Since it's from Right Wing News, let me take a guess:

1. LIBS
2. LIBS
3. LIBS
4. LIBS
5. LIBS
6. LIBS
7. LIBS
8. LIBS
9. LIBS
10. LIBS

Am I right?

El Freak: Since it's from Right Wing News, let me take a guess:

1. LIBS
2. LIBS
3. LIBS
4. LIBS
5. LIBS
6. LIBS
7. LIBS
8. LIBS
9. LIBS
10. LIBS

Am I right?

You forgot terrorist appeasers and teh homogheys, but yeah pretty close

El Freak: 1. LIBS
2. LIBS
3. LIBS
4. LIBS
5. LIBS
6. LIBS
7. LIBS
8. LIBS
9. LIBS
10. LIBS

Am I right?

You forgot those Osama Bin Laden Homo Abortion Jizz Pot Emporium lovers at the CIA. They made the list too.

El Freak: Am I right?

Not really. The guy is pretty much on with some of these, especially the 'Not offend somebody' and the 'endless campaign' ones.

ozarkmatt: El Freak: Am I right?

Not really. The guy is pretty much on with some of these, especially the 'Not offend somebody' and the 'endless campaign' ones.

Both are true however the first one is rather ironic considering the source of the editorial.

I agree with most of the points here, but they forgot one or two:

News media telling people who won before the election begins.

Paying massive attention to polls and then ignoring the fact that the polls were way off in predicting recent past results.

El Freak: Since it's from Right Wing News, let me take a guess:

1. LIBS
2. LIBS
3. LIBS
4. LIBS
5. LIBS
6. LIBS
7. LIBS
8. LIBS
9. LIBS
10. LIBS

Am I right?

Mostly. He has a couple of points, but it's mostly an excuse to attack people who disagree with him.

Yoyo: News media telling people who won before the election begins.

Ooooh good one.

They are terrified to put an end to illegal immigration because that might offend Hispanics. They can't call for an end to Affirmative Action, which is a racist policy that discriminates against white people, because that might offend blacks. They can't say anything nice about the Boy Scouts because that might offend gays. They can't point out that the problem with our schools isn't funding, it's the teacher's unions, because they'll be accused of hating children. They can't point out that wind, solar, ethanol, and the other alternative fuels that every politician in America seems to tout are, at least for the moment, technological jokes that can't come close to replacing oil because they'll offend the environmentalists. They can't point out that Muslims are more likely to engage in terrorism than anyone else because they'll be accused of hating Muslims.

He forgot to close the paragraph with "there's no hate like liberal hate"

StopArrestingMe: "there's no hate like liberal hate"

Because there isn't???

ozarkmatt: StopArrestingMe: "there's no hate like liberal hate"

Because there isn't???

Right! *High five*

based on the new assesment data we are getting in for 1st quarter 2008 I can cease to list the decline of modern ebony porn sites to the false market share reading assessed last year at the tri-numptual meeting of my associates whom I humbly call bed fellows.

ozarkmatt: Yoyo: News media telling people who won before the election begins.

Ooooh good one.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I was mentioning things rational thinking viewers hate about political rhetoric spewed by corporate news giants.

Let's see what's the negation of each one:

1. Xenophobia.
2. Criticizing the US is only acceptable if you do it in the US and no foreigners ever find out.
3. Honesty.
4. Understatement is better than overstatement.
5. The media should just admit it's completely liberal.
6. Lay off conspiracy theories.
7. Term limits? (can't think of any other alternatives).
8. Politicians should enact policies that will benefit the country after they're no longer in politics.
9. Bipartisanship (easier said than done, since one side or both has to give up their stance).
10. Extend the primary season.

Almost well reasoned thought sort of interjection

A) As everyone suspects its a slant article, but if you're posting on right wing news should you even approach it with the idea that the article is trying to be centrist.

B) There are a couple which we can all get behind
The Perpetual Campaign
Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories
Politics Not Stopping At The Water's Edge (yeah I know iffy)
(Several of the others would've been here, but the explanations listed were tilted too far rightward)

C) Its missing the primary complaint of "Everyone and their mother understanding the intricacies of foreign policy." Lets take a nice breath. Yes domestic policy is complicated too, but foreign policy is more so.

