Whatever makes them feel better!

He looked lost and weak

$16.1 Trillion National Debt

Do you understand that without public television and radio, the public could only get information from those wealthy enough to own a major media outlet? How do you think they will lead the dumb sheep of this nation?

yes NPR news is about as non-bias as bill Maher and Glenn Beck

"yes NPR news is about as non-bias as bill Maher and Glenn Beck"

Spoken like an Absolute Idiot who doesn't know WTH they're talking about.

Dino-
I assume by saying the wealthy run the non-public media that you believe the Rep control that faction. Newsflash - in general, what you watch is more liberal!

lyn; FYI the news you watch is controlled by 6 mega-corporations. It used to be 50. Maybe there was a time when there was a liberal media but that misnomer only exists in the minds of right-wing nuts.
"Do you think that anyone in the mainstream news would actually tell you that the Federal Reserve is bad for America or that we are facing a horrific derivatives bubble that could destroy the entire world financial system? Do you think that anyone in the mainstream media would actually tell you the truth about the deindustrialization of America or the truth about the voracious greed of Goldman Sachs?

Sure there are a few courageous reporters in the mainstream media that manage to slip a few stories past their corporate bosses from time to time, but in general there is a very clear understanding that there are simply certain things that you just do not say in the mainstream news."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/who-owns-the-media-the-6-monolithic-corporations-that-control-almost-everything-we-watch-hear-and-read

Now I'm a "right-wing nut"?
I guess you pick and choose what posts of mine you read or ignore.
I think you just like to argue.

I think that NPR is the MAIN reason these Republinazis want to end funding for PBS. They don't like all the"socialist" radio commentary! Big Bird will end up beating the guy that ties his dog to the roof of the car and hides his tax returns. Everyone with brains knows that Romney is a vulture and a shyster!

Slight correction, they don't like the publicly funded "socialist" radio commentary!

Why should tax-payers fund "socialist" propaganda?

PBS and NPR are not budget-line items in the federal budget.

My God you people are morons. Care to back up the "socialist" BS you're pulling out of your stupid posteriors?

Jack,
they aren't but the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is. It's all one in the same Pravda.

Keith Best-
Why don't you write your own blogs, and use whatever pictures you'd like on them, rather than adding pro-Romney campaign fodder to mine? It might assist in your credibility, instead of making you look like a juvenile hack who has to deface the work of others like an immature, internet troll.

Of course, if dignity is not your strong suit, I can just continue making requests to Patch editors to remove them. At least until they get so tired of doing so they take the matter into their own hands.

Patrick, did I miss a comment? The one you replied to doesn't seem to justify censorship.

We had an issue that has since been resolved.

I agree!

Big Bird doesn't get government funding.
My God -- are all of you trying to win some sort of "Biggest Moron" award?

Please, tell us -- how does it feel to be so darned uneducated? You, James, Tom & Brian can draw straws to see who goes first.

No Jack Kelly,
you have that award locked up for the next couple of decades.

And Jack,
you can also have the Nobel Peace Prize from 2009. You deserve it as much as the guy who got it.

Michael BIG MAC Moore? lol

...

That's what Jack Kelly is on Patch For.

nor do I see the need to pay the head of NPR 1.2 million every year

SPOT ON Brian!

Brian,
Thank you for being respectful in the way you asked your question. That's a dying art around here.

This blog is more to analyze the strategy and lasting effects of the debate, and less to do with NPR/PBS's funding, It's been almost a week now, and people seem to remember three specific things: 1) Mitt Romney won the debate, and/or 2) Obama badly lost the debate, and 3) Romney tried to "kill Big Bird."

Romney needs undecideds. He needs independents. He needs to convince people of his vision and plans for this country. And if we're almost a week after a major debate win for Romney, but no one can remember what those specific visions and plans are because we're still talking about Big Bird, that is not a long-term strategy to get him to 270 from where he is.

For example: he opened the debate with a five step plan for America. Without looking on the internet, can you name it? Probably not. In order to win, Romney needs to make his long-term, specific case, and he instead fed Obama a two week talking point. His plan faded from memory. The Big Bird soundbite stuck.

Romney got a bounce in the national polls, but still has the much harder road to 270. And immediately after it, Obama got the jobs news back in his favor. That's why "won" is in quotes. It doesn't matter to the people on this comment board who performed better-- we've already decided. He needs to impress the non-political. He needs to win again and be more specific to do that.

