Ahh....got it! :thumbup:

Just curious, but how many Americans are in Iraq, and how many people live in Chicago?

I think if you were trying to make the point that Chicago is more dangerous than Iraq, you would have to compare chicago's murder rate to the total people killed in Iraq.

I think that he is an interesting character. That is what I spoke about. I think the article would have been stronger without the "the writer is a Democrat" byline, that was my point.

You can call them all truths, but that is through your particular lens. I used phrases like "interesting article", "nothing wrong with these views", and "interesting that it is all about sub-prime mortgages and no mention of the CDS market". Any opinion on those statements?

I have posted previously (within the past two days) that I think that the US entertainment news media is biased in both directions, it depends on which channel or URL you follow. I see lots of bias.

Palin's clothes? Please. Nobody is interested in Palin's clothes. They are interested in the contrast between the hockey mom image that is being sold, and her campaign's actions. Nothing to do with clothes. They look quite nice actually, IMO.

"On the shoulders of the Democratic Party"? OK. I think there is quite enough blame to go around on both parties, I think they both did it, but if you like, let's blame one of them and not the other. That isn't biased.

As to the point of the article, I saw it as a blast against poor quality journalism. We have raging agreement on that point. I think it would have been more effective overall if the writer had not sunk into partisan politics, and had pointed out the nonsense on both sides. That would have been a journalistic triumph. Instead, he said journalism is terrible, and it is one-sided. He immediately went into the partisan mode that he claims to despair over. I thought that was unfortunate.

He got to sell more articles that way, because the Democrats will line up to hate him, and the Republicans will feel good because they are personally validated. Fine, but that isn't journalism.

I think that everything we believe is filtered through our own lens, our own values, our own understanding. You probably believe I am a Democrat, or I would guess so from your spin accusations. Nope. What I believe isn't relevant though. I was talking about journalism, not politics.

Thanks for your comments.

Might be a good idea to uncover truths somewhere other than on the editorial/opinion pages.

I accuse you of spinning things because you are overlooking the facts and larger point of the article to rip someones personal life. That is what Democrats here like to do. Spin the focus away from the actual issue. How can you argue that Fannie Mae was created by Democrats, loosened by the Democrats, milked dry by the Democrats (Raines, etc), challenged by the Republicans, and defended once again by the Democrats? Those things happened. It doesn't matter what "lens" you are looking through. You can interpret that however you wish, but they happened.

What are your comments on Fannie Mae being started by a Democratic President? Fannie Mae regulations being "loosened" by Bill Clinton? The Republicans warning of the dangers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Raines and others being accused of milking Fannie Mae? Those are the issues, not the person who wrote the articles personal life.

I think our main disagreement is that you don't believe these things actually happened.

:iagree: Or better yet, believe that these things happened but won't accept the TRUTH that the Democrats are the ones who did all this

Well, I don't seem to have been able to explain my point, since you seem to think I am assaulting the character of the writer. I didn't. We can drop it.

I do find incredulous the comment that Fox News is considered truth, and everything else is Liberal bias. Fox is completely off the scale IMO. That is fine, there are lots of biased news sources in the other direction. Why not try non-commerical news outlets, and compare their news with what you see on Fox?

I am really not interested in debating Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and who invented them. If you know lots about them, great. I am not saying anything about what happened or didn't happen and on who's watch. I think that both parties share the blame, as do many others. It is just that I thought the thread was about journalistic bias. And if a journalist is going to write such a piece, he should probably try not to let his bias into it, because then it would be more powerful. Sad thing is, he was capable of doing it by most reports.

I understand your point about the writer being biased in the article. I really do get that. I just thought what he wrote about was more interesting than the way in which he went about it. No big deal. You were debating the journalism and I was debating the issue in the article. No hard feelings.

I actually don't watch Fox news. I was just saying that they were really the only right leaning major news channel on TV here. Most all others are clearly left leaning. I have actually taken your or someone else's suggestion to look at PBS, NPR, etc. It has been all too obvious of the media (generally speaking) left wing bias throughout this Presidential campiagn. That is what is really frustrating to me. Everyone from individual actors, the conversation of talk shows, radio DJ's, musicians, national and local news casts, newspapers, etc. just thinks Obama is a God and can do no wrong.