D) The Primary System Is Broken:
I submit that its not broken, its the electorates own fault. Because once a landslide starts in the early races it continues, largely because at the end of the day, especially in picking your own party, people want to be voting for a winner. People don't vote for their first choice writ large once a landslide starts a coming. I'm talking about the vast swath of swing voters who can't make up their mind until election day. *shakes fist*

E) Flame war may commence in general now.

El Freak: Since it's from Right Wing News, let me take a guess:

1. LIBS
2. LIBS
3. LIBS
4. LIBS
5. LIBS
6. LIBS
7. LIBS
8. LIBS
9. LIBS
10. LIBS

Am I right?

Come on, are you serious? Read the damned thing. Where he takes his points you can disagree with, but every single one of those points are true problems with politics today and shows how sad a shape our politics are in.

All I can really tell from that article is that it was written by someone who doesn't like liberals.

What I hate about politics is political junkies. These are the people who treat elections as a sport, not a policy referendum. They're more concerned with campaign strategy than campaign issues.

Campaign strategy? Why is that news? Why is how many ads a person is running important? Why is what state a candidate is putting emphasis on worth reporting? It's all nonsense.

Sam

Domestic and foreign policy are both very simple:

Domestic: cut taxes and increase spending, send people to jail, talk about our children being the future.
Foreign: 1 American = 20 Europeans = 500 Asians = 200000 Africans.

Hey Yo, I'm agreeing with you! I wish I'd thought of it. I guess living on the the west coast-ish part of the country, that type of shiat would grate.

I would like to see a common start and stop time on voting day across the country, but it would have to be extended to like 15 hours or something to let everybody that actually works for a living time to go vote before or after work. And that won't work, 'cause God forbid we don't get our results that evening before we go to bed.

/24-hour voting day, midnight to midnight eastern.
//But what about Alaska and Hawaii?
///Actually, both of your points are good.

This has something to do with Britney, doesn't it?

He's got some good points, but pleading for bipartisanship in congress and then blaming "liberals" for the antipathy in the house is ridiculous.

If the guy left the list to its main points, I wouldn't agree with most of them, but I could see where he's coming from. But the follow up to a lot of the points is, "and it's the liberals who are doing it!", which is retarded.

I'm one of the politics-as-a-sport sort of junkies, so the messier, the better. If I had to choose something to change, I'd say that I wish debates could be more debate-like, with actual back-and-forth between candidates, rather than series of stump speeches like they seem to be. Too much of the direct challenging of one candidate to another gets spun as personal attacks.

and then... and then i was talking about politics... and... and... *sob* and the liberals were saying things... they were saying mean things... and... *sob* and... they were saying stuff about things i didn't want to think about... and... and... i was so scared... *sob* why do the liberals hate America so much, mommy? *sob*

Smart Ass: Oh really?(pops)

Thompson came in 4th? And where did the money go?

JerseyTim: What I hate about politics is political junkies. These are the people who treat elections as a sport, not a policy referendum. They're more concerned with campaign strategy than campaign issues.


To be fair, treating it as a policy referendum is doing it wrong, too.

The idea is to get competent people into office who can run the country effectively. Voting for someone because of their extreme confirmation bias on a given issue is pretty much the opposite of this, as anyone that really merits a vote won't have any such thing unless he's already been dealing with the issue at the local level. This is why I can justify rooting for Obama despite disagreeing with him on where the control/free-market balance should be put economically. If something is shown empirically to work better, I think he'd go with that.

He has some good points, and some bad points (or things I disagree with anyway). He's definitely right about the primary system, which I haven't heard any right wingers mentioning (partly because there wouldn't have been a Bush presidency without it). I think he's wrong for spouting the crap about "water's edge" politics, its just a rehashing of the idea that calling out our president for his bad war planning emboldens the enemies.

