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Definitely a thread topic that needed to be brought up. I've been listening to AM talk radio stuff since the early 90's. Rush, Hannity, Levin, Boortz, Savage, Beck, and our local right-wing talker Lars Larson. There are so many others that are just the local version of Rush and they come and go with their attempts at national syndication. The market is insanely saturated with these guys. I also listen to a lot of NPR and other non-politcs talk shows, and it is interesting to see comparisons in how right-wing talk shows operate like other formats. Somethings I've noticed that really puts the whole conservative talk business into perspective is that many of these personalities did not start their careers as right-wing pundits. Boortz did sports. Rush really badly wanted to do sports, football in particular (and when he got his chance he was fired for saying stupid poo poo). Beck did a morning zoo show. Bill O'Reilly did a Hollywood tabloid show for years, and if you look up his "Inside Edition Meltdown" you can see he was just as passionate about peddling tabloid smut as he is about being a conservative champion. Hannity and Savage are actually unique in that they got into radio to be edgy conservative pundits. Levin was a former Reagan administration staffer, which explains why he drops Reagan's way too much in a format that already drops Reagan's name way too much. So many of these guys just moved from one format to another and it is arguable that they only did it for the money. Beck is an excellent example, as he went from nothing to rich and famous to being put out to pasture so publically in such a short ammount of time. And he played the part of an overly emotional conspiracy theorist for all it was worth. And that leads me to another really good point. Something thing that dawned on me after we got the Howard Stern show in my area (only a few years before he went off to satellite) and already listening to Tom Leykis for years, was that conservative pundits are basically politics flavored shock jocks. They are very formulaic and it's pretty much the same formula used by Imus, Stern and Leykis. They say incredibly off the wall stuff, especially right before a break to keep you tuned in. They leverage the call screening system to ensure that the callers are either complete sycophants, and any sort of opposition are people that sound terrible or otherwise can't string together a sentence. And there is heavy doses of just plain smack talk that you only otherwise find in the shock jock genre. You can find a bit of this in sports or car shows, but shock jocks and right-wing pundits are the only places you find such incredibly high level of low-blows and pure vitriol. Not only do these guys know that they have devoted fans, but that they also get a lot of people who will tune in just to hear what crazy thing they'll say next. I'm guilty of this myself. Being rather left-wing in my opinions, if I turn on right-wing radio it will be out of a morbid curiosity of what the latest right-wing talking points are. And radio is a great format for them to pull off these stunts. They will never be called out for the lies and the name calling because they control the discussion. The screener can just line up a dozen caller who whole heatedly agree with anything said. And if that doesn't work, groups like Premiere Radio Networks have things like "Premiere On Call", which is a stable of voice actors to provide "callers" for call in shows. Since no one will admit to using shills though, who knows how many they use.
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Oct 17, 2012 23:11
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Kneel Before Zog posted:I read an article, maybe it was on here, on how most of these products were driven by peoples fears, like having your identity theft stolen or life-alert, which ties into how most right wingers are people who are scared of the world around them, and they love to hate because they are afraid. Don't forget Carbonite Backup. You might [fear] lose all your files [/fear]. There is definitely a fear component to may of the things they advertise. But radio broadcasters are paid by advertisers, and with radio on the decline they'll take what they can get. Lars Larson does his best to be some sort of champion of hunters and farmers because he knows his audience. His employer has him doing ads for hot tubs, face lifts and divorceondemand.com because his employer knows where the money is at.
