BBC bias

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Come on, it's obvious.

He doesn't like George Bush, he has to be one of...
THEM...

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Citizen,

Argh.

Okay. Now seriously

Why is Bush in any way a leftist?

I've said it only about a hundred times, and you keep mischaracterizing it in the most simple minded way possible. Which, quite frankly, is dishonest. You know my position, and yet you insist on this ruse to paint it as something else because that other thing is easier to attack.


Bush's backers are the neocons, people born of the political left. Disown them as you are free to do. But don't deny us on the right the right to disown them as well.

The only conservative thing about neocons is that they support republican candidates financially, but they only do so in exchange for specific favors, ie. corruption, and their social dem counterparts are doing the same thing over on the left.

A list of Bush's leftist accomplishments:

1. Wars to spread freedom, a favorite clinton thing also, what i call social militarism, enforcing social reforms through military action, a classic leftist tactic. Not "liberal" in any libertarian individualist sense, but leftists is a commie fascists sense.

2. Big big big govt. spend spend spend

3. A national healthcare plan in the form of the perscription drug benefit plan., big spending.

4. centralized control, such as the dept of homeland security.

5. lack of support for american business initatives in favor of large govt. employment projects

6. attempts to regulate free industry like the internet, biotech, etc.

7. Curtailing states rights

A democrat could *run* on this, and a clinton and kerry have run on things not too different from it. It's not what Bush ran on. Bush said back in 2000 he was going to set aside 60 billion dollars to distribute among the poor. He said a lot of stuff, such as he wouldn't go to war. He pledged to support small business and states rights. He said he was a christian. In retrospect, I think he was lying his ass off.

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Soup

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you make these blanket statements that have absolutely no basis in reality.

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That's a sweet rhetorical technique you've got there

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one of the hallmarks of modern American movement conservatism is that conservatives are not wrong,

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And liberals in no way fit this model?

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therefore anyone who makes a statement they disagree with must not be conservative.

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Oh come on, I'm sick of this bull. I made the case for Bush isn't a conservative dozens of times, and no one disagreed, everyone said "sure, he's not a conservative" He's not compassionate either. He ran on the ticket, that doesn't make him the thing.

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I see this time and again when someone that movement conservatives have supported makes a statement that challenges one of the core beliefs of modern American conservatism.

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This is a core belief. If you don't stand for the values, you're not one of us. We don't change. Our beliefs are not about change. The concept of neocon is an oxymoron. Conservative is about not changing.

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All of a sudden, they're now liberals.

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If they become liberals, they're liberals. But Bush was never a conservative, he was a liar. He proved in 2002 that he was no kind of conservative when he established the dept of homeland security. That cross so many lines of conservative thought it was like a drunk driver on the interstate. Any conservative who didn't at least have serious doubts throw at that point just wasn't paying enough attention.

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When conservative policies fail, as they have throughout this Presidency,

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What conservative policies? This guy isn't one of us, and was never one of us. Sure, once in a while he supported one of our ideas, like faith-based initiative or social security reform. But that was an act. He never threw any serious backing behind it, he never threw money behind it. It was lip service to get our support.

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conservatives never admit that the policy itself (and the underlying theory behind it) may have been in error.

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whatever

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It's always the fault of those who implemented the policy because they weren't conservative enough.

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I don't see evidence that we do this, but if we do, it's not as if liberals don't do this all the time. I've heard the argument 1000 times Hitler wasn't a *true* socialist, the Soviet Union wasn't *true* communism.
Sure, I agree with your premise, the policy failed, don't blame the person who implemented it.
But that's *so* not what's going on here.

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Modern American conservatism

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Is probably also an oxy moron.

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has been remarkably consistent over the past many years concerning one bedrock belief: what is good for the corporation is good for the country.

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What's good for General Motors is good for america. Sure. No quibble there.

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If you look at the top twenty think tanks in the country, they are all advocates for conservative policies.

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Depends on your definition of conservative. There are some conservative think tanks, most of them are globalist/federalist

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And most of them got their start after the Vietnam war.

