posted 07-30-2001 22:55            

quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
Bush sez: "... In the meantime, conserve, you fuckin' dolts..."

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quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
"..[gas] prices now are lower than they were last year..."

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quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
"Could it be that having a bona fide business man in the White House is turning out to be a good thing?"

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quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
"But Al Gore invented the fugga internet!" you say.

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Basically, what I'm trying to say is:
1) Try to post on issues you're familiar with.
2) Are you fucking serious?

thanks-
fen

P.S. Gore also had the audacity to claim that his college roommate was Tommy Lee Jones! Can you believe it? Good thing he got flamed in the press for it!

P.P.S. Mind you, his college roommate was Tommy Lee Jones. But still.

posted 07-31-2001 02:25            

What I got out of it is a push for more nuclear plants for large scale power needs, which will increase, and a push to drill our own national oil deposits, to reduce dependence on foreign sources. Which also will increase.

I especially liked that part where Bush said "ANWAR can produce 600,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 40 years. That happens to be the exact amount of oil we import from Iraq."

What else did that article say?

One part offers language that appears to favor ordering the auto industry to raise fuel efficiency standards.

Sounds like conservation to me.

But damnit Three! You fugga evil conservative and/or libertarian types want to rape the environment!

House Democrats announced a plan of their own on Tuesday that calls for increasing oil production in areas that have already been roped off by the federal government for exploration and drilling -- lands that already account for some 89 percent of the nation's untapped reserves.

And uh, thanks for backing me up on my wisecrack about proletariat socialist price controls. =)

They also propose more pipelines to move natural gas into the lower 48 from Alaska's North Slope, and would move to hold down price increases that may be put in place by Western electricity providers.

Fen: "Bush claimed over and over that conservation does nothing to address supply shortages. Read up."

I did read up... and... Where do you see this? I don't see it. (No, really, where did you see this?)

I did find a reference to Cheney's statement about conservation being more of a 'personal virtue' and unreliable, in effect... but I'm pretty sure he was referring to the unreliability of Americans - to the ludicrous nature of expecting people who drive 12mpg SUVs to conserve gasoline usage. As I've already shown, the administration is all for increased efficiency in automobiles, which will save FAR more than any half hearted attempts at self control ever will.

Here's an interesting tidbit for you.

"To accomplish this, President Bush created an Energy Task Force headed by Vice President Cheney. He has asked us to define a clear strategy – a strategy that will allow environmentally responsible exploration and recovery of our domestic resources ... enhance our commitment to conservation and energy efficiency ... and encourage investment in new technology to further the development of renewable energy sources."

from http://www.energy.gov/HQDocs/speeches/2001/marss/energy_speech.html

Oh yeah, about the "Al Gore and the internet" thing... that was mostly in jest, though I have to admit the article you posted was interesting, as well as fairly enlightening.

posted 07-31-2001 15:22         

...

posted 07-31-2001 17:06            

Well, basically, I said.. um. I said that I get most of my news from this weekly NYT supplement put out by a tokyo english daily, but I can't link to anything because NYT charges. But they ran several editorials criticizing bush's environmental policies, and saying it was probably a bad idea to dismiss conservation and push exploration.

Then this past week, they reported that Cheney had for some reason asked that the electricity bill for his VP mansion be paid by the navy instead of whoever paid it before, possibly to draw attention to the fact that he had cut electric costs (to only $130,000, go figure), and how it was part of a new effort in the bush camp to come across softer on environmental stuff, after the shit they took for kyoto, arsenic, etc.

Then I said something like, you think the internet thing is bad, read this: http://www.coxnews.com/2000/news/cox/040800_hype.html
And that's the judicious version of the story.

Then I said, not that I'm a gore fan. Way back, I favored bush, on the grounds that dumb and evil does less damage than smart and evil. But later I switched, on the grounds that smart and evil may be better than really really fucking dumb and evil.

Then I said, glad I got my arguing fix on since the drug thread died. ;)

Then I said,

posted 07-31-2001 17:58            

quote:

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Originally posted by fenomas:
Fuck me.. I typed a big long reply to you last night, threes, and this morning it's gone. Did someone zap it, or did my submit fail?

Well, basically, I said.. um. I said that I get most of my news from this weekly NYT supplement put out by a tokyo english daily, but I can't link to anything because NYT charges. But they ran several editorials criticizing bush's environmental policies, and saying it was probably a bad idea to dismiss conservation and push exploration.

Then this past week, they reported that Cheney had for some reason asked that the electricity bill for his VP mansion be paid by the navy instead of whoever paid it before, possibly to draw attention to the fact that he had cut electric costs (to only $130,000, go figure), and how it was part of a new effort in the bush camp to come across softer on environmental stuff, after the shit they took for kyoto, arsenic, etc.