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Oct 17, 2012 23:55
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ZobarStyl posted:My bad, my post was not to imply that these ads are unique to right wing radio, but rather that they are things that are a complete waste of money that no thinking person should be purchasing. Doing stupid things with your money is not the sole province of the right, but I think the argument can be made that people who listen to authoritarian right wing radio are self-selected to be fed such advertisements. Would I more accurately paint with my over-broad brush if I had said survival seed kits and gun safes? People might be reading too much into these sorts of adds. Yes, there are a lot of ads that have "Protect your..." in them. But that sort of tactic really is used everywhere. Talk radio ads in general though are bottom of the barrel type stuff. AM radio in particular was on it's way out when Rush really ricked off the current right-wing radio format. And part of the reason he became hugely popular was that he used to let local stations rebroadcast him for free. That breathed a bit of life into all those near-death AM station around the country that needed something to attract listeners. Rush made up for it by using national level advertising, like when he started advertising for Florida Orange Juice. To this day though, they are still scraping the bottom of the barrel. FM radio still sounds better, satellite radio is becoming common, and now streaming to your smartphone is coming into its own. The personalities themselves still hawk things with a national appeal, and when the holidays come around they do switch it up for things like 1-800-Flowers for Valentines and Mothers Day. And if the market is good enough, local broadcasters still get ads for local goods and services.
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Oct 18, 2012 19:38
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BiggerBoat posted:This stuff really does permeate the language, through osmosis alone and by way of sheer repetition, and that bugs me more than anything. Someone brought up "how to debate a conservative" earlier in the thread, but every time I do it, I hit a brick wall of impenetrable false information that they have accepted as abject fact and the conversation ends there. They're getting this information from somewhere and a lot of them should know better, but they don't. I've found that there is a lot of truth to the saying that "you can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into". In my experience, you can make a bit of head way if you are really meticulous about presenting facts and examples. But eventually you hit a brick wall of some sort of belief that isn't really based on anything that can be counter-argued in a rational way. For Republicans, these brick walls are often abortion and other religious beliefs, national defense, and the deification of the constitution and capitalism. That is the point where no matter how much proof you have, the Republicans are irrefutably on the right side and everyone else is on the wrong side. And since the Republicans hit on so many disparate areas of policy, even if you finally score a rhetorical victory on one policy, they'll just fall back to supporting the Republicans on some other policy. Much like few religious people rarely lose their faith through a couple well reasoned debates, and mostly through personal and introspective moments of clarity, the American 2 party, heavily tribal, political system only gets converts through a similar fashion. They either stick with the one they are born into, or pick a side while going though their young adult existential crisis. Not to sound defeatist, but debating people about these things is largely a waste of time. No matter how tactful you are, it inevitably ends up confrontational because you are trying to destroy their world. You can see in people's eyes when cognitive dissonance hits, and how quickly after that they will get nasty at you to assuage that unpleasant feeling you inflicted on them. As another poster noted, every generation is more liberal than the last in the long run. If you want liberal views to win out in the long run, do what you can to promote the long standing trend of kids leaving rural (and now often suburban) conservative echo chambers and get more exposure to the real world. It may not create an army of dyed in the wool socialists. But I'd rather deal with a college Libertarian, who has dropped every republican platform except for "I like money", than the kid who never left Kansas or Mississippi and honestly thinks a milquetoast Democrat like Obama wants to take their guns so he can force gay abortions on persecuted white Christians.
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Oct 18, 2012 22:52
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The think tanks might provide the ammo, but it is the talking heads that actually fire the gun by broadcasting those views. Without Fox News and talk radio, the think tanks would be like a newspaper with no paperboys. But now, the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute have a way to get their propaganda right into homes and cars. Not only that, but in a format that will never be critical of them.
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Oct 19, 2012 19:48
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Zeroisanumber posted:Huffington Post and Salon.com come to mind, though they're not nearly as influential amongst liberals. Over the years, Huffington Post has become a go to source for a lot of liberal talking points. They are probably as much a household name to liberals as Drudge and Breitbart are to conservatives. I would probably add DailyKos is that sort of crowd though, as a talking point producers that doesn't filter out much of the fringe.
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Oct 19, 2012 23:21
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Wheresmy5bucks posted:
Just wait a few minutes for O'Reilly to have one of his trademark  momments. Then point out to your room mate how "emotional" O'Reilly's arguement is.
