If you pay attention the the Republicans it often seems like they’re living in their own little world. A recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll seems to indicate that impression may be correct. Not surprisingly we’ve got FOX News to blame for it:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Spend any amount of time watching FOX News and it’s clear that they’re helping to promote many of the flat out lies that Republicans are shouting at various town halls. All the major news channels have their opinion/editorial shows, Rachel Maddow is one of MSNBC’s, but if you watch the reporting of news outside of those shows it’s clear that the FOX anchors inject their opinions into their reporting quite a bit more than any other network.
It brought to mind the time before cable was available when we had just the big three networks and, if you were lucky, a smattering of UHF channels to choose from. The UHF channels often didn’t have much, if any, news programming so you watched one of the big three to find out what was going on. Now this may just be the fuzzy memory of nostalgia kicking in, but as I recall the big three news programs generally reported the same set of facts on most stories with any editorializing being labeled clearly as such in its own segment. Sure sometimes one network would scoop a story, but overall if you saw a news report on one network the facts would be pretty much the same as either of the other two networks reporting on it.
With the advent of cable and the 24 hour news channel the race to get a story first resulted in a lot more speculation and hearsay showing up in any reporting of something happening right that second. That’s annoying enough, but with the rise of FOX News we’ve moved beyond having to deal with a lot of air time devoted to anchors guessing at what’s happening and scrambling for info to anchors actively trying to spin news stories to match the talking points of one of the two major political parties. Throw in “pundits” that are willing to spout off the most batshit insane bullshit you’ve ever heard from someone who wasn’t wearing a tinfoil hat and you have a recipe for what we have today.
Which isn’t to say that MSNBC and CNN are paragons of TV journalism, but it’s amazing how less misinformed viewers of either of those two networks are compared to the folks who follow FOX News. Consider this survey by Public Policy Polling*PDF file in which of the questions was: “Do you think the Government should stay out of Medicare?”
The results? 39% of respondents said YES! An additional 15% said they weren’t sure. (Note: For those of you who aren’t clear on the issue, Medicare is a government run program. I say this not to the usual SEB audience, but to any morons who might be passing by.)
Now not all of the people who answered yes to that question considered themselves Conservative, some felt they were Liberal or Moderates, but when you break it down by those categories you find that 59% of those who answered “yes” identified themselves as Conservatives. Now it’s possible that some of the people misheard the question and thought they had said “health care” and not “Medicare”—and there’s a part of me that hopes that’s the case—but that’s still a lot of people who don’t know that Medicare is run by the government.
It says something that the pundits on FOX News have made heavy use of the word socialism in addition to suggesting that the Obama administration shares a lot of similarities with the fascist Nazis. Glen Beck alone has made heavy use of Nazi imagery when ranting and crying (literally) over some perceived outrage on the part of Obama. So what do we end up seeing at various town halls across the nation? Angry Republicans with pictures of Obama as Hitler yelling about the socialist programs Obama supports blissfully unaware of the fact that Socialism is pretty much the opposite of Fascism. I guess that’s just a sign of how evil Obama really is that he manages to be two opposing -isms at the same time.
Or perhaps it’s a sign of how fucking clueless your average Republican is these days.
Then I guess you look like the unholy love child of Sean Hannity and Karl Rove.
Keep making funny fucknut.
If I did, then I wouldn’t post my picture on my blog so that the whole world would know that I was stupid AND ugly.
Glad you are enjoying the humor!
That boat has sailed fucknut. You’ve already proven you’re stupid. And by your logic it means you’re ugly.
Of course, logic is obviously not something you understand.
I have never been able to look at another man and tell if he is good looking or not. Les just looks like…..Les.
Is that some kind of gift or something you have ?
If I were a conservative, I would not be sharing stuff like…you check out guys.
Really? Is that what we’re down to now? Calling me ugly? I literally laughed out loud at that.
Considering how immune to reality you are your calling me ugly is an odd form of compliment. Thanks.
And here I didn’t think you cared.
Wow, go to work for a day and the fucknut explodes. Microscopic Republican brain turds everywhere.
Jon, you’re a moron. An imbecile. A complete and total fucknut.
More that that, you appear to be a masochist. You like to be made fun of. Probably some childhood thing. Did your mother not pay enough attention to you? Did your father pay too much attention? Were you diddled by a priest?
Do yourself a favor, give it up and go someplace where people might actually like you. Or stay here and we’ll slap you around some more. Makes no difference to me.
By the way, the link to your site is 404’d.
Also, your momma dresses you funny…..
@Julian – I have not proven that I am stupid. Just the opposite. I have illustrated my own intelligence and the sheer stupidity of most of the crazy liberals hanging around this blog. It is you that has no understanding of logic. Or manners.
@Paul – I’m not really interested in how you look at other men, but thanks for sharing anyway. Les looks like Les…thanks for that update – its groundbreaking.
Every once in a while we have commenters who could barely even pass a Turing test, let alone the final exam in PolSci 101.
@Les – yes, we are down to calling you ugly. Its interesting that you laughed out loud at that suggestion. Laughter/shock/disbelief/horror—all reactions that I had in viewing your picture and probably the same reaction you have everyday when you look in the mirror or anyone looking back at you.
If you take it as a compliment, that’s great for you. Glad to enrich your day!
And to think you would think I didn’t care—you should know by now that I care deeply about you and your hysterically crazy fanatical opinions.
