To my way of thinking all the facts surrounding the life experience of a person who wishes to be elected to public office, especially the President of the US of A, should be out in the public arena. Is anyone going to deny that his mother had no influence in his thought processes and conclusions? or his father? or his stepfather? or his teachers at the muslim school in Indonesia??
A person must be the sum total of their own personal experiences, how could it be otherwise?? And his mother was certainly not your typical all american girl as the spin doctors would have us believe.
Is that the same New York Times that spread the utter crap about WMDs and carried the story which named an active CIA agent, leaked by that paragon of American patriotism Scooter Libby?
No, that would be the 'New York Times' that refused to publish an op-ed from McCain that would have rebutted an op-ed by Obama that the "New York Times" published and that would be the "New York Times" that charged the Obama campaign a tenth of the standard price of a full page ad promoting Obama for President, along with a nearly 10 to 1 ratio of editorials promoting Obama and decrying McCain.
(After FOX news, yeah I know, boo boo, hiss hiss, broke the story about the cost of the ad the "New York Times" reluctantly and begrudgingly billed the Obama campaign for the full price of the ad, I don't if the bill was paid or not.)
That is the "New York Times" I am talking about. You cannot, with any seriousness, actually claim that the "New York Times" is not bias in favor of Obama and the Democratic Party.
Oh, one more thing, when the "New York Times" published the article by Robert Novak in the naming of a so called CIA agent they did so with expressed purpose to embarrass the Bush Adminstration. Results were that Scooter Libby was sentenced to thirty months in prison and fined $250,000. The sentence was commuted in June 2007 by President Bush, voiding the prison term. The convictions still stand on the record. As does the fine of $250,000.00.
Last edited by con-pilot : 28th August 2008 at 23:41.
Finally, English 'classlessness?'
I did not think you had a sense of humo(u)r. Well done!
Re-read the message. Englishness transcends class and political viewpoint. In the US on the other hand, to hold a certain political viewpoint or to represent a certain class (i.e. to not be a good old country girl from Kansas) seems to open up claims to be un-American. That I find a little poor.
You cannot, with any seriousness, actually claim that the "New York Times" is not bias in favor of Obama and the Democratic Party.
Is that not what your First Amendment is all about?
Do you not have enough other outlets for the right wing viewpoint such as talk radio and most News Corp owned publications?
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Is anyone going to deny that his mother had no influence in his thought processes and conclusions? or his father? or his stepfather? or his teachers at the muslim school in Indonesia??
I don't believe anyone has denied that. If anything by having a more cosmopolitan upbrining could very well be seen as a definite asset - especially in the globalised economy and the near impossibility of any country to have an isolationist policy. Unless of course you have deeply blinkered viewpoint.
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A person must be the sum total of their own personal experiences, how could it be otherwise?? And his mother was certainly not your typical all american girl as the spin doctors would have us believe.
Can you provide some evidence of the spin doctoring presentation of Obama's mother being an "all American girl"?
Is that not what your First Amendment is all about?
Do you not have enough other outlets for the right wing viewpoint such as talk radio and most News Corp owned publications?
Yes it is and I have no problem with that fact, as long as the bias is admitted and falls under the guidelines of the 'Fairness Doctrine'.
Now, as for talk shows, in this country all radio stations rely on advertising income to remain on the air, except PBS (Public Broadcast System). Conservative Radio Talk shows are carried mostly on AM radio stations and are very successful. Liberal and pro Democratic Party Radio Talk shows have been attempted, but all have failed, except on the PBS radio stations, the stations that do not depend on advertising revenue to stay on the air. Funding for PBS is 40 to 47% from Federal and State Funding, the remainder from private donations. There is an obvious connection here in the fact that the only successful liberal radio shows can only survive on PBS Radio Stations.
Sorry, I forgot about the News Corporation. I must admit I am mystified by the near paranoid hatred and fear that many Brits and Europeans have about Fox News and Robert Murdock. For God's sake Fox is only one channel and cable at that. Fox news is countered here in the U.S. by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC and two CNN news channels, so I believe we have a fair representation of various news sources here in the U.S. People do not sit around watching only Fox News all day in spite of what folks in Britain and Europe think.
