2012 National Republican Platform
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/…ican-platform/

Scary reading. In particular, barring abortions, and gay marriage. Any rational being planning to vote Republican this year should have second thoughts.

I have no problem with barring abortion and gay marriage and I'm definitely an extremely rational person.

Irrational people are incapable of making that assessment.

Many Christians dont support gay marriage and abortion. News at 11.

Pretend "Christians" care of Faux News.

Strange, I've always thought that people who supported gay marriage and/or abortion were totally irrational!!

You guys need to start by defining rational to each other :P

@Corwin & others: The point is that "marriage" is just a name for a union between two people. You can call it porridge for all I care and I understand that some churches shouldn't have to marry/porry to same-sex people if they don't want as that should be THEIR choice. However, in the same regard, according to state laws, men and women should be treated equally in my opinion and so anyone who chooses to have state laws protecting them by rights of marriage/porridge should as well.

This is my rationale -> Logical thought process. Equality for men and women. Right to have rights for both men and women.

Abortion is a more delicate matter, since you have to start by defining life, which is very complicated to do. My opinion though is that it should be the mother's choice, but that at the same time, it shouldn't be TOO easy to do. Exactly how to do that is hard too in my opinion. So basically, I understand why many struggle with this issue. I'm not a woman though, so I think it's very important for men to try and imagine carrying a child you would not want and at best MIGHT grow to love and at worst you'd dump the child at an adoption centre them moment it is born… Again, this is very complicated. I'm very much in favour of European laws as far as I understand them, which allow for the persons to choose what to do. This allows religious couples not to abort, non-religious couples who are against abortion not to abort, and people who want to abort have that option too.

Hope that logic makes sense too :)

Let's keep all the fun related to the convention in one place. It might be infectious. ;)

Check this out

Paul Ryan’s brazen lies

and a list of other media pushback, even from Faux News of all places. ;)

LYIN' RYAN: ALL THE MEDIA PUSHBACK

What, fox described it as dazzling. I stopped reading there but I'm sure that's the gist of it.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/…#ixzz252BejeYA

Though that contributor is perhaps a bit on the liberal side compared to others used by them. The majority of pieces I've found major news services so far do highlight one thing clearly and consistently though - we've reached a high watermark for news outlets' ineptitude and downright uselessness in providing this sort of analysis.

That includes the fact checking articles. Even when absolutely right they are almost absolutely useless when partitioned outside of normal coverage and broader editorial pieces.

Well isn't it convenient that you stopped reading the Fox News article once it laid out all the lies he made.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/…n-three-words/

Politicians lie. News at 11.

You did realize that was a joke right?

Since you seem so willing to dismiss the truth, no.

What the hell are you talking about? Did you think I meant the fact check articles were wrong? That's not what I meant at all; whether a fact check is done as party of a cogent comprehensive analysis/discussion featured prominently in the coverage is mostly decided by the ideology of the commentator and expected ideology of the viewing audience. This was perhaps more obvious in CNN's online coverage where they gave reactions from all of their staff commentators in one long article; liberals fact checked but were identified as such so conservatives could skip them and conservatives gushed and were identified as conservatives so liberals could skip them. This makes it easier to for viewers who would potentially benefit from these facts to comfortably avoid them.

You seem to have inserted intent and meaning into what I said that is not there at all. I said that the fact checking articles were useless because the only people they'd convince of anything - in that format and presentation - was people who were already inclined to believe them in the first place. The article I linked to explained that; this effect means that perfectly accurate and wholly unbiased fact checking is just about as useless as partisan misinformation presented as such. That is why the uselessness of fact checking taken out of a more comprehensive coverage is independent of whether or not they're right. That should have been obvious if you read it. It's an interesting study demonstrating that people presented with misinformation hold to that incorrect idea even when subsequently presented facts which dispute it. I guess you were just too ready to dismiss that though.

No you started with the presumption that the joke I made was earnest and then based your interpretation of what I said on that. So when I mentioned the contributor was more liberal than other fox news contributors you assumed that was me dismissing the article. Though any small amount of thinking would have told you this made no sense to infer - if you thought the joke serious than there would have been nothing I had read to dismiss. No I was mentioning this because I don't think this can honestly be portrayed as "Fox news" calling him on things but one contributor whose fact-checking is partitioned away from the main news programming and easily avoidable by those customers who don't want to hear it.

Perhaps you thought I meant that most media is useless in performing this sort of analysis because it is liberal? No - it uselessness comes from either a full embrace of a partisan outlook (Fox and most MSNBC programming) in some cases and an embrace of the fallacy that there are two equal opposing opinions about everything (CNN's mind-sucking round-tables and on-air assertions that factual inaccuracies might be alright).

You have to do something more involved and difficult if you actually want to do your job as a journalist and get the truth of things out there - but this is hard and takes time and still risks alienating those who disagree so they don't do that so much anymore. To this extent they have taken the fact checking out of analysis and partitioned it off into its own little section - where nobody who is not already inclined to find fault with a candidate will pay attention to it. That's the point of that article I linked to - it explains how facts presented as such do not do a very good job of correcting misinformation.

Thrasher randomly flings insults at people instead of debating logically. News at 11.

You know, I keep waiting for that damn news to roll around, but it never seems to get here. It's just more and more of these teasers… ;)

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily…145223432.html

Both sides are lying to get elected. Imagine that.

One commentator in the press here feared that the U.S. 2-parties system might push a wedge into the U.S. society, thus creating a schism - and even more extremity on both sides.

It's already happened. And comments like both sides are doing it doesn't help. There's also the matter of degree and the source. A candidate and national strategy based on a pack of lies is much worse than pundits making up a few lies as they go.

Its not so much even about both sides doing anything how one or either of them can get away with it to the extent they do. That problem comes in part from a news media that is completely incapable of delivering these facts in a way that actually reaches people who believe the falsehoods to be true - whenever they occur. That requires they be part of a more comprehensive commentary that approaches viewers who may have been taken in from a point of respect and understanding first and foremost. That's slow and its hard to get right and not sound (or be) disingenuous so they don't do it. Much easier to save that for an online blog post or a throw-away segment that viewers can just ignore if they don't like the cognitive dissonance.