Re: Progressive Liberals and Regressive Conservatives

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This is my response to the two aforementroned threads from my centrist point of view.

Traits of both sides:

1. Ignorance of Mutual Racism. Both sides are ignorant that racism still happens to everyone at least once. Whether its being called the N-word by a white person or being denied a job because of affirmative action.

2. Worship of Money. The left worships union money while the right worships corporate money.

3. Blind following of biased news. MSNBC and Fox News are ran by big names on the left and right,respectively. If you want unbiased political news, get it from the source, watch C-SPAN

4. Idolization of Pundits. all pundits are bought and paid for by the side they represent.

Both sides have a right to believe what they believe, they do not have the right to force it on the american people. They also have no right to lie to the american people.

Fellow WPers, please keep this civil, Because I will NOT hesitate to go to a Moderator if I see any personal attacks.

I don't deny racism exists, I just think the entire concept of racism is stupid. Most conservatives have the same stance and are likely to look at someone spewing racist rants as some kind of lunatic.



Big business tries to usually play both sides.



I have to disagree with you on this point, C-SPAN isn't unbiased cause it is actually controlled by the House and Senate majorities as to what they can and can't report on. I will agree watching House and Senate Debates live is a good way to get information, but you have to bear in mind that the party in power controls the cameras and can thus slant the coverage.



I don't idolize pundits, for a while I thought Sean Hannity might be going off the deep end concerning Obama until I did my own research and found Sean Hannity was telling the truth (which was more scary than him losing it). "Trust but verify," said Reagan once. I trust what Fox News reports, but I will also verify it by doing research of my own.



My stance is if you don't want to watch it, change the channel, I'm not arguing for censorship. I will agree with you that they should not lie to the American public.

Yes, let's pretend we needed yet another thread for this discussion. Thanks.

Why not, I would like to see what someone closer to the center says.

Anyways, stumbled across an interesting tidbit of information.

49% of Americans say they trust Fox News to 37% who disagree. Predictably there is a
large party split on this with 74% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying they
trust the right leaning network.
CNN does next best because it is the second most trusted of Democrats, Republicans, and
independents. 39% say they trust it compared to 41% who do not, with 59% of
Democrats, 33% of independents and 23% of Republicans saying it carries credibility
with them.
http://www.webcitation.org/5tIIvxhkK

Fox News was the only outlet with a net positive as far as number of people that trusted the network compared to those that distrust Fox News.

But this thread is different; it has threats to behave or else!

I think I should put that on every thread I make in PPR, what do you think?

We do not need different threads for the same discussion, the left, the right and the center could just make their statements in your thread or something like that...

He's admonishing both sides, and he's certainly entitled to post his own topic on the subject.

Just put it in your signature. You'll look silly of course, but at least you won't be making explicit threats in every PPR thread,

I find there's an awful amount of intellectual lazziness and superficiality in self-described centrism, especially in the United States. Centrists seem obsessed with some Golden Mean fallacy, unware that their simply are situations in which diluting policy towards the halfway point simply isn't feasible. The relentless drive to attribute blame to both sides where the blame really is lopsided is another vice of what I like to call the "cliche centrists" of America.



To be honest, I find this a very comical attempted equivalency. The worst example of racism against minorities you could come up with against the backdrop of a policy that supposed deprives Whites of jobs is being called the N-word? How about using the motivation for Positive Discrimination in the first place as a counterexample, namely the fact certain people are unconciously biased against "the other" to the point where they don't hire them on par (there's been numerous studies on unconcious racial discrimination). Or how about racial profiling and the systemic inequities in the Judicial system?



I think it's very odd to say that the left "worships Union money", especially since many leftists supported campaign finance reforms that banned union donations (along with corporate donations). As a matter of fact, in Manitoba the NDP outlawed union and corporate donations, and the Manitoba NDP is a lot more connected to organized labour than any US political party (and is regarded by all political observers as firmly on the centre-left). Centre-left politicians like union money in the same way they like any other money - because it helps them run campaigns. Given that the more leftwing a politician is, the less business interests will prefer them, it makes perfect sense that they'd accept money from a collective entity which shares some of their philosophy. As a matter of fact, my affinity towards the union movement is more over its potential as a means for industrial democracy than it's ability to finance centre-left politicians.



Cenk Uygur has criticized Chris Matthews and Joe Scarbrough on numerous occassions and he's undoubtedly a centre-left progressive, so that hardly counts as "blindly" following MSNBC. Many members of the Kumbya left has throwed fits over Olbermann's polemical tone (Jon Stewart being a notable example), so I hardly think even primetime MSNBC has a following as loyal or unflinching as Fox News does. And since MSNBC is "run by big names on the left", why the hell did they fire Phil Donahue and Ashleigh Banfield?



Care to explain how Keith Olbermann is "bought and paid for" by the left? I guess you could say that his ratings are high thanks to the fact a segment of the left watches his shows, so in a way the left is "paying his salary". Aside from that, it seems that Olbermann was paid to spout leftist polemics, it became a bottom (or middle) up feature of his program and quite contrary to management's original intentions (they fired Phil Donahue and Ashleigh Banfield for speaking out against the Iraq War, so MSNBC initally was no friend to the left).

Just cause you can't see his point doesn't mean he is intellectually lazy.



If the perp happens to be black, I don't think it is appropriate to stop and treat every white guy and gal as a suspect just to be PC. Same token if the situation is reversed. There is no such thing a positive discrimination; discrimination is discrimination whether it is towards black people, whites, hispanics, whatever. It is wrong period, and two wrongs do not make a right.



Actually what you just said is incorrect. The Dem's campaign finance reform bill gave exemptions to Unions and other groups that Donate to Democrats so they wouldn't have been affected by the DISCLOSE Act.

Where the Republicans got hung up, and where I agree with them, is the nature and extent of the disclosures required (such as 14 second disclosures in a 30 second commercial according to some estimates) and the massive number of exemptions provided to unions and other Democrat-favored entities. The Senate bill cut down on those exemptions, but they didn’t go away entirely:

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/senate ... t-for-now/

I first heard about this bit of information from Fox News, which kinda changes the entire story about the Republicans blocking the legislation which most of the media conveinently didn't report this fact.



They may have ticked off one too many people, question is, why is Fox News considered to be the only network to have a net positive when it comes to trust. I think MSNBC was somewhere close to dead last in the study I brought up the other day, I'll have to double check though.

Jon Stewart has finally started criticizing people on the left because he thinks they've gone too far.



They were afraid of a public backlash after the anger that was directed towards the New York Times due to an article they printed on 9/11/2001.