Last edited by con-pilot : 29th August 2008 at 00:26.
Do you not have enough other outlets for the right wing viewpoint such as talk radio and most News Corp owned publications?.
It never ceases to amaze we what the Left considers "balance". You've got NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes and its clones, NPR, Time, Newsweek -- all cosying up to the Democrat agenda. And it's still not enough: they're obsessed with Fox espousing another agenda. There have been any number of surveys showing that newsmedia types admit to a liberal view over a conservative one, in the range of 85% to 15%, and that during the last couple of elections the actual voting record reached 91% Democrat.
"Balance" would be 50-50, or maybe even 60-40. Not 91-9.
Talk radio? -- mostly babbling to themselves. I doubt that Rush has changed many minds.
Are you sure you are a rabid Republican Con? I thought that was something that the liberals (American understanding) want re-instated? I thought the Fairness Doctrine was something torpedoed by the Regan Administration in the mid-80s.
How can you possibly be pissed at the NYT having a percieved bias in one direction and not explicitly spelling it out to it's (presumably intelligent) readership, when Fox News touts itself as being fair and balanced?
Granted the Fairness Doctrine is no longer law, endorsed by the Supreme Court, its guidelines are more or less being followed. Because of the huge success of the conservative radio shows and the abject failure of liberal talk shows the Democratic Party is try to pass a bill to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and force radio stations that carry conservative talk shows to carry liberal talk despite the fact they are unprofitable or force the conservative talk shows off the air. Which I feel is hardly fair under any case.
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How can you possibly be pissed at the NYT having a percieved bias in one direction and not explicitly spelling it out to it's (presumably intelligent) readership, when Fox News touts itself as being fair and balanced?
First I am not pissed at the New Yorks Times, I simply disagree with its editorial bias. As for Fox claiming to be fair and balanced you just happen to disagree with Fox, as I do with the New York Times, which does not make us either right or wrong.
Oh, and I'm hardly what one could call a "rabid Republican" as I vote often for Democratic candidates.
From Aviation International News today. I wonder what, if anything, may be read into it.
Bizav Traffic at DNC in Denver Less Than Anticipated
The volume of business aircraft arrivals for the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week has been less than predicted, Denver-area FBOs serving the turbine-powered fleet have reported. Levels have been so low that the FAA’s special traffic management plan for the event had not gone into effect as of this morning. Cutter Aviation at Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), 60 miles south of the convention site at Pepsi Center in downtown Denver, prepared for an influx of convention arrivals that didn’t occur. Jessi Scudder, Cutter’s facility manager at COS, told AIN, “We had some convention traffic, but not as much as expected. We had heard that Denver would be packed and they would be heading toward us. A few double-booked reservations, but canceled when they found they could get into the Denver area.” She added that “a few” business aircraft had scheduled arrivals in advance of tonight’s nomination acceptance speech by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
One very important principle a legislator learns in his first term is: The CONTENT of a bill (proposed law) is secondary to its TITLE. You can write a bill confiscating private property, but if you call it by a noble name, it will stand a good chance of passage. The "fairness doctrine" was focused only on broadcast media, and confiscated air time (a valuable private commodity) in violation of several Constitution clauses.
For example: the "Patriot" act is a misnomer - it's actually an acronym. The full name is "USA PATRIOT" act, which stands for:
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
I am not making this up. Read the damn thing some time.
I don't have a very good feeling about the whole election (but I'm never warm and fuzzy about polititians). I think Obama so far, has been shallow, thin on policy, basically insulting on JFK references by his organization and fat on kissing babies. Don't think much of his chomping at the bit wife either. McCain - well, well - I don't see much lustre or anything new (non-Bush).
I also fear for Obamas safety, given the multitude of whack-job groups in America.
Rumors are a flying all over the airways that McCain's choice for Vice President is going to be,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(think drum roll),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I have not talked to one pilot that is even considering Obama for president here in the USA, even the miltary both active and retired wont vote for this useless idiot.
This guy is bad news from the word go.
All smoke and mirrors!
Maybe the rest of the world likes him but those of us here, which is what counts do not.