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Sure, they're part of the whole globalist movement, an academia-born leftist phenomenon which came out of the american communist part and the socialist workers party, and now has the social dems and the neocons.

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In fact, you can trace the genesis of the modern conservative think tank movement to the 1970 Lewis Powell memo to the National Chamber of Commerce. The call to action outlined in that memo was for conservatives with money to fund professorships, campus institutes and think tanks that would spread a business friendly conservative message.

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our tinfoil hat theories are going to clash here. I'll have to look into this. I know that the straussians and shachtmanites were heavily involved in the same thing at the time, and they were commies and socialists, and my tinfoil hat theory has the added advantage that a whole bunch of people

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Geezer,

not changing the subject. "The media leans left" isn't news.

partly I posted because I'm a troll, and Kaneman irritates me. But I could have joined in the chorus. The BBC is big to admit to it, but what they really should do is fix the problem.

The Tories are really a kick ass party. If the GOP were more like the Tories they'd probably get my vote all the time.

But lately, they're being like Tony Blair, which is worse than old labour.

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Dreamtrove,

first thanks for taking the time to reply. Looks like you were busy.

You certainly haven't convinced me that the media leans left.

I get that you hate Clinton. I think you have some valid points. But you can hardly use him as the poster child for Liberal or left wing. I assume your argument would go like this. Clinton and Bush are globalists. Communists are globalists, therefore lefties are globalists -

but that is hardly representative of the left today, which is against things like Nafta and Cafta, and outsourcing. At least half of us are against illegal immigration (if the posts at Democratic Underground can be any guage,) though I would never pick that answer in a poll without being allowed to clarify myself.



How about we come to terms on this one by leaving out both conservative and liberal when we talk about the media. The Republican party has definitely abandoned its conservative base. The DLC of the Democratic Party is only different in that it is more subtle. Both seem to be tools for the biggest lobbyists out there.

So fine, the media isn't liberal or conservative, but it is corporate. Corporate interests have no party affiliation any more than they have an ideology. Liberal or conservative isn't the issue, money is.

You want to continue to pretend that it isn't unconstrained capitalism that has corrupted our government and our media, but communism, or globalism. Like globalism isn't a pet of big corporate interests?

when we look at the winners in all of this administration's policies, there is an obvious trend. Bush isn't his own man, he's the puppet of our most megalithic corporations, and they are doing just stellar for their part in getting him elected.

Why oh why won't you allow yourself to see the corporate ownership of our government? The evidence is not hard to come by. Everything points to it, but you would go with 'liberal academia is trying to conform everybody to its will.' Okay...

so it was the liberal academia that wanted to go to war in Iraq? Not GE? which happens to own NBC? Not Carlile? Not Halliburton? Not Exxon?


Look, I will promise to try, though it will be hard, not to refer to everything perpetrated by the GOP as conservative, because I truly see that that isn't fair, if you promise to quit confusing liberal with communist...equating Bush to democrats, and jumping on the dittohead bandwagon and painting Hillary and Bill as liberals when they are far from it.


P.s.

Not sure how the media can love labor but globalism more. Aren't they somewhat exclusive? as in globalism hurts labor? Or do I not understand something here?

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dreamtrove,

There's a lot of stuff that is written on these boards that, while I don't buy, I don't challenge. Mostly it's in areas where I have little knowledge. But when someone makes a claim that is clearly opposite of evidence, I sometimes feel the need to challenge. Now maybe it's just that I haven't been paying attention, but I've yet to see you document your claims on a consistent basis. And you make a lot of claims. We can take your word for it. But it's like charging something on a credit card. At some point you have to make a minimum payment. That is the background behind my statement that you're starting to lose credibility with me. Most of your claims I have no clue about. But some are just plain wrong. And that's starting to influence my opinion of the others.

That said, let me try to clarify some things. When I use the term movement conservatives, I'm specifically referring to authoritarian followers (people that share many traits with the authoritarian followers found in some fundamentalist religions). The Republican party is currently controlling the government in large part because of the support they receive from movement conservatives. Movement conservatives may or may not support policies that are traditionally considered conservative. As we have seen with this particular President, it's a grab bag. The legislation that has directly benefitted the credit card industries, the health insurers, the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies, etc. is rock solid conservative stuff. As is the tax cutting. But the expansion of government and spending like a drunken sailor are about as far from traditional conservative policies as you could get.

