>> ^rottenseed:

I don't get this hub-bub. What are people doing? They're mad, yes, but what's their focus? Some seem mad that they went to college and they can't get a job. Some are mad at the banks (the bailouts, maybe?). There just seems to be a general consensus of anger at how life isn't fair. What exactly do you do when your problem isn't focused (ie, no dictator to overthrow)? Why did you go peggedpea???


I agree, it's really hard to figure out what they want.

Just FYI, this guy being interviewed is MinistryOfTruth from DailyKos.

Just pure dumb luck that the Fox drone picked him out of the crowd. I think it was probably the hat that caught his eye.

If anyone cares, I was wrong to think that Weiner's account was hacked. I even tweeted the DailyKos conspiracy theory that identified the hackers
http://t.co/uze443Q

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/03/972501/-Geographers-predict-Osamas-location?detail=hide

There is no vid associated with this -- I just wanted to get it on the sift.

College students predicted where Osama was hiding!!!!!

That's the typical level of debate I've seen in FOX News.

This summarizes my impression of the last presidential campaigns: http://imgur.com/gallery/YjisN

While this is a caricature of the GOP, it can be easily extended to both parties in the sense that the political discourse is constantly deadlocked by controversial yet less important issues.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
@flavioribeiro, just after I posted that, I came across this comic, which I think pretty much perfectly illustrates the problem we have here in the US:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/965457/-Language-is-a-Virus

>> ^NetRunner:

flavioribeiro, just after I posted that, I came across this comic, which I think pretty much perfectly illustrates the problem we have here in the US:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/965457/-Language-is-a-Virus
Bipartisan drivel.

@flavioribeiro, just after I posted that, I came across this comic, which I think pretty much perfectly illustrates the problem we have here in the US:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/965457/-Language-is-a-Virus

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/29/787888/-Hitler.-Was.-Not.-
Vegetarian.
Also, liberator of corporate & government secrets ≠ crazed racist despot

That's not what barebaords2 was saying. lols.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

I don't know -- and am not interested in learning -- how to update wikipedia. This would be a great place to add the Hitler thing. I am in the middle of reading this -- I wouldn't have made that mistake if your factoid had been in this post.

I am fascinated by how propaganda works. The persistence of it.

Thanks again for sharing that link.

In reply to this comment by GenjiKilpatrick:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/29/787888/-Hitler.-Was.-Not.-Vegetarian.

Also, liberator of corporate & government secrets ≠ crazed racist despot

just sayin'? oh wait.. no, i sincerely mean that. =]



>> ^bareboards2:

I thought I might get beat up, so I edited it down to a factual statement.

Oh my god! I had no idea that this was Hitler Myth! Thanks for the info.

(That was a weird leap of logic, though, to think that my original statement was linking Hitler with Assange. An accurate logical equation statement would have been "good deed does not equal hero.")


>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/29/787888/-Hitler.-Was.-Not.-
Vegetarian.
Also, liberator of corporate & government secrets ≠ crazed racist despot
just sayin'? oh wait.. no, i sincerely mean that. =]

>> ^bareboards2:
I thought I might get beat up, so I edited it down to a factual statement.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/29/787888/-Hitler.-Was.-Not.-Vegetarian.

Also, liberator of corporate & government secrets ≠ crazed racist despot


>> ^bareboards2:

I thought I might get beat up, so I edited it down to a factual statement.

I was wondering how long it would take before the false equivalence fallacy entered the discussion.

The left has been taking flak for the rather obvious hypocrisy. It is no surprise that thinking orders have gone out to give the faithful masses a thought to grasp for when confronted by reason...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/9/934662/-This-is-the-problem-with-the-promotion-of-false-equivalencies

"The problem with false equivalencies is that while there is overblown rhetoric on both sides, the amount and intensity is much worse on the right than the left. To indicate otherwise is not only disingenuous but it is dishonest and harmful."