Then I said something like, you think the internet thing is bad, read this: http://www.coxnews.com/2000/news/cox/040800_hype.html
And that's the judicious version of the story.

Then I said, not that I'm a gore fan. Way back, I favored bush, on the grounds that dumb and evil does less damage than smart and evil. But later I switched, on the grounds that smart and evil may be better than really really fucking dumb and evil.

Then I said, glad I got my arguing fix on since the drug thread died.

Then I said,

-fen

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OMG. NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES? I can't believe you made fun of the possible 'liberal media conspiracy' in your first post, then admitted to using them as your source, when they are the heart of the liberal media.

NY FUCKING TIMES EDITORIALS? ARE YOU MAD? =P

And um.. rememeber back when you said 'You just did the equivalent of forwarding a virus-hoax email'? Let's get the facts straight on the whole arsenic thing. Clinton, in his mad insane last hours of limitless power, decided to cut the allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water from practically nothing to one half of practically nothing.

Understand that the previous limitations were FAR stricter than needed for consumer safety. What the new limitations would do, however, is DRASTICALLY increase the cost of production / filtration / quality control. Absurd. This is akin to Dove soap unveiling a new ad campaign: "No longer just 99.5% pure, our soap is now 99.50005% pure!"

Of course, the fugga moron tree hugging dirt munching druid types, along with those easily panicked (sheep types) got really indignant and assumed that Bush just wanted everyone to die, or just didn't care.

Absurd.

As far as Cheney's VP mansion, I have no clue, but... it's the VP MANSION. If you were elected VP, would you live in a tent on the white house lawn, or a bus station, or in the accomodations provided to you?

And um... if Cheney lowered the costs to $130,000, how much did it fugga costs when GORE lived in it? Hrmm!

And back to the remarks attributed to Gore... Some may have been blown out of proportion, but in that article you linked, I found this:

The day after his remarks at Concord High, Gore issued a statement apologizing for any misimpression he may have created with his comments.

So evidently it's not completely groundless.

And this is just funny as hell, if you take it the wrong way intenionally:

He cited as ''falsehoods'' Gore's claims that his marijuana smoking in the 1960s and 1970s was infrequent

Hahaha, sweet. =P Gore 4:20 in 2004! HEY WAIT! If you rearrange 2004, what do you get? 0420! Hrmmm!

quote:

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Then I said,

-fen

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Just make it fucking personal, why don't you.

-3

posted 07-31-2001 21:54            

In my original emails, when I mentioned arsenic, I added "not his fault, imo" in parens. I never said he fucked up on arsenic, I said he got slammed over it. He was the one that decided to introduce it with a joke at a press club dinner.

As for electricity, still take it easy. I didn't say cheney is a wastrel, I implied that $130,000 was a lot of money, and it is. And I said that cheney and bush were trying to present a more conservation-friendly image, and they are. And I said that power outages in CA don't have shit to do with shit, and they don't.

And what the hell is wrong with the NYT? They were harder on Gore than on Bush during the election, and they called for Al to step down and not pursue the voting stuff in court. And they didn't give Bush one tenth of the shit he deserves over his billion dollar tax ass-reaming "rebate" that we all pay for.

Who should I be reading, Geroge Will?

posted 08-01-2001 00:22            

As for the vp mansion, again, what you said could have been taken any number of ways, you didn't really state your position clearly. Since we were debating, I assumed you meant it negatively. I have to agree that 130k *IS* a lot of money, but I have no idea what goes on at the 'VP' mansion, either. I'm pretty sure a man and his family can't run up a light bill for 130 large. (pretty sure, anyway.)

And really, the California energy woes have a LOT to do with shit, in my opinion. Namely, let's not all do what those fugga morons have done: Vote down every new power plant, implement artificial price controls to 'shield' consumers from what it *actually* costs for electricity, etc.

I sure wish the goverment would step in and mandate the selling price of ram at 1 cent per meg, cpus at 1 cent per mhz, and harddrives at 1 cent per gigabyte. Oh wait, then no one would make them, right? Or sell them? But no matter, it still seems like a grand idea. Why stop there? diamonds at 1 cent per carat/clarity rating, gold at 1 cent per ounce... See where I'm going with this? I find it kind of funny that they called it 'failed deregulation' when on the face of it, it's exactly the opposite.

(That is not directed at you, btw, so don't take offense when none is intended.)

And lastly, here's an excerpt from an article I found about Bill Keller, managing editor for the NYT

Top Timesman admitted stories normally come with an agenda. New York Times Managing Editor Bill Keller let slip to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz that New York Times stories normally deliver "a little editorial elbow in the ribs," so the lack of a pointed theme was "kind of liberating" in a Times series which won a Pulitzer Prize. The top level Times editor conceded to Kurtz that stories in the New York paper usually have followed a formula in which they "build up to a fourth or fifth paragraph where the writer stood back, cleared his throat and told you what to think."