9:51 am on Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Patrick,
You Know, I think I want the next President of The United States to be comfortable with the idea of firing unelected bureaurocrats who have usurped the power to reign over the American people for the last umpteen years. Frankly, Big Bird Flambe with a dash of Hot Sauce would be OK by me.

"FYI PBS & NPR generate hundreds a million of dollars in merchandise revenue each year."

BZZZZT! Care to try again?

*sigh*
Big Bird is self-supporting and does not receive federal funding.

Way to know what you're talking about. As usual. NOT!

Jack,
if they're 'SELF-SUPPORTING" then they don't have a problem with de-funding NPR or PBS do they? But they are screaming their heads off aren't they with you in the chorus.

lyn,
Obama doesn't have "little else to put forth", he has NOTHING.

"Do you want to support the takers in urban areas with your hard earned tax dollars?" - More of the dog whistle racism of the extreme right. Yes, go research it and you will find this conspiracy connection being made, all tracking back to a number of article written by (or using as their point of reference) Stanley Kurtz, who is a famous within conservative circles for his 2008 harping on Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Also know for his anti-gay articles.

So yes, if you research this, you will find it, but never stop at researching to find something, continue through to research the source of what you are finding. And realize that TheGrapeHoax is using the old "urban" code to tap into the darkest side of our society, trying to use racism to create fear.

Always beware of anybody trying to get your vote by using fear and paranoia.

Welcome back, Watts. LOL
I haven't researched this, so please don't challenge me on that.
But, just reading what both of you have written, couldn't one simply be against their own community's property taxes, which in Ohio go to your own city, subsidizing other cities without it being a racial issue? I mean, keeping the tax dollars within ones own city where the real property is taxed and located. Each city has its own separate and individual rates and votes for certain levies for that community. So, I don't think this necessarily has to be a Rep or Dem, or white or black issue. Just one where I vote YES for a tax increase on my property and want those taxes to remain in my city.

Watts, since you have clearly researched the "dog whistle racism" issue, perhaps you could provide a list of words or phrases that should be considered racist. It seems to change all the time and I have a tough time keeping up. Since I cannot hear the dog whistle and rarely if ever consider someones race I would have missed that using the word "urban" was some type of code word.

If you could help me out, I am sure it would be a great public service for anyone reading the patch. Thanks in advance!

@MZ
I should hope that "urban" wouldn't be too hard to recognize. This has been so widely used to identify predominantly African American communities that it even had mainstream acceptance for years as Billboard Magazine famously had the "Urban Chart." In the UK, they still use "urban charts" to identify releases predominately released by black artists. Actually, this is barely dog whistle.

@lyn

Nothing wrong with that belief, as long as you understand that the connection of this that ThGrapeHoax was making, is fictitious. And as somebody who has dabbled with some fiction writing yourself, you should be able to pick this out pretty easily ;-)

Watts, Thanks for your response but I still have many questions.

How about the words "Chicago" or "apartment"? Chris Matthews recently claimed that both of these words are racist/dog whistles. Can I refer to my son as my "boy" or is that a dog whistle?

If the previous quote that you mentioned had just said "Do you want to support the takers with you hard earned tax dollars" would it have still been a dog whistle?

So many questions, so little time.

Watts-
Not sure if you are reading between the lines or I should be reading between the lines.
But, going with what I said, if you want to take from my community, in the suburbs, and give this city's tax dollars to another city who has less - that will usually be an urban community. So, just because you use THAT word I don't think makes it a racial argument. Just that I want to keep my city's tax dollars here.
I never knew urban was a "bad" word. I always thought you used the words rural, suburbs and urban to describe the area. Can't it also just merely be that, or do you think I'm being to naive.

And, regarding this idea of "redistribution" of property taxes that people have been kicking around.
Where I live, we are voting on a school bond issue which would add to our real estate taxes - it would cost homeowners $95 a year for every $100,000 in home valuation.
Now, how many people do you think would vote for this if they knew some of their property taxes would go out of our city?

Aren't more white people on foodstamps then black people? Couldn't the reference to the foodstamp president simply be that there are more people (of all colors) on foodstamps then ever before? Why does race have to be read into everything?

Is it your belief that the vast majority of rural Americans are racist? If so, why do you beleive that? If not, why would the dog whistle matter?

Maybe more credit should be given to the masses . Maybe most people are smart enough to come to their own conclusions. You make it sound like because someone might have a hidden agenda that most of us will fall in line and be brainwashed into anothers thinking. I didn't feel any racial undertones when the word "urban" was used. Rather, I thought of a place like Cleveland,a large city nearby, which has people living there that are NOT just black. I think sometimes people try to be overly politically correct. Sometimes I have no idea what I was suppose to be offended by because I don't think people always have an ulterior motive.

