US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2443

On October 28 2015 23:52 frazzle wrote:

So, it is D+25 bias because... you say so? Oh I get it. And Paul Ryan is a RINO liberal cuckservative. Thanks for the info.

The owners of the Hobby Lobby, the deeply Christian chain of craft stores that shot to prominence last year following a landmark supreme court ruling that extended religious rights to some corporations, has allegedly become embroiled in a investigation into the attempted importation of ancient antiquities from Iraq.

A federal investigation is under way into the reported shipment of up to 300 small clay tablets, bearing inscriptions in the cuneiform script, that were being imported from Iraq by the Hobby Lobby corporation. Their final destination was reportedly intended to be the Museum of the Bible, the massive $800m institution that is currently being built in the heart of Washington DC with a scheduled opening in 2017.

According to the Daily Beast, the pioneer of the museum, the devout Christian billionaire Steve Green who is CEO of the Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby corporation, attempted to import the tablets in 2011 to add to the Green family’s vast collection of 40,000 other ancient artifacts. The online magazine, citing unnamed federal officials, said that the thousands of years-old tablets were seized by US customs agents in Memphis upon entry to the US.

In a statement, the Hobby Lobby corporation said that it was “cooperating with the investigation relating to certain biblical artifacts”. But it added that the Museum of the Bible was a “separate not-for-profit entity made possible, in part, by the generous charitable contributions of the Green family”.

The Daily Beast said that the federal investigation was triggered by the 2011 seizure and is focused on whether the importation broke tight regulations over the movement of artifacts. “Is it possible that we have some illicit [artifacts]? That’s possible,” Green is quoted as telling the reporters, though the family has denied any intentional wrongdoing.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that the federal agency routinely investigates the theft and illegal sale of cultural property from around the world. But she added that “as a matter of policy, we are unable to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation”.

On October 29 2015 00:45 cLutZ wrote:


You don't get to make accusations of lack of evidence when you provide none. http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media/

The Senate will likely take up a package to repeal key parts of Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood sometime in November, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican said Wednesday.

Congressional Republicans are eager to take advantage of a powerful procedural tool called reconciliation that allows a measure to avoid a filibuster in the Senate – making it much easier to finally send President Barack Obama a bill that dismantles his health care law.

The House passed the reconciliation package last week. And Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said the legislation was headed to the Senate floor in the coming weeks, and that a vote-a-rama – a marathon series of votes – was coming.

“My expectation is that it’d be sometime this fall,” Cornyn told reporters. “The week or so before Thanksgiving looks like a good opportunity.”

The anti-Obamacare package repeals key elements of the health care law, including the individual and employer mandates as well as two taxes – the Cadillac tax on pricey benefit plans and a tax on medical devices.

The reconciliation bill also lost a chunk of its savings when one of its provisions – repealing the Obamacare auto-enrollment requirement – was included in the two-year budget deal unveiled earlier this week. Rolling back that provision of the health care law is projected to save $7.9 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

On October 28 2015 22:05 frazzle wrote:

Outside of the editorial pages, on what do you justify this statement?

Are you taking a Chomsky position that NYT supports the American establishment and its focus and choice of words with respect to foreign affairs supports American imperialism argument?

Or is a right-wing "NYT is pro-Democrat" argument?

I think the Chomsky argument has been well documented in his books but is somewhat irrelevant with respect to internal US politics. I mean, Chomsky reads the NYT to get the news still.

The right-winger argument is way more specious and seems grounded in the same reasoning that leads so many on the right now to call Paul Ryan and John Boehner, two guys who 10 years ago were considered pretty much the right-est of the right, RINOs. Basically, if your story doesn't read like a tea party chain email, then you are Democrat propaganda.

The NYT is pretty much the gold-standard in journalism right now. Do you need to read it with a skeptical mindset? Of course. Any writer could wittingly or unwittingly be writing with a subtle slant or bias. The choice between "A hospital was bombed by..." vs "The US bombed a..." matters for slant and bias, but it is subtle and a far cry from an Anti-Hilary Clinton documentary funded by a PAC.

On October 29 2015 00:45 cLutZ wrote:


You don't get to make accusations of lack of evidence when you provide none. http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media/

On October 29 2015 02:39 kwizach wrote:

What a laughably terrible ranking. The idea that the NYT is more biased towards the liberal viewpoint in its treatment of information than Fox News is towards the conservative viewpoint is ludicrous. Like someone else said, the NYT is among the best journals out there with regards to journalistic standards, despite its flaws. The fact that many of the conservatives in this thread don't like it says more about how they view serious reporting that contradicts their pre-existing beliefs than it does about the NYT.

On October 29 2015 02:49 ticklishmusic wrote:


How the heck is WSJ an 85

On a scale I'd give them about a 45 or something

Before proceeding, it is useful to clarify our definition of bias. Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet. Instead, our notion is more like a taste or preference. For instance, we estimate that the centrist U.S. voter during the late 1990s had a left-right ideology approximately equal to that of Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) or Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). Meanwhile, we estimate that the average New York Times article is ideologically very similar to the average speech by Joe Lieberman (D-Ct.). Next, since vote scores show Lieberman to be more liberal than Specter or Nunn, our method concludes that the New York Times has a liberal bias. However, in no way does this imply that the New York Times is inaccurate or dishonest—just as the vote scores do not imply that Joe Lieberman is any less honest than Sam Nunn or Arlen Specter.

In contrast, other writers, at least at times, do define bias as a matter of accuracy or honesty. We emphasize that our differences with such writers are ones of semantics, not substance. If, say, a reader insists that bias should refer to accuracy or honesty, then we urge him or her simply to substitute another word wherever we write “bias”. Perhaps “slant” is a good alternative.

On October 29 2015 03:03 Introvert wrote:
The reporting of the WSJ is notorious for being more liberal than its editorial page.

Come on politically savy posters, you are supposed to know this type of thing!

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton would let Wall Street banks fail and possibly break them up as president, she told comedian Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night, even though as a senator she voted to bail out the banks in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis.

Appearing for the first time on CBS’s The Late Show, Clinton was asked whether, as president, she would let “too big to fail” banks suffer the consequences of abuses and risky behavior.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Clinton said, adding that under Dodd Frank – the reform bill enacted in 2010 – “we now have stress tests and I’m going to impose a risk fee on the big banks if they engage in risky behavior.”

“But they have to know, their shareholders have to know that yes, they will fail and if they’re too big to fail, then under my plan and others that have been proposed, they may have to be broken up,” she said. “Because if you can’t manage it, it’s more likely to fail.”

Clinton’s new plan for reining in Wall Street is a departure from her more centrist position in 2008, when she voted to bail out the banks, saying in a statement: “The markets must be stabilized to stave off wider turmoil.

“Nevertheless, the urgency of this crisis does not mean that we should offer a blank check to financial institutions or the privileged few.”

At the time, Clinton added her voice to the angry chorus that excoriated the banking elites, railing against their “obscene bonuses and golden parachutes” and saying Congress could not “allow the administration to use the taxpayers like a ‘reset button’.”

In contrast, Clinton’s main rival in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, voted against the bailout and took to the Senate floor at the time to denounce it: “Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.”