When we have government employees in the CIA collaborating with members of the mainstream media to try to undercut our foreign policy via leak of sensitive classified documents, that should be treated as scandalous.
If he's talking about what I think he's talking about...wtf...wait I have no idea what he's talking about.

and about his two outer points:
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with your political opponent's foreign policy, but there is a problem when you put your petty political concerns ahead of the good of the country....

Love of country should come before petty political concerns and that has ceased to be the case for too many people in D.C.

In general, they aren't petty political concerns. We have a retarded monkey in charge of this country and he's been almost deliberately ruining it. It is for love of this country that we try to continuously point out how much of a wrong, evil, retarded monkey he is.

If it takes pointing out to every foreign leader that he IS a retarded monkey, then we damn well better do it to retain even a semblance of self respect.

Yes, we let a retarded monkey ruin our country. Yes, we're sorry. No, we won't let it happen again. Please don't listen to the monkey, he may be in a representative seat with a cute man-suit on, but the retarded monkey doesn't represent us as the country we wish to be.

The hatred of mainstreaming conspiracy theories is pretty legitimate, even Drew's book gets into that quite a bit.

I Miss Mah Bucket:
Read the damned thing. Where he takes his points you can disagree with, but every single one of those points are true problems with politics today and shows how sad a shape our politics are in.

No they're not.

surprisingly, some decent points in there, underneath it all.

I Miss Mah Bucket: Come on, are you serious? Read the damned thing. Where he takes his points you can disagree with, but every single one of those points are true problems with politics today and shows how sad a shape our politics are in.

Funny how all this didn't seem to be such a concern of your's between 2000 and 2006.

I assumed this list was going to be stupid, people said it brought up valid points so I read it, and it was stupid just like I expected it to be. Thanks a lot, arseholes.

By the way, I love how he says there needs to be bipartisanship and then slams liberals for a paragraph or two.

Verrai: Am I right?

No.

SilentStrider: surprisingly, some decent points in there, underneath it all.

If nothing else, you can sort the posters into two camps. The ones willing to see the problems, and who'll see the points being made, and the ones who refuse to see any viewpoint but their own who will simply dismiss everything he says. So far it's about 3/30.

Most of what the guys says, despite his obvious bias, is dead on. I'll give him credit for putting some blame on the right as well, but, adjust for the bias and all his points are valid.

* Crazed Hyperbole: On the Left, comparisons of Bush to Hitler and wild claims that the United States is a fascist dictatorship have become so commonplace as to be blasé.

Allegations nearly as vile and most certainly as false -- like the United States invaded Iraq for oil and the 2000 and 2004 elections were rigged -- have become so ordinary that they could fairly be said to constitute mainstream thought on the Left.

It's not surprising that people have unkind things to say about their political opponents, but when it gets as over-the-top as it has been during the Bush and Clinton presidencies, it is not healthy for the country

/This

thisisntnamtherearerules:
/This

I don't know about that... the downside to Godwin's Law is that we've become so ingrained to shout it any time anyone says "Hitler", that the next time a fascist dictator bent on genocide steps up, we'll find ourselves unable to discuss him. To claim that it's "not healthy for the country" to mention an ideologue's name for the purposes of comparison simultaneously claims that the country is so weak that merely mentioning the dreaded name will harm it. Personally, I don't believe that. This country, in spite of what the author of the article and you claim, is strong enough that it won't collapse because someone says "Hitler, Hitler, Hitler."

Fear Of Offending Anyone: Because politicians are always thinking about the next election instead of actually serving the people who put them into office...

Usually the people who put you into office are the same people you're trying to get votes from next election, so that's a bunch of a crap. Yes, we've gone too far as a PC-nation, but politicians thinking to the next election ARE thinking about the same people that elected them.

Politics Not Stopping At The Water's Edge

It doesn't. Sometimes we, as a country, have to interact with the rest of the world. Don't like it? Tough. Grow the f*ck up and learn to deal with it.

The Lying And Inauthenticity

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. From a site called "Right Wing News" that's just funny.

Crazed Hyperbole

That's just pretty much the "no hate like liberal hate" parroted party line. As if the liberals are the only ones doing this. I think some staunch conservatives are just as capable of their own hyperbole, but you don't see this wingnut complaining about it.