And when someone says Foodstamp President, I NEVER thought it meant just 1race. Just merely that he might be responsible for more people receiving foodstamps - all colors! I remember standing behind many white people with food stamps years ago - and that is who mainly resided in my community. So, why would I now or before think only 1 race is on them?

@MZ
Didn't you actually read (or comprehend) what I just wrote? Your questions are answered in the post that you are asking them about. Yes, as I said, the profile of foodstamp recipients has changed. But for the target audience, visiting cities or googling foodstamp statistics isn't part of their lives. For the target audience, these words are meant to draw from a history of popular culture to envision who these people are in the cities and/or receiving foodstamps and depending on the target person's age or life experiences those could be anything from Good Times to NWA. But the reality is that most suburbanites certainly not the vast majority of rural residents do not spend much time exploring these changing realities; first hand or otherwise. Hence, why they are the often successful targets of this type of racial coding.

@lyn

I agree, let them make their own decisions. But, part of that decision making should include when somebody points out these messages being first and formost; fiction. Let's not get too far down this path of the race coding in the terminology, but let's get back to the fact that the whole premise of that post was factually false. And secondly, then we get into the use of these terms to determine who the target audience is. It is really targeting lower educated, more hillbilly type voters. People who have dug their heals into the sand and absolutely distance themselves from change. This post by GrapeHoax wasn't selling Romney, it was using fiction and racially coded word to elicit social dichotomy, to instill fear into people that their worlds are being stolen out from under them by this "other" that dwells in the cities that they rarely (or never) visit.

"And when someone says Foodstamp President, I NEVER thought it meant just 1race" All that means is that you were not the target audience for that. Neither am I, but it doesn't make me ignorant of what the implications are when using this terminology. If you don't think that every single one of these terms that you hear repeated hasn't been tested and determined by renegade thinktakers to elicit some feeling to distance people from voting for a black president, then you have your head buried in the sand about how the process actually works.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in your world where everything means something else and where I need to look for more than one meaning in what someone says.
What you say might apply to some, but I think the vast majority have a purer heart.

@lyn

And not just tested by one side and not the other. Of course, the same is done on the left. But, when it comes down to racism, Republicans have a lock on that market. Just so this doesn't sound like I am calling Republicans racists (and this should also clarify things for MZ and his questions about rural Americans). Try to think back to the old logic circles that you had in high school. First of all, you have this massive circle of 55 million+ Republicans (and because of its relevance to the race discussion this circle will include Tea Party Libertarians). Now the circle of racists (anybody who beliefs that certain social characteristics are inherently tied to race) is far smaller, but exists almost exclusively within the larger Republican bubble. Not entirely, but by far enough to look at them as a subset of the base. Now similarly, you can create the smaller (based on individuals and not geographic space) bubble of rural Americans and they also fall as a subset of the Republican base. And those two smaller bubbles, each predominantly coexisting inside the larger Republican bubble, also significantly overlap.

Cont...

And these realities are not simply going to be ignored by the party. Because there is yet another way of looking at the bubbles and that is changing "Republicans" to "Conservatives" and that is their potential voter base. Now with that expansion, also comes the expansion of the bubble of racists and rural residents. Now we introduce another bubble to this and that is the lower educated. These are people who statistically attain lower levels of education and/or have lower IQs. These are also statistically part of the red base areas. But these are not very motivated voters. So you can't motivate them without creating a "fear" from which they feel they will be threatened if they don't vote. So now you have three subset circles, all with significant overlap and each with outliers, as well. Now between all of these, you have a far more significant part of the potential conservative voter base, who understand and are motivated more from fear of the "other," than they ever would be with a direct argument for a Republican candidate. That is the target audience for that GrapeHoax post.

Watts, I would have to politely disagree with you. At least from my observations the democrat side seems to pay way more attention to race than does the republican side. My anecdotal evidence consists of having worked around union members for over a decade. These were blue collar workers who voted democrat and were some of the most racist people I have ever met. These weren't isolated incidents or from a single union or location. It was quite widespread. They were roughly evenly split between urban and rural settings.

In Avon Lake (certainly not urban) I am amazed by the racist comments that come from my well educated liberal friends mouths. They vote a strait democrat ticket year after year including for Obama and still openly utter racist terms, not dog whistles but flat out racist.

Conversely, most business owners that I know (and there are many) couldn't care less about the color of ones skin. Can he or she do the job and help make profits is all that matters.

