News from Wisconsin

[Tzan]

Voting against self interest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... uI2LEKHGiQ

Voting for self interest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_9J5cJw ... re=related
The video is in the middle at 4:30, but you might want to watch the entire thing if you havent seen it before.

[Natalya]

I'm pretty sure that the "average American" has a pretty screwed up view of those movements by this point, with how the media's treated them... in between the stance that the Tea Party is out to kill everyone and the Occupy is out to rob everyone, I really don't know how the hell we expect to make a personal decision, what with the constant influence of a money-grubbing machine trying to tell us who to vote for. Politics ends up sickening me, and I'm the one who finally gets to vote this year! Oh well. I'll be voting, that's for damn sure, but it's a pretty screwed-up situation from my view.

From what I have seen, my best advice for you is that the best source of political information on the TV is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Not much else is worth watching, but if you want to see a comparison of dem talking-points vs repub talking-points then the Bill Maher show is okay. I guess it is sad that the best mainstream information sources are comedians. None of the news networks are worthwhile. Faux lies and distorts the truth, CNN wants to look impartial so they skew repub stuff to look more sane than it actually is without questioning it, and MSNBC is just weird.

[Zupponn]

I'm pretty sure that the "average American" has a pretty screwed up view of those movements by this point, with how the media's treated them... in between the stance that the Tea Party is out to kill everyone and the Occupy is out to rob everyone, I really don't know how the hell we expect to make a personal decision, what with the constant influence of a money-grubbing machine trying to tell us who to vote for. Politics ends up sickening me, and I'm the one who finally gets to vote this year! Oh well. I'll be voting, that's for damn sure, but it's a pretty screwed-up situation from my view.

From what I have seen, my best advice for you is that the best source of political information on the TV is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Not much else is worth watching, but if you want to see a comparison of dem talking-points vs repub talking-points then the Bill Maher show is okay. I guess it is sad that the best mainstream information sources are comedians. None of the news networks are worthwhile. Faux lies and distorts the truth, CNN wants to look impartial so they skew repub stuff to look more sane than it actually is without questioning it, and MSNBC is just weird.

I've always felt that CNN is skewed towards the left, while Fox is skewed towards the right. I'd suggest doing a little research online about issues you care about and then forming an opinion from there.

[Natalya]

I have religiously read articles on CNN especially their politics section for the past ten years. I am not exaggerating that amount of time; I started in highschool back in 2002. I think I know a little about CNN's news coverage habits.

[Zupponn]

I have religiously read articles on CNN especially their politics section for the past ten years. I am not exaggerating that amount of time; I started in highschool back in 2002. I think I know a little about CNN's news coverage habits.

That post sounds like you're pissy.

[Ross_Varn]

Yeah, I'm capable of gathering an unbiased opinion. It's a kneejerk reaction to blindly accepting whatever anyone told me for a dozen-odd years. When I got a bit of perspective on things and realized that a lot of stuff I had been told about- like politics and religion and world views and race and gender and all this social stigma- was bullshit, I stripped my perceptions back to the core, which for me, was always reading. The elemental Story, with Hope and Justice and Black and White. I added Grey, and exchanged Justice for Relativity. And I'm going from there.

[Natalya]

I have religiously read articles on CNN especially their politics section for the past ten years. I am not exaggerating that amount of time; I started in highschool back in 2002. I think I know a little about CNN's news coverage habits.

That post sounds like you're pissy.

Wow you really don't have a personality after all. Is there anything you believe in? Do you know that you are alive in the world?

[Ross_Varn]

Are we getting philosophical here? Due to the fact that the only perspective we have on life is the personal one, and that we never actually see ourselves from an outside perspective, to you know that you are alive? Perhaps it's all a dream, eh? The way dreams can last an instant and be a year inside our heads? There are a million different possibilities to this one, and they range the scale of ridiculousness. Multiple universes- we only perceive the timeline that lets us live forever. Cyberpunk- it's all a simulation. New Age- the entire human consciousness is actually developing to become one being. To insinuate that since another is being petty, they are simply disproven of life- seems pretty petty to me. This is why I don't like politics. It tends to rub people the wrong way.

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

[stubby]

I've always felt that CNN is skewed towards the left, while Fox is skewed towards the right.

MSNBC skews to the left, Fox to the right. CNN is skews to Left Versus Right, which is just as bad: the story they sell is by casting the whole world in those terms, turning any actual political thought into base tribalism. Everything they do is to prevent rational consideration of political philosophy rather than promote it; their business model depends on playing on your caveman instincts and tribal loyalty to treat the parties like competing sports teams rather than as representing tiny, near-identical fragments of a vastly wider spectrum of political thought.

Left vs right is the poorest one-dimensional excuse for a comprehensive political spectrum, especially in the U.S. where they both boil down to the same pro-consumption pro-capital Christianist supremacism.

I listen to BBC more than anything else. They've got their own Anglo skew, but that bothers me a lot less than American media's obsession with trying to trick me into thinking that either the left or the right could ever be the good guys.

[Zupponn]

I have religiously read articles on CNN especially their politics section for the past ten years. I am not exaggerating that amount of time; I started in highschool back in 2002. I think I know a little about CNN's news coverage habits.

That post sounds like you're pissy.

Wow you really don't have a personality after all. Is there anything you believe in? Do you know that you are alive in the world?

Wow. You must actually be in a bad mood. Was it something I said?

[Natalya]

I am not in a bad mood. I am just astonished by your shallow lack of convictions.

[Natalya]

Are we getting philosophical here? Due to the fact that the only perspective we have on life is the personal one, and that we never actually see ourselves from an outside perspective, to you know that you are alive? Perhaps it's all a dream, eh? The way dreams can last an instant and be a year inside our heads? There are a million different possibilities to this one, and they range the scale of ridiculousness. Multiple universes- we only perceive the timeline that lets us live forever. Cyberpunk- it's all a simulation. New Age- the entire human consciousness is actually developing to become one being. To insinuate that since another is being petty, they are simply disproven of life- seems pretty petty to me. This is why I don't like politics. It tends to rub people the wrong way.

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

Not what I meant. I mean that he doesn't appear to stand for anything. The stuff he thinks he stands for is all just ideas that he heard somewhere and decided to regurgitate onto the internet. He appears to lack empathy, compassion, and presence. No apparent self-reflection or critical thinking. Some people are just alive, not living.

[stubby]

To be fair, this is not exactly an inviting forum for critical thinking. The only appropriate use here is the ironic kind, where you use critical thinking to rationalize even greater stupidities.

[Tzan]

To be fair, this is not exactly an inviting forum for critical thinking. The only appropriate use here is the ironic kind, where you use critical thinking to rationalize even greater stupidities.

After much critical thinking, and looking at the drink in my hand, and many Bothans dying, I have concluded that CNN is for Coke not Pepsi.

[Zupponn]

Not what I meant. I mean that he doesn't appear to stand for anything. The stuff he thinks he stands for is all just ideas that he heard somewhere and decided to regurgitate onto the internet. He appears to lack empathy, compassion, and presence. No apparent self-reflection or critical thinking. Some people are just alive, not living.

Near the end of the first page I wrote a decently sized paragraph while replying to Blitzen where I tried to be as honest as possible about my thoughts. The rest has been just a mix of ideas and trolling.