Fake Objectivity From The Media

Again, "those darned liberals"
If you got nothing of substance, just attack the liberals. Seems to be the motto of the conservatives. Of course, the liberals do the same thing, if they got nothing just attack the opposition. Oh well.

Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories

Paranoid ranting. The conspiracy theorists of both extremes are the minority, and he's spouting off as if they're everywhere. They're not.

The Perpetual Campaign

Legit.

Short-Term Thinking

Legit.

Lack Of Bipartisanship

"Those darned liberals again"
It's so easy to see the flaws in others that are so hard to see in yourself. Every time this douche mentions liberals, you see that. He's pissed at them for doing exactly the same thing conservatives do, but you rarely see him critique his own party.

The Primary System Is Broken

Legit.

Final score: 30%. That's a major fail.

Um, wind, solar, and other alternative fuel are a joke? Riiiight. You lost me after the first paragraph and that BS.

KramericaWallet: Let's see what's the negation of each one:

5. The media should just admit it's completely liberal.
6. Lay off conspiracy theories.

Uh...

Short-Term Thinking

The one thing I love is the fact that in his comments, this only relates to Social Security.

How about we deal with the fact that we have raised the national long term debt to over 50 Trillion, which has over doubled in the last 7 years alone?

How about we stop acting like cutting taxes is going to grow the economy when there is absolutely no empirical evidence that would support this claim?

I am all for changes to our political system and he does ahve some points that would be easier to digest if they weren't so one-sided in his diatribe.

Party politics, and political contributions/campaign finance are the two biggest problems our political system faces. Democrats and Republicans alike have sold out the political system to the highest bidder and our policies have been held hostage,and all the while people mainly rant about inane things like whether someone supports our policy publicly or that conspiracy theories have no place.

If we keep swatting the flies away from the pile of sh*t, we will never deal with the real problems, and even more distressing is that neither of the two sides that most people put their trust in will care to change it as it isn't in the politicians interest to do so.

One of the major problems with politics today (as can be seen in this thread) is that no one thinks that the other side has any legit points. People need to realize that sensible people can disagree

unright

Hey, he's saying the media should lay off conspiracy theories. It's still ok for republicans to embrace them.

Hideously Gigantic Smurf: Funny how all this didn't seem to be such a concern of your's between 2000 and 2006.

Really? Because I kind of thought I did. But you would know better I suppose.

Wraithbane: Most of what the guys says, despite his obvious bias, is dead on. I'll give him credit for putting some blame on the right as well, but, adjust for the bias and all his points are valid.

Not all of his points are valid.

The first few are just plain wacky -
1) People get upset when you insult them, this is nothing new. And for the record, calling all Muslims terrorists is like calling all Republicans closet perverts - it's not true for most, even if there is a disturbing proclivity for it in the culture. If you're looking to convince one of them to do something for you, i.e. using diplomacy, it's probably best not to bring the subject up.

2) The people are allowed to criticize the government any time, any place. That fact is extremely crucial to the operation of the country, so if you don't like it then sit on your thumb and spin.

3) Surprise, Holden Caulfield, people are phonies. If you don't want to see the ads, then give up the TV (it's a very liberating choice).

After that he becomes a bit more lucid at least.

The presence of crazed hyperbole and lack of bipartisanship - despite his incredibly ironic handling of both subjects - are very unhealthy for the country.

Thankfully he tackled the "Mainstreaming conspiracy theories" with a bit more of a neutral view - and I fully agree with him on it.

As for the farked up primaries: that's our lovely two party system to blame. Do something about it.

Allegations nearly as vile and most certainly as false -- like the United States invaded Iraq for oil

Why in the world would anyone invade Iraq because of oil? Everyone knows what really gives a country geopolitical power is Freedom. *wipes tear*

Jim_Callahan: To be fair, treating it as a policy referendum is doing it wrong, too.

You're right about that. Policy referendum is the wrong concept.

Basically, I'm sick of elections being about who the best campaigner is.

11. Feeble-minded partisans with absolutely no sense of irony, or else they'd stick to blackening their pots and let the kettles alone.