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Oct 20, 2012 20:39
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Soap Bat Derby posted:I remember when Rush Limbaugh called Kurt Cobain a waste of skin the day after he died. They've always been brazen about it, it's just far more obvious to us now, because unlike the Clinton days, the poo poo they're making up has no threads to reality (And we have the Internet to use for fact checking). At least Vince Foster was a White House staffer who was found dead, and Clinton did get a Blowjob. They are brazen because the are fundamentally shock jocks in three piece suits. Like was mentioned earlier, there are plenty of real things the right could grill Obama on. But that poo poo is boring, and the few people who are interested in that sort of thing are already tuned into NPR. If you want to get listeners to tune in and sit through the commercial break, Obama can't just be wrong on some wonky technical terms. He has to be a Islamo-Commie-Nazi who will utterly destroy America. I'm also of the opinion that the crazy conspiracy talk leads to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Basically that you and the radio host are the only ones who realize that everyone is out to get you, and you can hear it as the host and supportive callers will verbally jerk each other off every chance they get.  I love your show You are a great American You are a greater American We are both great Americans, and I'll send you a copy of my book, Why Obama is Literally The Devil
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Oct 24, 2012 20:15
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Guys like Rush and Hannity are comfort food to right-wingers. It is a place they can go to and get spoon fed arguments for their beliefs and get validation. The most worrisome aspect is that Rush has taken it so far as to become a sort of perpetual motion machine. He went from opinion echo chamber, to opinion maker, to the chief of the Republican Party apologizing for making Rush out to be a mere entertainer*. His de facto position as echo chamber/policy maker/secret boss of the RNC can just keep feeding into itself. It will be interesting when he dies because so much of the Republican machine has relied on him framing everything and setting the talking points. One thing is for sure, regardless of all the skeletons that come out of Rush's closest after his death, he'll still be given a sort of sainthood, sitting at the right had of Reagan Jesus in Republican Heaven. *Listen to any these guys long enough and you will eventually find them hiding behind the "entertainment" label when they say something that goes too far. In a similar fashion, almost all of them will self-identify as "independent", to make themselves out to be legitimate journalists instead of the pundits they really are.
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Oct 27, 2012 00:13
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Super Joe posted:Why would we be in Iraq? The Iraq War started in 2003. And there are sources that say the Bush administration were planning something with Iraq even before the 9/11 attacks. So if Kerry had won in 2004, he would have owned all the eventual problems with Iraq.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:15
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Super Joe posted:What? How are you able to determine these people's economic status and why are you assuming that suburban or rural people can't be poor? Middle class people have lost jobs, lost money in stocks or retirement investments, and are hurt by rising prices. You can't assume they aren't suffering just because you don't like them. Very true. Way to many of these seemingly well off suburbanites were only well off so long as their houses would always increase substantial in value so they could borrow against them, easy credit cards to afford toys, and a booming stock market that would take care of their retirement. They felt the crash as much as other people, and conservative pundits where quick to frame the problems. The funniest part is, for all their howling about "entitlement" programs, these people have their own overblown sense of entitlement and have no issue with government stepping in to protect those entitlements. Their house shouldn't go down in value. Gasoline should never get too expensive. Stocks and their 401(k) should always go up. They should always be able to find work so long as they put in a modicum of effort. They went to the streets when they stopped getting what they thought they were entitled too, and conservative media brought the feedback loop to reinforce the existing beliefs into blaming the government for all the problems. But no where in this framing were they going to be the ones who bought more house than they could afford. They were not to blame for how they allocated their 401(k). They were not to blame for using easy credit to live bigger than their income. They were not to blame for live so far from work and buying inefficient cars. I do have sympathy for Tea Party types who honestly fell on hard times. But they refuse to honestly analyze their own part in all this and refuse to accept any changes in their lifestyle to reflect the economic realities. So my sympathy only goes so far.
