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Playing Politics with the Troops

By jimgon (Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 06:38:02 PM EST) (all tags)

Who would believe that the GOP would play politics with the troops?

Well, me for one.

Mother Jones reports: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/04/military-pay-shutdown-gop-stalling-bill

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Playing Politics with the Troops | 23 comments (23 topical, 0 hidden)

Well, by technician (2.00 / 0) #1 Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 06:43:26 PM EST

you can guess what the folks around here are saying. Goddamn Dems, they say. Holding up pay for no reason. Bastards.

Because the lie is the truth.

Goddamn. I need to move to Canada like right now.

what seriously? by R343L (2.00 / 0) #2 Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:08:21 PM EST

And the republicans aren't at all responsible for threatening filibusters on budget bills last year? Or refusing to offer anything remotely reasonable for the last four months?

"There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." -- Eliot

[ Parent ]

: 2004 presidential debates by lm (2.00 / 0) #3 Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:16:37 PM EST

Bush called Kerry a flip-flopper and poked fun at him for being for the bill before he was against the bill.
Nevermind that Bush threatened to veto the bill before he signed the bill.
Kindness is an act of rebellion.
[ Parent ]

and Clinton ensured I got paid. lol. by ammoniacal (2.00 / 0) #4 Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 08:45:13 PM EST

"To this day that was the most bullshit caesar salad I have every experienced..." - triggerfinger

wow, i totally misread that... by LilFlightTest (4.00 / 2) #7 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 09:59:28 AM EST

"paid" is not the same word as "laid"...
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if de-virgination results in me being able to birth hammerhead sharks, SIGN ME UP!!! --misslake

[ Parent ]

: He did that too, thanks to Haiti. by ammoniacal (2.00 / 0) #10 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 12:21:08 PM EST

"To this day that was the most bullshit caesar salad I have every experienced..." - triggerfinger
[ Parent ]

I'm just impressed... by atreides

(4.00 / 1) #5 Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 10:41:45 PM EST

...that Louie Gohmert is doing something (trying to introduce HB1297) that doesn't make me want to cringe or vomit. A broken clock really is right twice a day!

_{He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.}

I was shocked by jimgon

(2.00 / 0) #8 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 10:54:27 AM EST

I'm not shocked that it got put into committee. I'm also not shocked that the general media or the Democratic party dropped the ball. The Democrats are inept and the media is incompetent.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

[ Parent ]

What would a competent media look like? by wumpus (2.00 / 0) #16 Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 01:56:19 PM EST

Media exist to sell customers to advertisers. They simply want to placate the marks and make them more susceptible to the corporate propaganda their customers are selling. "Competant" media companies are good at pulling eyeballs from the competition. The first part appears easy enough that all of them seem to have mastered it.

Wumpus

[ Parent ]

Non-profit for the start by jimgon

(2.00 / 0) #17 Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 06:41:02 PM EST

And by non-profit I don't necessarily mean near poverty. Consumer Reports manages it from a consumer perspective. A competent media or more precisely a competent news media would have freedom to intellectually pursue investigation and intellectual freedom to come to conclusion based on the evidence. Currently they don't for the reasons you specify. They're chasing the next buck and doing whatever they can to capture it and not alienate too many that may be hiding nearby.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

[ Parent ]

A real-time wiki would be a start by wumpus (2.00 / 0) #18 Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 07:22:45 PM EST

just to allow the heavy editing that involves most articles ignore obvious (if only to experts) facts. I wondered what would happen if you put something like AP on site and allowed wiki-style editing. My guess is that you couldn't get AP's content for such work, and you wouldn't have any other board based content to start on.

I think the problem isn't the difference between non-profits and for-profits. I've seen to many stories of non-profit CEO featherbeding and other horrors (how many non-profits employed telemarketing, anyway?) The problem is the revenue source. CR gets revenue from subscribers, and returns facts. Most media get revenue from advertisers, and returns marks to them.

Wumpus

[ Parent ]

: Agree on the Revenue Source by jimgon (2.00 / 0) #19 Mon Apr 11, 2011 at 06:22:47 AM EST

I watched a documentary over the weekend about the US media, I don't know the name. One of the points they made is that political advertising is a huge source of revenue for the news media. So they can't rock the boat. Throw in that politicians retaliate when they see something they don't like by reducing or eliminating access and you have a problem. If they call a spade a spade, then they lose access and funding. So they don't cover stories and if they do they don't do it critically.

The thinking for me with a non-profit is that with a break even strategy you have a bit more flexibility. You don't have to tack on margin and you don't have to please the shareholders. A major media company is beholden to institutional investors who are going to demand ever increasing margins and due to the size of their holdings the executives have to listen.

The wiki idea is interesting, but as you wrote you aren't going to get a professional article as a basis. And it takes time to research and write an article. It's not something you can generate much content on from volunteers, especially given the fleeting nature of topics. It might work for large investigative pieces which take weeks to fletch out, but as soon as you release the first draft people are going to head to the bunkers and the major media will never run it.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."
[ Parent ]

the american public doesn't want a BBC by garlic (4.00 / 1) #20 Mon Apr 11, 2011 at 01:57:48 PM EST

that's why NPR and PBS are funded via donation instead of taxes mostly.

[ Parent ]

It's shocking to me by jayhawk88 (4.00 / 0) #6 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 01:10:05 AM EST

How many people there are out there that so willingly get spoon-fed their chosen party line on stuff like this, just to re-enforce their own pre-conceived notions, beliefs, and prejudices.

Repubs: Here's a bill to ensure troops get paid during a govt shutdown, and oh yeah, also a bunch of drastic spending cuts we know you'll never agree to in the same bill.