@Kpatrick – from your first comment, you showed yourself to be everything that you are claiming that I am. I am not a masochist – you have to realize that I am not really bothered by the childish insults and immature opinions that most of your readers have to offer.
While your theories about over/under attentive parental units and inappropriate priestly behavior which happens far often are shockingly brilliant from an individual with an iq smaller than their shoe size, none of them happened to me.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m not seeking approval from you or anyone else on this blog. So I’ll hang around here for a while longer, since it makes no difference to you. You can attempt to slap me around, and I’ll slap you right back. It’ll be a lot of fun, and you’ll probably continue to use the word fucknut since that seems to be one of the few insults you know.
And I know my site is 404’d at the moment, but I appreciate you checking that out for me.
@decrpitoldfool –
Every once in a while? I’m a little amazed that most of these liberal commenters can even turn on their computers given their lack of mental prowess.
Well I think it’s clear Jon has admitted he’s nothing more than a troll so from now on I’ll just start deleting his comments.
He is, after all, not adding anything to the conversation which is one of the guidelines I’ve put in place.
This is amusing. Jon has gone and made himself a Twitter account just so he could bitch at me.
I think I have a new stalker.
Wow, Jon is desperate for attention. Used a new email address and rerouted his IP. Not that it matters, I have no problems just deleting his comments and banning the new IP ranges.
Like I said, desperate for attention.
Seeing as Jon can’t take a hint I’ve made having a registered account mandatory for commenting and I’ve turned off self-confirmation of registration. I realize this will be a bit of a bother for a bit, but it’ll save some time in dealing with all the Jon clones.
Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I won’t require membership to comment, but I am turning comment moderation on.
Registered members will bypass comment moderation and the standard form. So this allows folks to still comment without registering, but your comment won’t be seen until I approve it.
Did Jon register an account already? If he’s that serious about man-love…
Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time I’m sure.
This Jon character must be quite hard to deal with if you have to change your whole blog configuration simply to deal with him. I would have thought you would allow him to comment simply for sheer entertainment.
Good luck with the new system – sounds like it will work out well!
It wasn’t much of a change. Just flip a couple of switches and its done.
Had Jon at least been entertaining I wouldn’t have bothered to ban him, but he wasn’t contributing anything to the discussion.
Les, if this change will remain permanent, you should probably add a big fat hint to the comment template if you don’t want five consecutive comments in a row from dot-morons who don’t pay attention to the moderation notice.
Lenny, I missed the Jon saga as it unfolded, but he was past his use-by date long before Les wielded the ban hammer. In the five years or so I’ve been around SEB, this is only the second or third poster to have achieved that distinction…
Good idea elwed. But it looks like Les has multiple comments in a row himself.
Yep, I do, but it’s a rarity for me and that’s not what I banned him for. That’s annoying, but it’s not something I tend to ban over. I banned him because he was a troll that added nothing to the conversation.
Elwed, I haven’t decided yet on if it’s permanent. Depends on whether or not Jon takes the hint. Thought I have to admit that this does deal with the issue of comment spam that makes it past the Akismet filter.
Leslie, multiple comments in a row aren’t a big deal. What I’m thinking of are sequences like this (we’ve had the almost exact same thing happen due to problems with a spam filter):
Submit comment.
Resubmit comment.
Resubmit comment. Hey, why doesn’t this show up?
Yo, what’s up fascist censors?
This site sucks. You can’t stand the truth.
Les, it’s a tough call. One way or the other, you have to junk Jon’s drivel until he finally calls it quits, you do indeed get the benefit of catching what Akismet misses, but you’re also penalizing the legitimate “one-issue posters” who can’t be bothered to register. I myself would prefer to undo this change in due time, but that’s just me of course.
Not sure how I missed this.
What was the line “Stupid is as Stupid does.” ?
Did register.
Maybe you could make it where unregistered posters had to buy a SEB mug or tshirt to comment. I imagine you could deal with folks like Jon making nuisances of themselves pretty easily if it were paying for a new Lesmobile to run around town in.
Elwed, eventually I’ll go back to the usual open commenting we’ve had in the past. This Jon fellow apparently wants to have my baby or something. Now that he can’t reply here he’s been replying to every single Twitter comment I make. The replies are so cordial that I can only conclude he’s fallen in love with me.
MM, I don’t think even Jon’s love for me would be enough to get him to buy an SEB t-shirt every time he commented. There’s only so many t-shirts you really need.
I dunno, maybe he could use ‘em as uh…towels or something to clean up after a hot night of posting on The Lesmeister.
I was thinking troll after the second page. The replies were just the same over and over and he didn’t argue the un-answerable arguments made by LK. Instead he took the issues people brought up that were more easily argued and turned them around. Not even a moron does this because there really is no point to it but to get a rise. Glad that Les banned. I’m not a big fan at all of deleting comments, but trolls are a good reason to start.
Webs – I don’t think Jon was/is a troll. I think Les just didn’t have the strength to deal with someone who was willing to offer a conflicting viewpoint.
Conflicting viewpoints are fine. Being repetitive, belligerent, and not contributing anything of substance to a debate is not. In other words: bullshit.
Oh, please. He didn’t supply any supporting information or cogent arguments, he just spewed insults. I’ve seen Les work patiently with completely opposing viewpoints as long as an actual argument was taking place.