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Oct 29, 2012 19:51
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The Ender posted:...I had heard, actually, that Rush's listener base was grossly exaggerated by the laughably inaccurate listener diaries that were being used to track a show's exposure, and that the new automated monitoring thingies were showing that the 'shock jock' format actually had small audience (most of whom were only casual listeners). Arbitron has been pretty tight-lipped about how they do things. But I would not be surprised if Rush's business model, of giving away his show so that failing AM stations could fill in the dead air, ends up skewing the statistics to make more listeners than their really is. If they find that x% of people are listening to him in a given market, than suppose that the same x% are listening on every far flung AM broadcaster that plays Rush 2 or 3 times a day because they got nothing else, than that could produce way bigger numbers. I remember hearing about some one who tracked down how much Rush is re-broadcast around the country, and it came out to some ridiculous 100 hours a days or something. At any time of day, anywhere in the country, you could find Rush on the radio, including re-plays in the dead of night and all weekend long.
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Oct 29, 2012 20:03
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Do you see the kind of slippery slope that exists here when you start holding people - anyone - to painfully high standards of personal responsibility? Like I said, I do have some sympathy for these guys. A lot of them where just doing what they had always been told was the right thing. The point I was getting across was that right-wing media doesn't ultimately help these people with these problems, or even believe they exist. They would have been better off tuning into Bob Brinker or Dave Ramsey to get a handle on their money problems. Instead, they kept listening to Rush and friends, and they just keep going with the blame-government mantra. But I can be as sympathetic as Gandhi, it still doesn't change the fact that these people have completely bought into the right-wing narrative. And as others have pointed out, trying to argue them out of that mindset is drat near impossible. The right-wing media has built of surprisingly solid foundation of circular reasoning, begging the question, and other a priori facts. Or as Chomsky put it, it is at least internally consistent.
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Oct 30, 2012 19:26
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BiggerBoat posted:It's not reinforcement, it's a lack of independent logic. I don't think these 2 points are mutually exclusive. It is reinforcement in the sense that they have decided on a political tribe to belong to, and the radio pundits provide the latest reason why their tribe is best. Since politics is mufti-faceted and evolving, there is always a need for new reasons. So right now, they are going off on the Benghazi attacks, and listeners are getting reassured that their team is right because the other team got Americans killed. Other times they will cherry pick numbers that make Obama look bad, or even local numbers that make a Republican governor look good. And there is a lot of flat out lies, but the format doesn't allow for any real rebuttals. Even during the Clinton years, when the economy was generally good and Republicans were getting a lot of what they wanted passed through the legislature, right-wing pundits still got up everyday and hammered on any new example of why their team was right and the other was wrong. I do agree though that a lot of Americans do rely heavily on leaders to get them through the day. And some of these people will take literal marching orders if they are handed down. In a lot of ways, we are lucky that right-wing pundits have the attention span of an average Americans and are more interested in making some easy money than being revolutionaries.
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Oct 31, 2012 20:58
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Jazerus posted:The best political moves are both absolutely honest and cynically political at the same time. I don't envy Christie's position at the moment. His remarks make a lot of sense on a couple levels though. His state is now a disaster area, and he has no doubt under a lot of stress and little sleep. Photo ops and campaigning potshots are not on his list of priorities. Also, Christie's presidential aspirations were largely riding on New Jersey doing economically well, and now he is the governor of a (near term) economic money pit. Being a wide spread disaster, this also crimps his reliance on being a bedroom community for people making good money in NYC. Disasters like this also bring out the worst in capitalism. He'll no doubt go into a 2016 presidential run with a track record of taking a lot of Federal money and butting heads with a lot of "free market" insurance companies. I'm sure they'll be pulling the same stunts in New Jersey as they did in Louisiana, and be all "What storm damage? All we see is flood damage. Claim denied!"
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Oct 31, 2012 21:15
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Gazpacho posted:Remember Rush did the NFL desk for a while then lost the job for talking race. That indicates to me that he's not quite faking and doesn't have much chance of "moving on". Also a guy with that kind of success tends to take on debts. There are no shortage of examples of people who couldn't really retire because they spent so much on appearing rich. Rush no doubt falls into this category. He makes great money, but he flies around, buys ostentatious things, and has a ton of medical problems. Even if he isn't in debt, he'll quickly burn through what ever he's saved trying to maintain his current lifestyle.
