics intentionally lie in order to shape knowledge about human history and society, the increased inaccuracy created by those lies doesn't remain contained within those special areas. I hope we stay in touch for the next 20 years, so we can see if you reverse your position and start advocating reprogenetics to create actual rather than fictitious equality.

>> ^Reefie:

>> ^Phreezdryd:
Lost me at the zeitgeist movement, and the movie that gets your interest by showing how all the religions of history are based on the same stuff, and works it's way towards globalization under the shadowy Illuminati, or were they lizard people. It's been a while since I watched it. Full of inaccuracies and high grade conspiracy sci-fi.

So, lost you right at the very end then?

Yeah, sort of. The last thing we need is to fight ignorance with conspiracy theories.

>> ^Phreezdryd:
Lost me at the zeitgeist movement, and the movie that gets your interest by showing how all the religions of history are based on the same stuff, and works it's way towards globalization under the shadowy Illuminati, or were they lizard people. It's been a while since I watched it. Full of inaccuracies and high grade conspiracy sci-fi.


So, lost you right at the very end then?

Lost me at the zeitgeist movement, and the movie that gets your interest by showing how all the religions of history are based on the same stuff, and works it's way towards globalization under the shadowy Illuminati, or were they lizard people. It's been a while since I watched it. Full of inaccuracies and high grade conspiracy sci-fi.

@chilaxe, ahh, so your issue is that you don't like the bigotry of the Tea Party being put front and center.

That's cool, but it's not an inaccuracy. Inaccuracy is saying Santorum was avoiding condemning all Muslims when he said "our civilization is antithetical to the Jihadist civilization".

What civilization is the "Jihadist" civilization? Is it not the same as the Muslim civilization? If he meant to say it's just a band of extremists operating outside the mainstream, why frame it as some clash of civilizations?

Paul understood the subtext, and pushed back on it.

Yes, the overall exchange was ostensibly about the general platform for the demonization of Muslims -- they hate us for our freedom and all that -- but people who listened to their undergraduate professors' encouragement to read skeptically and deconstruct media instead of accepting it without question saw that underlying theme, and wanted to try to highlight and expose it.

That's why I don't see your complaint about the title as a question of factual accuracy, so much as a disagreement with me over what the lede is. You'd prefer this particular lede be buried.

You're right about there being a timing problem with the title's current call/answer format. How about "Ron Paul Booed by Tea Party for Defending Muslims"?

@NetRunner

An accurate title would reflect what they were actually debating, not minor points delivered along the way that could be removed without anyone noticing. The debate was: Were we attacked because of our actions?

If Ron Paul had said: "This is the 21st century and government doesn't have any business regulating women's reproductive choices" and the audience booed, it wouldn't be accurate to title the video: "Ron Paul: This is the 21st century; Tea Party: Boooo"


All the above commenters who are supporting and enabling the spread of an inaccurate video without watching it closely can reasonably be regarded as supporting inaccuracy. In Xaielao's comment immediately preceding yours, he even quotes the inaccurate title approvingly.

This is why our undergraduate professors encouraged us (to no avail) to read skeptically and deconstruct media instead of accepting it without question.

>> ^chilaxe:

Being a spreader of inaccuracy doesn't bother you enough to change it, though?

I guess I feel like you're splitting hairs. What do you want the title to say?

>> ^chilaxe:

Also, you have to admit the humor of the commenters above criticizing the GOP audience for disliking truthful statements, while they themselves are opposing accuracy


The only commenter here who could arguably be accused of that is me, and I wasn't the one who said this was about booing the truth. To me it was about Ron Paul saying something morally righteous, and getting booed by a bunch of Tea Party savages.

So they booed a couple seconds after the phrase "don't blame all Muslims" when he got to the "here's why you shouldn't blame all Muslims" phase of the argument. Maybe it was just that what he said wounded their sensitive pride, but their sensitive pride wouldn't be an issue worthy of note if it didn't lead them to demonize Muslims as "hating us for our freedom."

I'd be happy to change the title to "Ron Paul: Muslims aren't monsters who hate freedom, they're people just like you and me; you'd be mad too if they did to us what we did to them! / Tea Party: BOOOOOO!" but I don't think it'll fit, even if I take off the extra O's.

@NetRunner

Being a spreader of inaccuracy doesn't bother you enough to change it, though?

I admit, most sifters aren't aware enough to notice they were promised one thing and they got another, but, in theory, it's better anyway to be on the side of intellectual accuracy.