Really hoping that Colin Powell will be the running mate with McCain, if he would accept.
It's truly a coincidence that Obama will make his acceptance speech exactly 45 years to the day since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his "I have a dream" speech, is it not?
Isn't it interesting how people re-invent themselves when they need and/or want to? Here we have Obama's mother turning out not to be some Kansas girl but a leftist from Washington State. She's safely dead but embarrassing facts are leaking out, even so. Personally I have nothing much against free-thinkers; that is an enshrined right of all U.S. citizens but do not present such a person as a typical citizen of the American mid-West. They are good people but very conformist for the most part so this is like selling us a roast turkey that turns out to be made of tofu.
Well, sorry, image-makers, but you would have to be exceptionally brain-dead to think that your average American girl marries first a Kenyan and then an Indonesian, so that it might have been better to shade the truth instead of trying to hide it. First we had Barack attending a church led by a raving racist loon, when he must have been just there for the hymns but not the preaching and now his mother turns out (shock-horror!) to have been exposed to THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO!
We had a child in our school whom that happened to; he spent the rest of his time in a big, plastic bubble with air pumped in under positive pressure until his parents finally moved to Moscow, Idaho or Russia I am not sure which. Last I heard he had joined the Red Army but that was years ago and we have lost touch.
Some of the posters here seem to be uninformed about the general form of the U.S.A. so that they are mistaking the usual campaign shenanigans for main-stream, deeply-held beliefs. Then they jump to some interesting conclusions about our country that allow them to give us some truly fascinating insights.
McCain, what you see is what you get: a grumpy, old, White, Republican politician. I liked him better when he was running the first time but back then he had not been sanded down smooth enough for his Party.
Who is Barack Obama, though? Who I think he is is just another politician but the Democrats seem to think he's the Messiah. They want him so badly that they are willing to throw wisdom overboard and ignore all these warning signs of things that the average voter just cannot accept.
Start with race, unfortunately and not just that he's "black" but that he attended that church with a racist preacher. (Hint: when you are running for President try real hard NOT to have your suddenly ex- family preacher go to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and give a speech stating that he thinks it might be so that AIDS came from U.S. Government sources as an anti-black plot. People in Kansas won't like that much.)
Next we have his distinctly odd upbringing, definitely not straight Kansas by any means. "Granny lives in a mud hut in Kenya and keeps goats," is cool, sort of. "Dad bugged out for Kenya and didn't want to know me," is not such a good sell, to say nothing of "My second daddy is a Muslim." Me, I associate closely with practicing Muslims and I have nothing against them at all but to your average voter in Middle America they represent at least "the big unknown" if not a potential or real threat.
Then we have his emergence from Chicago machine politics on the one hand yet his presentation to the Democratic faithful as something positively new.
Finally, his wife comes across as a very strong personality in her own right, perhaps not just an equal partner in the marriage but even the dominant one. Pure poison in American politics, that one! (McCain's wife is a smiling, pretty blonde, by the way. Oh, with a family background in beer distribution. I think I am in love.)
This is beginning to remind me of McGovern's run for President when a minor detail about his running mate came out, that he had once had ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy). That is nothing to be afraid of but, somehow, that image of a guy with a rag in his mouth and beads of sweat popping out on his forehead while they shoot the juice to his brain just did not appeal to your average American voter. Yes, we can be distinctly odd in our tastes.
You don't know of anyone, either pilot or military, who supports Obama? For starters, there were two speaking at the convention. And pilots or the military are hardly representitive of democrat supports, nor probably are your immediate circle of friends. Using such a self selected sample group says nothing, and as far as it goes, I don't know anyone, American or otherwise, who supports the republicans.
As for Obama being bad from the word go, how is that so? As tacky as the conventions are, as sickly as the whole playing up to the cameras, the mom dad and applepie displays of family values, gratuitous displays of loyalty to god and army, the speeches given by the Clinton's, Biden and Obama over the last two days were powerful stuff (unlike a lot of the other blathering). They didn't attack McCain for who he is, but for what his stated policies are.
If you have any issues with the Obama PR and media teams, the Republican ditry tactics, attack ads and slurs should be an absolute embarasment.
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