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Nov 5, 2012 08:09
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bloodysabbath posted:In 2008, Rush Limbaugh inked an 8 year contract for $400 million dollars. I have no idea if that includes his stupid side projects, like endorsing "Two if by Tea" beverage. He also has a private jet and a stable of exotic cars. Lots of things that take maintenance and depreciate in value. And that's not to mention things like grandiose (3rd or 4th) wedding where he got Elton John to sing. 400 million dollars is certainly in the "gently caress you" never have to work again range. If he was a savvy investor he could live well and leave a long lasting charitable foundation behind. But looking up Rush's spending habits, and he is exactly the type of person who would not only buy platinum toilet paper, but have matching platinum toilets in a 57 bathroom mansion. Again, the world has no shortage of rock stars, movie stars and athletes who's lifetime earnings where that huge, and later had little to show for it. Private jets are a huge money pit, and might be justifiable if you are the CEO of a mufti-national corporation and need to fly off at a moments notice to sign off on billion dollar deals. Rush isn't doing that, so he's just burning money on upkeep and hanger rental. Those stables of exotic cars will slowly rot in the garage. Housekeepers and landscapers are a constant drain. The parties and gaudy decorations have no real return and is just more money burning. And I'm sure he has a celebrity grade Dr. Feelgood or two, and that sort of discretion never comes cheap. But at least all that spending is good for the economy.
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Nov 5, 2012 20:46
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Sephyr posted:That's a solid point. I remember watching quite a few documentaries about faith healers who started out cheating, with fake sick people being healed, earpieces telling them the details of the sheep they sudenly knew everything about due to the grace of God, but who slowly came to believe their own lies. It is definitely a solid concept. Especially given how many of these guys started their careers in non-political media, often had aspirations for something else, and then found a spot on the rght-wing gravy train filling in a couple times for some local pundit. I'm sure Rush loves the money and attention, but after hearing him opine about doing sport-talk over the years, I'm sure he would have been happier making that same money as the worlds premier NFL color commentator. Ironically, he blew his chance commenting on the "color" of a football player. Beck is an interesting case too. Former morning-zoo shock-jock (shocking enough to make fun of a miscarriage), he latter found (Mormon) Jesus and got national exposure being the official right-winger for CNN. Even his the story of his religious conversion is half-assed. The story goes, his family was shopping for a church because he figured they should be going to a church, and they settled on the LDS they visited because one of his kids liked it. If you listen to his show, he can't seem to help slipping back into the morning-zoo routine. And it becomes quite schizophrenic, as he'll go from laughing and talking back and forth with the other staff, and then slip back into some dire monologue when he seems to remember he's not getting paid for fun and games any more.
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Nov 5, 2012 21:10
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Axetrain posted:I thought he had one billion+? If so then he should easily be able to afford all those things, even at 1% interest thats 10mil a year not even counting his salary as well. In the case of Rush, there would have to be a credible third party to release his finances for me to believe it. Rush himself has too much of an image to maintain to really speak about it honestly. Also, he could have a gold plated mahogany desk that he paid millions for but he could never get that same amount back out of. He could have lots of things he thinks are worth millions up until he has to beg people to take it off his hands. The millions he spent decorating that NYC apartment he sold probably went right into a dumpster, as the terrible tastes of the nouveau riche rarely appreciate in value. He could be living off the interest of investments, but that is only if he is making sound investments. The internet isn't helping me much here though. No shortage of articles on the crap he spends his money on. Anything on "investments" just turns up cases of the good and bad effects on the stocks of companies Rush advertises for. His "EIB Network" is just him, so it isn't like he's rolling his fame and fortune into building a media empire.