But here's where the craziness of the movement conservatives kicks in. They have gotten to define what conservative is. To millions of Americans, George Bush is conservative. And anyone who disagrees with George Bush is not. Matter of fact, the second they disagree with Bush they become liberal. Now this is becoming less pronounced the lower Bush's popularity ratings fall. But there was a time where all you had to do was utter one complaint and a lifetime of statements was thrown out the window. Bob Barr was called a liberal. Bruce Bartlett. Andrew Sullivan. Hell, I even read a statement from a prominent conservative pundit that Tom DeLay failed because his policies, towards the end, were too liberal. This is crazy talk. And these are the people who are the current backbone of the Republican party.

There are principled conservatives out there. But they've lost control of the Republican party. Which is probably for the best, in my opinion. Because if they were still in total command we'd have even more tax cuts, and more corporate welfare, and more direct assaults on the middle class. As it is, it's going to take us a long time to recover. That's assuming we get the chance.

As far as whether or not liberals engage in this type of behavior, you have to get pretty far to the left before you start seeing authoritarianism like what is the bread and butter of the current Republican party. It's always something that needs to be watched out for. The next time the liberals control the government (which is roughly about the time when hell freezes over) you can bet I'll be watching like a hawk. But I kick against the pricks. And right now, the pricks are the Republicans who are running everything. And running it poorly.

This is getting longer than I usually like to post but I wanted to get in two more thoughts. What makes something a conspiracy theory, in my opinion, is that it is a theory that goes against the "official" version. The official version is what is put out in the books and press releases and interviews. The official version isn't always right. Quite often, it leaves out a lot of the details. And sometimes it's about as close to wrong as you can get. But to label every theory as a conspiracy theory just muddies the waters. For example, it's not a conspiracy theory to say that PNAC laid out the plans

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Righteous,

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You certainly haven't convinced me that the media leans left.

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Not my job to do so. The media doesn't always lean left in "elect a democrat", but it was much rougher on bush than on clinton, for what was basically the same set of policies. but i can't make the argument, it's like making an argument for why the constitution is a good idea. it's more time and effort than it probably merits, it's pretty well accepted that the media leans left.

look at it this way. if the left as a society believes in politically correct, with no moral restrictions, but social top down control, police et al, and the right believes in each society has the right to set its own rules, but that the people should behave by those rules, with moral limitations, but local social structure, faith, and the free market - pull yourself up by your bootstraps., then which does the media generally tend to represent?

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I get that you hate Clinton.

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I try not to hate, it's against my religion. I just get annoyed when people give him this big benefit of the doubt that he doesn't deserve. I don't see the difference between him and bush. which isn't a challenge, i just don't believe a strong difference exists.

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I think you have some valid points. But you can hardly use him as the poster child for Liberal or left wing.

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oh, sure, not meaning to... by all means no, Clinton is not a liberal - i get that. just like Bush isn't a conservative, these guys are something else.
But the media is sometimes not that swift, and a lot of the rank and file who are about 80% or so democrats will be thinking "democrats in office=good" and so won't attack when maybe they should

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I assume your argument would go like this. Clinton and Bush are globalists. Communists are globalists, therefore lefties are globalists -

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nah. don't put words in my mouth. Globalist is its own thing. These particular globalists derived their globalism from communism. They are followers of the shachtmanite trotsky thing. They're terrible communists, sure. but they are their own thing.
Just I don't buy this media image that this mutant commie thing is by definition "conservative" because it won a republican presidential primaries and some congressional seats. It did that by playing fast and loose with christian scripture and got the monkey to dance.

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but that is hardly representative of the left today,

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no doubt at all

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which is against things like Nafta and Cafta, and outsourcing.

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not necessarily so. These are, after all, all positions which are supported by right wing third parties such as Reform and Constitution. The centrist 'Libertarian' party supports them, as do the some of the greens. a few progressive dem voter groups do, but there's very little mainstream liberal opposition to nafta.