The thing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is that they are the biggest reason the U.S. is in the situation that is is today and yes, it was mainly due to decisions made by Democrats. Don't you think that is relevant and worth discussing? That was the point in the article after all.

I think the point of the article was biased journalism. In addition to the financial crisis, we could talk about 9/11 responsibility, NOW, and so on. All those points are in the article.

I think there were a lot of contributors to the US being in the situation it is today. Some of those decisions are down to Democrats, absolutely. Others aren't. This is from Factcheck; I liked how concise it was. I also like the last sentence in the article:

Quote:

The Real Deal So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault: The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap. Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively. Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses. Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes. The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families. Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages. Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral. The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market. An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic. Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up. The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

There are many small aspects that helped get us in the situation were are in today, but the biggest issue was the Clinton administration who made home ownership possible for people that probably couldn't afford a home in the first place. It was his loosening of regulations that allowed mortgage brokers to push these loans.

Lets look at all of those the your webiste lists as responsible;

Home buyers - They simply took advantage of programs and credit that the
Clinton administration made available to them.

Congress - Let's face it, people that were buying more expensive homes for larger tax breaks were probably not the ones in default on their loans right now.

Real Estate agents - Buyers have to be informed and buyers agents are availabe for free to most buyers looking to purchase real estate as their fee is a percentage of the sale paid by the seller. Of course they are wanting to sell a more expensive home, but if the home isn't worth it, hopefully the appraiser will let the bank who is loaning the money know this upfront before the sale is final. Anyway, not a significant part of the reason we are where we are now.

Clinton Administration - Main reason we are here today for reasons listed in above posts.

Mortgage Brokers - Only pushed what the Clinton Admin allowed them to do.

Greenspan - Not sure on that one.

Wall Street - For sure part of the problem.

Bush Admin - Didn't get a lot of help or cooperation from the Democrats on this issue as most key Democrats opposed reorganizing oversight of Fannie Mae.

Accounting rule - Not sure about that either.

As for the last sentence, it is pretty hard to argue with the facts that key Democrats were in charge of overseeing Fannie Mae (Raines and others), the Clinton Admin pushed lenders to offer loans to lower income and credit challenged people who probably never should have had loans in the first place., the Republicans tried to warn about the looming dangers of Fannie Mae, the Democrats insisted that Fannie Mae was fine and that there were no issues, and so on. I really don't agree with that article you posted, but I guess everyone can draw their own conclusion

First I want to thank you for the research you did on Orson Card and I appreciate your opinion in response to my post. I also found some 'independent' opinions on his character and political stance that parallel what you said. Knowing a little about the person that wrote the article is a good thing and can have an impact on it's credibility. But as I said before I don't care how flaky or upstanding Orson Card may or may not be, I agree with what he is saying.

Did anyone really read the very first line of the column?
"An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:"
Card's column was directed at today's journalists for NOT reporting the truth to the American people. The other 'truths' he referenced, though obviously factual, were used to support his point. The point that journalists have shed their prime directive to report the truth in a timely and unbiased form to the public. Instead they have been using their influence to mislead and sway the opinion of the gullible masses to benefit their own interests. Uncovering THAT truth anywhere other than in an editorial or opinion column would be very difficult given the practices of most journalists/newspapers/networks today. I doubt my hometown paper, The Star Telegram, would put such an article on the front page.

While Card does call himself a Democrat he tends to agree with policies from both parties. IMO, he seems to support what he believes to be good for the country no matter which side of the fence it comes from. I could say the same for myself and applaud him for it even if I might disagree with some of his views.

A personal side note:

I had been interested in journalism in high school. I was a reporter my junior year, a reporter and the advertising editor during my senior year. Although I have forgotten a lot of what I studied back then I do remember one of the things our teacher stressed the most and that I see lacking in today's media: Reporting the Truth.