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Nov 5, 2012 21:50
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Super Ninja Fish posted:There needs to be more discussion in this thread about Mark Levin. Rush has definitely had better days. I don't catch him on the radio as much as I used to, but from what I have caught he is coasting on his previous glory. His voice went to poo poo when he went deaf, and having relatives with bad hearing loss I would turn the dial as much from a sense of pity as plain disgust. And in retrospect, the drugs took a toll during that early 2000's period. He went from great radio voice and quick wits in the 90's to weird voice and losing his train of thought. But he was a trend setter, got his name out there by giving his product away to desperate AM stations, so he still makes money even though he has really gone to poo poo. Levin is an interesting case because he is one of those guys that got into radio to be a right-wing pundit. I find him pretty much impossible to listen to for any stretch because (as others have mentioned) he has no range and bounces from NPR whisper to that nasal shouting. And he can't keep Reagan's cock out of his mouth to save his life. Granted, the highpoint of his career was working in the Reagan administration. I doubt he'll gain much popularity because the number of people pining for the days of Reagan are declining. The bit of him I caught today was him playing back some old Reagan speeches, and then reading the transcript of them. But he's just so wrapped up in those good old days I don't think he really noticed that Reagan's words really aren't that different then any other politicians. GW Bush promised the same poo poo, but you'll be hard pressed to find a pundit who really champions Bush to any great extant. He's another case of preaching to the choir, but that choir is old and dying off.
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Nov 6, 2012 07:24
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bloodysabbath posted:Has anyone heard Levin today? I am not in a place where I can catch it, and I was just wondering if he's hit peak lunatic, even for him. I had this fantasy that if Obama got a second term, he'd pop some brain vessels. He's doubling down on the Republicans not being conservative enough. Oh, and women sold us out to liberty hating socialist to get free condoms and birth control pills. And now he's doing a "going galt" rant. After all, only true conservative have jobs and produce anything.
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Nov 8, 2012 00:52
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Tortolia posted:The part that nearly had me drive off the road laughing was when, to counter those immigrants that want to be welfare mooches and the Democrats who encourage them, the Republicans should go to places like Eastern Europe, Cuba and Venezuela and import immigrants who can be convinced to vote Republican. Add this as another example of how this batch of "wait for them to die" has something to it. Many of these pundits drop codewords that only have any real meaning in a Cold War context. And as they do it, it just reinforces the old Cold War mentality and viewpoint in the listeners. To people who are still living the Cold War, it seems totally obvious that people would leave those socialist hellholes, become productive citizens in the US, and then vote Republican so they could keep their hard earned money. The Republican party has withered to being the party of old white male church goers, to the point where diversity is something they need to "import". Then again, these same pundits have been scratching their heads for years about why all the nominally Catholic Hispanics aren't flocking to the rabidly pro-life/family party.
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Nov 8, 2012 11:45
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Bait and Swatch posted:I was wondering the same thing earlier today actually. I was momentarily worried that perhaps since I considered conservative talking heads to be crazy, and they obviously consider people like me to be crazy, that maybe I'm the crazy one in the equation. Then I did some introspection while validating my opinions with known facts and empirical evidence. I also re-listened to the Maddow comments from yesterday, it was like a shower after slogging through poo poo all day. There are the liberal alternatives on talk radio too. For best liberal version of the off-the-rails and spittle on the mic, I nominate Mike Malloy http://www.mikemalloy.com/ Some one commented in another thread about how Bill O'Reilly couldn't say the word "left" without prefixing it with a "far-". All through the Bush administration, Malloy couldn't seem to say the word "bush" without appending "crime family" to it.
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Nov 9, 2012 09:50
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It will be interesting to see whether the doubling-down of the pundits ever ends up classing with what ever realpolitik operatives the Republican party has. It's honestly hard to tell what is the dog, what is the tail, and which one is wagging. Lars Larson, a local guy that with a national show, had a guest on in the last hour who wrote a book about how awesome low taxes and deregulation is. They spent their time trying to parse Boehner's post Obama victory statements about taxes. Trying to reassure hard working small business owners that what Boehner meant was that they would not raise their taxes but just make it so the government got more tax revenue. It was like a glimpse into the birth of a talking point. Going back and worth trying to wordsmith "You are going to pay more taxes" into "You'll pay less taxes".
