Letters to the Editor
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Not Balanced
As someone who spent the '80s begging fellow reporters to eschew fake objectivity in favor of the more straightforward fairness, accuracy and balance, I assure you that what passes for "balanced" today is nothing of the kind.
Balanced does NOT mean "equivalent." It means that each side gets the coverage its activities warrant.
You don't "balance" criticism of Smirky's crimes against humanity, justice and the Constitution with condemnation of liberals as fascists any more than you "balance" the description of a serial killer's vicious murders with a list of the lovers with whom the prosecutor has cheated on her spouse.
Criminals get condemned. Defenders of justice get praised.
That's balance.
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@Bees
Is that worse than asserting there are no terrorists, only 'militants' or worse, 'activists'?
Who says that? "Libruls"?
Is that worse than asserting that if 'those people over there' have interesting yet quaint and brutal traditions that it's not our business to interfere?
Depends if the interference is more brutal than the quaint traditions or not, I'd think.
This bland bizarre 'everything is everything' point of view that sets out to say there's no such thing as right or wrong, only the west's shame and guilt about it.
You're 20 years too late to be complaining about this.
I see this all the time in England which has gone into multiculturalism in a rabid way. Everyone is a hyphenated national, everyone's cultural norms, whatever those are, are to be respected no matter how insane they are.
Well, that's why I opppose neocons so much: the normative solution for them for every problem is to kill some people, and pay for it with debt. That's insane and will be opposed by any person not completely brainwashed by the nutty philosophy.
And in the end all it does is wind up alienating people from one another as they become obsessed with the differences between their little ghetto world view and everyone else's.
If some things are right, and others are wrong, it is important to oppose the wrong things. This includes every neocon/Republican policy at the current time, in my opinion.
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'lette
Thanks for picking up that ball and running w/ it (as I hoped someone "better informed" than I would do)... Brevity may be the soul of wit, but I can be brief to the point of cryptic, I realize - an artifact of my "in and out" relationship w/ this place. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it, anyway,
HRH: When are you gonna realize you're preaching to the choir here? Every damn post isn't guaged by how you perceive it's importance relative to the stinking Drug War.
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Is Glenn Greenwald a Muslim, and does he want to murder your children in their beds?
We'll hear both sides of this debate, right after the break!
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@Aycharaych
Despite a little lip service to the contrary I really don't think anyone here is all that disturbed by having to piss in a cup.
The ship of protecting our privacy from unwarranted intrusion sailed a long time ago and most of you didn't give a fuck then.
Why should I care about your issues now?
Give me one really good reason..
For one thing, no one forces you to pee in a cup, unless you are in some legal trouble. You have the choice not to take money from people who disrespect you so. I know several people who refuse to ever take a voluntary drug test, not because they are drug users, but because their dignity is worth more to them than whatever income they might be forgoing.
Seconldy, "Our issues" are your issues. You are as much a target of these privacy violations as anyone, and unlike pee tests, NSA wiretapping does not give you any options as to whether you are spied on or not. The US Terror Watch list now includes over 900,000 names, growing at over 600 new entries per day.
How do you like those odds?
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prunes
Seconldy, "Our issues" are your issues. You are as much a target of these privacy violations as anyone, and unlike pee tests, NSA wiretapping does not give you any options as to whether you are spied on or not. The US Terror Watch list now includes over 900,000 names, growing at over 600 new entries per day.
I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to worry about.
Again, why should I care?
And I guess you missed the part where I pointed out that to get or keep a decent cup I have to submit to a (what is to me at least) a humiliating procedure.
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prunes
One more point..
How many people are in prison because of "data mining"?
How many are in prison because of the drug war?
Which is really the more significant threat to freedom?
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Got that right
The media begrudingly gave Moore a few interviews when F/911 came out -- but every interview was a string of hostile questions challenging him. And much of the time the interview was followed by a negative, fact-free "review" of his movie.
-- anonny
You got that right bud. I remember the "interview" that Moore had on the CBS Early show when F/911 came out. Can't remember the woman's last name but her first was Hannah. She's not one the show anymore, but does anyone know her last name?I've never seen such an overtly hostile demeanor on the part of the interviewer. She was just dripping with hostility towards Mike. As you can imagine, the interview didn't go well. When it was over, the sarcasm was thick when she thanked him for coming on.
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damn..
Substitute "job" for "cup" in my next to last post..
That's what I get for posting when distracted..
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:-)
And I guess you missed the part where I pointed out that to get or keep a decent cup I have to submit to a (what is to me at least) a humiliating procedure. -- Aycharaych
Hard to fit? Or just bragging?
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"Nothing To Hide" - The Biggest Privacy Misconception
I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to worry about.
Again, why should I care?
And I guess you missed the part where I pointed out that to get or keep a decent cup I have to submit to a (what is to me at least) a humiliating procedure.
Nothing to worry about? Nothing to hide?
The NSA and the Executive Branch will decide that, citizen.
I'm serious. The thing about this is that it can be abused in so many ways, what you might consider innocuous, the government might try and connect into something insidious and find some way to justify further watch on you or even go so far as to go after you, just because you might have bought a certain book, or went to a certain kind of rally, or talked to someone who talked to someone who talked to someone who MIGHT have funded someone who funded someone that COULD be a terrorist.