Dems: Why are you playing politics with the troops? -1, Troll

Repubs: Why are Dems refusing to ensure that the troops get paid during the govt lockout? They're playing politics.

Dems: Those Repubs can't get a budget passed that we'll vote for. We'd sure hate to think that troops won't get paid because of Republican stall tactics. We have the power to make sure that doesn't happen of course, but we're not going to say that we'll pay the troops regardless, to put pressure on the Repubs in Congress. BTW, we really hate it when the Repubs play politics.

Repubs: You see how the Dems like to play politics?

Half the country: Damn Liberals!

The other half: Damn Conservatives!

And what was accomplished, besides filling a news cycle? Nothing.

I refuse to believe people are really this stupid. If you can get yourself up in the morning, dressed properly, and find a way to get to a McDonalds or Starbucks, you have to be able to see and understand the games these fuckers are playing. Why doesn't this piss more people off, and by that I mean piss them off in the right way, and not just piss them off at the other side? Is it really so comforting to just wrap yourself in an ideology that so many are so willing to just completely turn off their reason and logic when it comes to politics? This is what scares me the most. Not that our elected officials are screwing us over, not any one thing either side does or stands for. The idea that so many people just willfully turn a blind eye to what happens in the name of a political affiliation. This behavior is the worst parts of books like 1984 and Brave New World, and it scares the living shit out of me.

Don't know where you were going with that by jimgon

(2.00 / 0) #9 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 11:13:37 AM EST

But I don't care which party was doing it. It was wrong. It just so happens the Republicans were wrong this time. Next time it might be the Democrats. It has in the past. The pendulum swings. When everyone is responsible, no one is resonsible. The party in majority is responsible for the time it is in majority. The fact of the matter is that Mother Jones was the only media outlet that made comment on this other than a blog post over at redstate.com. Or I could have posted back to the Library of Congress where the bill is listed.

I read Mother Jones because it provides exposure that I don't get from other media source and yes, it just so happens to be a left leaning publication. But they don't pretend to be anything other than what they are.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

[ Parent ]

Don't misunderstand by jayhawk88 (2.00 / 0) #12 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 04:26:09 PM EST

This wasn't meant to be a personal attack, and I'm not necessarily trying to comment on anything anyone here has said. I'm just speaking generally. Perhaps it's a fallacy, and I'm guilty of paying too much attention to the fringe element. But it does seem like we're quickly reaching a point (if we're not already there), where the majority of us are satisfied with just parroting the same old tired talking points and attacks, and not really caring whether anything actually gets fixed or not. Almost like politics has become a spectator sport on par with football or baseball. Root, root, root for your home team, boo the opposition...sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but in the end what's important is that you were entertained.

[ Parent ]

: I think it is a fallacy by jimgon (2.00 / 0) #14 Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 10:50:20 AM EST

There's a fallacy in general that we all succumb to a different degree in regards to the media. We want a neutral media that tells us the truth. We want the truth to be neutral. Sometimes the truth really is a liberal or conservative ideal. My big thing is to point out hypocrisy. I hate hypocrisy. In this case it was Republicans bluntly using the military as a tool to get what it wants. I hate that. Don't say you support X and then do Y. It has always been my problem with the Republican Party because it's what they've always done. It has increasingly become a problem for me with the Democratic Party because they do the same thing, but with different groups.

I am guilty of posting things with a particular spin. I do it intentionally. I am a critical thinker and reader. I can read an article and disagree with the conclusion. I can find the pieces of valuable information in an article and pull it out without buying into the overall argument. Maybe I'm an elitist (actually I guess I am), but I don't believe most people can do that (HuSi is blessed in that there is a large number of critical thinkers here). I post with particular spin because I don't trust that people will pull out the information that's there without having buying into what is usually a flawed conclusion. When I have time and I'm not feeling lazy I will write an article myself and simply reference back through links to the source articles, but I usually only do that every couple weeks and it's on my public blog when I do.

And I'll admit to being a bit defensive, because I was being lazy.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."
[ Parent ]

Whoops by jayhawk88 (4.00 / 0) #13 Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 04:28:28 PM EST

Should have read your comment before I posted my other one. But rooting for a sports team really is the closest analogy, isn't it? If only people applied as much critical thinking to politics as they do to analyzing the NFL lockout or fixing the BCS (myself included).

[ Parent ]

And that's the thing by jimgon

(2.00 / 0) #15 Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 10:55:38 AM EST

People aren't critical thinkers, so you have to cherry pick what you present knowing that people aren't going to read it critically and that they will buy into the conclusion at the end. Use a conservative article on a conservative and you reinforce their opinion even if the facts cited are in direct contradiction. People, Americans in particular, are simply not properly educated on logic and critical thinking.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

[ Parent ]

This sounds like a reason by garlic (2.00 / 0) #21 Mon Apr 11, 2011 at 02:01:12 PM EST

to not have a democracy. But it certainly feels like democratic countries are ruled better than the others.

[ Parent ]

It's why by jimgon

(2.00 / 0) #22 Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 06:49:00 AM EST

I trend to (lower case) republican. I'm not much of a (lower case) democrat.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

[ Parent ]

no need to get all lm literal on me. by garlic (4.00 / 1) #23 Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 08:09:18 AM EST

I don't think there are any actual democracies in the world. California is probably the closest.

[ Parent ]

: New England Town Government by jimgon (2.00 / 0) #24 Wed Apr 13, 2011 at 06:46:30 AM EST

Town meeting in New England is more democratic. The legislative authority is vested in town meeting and every registered voter in the town can attend town meeting and vote. The reality is that only a small sliver of those eligible to participate actually do, so each of those vote counts for more than it should. Typical of our electorate.

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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."
[ Parent ]

Playing Politics with the Troops | 23 comments (23 topical, 0 hidden)


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