Keller said the Times decided not to have each piece "build up to a fourth or fifth paragraph where the writer stood back, cleared his throat and told you what to think. We trusted readers would draw their own conclusions and maybe disagree." For a newspaper that specializes in "giving you a little editorial elbow in the ribs," he said, the lack of a pointed theme was "kind of liberating."

He's talking about a pulitzer-prize winning series about racial tension. Evidently they decided to actually be objective in this piece, and won a pulitzer. Go figure.

Liberal bias in the NYT? Naw.
http://www.smartertimes.com/archive/2001/06/010612.html

Liberal bias in the media in general? Naw.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/2001/nq20010723.html

Again, Liberal bias in the media in general? Naw.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/MediaBiasBasics.html

Who / what should you read? I have no clue. Sigh.

posted 08-01-2001 00:26            

It's rather straighforward to determine which political view a newspaper tends to favor by looking at its so-called op-ed pages. Those pages tend to agree with the editorial pages. Here's a list of the top 15 political columnists with their political orientation and the approximate number of clients they have. The ranking is done based on the number of clients:

 
Name   		Political  View     	No.  clients         
Cal  Thomas     	conservative    537         
George  Will    	conservative    450         
Ellen  Goodman     	moderate     	420         
Mona  Charen     	conservative    400         
William  Raspberry     liberal     	300         
David  Broder     	moderate     	300         
William  Buckley     	conservative    300         
Molly  Irvins     	liberal     	300         
Morton  Kondrake     	conservative    250         
Ben  Wattenberg     	conservative    250         
James  Kilpatrick     conservative    200         
Tony  Snow     	conservative    200         
Robert  Novak     	conservative    150         
John  Leo     	conservative    120         
Mary  McGrory     	liberal     	120   
(taken  from  Arthur  E.  Rowse's  "Drive-By  Journalism").  

Hey! It seems most of these columnists are actually conservative.

Now, let's look at endorsements for president. The following table shows the data for the years 1940 to 1996, namely the percentage of daily newspapers which endorsed the Republican, the Democratic, or no candidate:

      Year     Republican     Democrat     no         
	1940     64%     	25%     13%         
	1944     60%     	22%     18%         
	1948     70%     	15%     15%         
	1952     67%     	15%     18%         
	1956     62%     	15%     23%         
	1960     58%     	16%     25%         
	1964     42%     	35%     23%         
	1968     61%     	14%     24%         
	1972     71%     	5%     23%         
	1976     62%     	12%     28%         
	1980     42%     	12%     42%         
	1984     58%     	9%     27%         
	1988     29%    	 8%     63%         
	1992     15%     	18%     67%         
	1996     27%    	 4%     69%   
(source:  Editor  &  Publisher,  Oct.  26,  1996.  Third  parties  omitted)

Let's look at talk show radio next. Talk show radio is very influential in the US. Let's look at the audiences of the the top 5 political commentators (again based on the size of their audience):

Paul Harvey (conservative) 23m, Rush Limbaugh (conservative) 14.25m, "Dr." Laura Schlesinger (conservative) 14.25m, Howard Stern (liberal) 9.25m, Art Bell (conservative) 5.5m.

Schlesinger and Stern are not really mainly political commentators, but they prefer to add short political comments to their shows so it doesn't hurt to include them. If you want to take them out, add Don Imus (conservative) 5m and Jim Bohannon (liberal) 5m to the list.

Where is the liberal media bias? On the basis of real data, one can only conclude that there is none. In fact, media in the US have a strong conservative bias. Who would have thought that?

[edited to fix formatting]

posted 08-01-2001 01:10            

quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
I'm pretty sure a man and his family can't run up a light bill for 130 large.

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quote:

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Originally posted by InThrees:
implement artificial price controls to 'shield' consumers from what it *actually* costs for electricity, etc.

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Mind you, I'm getting my information from the liberal media, like Paul Krugman, who has a column on the NYT oped page. Now THERE's a guy who disliked Bush's tax sorta-rebate.

Which brings me to Laural's very interesting info. Which didn't take into account the study where 62% of reporters said they lean liberal, and 15% leaned conservative. ( http://www.asne.org/kiosk/reports/97reports/journalists90s/coverpage.html )

But the fact is that you can find numerical and anecdotal evidence on both sides of the liberal media bias claim. Personally, I think you find more liberal reporters because the work requires education and doesn't pay very much. (I could suggest here that you find more conservative columnists because that pays better and requires no education, but I won't. )

At the end of the day, I think the NYT leans left, but I don't think media leans left.

