Daily Topics - Thursday April 5th, 2012
By shawnt56
Catch The Thom Hartmann Program LIVE at our new time, 3-6pm Eastern!
Hour One: A well oiled machine that doesn't depend on facts...
Hour Two: Cop in Chamberlain shooting sued in '08 racism case - Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr. and his attorney Randolph McLaughlin
Hour Three: Is the Greek Suicide the beginning of Europe's Arab Spring?
Comments
#2
So when they ask who's going to pay for it? (referring to medical care, or any other government program) the left should be prepared with the answer: "the same people who are now paying more for the private option, and are going to pay even more if they don't get government relief."
Geez I can't understand how people like Luntz can go on these shows, advertise the game plan, and then pundits and politicians on the left stand there dumbfounded. HELLO YOU MORONS, THEY HAVE GIVEN YOU THE GAME PLAN, FIND A COUNTER TO IT AND USE IT!!!!! This isn't rocket science.
N
#3
Largely it is a campaign of truth-through-repetition. Once the idea that "public" is a dirty word stops being questioned, the rest follows more or less effortlessly.
#4
Hearing stories of police brutality like this makes me desire term limits on being a police officer. It seems that the longer someone serves as a police officer the more likely they have a probability of subcombing to a rampant culture of the us against them mentality between police and citizens.
N
#5
I worry that the official response to police misconduct, especially in cases where indivdual officers come in with a seige mentality, may be more repression of a citizen's right to monitor police behaviour and result in more unaccountability.
The Illinois Eavesdropping law was recently declared unconstitutional in a Class 1 felony case (15 years in the joint) involving Chicago artist Chris Drew, who made an audio recording of his own arrest for peddling without a license (a city ordinance). The state wants to appeal Judge Stanley Sacks' ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court. the State's Attorney and the Attorney General involved willl spend unlimited amounts of money to assert State power over citizens. An attempt to modify the law failed in the State House recently.
The will to change the laws involving the hiring and promotion of people who may be mentally unfit for their jobs may come to the fore, but many people have suffered far too long waiting for something positive to happen.
As I've asked before, "who works for whom?".
#6
As a lawyer once told me, "there is no such thing as the Fourth Amendment for the working class any more."
#7
I agree with the anomy theory of suicide under conservative rule. Certainly when I contemplate suicide (don't worry, I'm far from actually doing it), it's because I feel like I haven't really been admitted to the world, so I might as well leave it. I have culture shock in my own country.
#8
Cultrivorously ugly = knife-swallowingly ugly.
#9
/Fashay/? "Fasces" is pronounced /fash-eez/.
#10
There is a very good reason that Republican candidates lie, especially relatively moderate candidates who need to get support from the conservative base. The more they lie, the more conservatives believe them. Even when the lies are exposed - in fact, their lies work better with conservatives when they are exposed as lies. This is called the "Backfire Effect". It is why John McCain lied so enthusiastically in 2008, and why Mitt is lying now - it actually works, and proving that they are lying just makes it work better.
Post on the "Backfire Effect" from 2008: Why They Lie
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
More here: The Power of Political Misinformation
Once you understand the Backfire Effect, your response to political lies becomes more complicated. Republican lies have relatively little effect on Democratic voters, so refuting them has a limited benefit. But Republican lies have a strong effect on conservative voters, and refuting those lies only makes conservatives believe the lies more strongly. Because of this cognitive defect in conservative brains (really, that is NOT hyperbole) you can make a calculated argument that not answering lies from a conservative opponent may be better than refuting them.
I suspect Obama still needs to counter lies - he isn't going to convert conservatives, they are crazy (literally) and aren't going to switch their vote, and they hate Obama so much that the Backfire Effect could hardly increase their motivation. BUT - sane uncommitted voters may, on balance, be swayed by the spectacle of one side being a loopy lie factory, and refuting lies may help motivate traditional Democrat voters to go to the polls. And in the end elections are almost always won not by persuasion, but by getting your supporters to show up.
#11
Legal knowledge and training helps when trying to determine what the Constitution means. Barring that, you need to at least look up the words in a good legal dictionary.
"Law" refers to determination of disputes as performed by courts in the English system. It includes resolution of "torts" by awarding damages for civil wrongs and penalizing guilty parties under the criminal law as well as other matters that were traditionally recognized at law.
"Equity" refers to lawsuits and petitions requesting remedies other than damages, such as writs, injunctions and specific performance. It comes from determination of disputes by chancellors under the old English system. It includes determination of property rights, including enjoining nuisances and other matters that are resolved by orders without damages or penalties.
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By webmaster
Hello All
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The staff at WDTW are again twisting dials at the mixing console, degrading the content with some kind of "echo chamber" effects. Or so it seems. Is this something that "just happens" in broadcasting, or is it (as it appears to be) mischief? I've never heard these seemingly random signal degradations on any other broadcast station, ever. It pops up every so often on Clear Channel property WDTW, along with a lot of other crimes/negligences against "production values." Maybe I'm just paranoid.
See http://n8chz.blogspot.com/search?q=wdtw