No one at the AP (at least I hope no one) really believes any of this stuff. They are just lying in an attempt to persuade confused people.

If partisan (right-wing) hacks are labeled "journalists", and real journalists are named "partisans", perhaps people will confusedly follow along with the lies. This is all done with malice aforethought. As it works less and less, it will become louder and more shrill.

The only question worth considering now is: Will this result in more people being confused and drawn to their side, or more people being alienated and pushed away from their side.

Just as abolishing the FDA is the way to protect public health. Because it seriously impairs the freedom of those whose lives it saves.

Actually, the FDA has killed people. It does this by not permitting them -- even when they are terminally ill and have nothing to lose -- from using drugs or techniques not yet approved by Their Protectors. The FDA also is directly implicated in the prison-industrial system fueled by the War on (some) Drugs, and the corollary war on doctors who deal with patients in severe and intractable pain.

Odd how the "my body, my choice" mantra flies out the window for some leftists when one of their beloved regulatory agencies is at issue.

An organization more representative of the powerful corporate, "go-along-to-get-along" media culture would be hard to find.

From Project Censored, the media watchdog group:

"The AP Board of Directors is made up of 22 newspaper and media executives including the Presidents/CEOs of ABC, Cox News, McClatchy, Gannett, Scripps, Tribune, Hearst, Washington Post and several smaller/regional newspaper chains. Two directors are members of conservative policy councils including the Hoover Institute and the Business Round Table. Three are on the board of directors of Mutual Insurance, and one is on the board of the world’s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin. The AP Board represents a solid corporate media network of the largest publishers in the US and provides a clear tilt towards right-wing conservative perspectives."

Just a phrase, a word with a negative connotation in a wire service story, has enormous impact, in view of the widespread assumption of objectivity and fairness most of us grant to the major wire services. In the past the AP has underplayed ACLU reports on torture, has been accused of bias on reporting on the Israeli-Arab conflict, and purportedly under-reports stories on the growing national impeachment movement, among other things.

It isn't a real "failure" if success is defined at giving people what they want, but it is a failure if success is defined as giving them what they need to be good citizens. -- Mona

Despite your disclaimer downthread, Mona, I'm always at a loss to explain to myself how someone whose comments always sound like those of a hereditary aristocrat trapped among Hell's Angels can actually believe in liberty of any but the most rarified kind, the kind that benefits the right sort.

I'm sure that the people have all the defects you ascribe to them and more besides. What I don't understand is how you come to the conclusion that the problem of power can be solved without any reference to the mechanisms, social and individual, which give rise to it.

Liberals look at all the influences which impinge on us, from variations in the intelligence, psychology and personal history of individuals, to the phenomena -- social, historical, technological, etc. -- which tend toward the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Liberals also think about what practical monkey-wrenches can be thrown in the path of this tendency by the political process.

Never mind the grand theories of liberty; what informs us doesn't automatically exclude social engineering from the bottom as well as the top. If you want to know how the people with all their defects can be spared oppression, you have to first concede that you live among them, that you are in fact, one of them.

I'm curious if you believe the government has any role at all in testing pharmaceuticals or guaranteeing their purity/efficacy. Note that I’m not saying the current FDA performs these tasks especially well. But is there a place in libertarian theory for pure food and drug laws backed by the power of the government?

Has Olbermann said anything positive about Bush?

-- shooter242

While we're on the subject, has Olbermann said anything positive about terminal cancer? The Unibomber? Termite infestations? Clearly he isn't fair and balanced.

Unless you can find something nice and respectful to say about the alligator who's chewing off your leg, you must be a vicious partisan.

Dishonest, Glenn. When Hume said those words about Murtha, it was on Fox News Sunday and he was in the role of commentator. On Special Report, he puts on the anchor hat. Olbermann's show is an hour-long opinion piece.

Unless you can find something nice and respectful to say about the alligator who's chewing off your leg, you must be a vicious partisan.

-- SomeNYGuy

Shooter, back awhile, put the same insipid question to us about saying something positive about Bush showing bias of non-bias. I had the same reply as you did, SomeNYGuy. Except I left out the alligator bit. That about sums it up, though. Hard to have a good word to say about things or people who are the equivalent disleasure as violent vomiting is.

"No it doesn't. As revolting as I find the current state of the "news" to be, there is no cure that would not be worse by seriously impairing freedom, as Mr. Dirks noted. People do not always use their liberty in ways I like, but letting them do so beats paternalism and totalitarianism every time."

--quoth Mona..

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Intelligent but somewhat deranged people like yourself, Mona, are the toughest nuts to crack. I dunno why I'm bothering..

but, markets, ANY markets, work properly ONLY in the presence of accurate information. Take away accurate information, distributed to all equally, and explained to all equally, and all you have is an elaborate con-game. Surely you can see that?

This is why our health-care system is broken. This is why our stock market is occasionally broken. This is why any number of human-made systems don't work as you might wish, in your libertarian fog. Because, a lot of the time, most of the people participating in said market are being lied to with malice aforethought.

Government regulation, done right, levels the playing field in markets. Done wrong, it just compounds the crime of advantage to one side, to the detriment of the other.

I won't argue that government regulation is always a good thing. But, very often, such regulation fails its purpose because it's corrupted by the very factions that are trying to tilt the market their way in the absence of such regulation. In other words, them what has the power and money in any market transaction fully intend to screw the other side of the transaction by witholding vital information. If corrupting government regulation is required to do that, then that's what happens.

Libertarians like yourself, far from living in a world of truth, live in a world of wishful thinking. You seem too smart for that. But then, you're not the first smart/stupid libertarian I've run into. It seems to be a requirement of that world-view.