And finally, I stand by the NYT. I was pretty pissed off 6 or 8 months ago when there was a technology story by John Markoff, though. Oh well. Better than fucking McNews.

fen

posted 08-01-2001 02:17            

1. The mansion the VP gets to live in is a huge 31 room bastard on 70ish acres with a staff on hand, lighted roads/grounds/etc. Power was just pumped in as needed and it was never metered until ...

2. Three years ago, they installed a meter. Al Gore picked up like 47,000 or so of the last bill out of his budget (he was already rolling in huge piles of money he got from the Chinese and pimpin pardons so he wasn't really sweating it). Cheney wants the bill sent to the Navy rather than taking it out of his budget. Historically, the Navy has always picked up the tab, so ...

3. It's all a bunch of bullshit, no matter whose budget it comes out of we all foot the bill anyway. As far as I know, Gore had already started the paperwork to transfer the bill. However ...

4. *Forgive me I have to do this from memory* The annual bill went from 87k
to 110k to 130k to 180k this year, apparently Gore and Cheney both lived there during the last and most expensive year when the power use dropped, but electricity rates in DC were reported to be about the same as last year. I haven't seen an explanation on how you use one third less power and get a one third higher bill when prices stay the same yet. But the bottom line is ...

5. Fenomas uses this site as the literary equivalent of the Fight Club sometimes, where we all get together and beat the text-based crap out of each other and our half-assed misguided philosophies. He is not our champion by coincedence. In conclusion ...

-Lon

posted 08-01-2001 12:41            

I will agree with Fen, however, when he said that either one of us can find article, studies, and reports that support whatever we want to say. As far as talk radio goes, I have to agree with the conservative-dominated market you were alluding to. It's easy to report the news and then editorialize about how stupid everyone is, which is what most conservative talk radio hosts do. Bread and circuses, and evidently, people in their cars eat that up.

As far as the op-ed data you quoted goes, I wonder how accurate that is. I imagine it varies greatly by region, in any event. I know locally, there are frequently pieces on the editor's page that espouse the virtues of nanny state laws, graduated tax systems, and big government in general.

Fen...

Defibrilation, dude.

Hahahaha! Touche! =p

I still think you're way off here. People in CA weren't paying that much because electricity was scarce, or rising in price, but because of misguided CA laws that made it profitable to limit supply. Why weren't Nevadans paying through the nose?

No, people in california weren't paying much because of misguided laws that forced utility companies to buy needed energy from out-of-state sources, then resell it at a LOSS. Obviously, a situation like that can't continue indefinitely. I'd say Nevada didn't have a problem because the power they generated was much closer to the 'used/needed' mark.

Now THERE's a guy who disliked Bush's tax sorta-rebate.

And I have to say that calling it a 'rebate' was pretty low. I wasn't happy with that. Calling it an interest free loan against NEXT year's return would have been more accurate.

LMJ: Thanks for that info on the VP Mansion, good post.

posted 08-01-2001 18:07            

First, I didn't mean to get us onto the VP mansion thing. I didn't bring that up to imply that cheney uses too much electricity, but as evidence that the bush camp was trying to recast itself as more conservation-friendly, and image they seemed to eschew earlier in the 100 days. I don't know anything about how much energy gore used, or why the navy should pay for it, or who used to pay for it.

As for columnists, I don't have any evidence, but my gut feeling is that if you look at op-ed pages accross the country, you'll find they skew conservative by number, but liberal by readership. In other words, that large numbers of small papers lean right while small numbers of large papers lean left. But that's just guessing.

And the rebate thing was pretty low, but not necessarily dumb.. depends on whether he takes flack for it next April I spose.

quote:

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Originally posted by LonMabonJovi:
5. Fenomas uses this site as the literary equivalent of the Fight Club sometimes, where we all get together and beat the text-based crap out of each other and our half-assed misguided philosophies. He is not our champion by coincedence. In conclusion ...

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I don't much know how you mean this.. I like to argue, but no-one has to argue back if they don't want to. I'll admit my first post this thread was harsh, but I felt strongly. And for what it's worth, my estimation of InThrees' intelligence and command of his views has shot up between writing that post and this one, because of his responses. And I'm prolly smarter now than I was then. Is that a good thing?

I didn't know I was someone's champion. I do consider myself, however, the Wind beneath this message board's Wings.

posted 08-01-2001 22:11            

quote:

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Originally posted by fenomas:
... I do consider myself, however, the Wind beneath this message board's Wings.

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posted 08-01-2001 23:26            

quote:

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Originally posted by Jimbo:
For what it's worth, my estimation of your homosexuality as shot up between writing my last post and this one, because of that line there. And I'm prolly much more nauseated now than I was then. Is that a good thing?

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I dunno, do you go 'bing' when you walk? =p

-3

posted 08-03-2001 19:55            

[edited to add] By the way, what better way to tear down your opposition than by highlighting the views of its most extreme member?