nabalzbbfr cranked out :

What if there's no alternative
. . . Most notable, of course, has been the unfathomable irresponsibility of defunding our troops in the middle of war . . . So if one of the branches of government willfully acts against our national interests . . .
- - nabalzbbfr - - Wednesday, May 2, 2007 01:09 PM

Hmmm. Now which branch was it, that failed to fund the military? Which branch was it that, just before the election of 2006, in order to hide their budget deficits, submitted a Pentagon budget request that they knew wasn't enough to fund the Pentagon?

So, since that was a willful act against our national interests . . .

Kovie wondered :

On trolls
. . . What I'm wondering is, has anyone compiled . . . typically trollish talking points . . . ? I.e. a trollopedia of sorts . . .
- - kovie - - Wednesday, May 2, 2007 02:35 PM

Go to

http://denialism.com

and click on "The Denialist Deck of Cards"

for an entertaining taxonomy of denialism. Of course, not all trollishness is denialism (and, for that matter, not all trolling is bad, though I think you meant the bad sort.) The Hoofnagles also discuss (at their new blog, follow the link from their old blog) some other ways, besides denialism, that debates get disrupted and sidetracked.

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/06/opinion/06gewirtz.html

So Who Are the Activists?
By PAUL GEWIRTZ AND CHAD GOLDER

July 6, 2005

WHEN Democrats or Republicans seek to criticize judges or judicial nominees, they often resort to the same language. They say that the judge is ''activist.'' But the word ''activist'' is rarely defined. Often it simply means that the judge makes decisions with which the critic disagrees.

In order to move beyond this labeling game, we've identified one reasonably objective and quantifiable measure of a judge's activism, and we've used it to assess the records of the justices on the current Supreme Court.

Here is the question we asked: How often has each justice voted to strike down a law passed by Congress? . . .

. . . We found that justices vary widely in their inclination to strike down Congressional laws. Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, was the most inclined, voting to invalidate 65.63 percent of those laws; Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, was the least, voting to invalidate 28.13 percent. The tally for all the justices appears below.

One conclusion our data suggests is that those justices often considered more "liberal" - Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens - vote least frequently to overturn Congressional statutes, while those often labeled "conservative" vote more frequently to do so. At least by this measure (others are possible, of course), the latter group is the most activist . . .

- - Paul Gewirtz is a professor at Yale Law School. Chad Golder graduated from Yale Law School in May.

Prima facie evidence of the broken, dysfunctional national media:

1. An electorate that STILL believes that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

2. An electorate that believes that Senator Clinton and her husband are to the left of Senator Obama, who is to the left of Edwards.

3. An electorate that believes that Giuliani, McCain, and Romney are all more centrist and more more moderate than any of the Democrats.

Points 2 and 3 are seen in a survey released last week: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/463/campaign-2008-voter-groups

I like Edwards, and maybe it would hurt him if voters knew the truth, but the truth is that he's to the left of the other 5 major candidates.

I don't like H.R.C. but it's simply a fact that she's the most centrist of the 6 major candidates (3 Dems and 3 GOP).

If the electorate hasn't learned these simple facts, then the national media are failing to do their most essential task.

stevemaher12 :

But I don't believe there's this conspiracy to get the left (or the right). As I've noted several times, I think a right wing bias IS the end result, but not for all of the salacious reasons that everyone would most enjoy.
- - stevemaher12 - - Thursday, May 3, 2007 05:26 PM

In 1988, NBC News president Lawrence Grossman insisted to G.E.'s CEO, Jack Welch, that news was a public trust and should not be subjected to the same pressure to make profits that was applied to other GE units.

Welch fired him.

NBC reporter Claire Shipman said some nice things about Al Gore.

Welch fired her.

Chris Matthews said that Gore won a debate with GWB in 2000.

Welch phoned him.

The next night, Matthews reversed himself and said that GWB had exceeded expectations.

At "The Politico," do you think the Allbritton family puts aside their corporate interests and their Republican politics?

Yes of course, the family is more subtle now, than back when J.L.A. (old Joe, as in "WJLA") first bought the Washington Star and wanted to publish a front-page editorial endorsing Gerald Ford. (The staff at the newspaper talked him out of it. They convinced him that he could be more effective by being less blatant.)

The not-so-great condition of the national media was described in 1979 by David Halberstam in his great book, "The Powers That Be", and things have gotten much worse since then.

You can quibble and say there's no single, central Republican conspiracy, but you won't find a lot of Democrats at the Alfalfa Club.