I support outsourcing btw. I think that the only way we are going to end world poverty is by fostering healthy economies in third world countries, which is what the vast majority of oursourcing is doing. There's some abuses, sure, and local law enforcement should deal with those. And don't think that they don't want to, btw, businesses like walmart are in violation of local labor laws everywhere they go. we should just stop protecting them. My position would be: if you go somewhere and break the law, don't come crying to us.

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At least half of us are against illegal immigration (if the posts at Democratic Underground can be any guage,) though I would never pick that answer in a poll without being allowed to clarify myself.

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So is the third party right. I'm indifferent on the issue. I think a wall between us and mexico is a dumb idea.

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How about we come to terms on this one by leaving out both conservative and liberal when we talk about the media.

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it's a wedge issue. it was resurrected by the globalists to divide their opponents on both sides of the aisle, to create political confusion. similar to the purpose of the abortion argument.

[quo

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Soup,

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The legislation that has directly benefitted the credit card industries, the health insurers, the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies, etc. is rock solid conservative stuff.

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No, it's not. true conservatives believe in fiscal responsibility, and wouldn't allow insurance and credit cards to run amok on people's finances without accountability, this isn't a very conservative way to practice.
By the book, frugal, orderly, are conservative concepts. This isn't what's happening now in the financial sector, it's a free for all. mobster capitalism. I hope you see where that isn't conservative. It's libertarian in a sense, not liberal, but not conservative in the strictest sense.
And I don't see how a huge $600 B healthcare welfare spending bill is conservative.

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As is the tax cutting.

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yay tax cuts. one thing bush did that was good.

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But the expansion of government and spending like a drunken sailor are about as far from traditional conservative policies as you could get.

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thank you.

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But here's where the craziness of the movement conservatives kicks in. They have gotten to define what conservative is.

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fortunately, several books have been written on the subject

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To millions of Americans, George Bush is conservative.

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true, some people don't know who berry goldwater and teddy roosevelt were

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And anyone who disagrees with George Bush is not. Matter of fact, the second they disagree with Bush they become liberal.

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happens to me daily on this forum

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Now this is becoming less pronounced the lower Bush's popularity ratings fall.

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Oh, i thought they'd already hit zero

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But there was a time where all you had to do was utter one complaint and a lifetime of statements was thrown out the window. Bob Barr was called a liberal. Bruce Bartlett. Andrew Sullivan. Hell, I even read a statement from a prominent conservative pundit that Tom DeLay failed because his policies, towards the end, were too liberal. This is crazy talk. And these are the people who are the current backbone of the Republican party.

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what can i say, the party is a mess.

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There are principled conservatives out there. But they've lost control of the Republican party. Which is probably for the best, in my opinion. Because if they were still in total command we'd have even more tax cuts, and more corporate welfare, and more direct assaults on the middle class. As it is, it's going to take us a long time to recover. That's assuming we get the chance.

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I don't think you have a grasp on what principled conservatives are about. Sure, there would be tax cuts. but there would probably not be a lot in the way of new spending bills. so there would not be 'more corporate welfare'

- speaking of which -

Why don't democrats see this? They stomp for a "national healthcare plan" all the time. Numbers like $2 trillion dollars is bandied about often by its opponents with very little to gainsay that number. Who exactly do you think is going to be getting that $2 trillion?
national healthcare is the biggest corporate welfare bill of all time. What we need to do is break up the cabal that's keep the prices through the roof, so people can afford healthcare, so medicare can afford to pick up the tab for the poor.
But throwing money at the problem is no kind of solution at all, it will in fact make things worse, prices will go up, taxes will go up, and fat cats will get fatter.

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As far as whether or not liberals engage in this type of behavior, you have to get pretty far to the left before you start seeing authoritarianism like what is the bread and butter of the current Republican party.

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nah, i just have to go to clinton, who is maybe one step to the left of center. Or joe lieberman. in fact, this sort of thing is pretty typical of the democrats. sure, the GOP is shameful atm, no argument from me.

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It's always something that needs to be watched out for. The next time th

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