I shall venture a guess that the above quote waxes eloquent in the ears of the average neolib. The statement is easy to make, but as with many baseless accusations it lacks substance and proof. I will then formally make the request for fair, scholarly evidence to support this argument. If the right is indeed far greater in "amount and intensity" compared to the left, then there must be some sort of dataset that proves the assertion in a neutral, non-partisan way.

But I'll save you the time, because no such research exists. Instead, what we have are laundry lists of isolated examples - extremes on both sides - which in no way represent the thought or speech of the majority. There is no proof that the right is greater in "amount and intensity" while the left meekly suffers in quietude. I've seen pages as long as my right arm of examples of 'right wing hate'. I've also seen pages as long as my left arm with examples of 'left wing hate'. Any perception of truth to the argument is based entirely on OPINIONS - not facts. The argument is patently false, and the fallacy exists because of personal bias alone.

What I think we are seeing is a case of mass hypersensitivity to opposing bias. People love to find isolated, eggregious cases and pretend that they are typical of entire groups. The left's hate of the Tea party is a good example. Bias magnifies the words you hate, and muffles the stuff you like.

So when people on the left hear Bush, Cheney, Bachman, Palin, Rush, Beck, Hannity, or Fox say something stupid it is instantly trumpeted as 'hate filled rhetoric' that is 'dominating the political discourse'. It isn't really, but they think it is because they disagree with it.

The very same people are able to blythely gloss over the exact same kind of rhetoric coming from ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, Rueters, NYT, CDS, USA Today, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, KOS, Beast, HuffPo, Maher, Olbermann, Kurtz, Maddow, Obama, Pelosi, Frank, Greyson, Sharpton, and MANY others. How are they able to achieve such staggeringly obvious cognitive dissonance? Easy. They AGREE with them. A nice thick layer of bias makes it all better.

The Videosift itself 10 to 1 favors left leaning links over right. All the above resources are filled to the literal brim with examples of 'left wing hate'. Just like the examples on the right of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, or Sean Hannity are filled with examples of 'right wing hate'. There is no difference in quantity or intensity. The only difference exists in the minds of people too blinkered by their own bias to see or hear accurately.

So I reject your inaccurate usage of the False equivalance fallacy. Such fallacies only exist when there is not actual equivalence. The angry rhetoric of the right that is being bemoaned is factually being duplicated on the left. Actual equivalence. And I - unlike others - am not attempting to use the existence of offensive rhetoric on one side as a club to censor the opinions of another.

@JiggaJohnson, now add another element -- Girl A (aka Fox), actually wants bad things to happen to Girl B (everyone who disagrees with conservative dogma), but doesn't want to be held accountable for it.

Now you're where a diary making the rounds at Daily Kos today is, which calls this process stochastic terrorism.

It's a bit grandiose in name, but frankly it puts a finger on exactly what I think is going on at this point. These outbursts of violence are a feature, not a bug.

Cool kids also call this Becking.

I know I'm stepping on the thrust of Jon's message (rhetoric is no more to blame than rock music, and we should all just calm down and stop being so partisan), but it hearkens back to a moment in Rachel Maddow's interview with him where he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "even if it's technically true that Bush is a war criminal, the left shouldn't say that he's a war criminal, because that's too partisan".

That's the problem we have right now -- when the left says the truth, it sounds partisan. While on the other hand you have the right constantly lying, and it comes out sounding like incitement to violence.

And the media is all too happy to look at the above and say "they're both doing it". Never mind that one side is vindicated by the facts, and the other is just trying to gin people up to try to get political power; you can't report that, because that would be "partisan"...

Apparently the stomper was Rand Paul's Bourbon County coordinator. In English, that means he was a volunteer for Paul's campaign, and at least a couple rungs up the ladder (I never met Obama's county coordinator, and I volunteered for the Obama campaign for months).

More links:

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/11/kyl-tax-cuts/
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/12/883717/-Sunday-Loon-Watch

*politics