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Nov 9, 2012 10:30
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Frostwerks posted:It was this thread and literally a page ago.  I knew I read it somewhere, and figured it was in all the TVIV stuff in here
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Nov 9, 2012 10:42
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Dr. Faustus posted:Don't write this guy off, he means well. No, he does not mean well. He has a deep seated hatered for Obama and wants to see him brought down with no regard for lies or double standards. And radio callers are not a reliable source. Not for Rush, not for Art Bell or Alex Jones either. If ignoring intel and getting troops killed was such a high crime, every president from FDR on would have got a one way ticket to Leavnworth. Sorry to say, your friend has drunk the Kool-aid, and it will probably take some personal experience or revelation to get him out of the bubble.
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Nov 10, 2012 22:02
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Sephyr posted:I just got my first dose of Neal Boortz, recommended by a libertarian friend who said he was more civil liberties-oriented and level-headed. See, talk radio is not all bad, she said. Boortz used to be a pretty middle of the road Libertarian and equal opportunity when it came to lambasting the big parties. Another one of those guys that got started doing sports radio and moved into politics, capitalizing on bashing both sides. And then 9/11 happened and he's been sliding towards the right end of the spectrum ever since.
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Nov 14, 2012 23:57
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SedanChair posted:Not that a shithead would believe. It is fast becoming the same type of tinfoil nonsense that is no easier to debunk than chemtrails, FEMA camps, or a lot of the witch hunt stuff the Republicans went after Clinton on. And when Benghazi finally gets played out, they'll find some new scandal to pin on Obama. As they say, you can't reason some one out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Obama is a murderous Islamo-Stalin-Hitler^3 and they'll just latch on to what ever is the next "proof" of that.
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Nov 29, 2012 00:43
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CommieGIR posted:They also somehow believe that Aircraft carrying reinforcements suddenly exceed the speed of light whenever the president wills it. The guys hyping this as a scandal at least know their audience well enough to know they are fine with the idea of liquidating Benghazi over the death of a few Americans. Because that is where this line of thought and many of the "asking questions" leads to. Obama probably did have the ability to drop high explosives on Benghazi neighborhoods with a couple hours notice. And not nuking Benghazi from orbit is the as doing nothing.
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Nov 29, 2012 10:00
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Mo Tzu posted:I honestly don't know much about Korean history despite all the Korean theologians I read. Isn't that completely coincidental to America's involvement? We left a military dictatorship in power didn't we? The US didn't technically leave a military dictatorship in power following the "end" of the Korean war, but it turned into one because it wasn't stable, and neither were the following regimes until relatively recently. Like, they had their fair share of coups, repression, torture and massacres all the way into the 1980's. And they are lucky they backslide completely during the Asian financial crisis of the 90's. The only example of he US setting up a replacement government that didn't soon fail, and the responsibility wasn't really shared, is Japan post-WWII. Over all, the US has an abysmal track record for that sort of thing.
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Dec 10, 2012 02:06
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Install Gentoo posted:The government is always stockpiling massive amounts of ammo. Mostly it's a way to provide pork barrel spending. I can go down to my near by guns & security stuff store and buy cases of "surplus" ammo. That is just the left over stuff that isn't legitimately used up by the government for training and practice. And it isn't just the US, because I could save a few bucks and buy cases of Russian or Chinese ammo too. It is the same sort of thing surrounding all the crazy equipment law enforcement has been stockpiling, with all that cash thrown at them for "counter-terrorism" and the "war on drugs". Congress can easily add half a percent to the GDP buying up tons of ammo, or drones, APCs, infrared, riot gear for the myriad of law enforcement agencies out there, local, state, and federal. While the  types see it as dangerous, everyone else just spins it as security and job creation.