I think most Americans, certainly not all, judge based on character, not color. We all carry stero-types, it is only natural. But I think most are deaf to dog whistles.

Watts,
Here are some urban lefties that appear by the article to be flat out racists under the guise of helping the kids. A school board voting to have different standards based on race. Your thoughts?

http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/10/12/florida-passes-plan-for-racially-based-academic-goals/

"If they have not been subject to discrimination, then why should this color of people, white, fear? They do not have any long built in hatred or resentment of past mistreatments. Isn't that what would cause one to be more racist?"

Wow...I don't even know what to say to this post. You should take some social anthropology classes or something in regards to the issue of race relations. I dont expect most people to have taken such classes, but hopefully most people still wouldn't be this oblivious on the subject to be asking these types of questions. On one side, they are almost profound, in that if these were answerable, then there would be no racism. But the fact that you are asking them here...like this...makes me believe that this is all coming from a truly naive point of knowledge on the subject. "Out of the louth of babes."

Watts-
As I assume you DO live in California, and I live in Ohio - how much of that accounts for our differences and experiences from which we draw?
And, as Ohio is a crucial state for this election, as you eluded to in a recent post ("with Ohio always being looked at as defining the true barometer of the nations final vote"), I assume that is why so many out of state posters have an interest in posting on this areas Patch. But maybe the comments people are posting from out of the area who do not know this area actually are not as relevant to our discussion as you think - other than to try and sway people.
Well, its been more pleasant this time around.
Have to go.
Almost dinner in this part of the country.
Lyn

If I were you, I would be less concerned about what I am posting here over what and why somebody like GrapeHoax is posting what they posted first. When somebody first posts something fictitious, they are depending on a complete lack of critical thinking on the part of the audience. Then, if it is racially coded, then they presume an audience that is also going to react to that (if even at a subconscious level). At least when I post something, I am not spinning some conspiracy theory, I usually try to pick the most objective and trusted sources that I can and very frequently, I can actually find what I want on traditionally conservative sites and I still hear people saying blah, blah blah because they don't even take the time to look. Why do you think that I got in your face in that other thread, when you started down that path of falsehoods against me? It wasn't just that it was being intellectually lazy on your part not to have been able to substantiate anything that you said, but because it was wholly disingenuous to me and to others on your local patch who previously thought that they could probably at least trust what you say. Now I think that you probably realize how wrong you were and that I am always up for legitimate discussions. And nicer discussion or not, guess what...I am still waiting for that apology.

Watts-
I don't know why I bothered with you today. I thought just maybe this fellow might be interested in an intellectual exchange. But I see you would rather put down someone.
I should have known you would once again continue down this road.
For the last time, as I'm not going to try on any topic again with you because you seem to like to leave your "opponent" a lesser person than they may truly be,...
I say I'm sorry when appropriate - not on the demands of someone who is tearing me apart and making a mountain out of a molehill. I said some peoples posts have been deleted and this is a fact. And I did not know if any of yours had or had not been - so I'm not saying I'm sorry about that! And if you think I'm lazy because I'm for not researching why those posts were deleted, go ahead and think that. If you want to know why they were, YOU look it up. I really don't care - some repeated posts across the country have been deleted so therefore, logic prevails that editors felt TOS were violated.

Your first post directed toward me as a response to a very credible and unbiased statistical analysis from Nate Silver:

"... keep your uninformed and misleading comments to your own states Patch."

Your next post to me:

"Go back to your own local Patch, at least your own state. I wouldn't mind if you had an interest in this area. But I have a problem with all of you spreading your garbage on other Patch networks just to promote you agendas, for free and going unchecked."

Then you started down your path of multiple posts grouping me in with some subset that you defined in your own mind, along with "policies" that also existed in your own mind:

"I have seen many times that a posters comments have gone from say 20 different Patch to maybe 12, which means 8 editors did the ethical and proper thing - deleted them."

Then continuing your insults to me: "Problem is, you don't want to "engage", but rather you bring your own brand of "ignorance" attached to your uninformed comments."

- all of which I think that you now personally know isn't true, but if you had spent even two seconds to look at my post history you could have known that wasn't true.

So please tell me at what point do you feel compelled to be a decent human being and apologize? Is it only after you start to insult my family members and tell people that I worship at the alter of satan? What lines do you have to cross before you feel that an apology is due? Again, your audience awaits.

Sorry, I don't know what that comment means. Was that a joke because some people jokingly refer to Clinton as our first "black" president?

Murphy-
I tried.