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Feb 14, 2013 22:35
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Rhesus Pieces posted:Agreed. Like I said, it's always about the money. The gun lobby isn't selling these guys more guns to prepare for some inevitable race war or to fight government tyranny. The gun lobby is selling them guns because they're the Go shopping for semi-auto rifles that fire .223 (similar to NATO 5.56) and compare the prices on a traditional hunting rifle to more military "tacti-cool" looking stuff. Switch out the wood stock for a bunch of black plastic/composite parts and they can sell it for almost 100% markup. I almost want to applaud these gun and accessory manufacturers for bleeding every cent out of the paranoid race-war types.
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Feb 15, 2013 00:09
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Kiwi Bigtree posted:At this point I think we could invent a "tactical" muzzle loading black powder rifle and make everyone happy. As long as you could cram enough rails on it to fit all the flashlights, lasers, 4x, red-dot sights, I'm sure it would be a hot item. And as soon as this happens, I'll go down to Home Depot, buy a bunch of their 5 gallon buckets, spray paint them black, and sell them for $100 each as "extended" powder horns.
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Feb 15, 2013 00:41
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Listen to enough enough of these guys, and they all at some point state that they are something other than registered Republicans. They often claim to be "independents" just to come off as unbiased, arriving at their obvious Republican talking points by careful and rational study.
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Feb 22, 2013 06:31
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Minorities posted:Can someone please post a "Best Of" from this Levin guy? This is the first I've heard of him and I'd love to hear Master Shake freak out and spike his blood pressure while spouting out conservative talking points. Here is a short clip of Levin ripping on Savage; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLw_8UdHDzw Here is a longer one, a sort of manifesto on how conservatives will not compromise; http://www.therightscoop.com/mark-levin-pulls-no-punches-gives-unvarnished-truth-about-loss-and-attacks-on-conservatism/
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Mar 8, 2013 22:58
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mr. mephistopheles posted:I imagine most of the shitposting in comments on Forbes are liberals. The shitposts on any website without a blatant political affiliation are almost all conservative talking points, though. You have to see it from there perspective. The conservative talking points aren't the shitposts. All the people who dog-pile on them, calling them out on their talking-point spamming, are the "shitposters". Go to GBS and go through the Teaparty Community thread. Talking points and terrible bigoted macros are fine. Linking to independent facts and studies is what makes one a shitposting troll worthy of being banned.
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Mar 8, 2013 23:44
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Install Gentoo posted:Actually tons of them do historically. Polygamy is highly associated with multiple wives in America because the 19th century mormons did it like that, but that's just a function of the Mormons being weird. Polyandry has certainly been done before, but it often becomes a situation were you marry a man and all his brothers. So while plural marriages can be equitable, like "traditional marriage" is has a long history of being a slavery like property system.
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Mar 18, 2013 21:20
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Levin is one of the few I can think of that does ads during his show. Most others I've heard are just the personalities doing the ads and are thrown in during the usual commercial breaks. Levin on the other hand will go off ranting, then go right into how one should buy gold or Lifelock, and then go into a commercial break. I also wonder how many of these are contractual. Like how they do station ID and other station advertisement.
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Mar 25, 2013 22:00
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I Fought The Mom posted:He said that he has always supported gay marriage and that on a lot of things he's "still not quite there yet" so I'm guessing he has to yell about freedoms for a while longer before he can say that legal pot/gambling/prostitution are ok without losing his core demographic of lunatics There are quite a few Libertarians who are fine with the idea of a Libertarian federal government while voting in extremely conservative policies at the local level. It is already that way with a few of those sorts of laws, which is why there are a few places in the US that have legal gambling and prostitution, and now even legal pot.
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Apr 7, 2013 07:41
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"I'm Chiquita banana and I've come to say - Bananas have to ripen in a certain way" 1944 banana commercial http://chiquita.com/Our-Company/The-Chiquita-Story/The-Chiquita-Jingle.aspx
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Apr 14, 2013 19:07
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