“the media, in my opinion, doesn’t enforce values. It feeds on ratings.”

This is true of talk radio, but not the major network news outlets.

Why does talk radio get accused of not being fair in presenting a balanced viewpoint from liberals. They only survive on ratings.

The major networks and newspapers that present a liberal perspective seem to struggle to even maintain their shrinking market share. If they fed on ratings they would shape their viewpoint to appeal to the ratings.

Conservatism supports its own way in the marketplace of ideas through ratings. In my opinion liberal viewpoints struggle to appeal to a wide cross section of consumers.

Well, okay.

Two things, though: the media, in my opinion, doesn’t enforce values. It feeds on ratings. We lost our chance at objective reporting when we didn’t exempt news programs from the same demands on money-making as sitcoms. The fairest reporting comes from NPR and PBS, but they can only do so much. But values? Don’t think so.

Two, Obama is a Democrat by party affiliation. I have a suspicion that the label is all he shares with FDR, LBJ ot WJC. I think we may be in for a surprise. But in the main, I agree with you, there’s not much difference between the two parties. What differences there are, however, seem to be irreconcilable.

I don’t trust the fourth estate of government. Any media moguls, whether liberal media (who claim there are better than others) or conserative strategists (who claim they are better than others) that use mass communications to accomplish any agenda that the people are not fully informed about is biased and capable of distorting any election.

The misuse/abuse of money (especially from biased news reporting) and from other unknown and/or hidden sources has been the crux of our problem.

People are not informed in any kind of a balanced way. Don’t try to tell me that the media doesn’t use their influence to enforce the values of the people doing the reporting. Both liberals and conservatives do it.

Democrat and Republican doesn’t mean much of anything anymore.

People follow the money like they do in most any other public endeavor.

Really, listen to your self!

“Anyone who gets to the office of president of the US other than a conservative does so at the expense of national unity. ”

Wow! So it’s “wrong for Karl, wrong for America, eh?”

Since elections entail the potential risk of electing a non-conservative, wouldn’t it be better to suppress elections in the interests of national unity? Since according to you, Americans are too stupid to be trusted to vote for the “right” candidate every time.

That is the kind of non-think that has gotten us into the cultural pretzels of the last 40 years. What the hell is so special about a conservative that his or her election couldn’t possibly threaten national unity? Do you think Sarah Palin would be a unifying candidate?

As to the so-called Liberal media, the entire edifice of popular news feeds have bought into the Right’s misuse of language since Reagan was in office. They’ve been friend to neither side. The Liberal media almost nothing to reveal George W. Bush for the twit his is until well after the election and tore both Gore and Kerry apart. You should have your early onset Alzheimers looked at, Karl. Conservative talk dominates 70% of the radio, almost that much of the newspaper industry (unless you really think Rupert Murdoch is a squishy-cored liberal), and they have Fox News, which seems to be the only television news most conservatives watch, so where do you get this notion of the “liberal media?”

As to Obama’s birth place…it seems clear with the kind of tactics Karl Rove is famous for, that if there was a problem this would have been used as a sledge hammer on the man when he first poked his head up two years ago to start running. Karl Rove is a slime mold of the first order and would stop at nothing to prevent a viable Democratic candidate from challenging the Republicans, but even he has to be careful to base certain allegations on fact.

Many years ago I got into an ongoing debate with a Holocaust Denier. He kept asking for the evidence that the Third Reich had killed “that many” and I among others on the bulletin board kept directing him to sources, citing documents, testimony from key Nazis from Nuremberg (especially Rudolf Hess, who has actually boasted of keeping “abuses” down in his camp), and this guy kept asking for sources, repeatedly. It was as if he could not even see the lines of type we were writing in response. Not that I would ever suggest you are a denier, but you do seem crippled by a similar myopia.

If there’d been a problem like you suggest with Obama, there were a number of politicians of both parties who would have used it long ago, with prejudice. Clearly there must be nothing to it.

But this is how it works, isn’t it? Keep repeating the question until people start believing the bullshit. The Republican Party has been doing that now for 28 years. They have nothing to be proud of.

But how dare you suggest that liberals are somehow innately corrupt, incapable of honesty. No way a liberal could get to the White House without damaging national unity? On what do you base that charge, given the record of disruption and “let’s you and him fight” campaign tactics used by conservatives up to and including this election?

Karl, you have by any measure in all your posts been generally polite and decent, but that crossed a line. You may have expressed it pleasantly enough, but that charge is patent crap. Everything that has made this country a decent place to live has come from a liberal agenda. But all it seems to take is a little name-calling and allegation-throwing by a conservative to call it all into question, and it shouldn’t be.

I suppose the conservatives who thought Lincoln was crazy to sign the Emancipation Proclamation would have accused him of sewing disunity. He must’ve been a liberal! The media of the day thought advocates of the 8-hour day and child labor laws were anarchistics, insane, hell-bent on destroying the country.

Sorry, Karl, but I think you need to look at the world as it is, not as it “ought to be”. Obama seems intent on unifying, on healing, on bringing us back together. In truth, most of what separates Red and Blue is a question of rhetoric, and all the divisions have been inventions of the Right.

Forgive my apparent bellicosity, but I’ve lost patience for that kind of vacuous “analysis by accusation.” It’s garbage.

I believe it, one day that will be common knowledge.

Anyone who gets to the office of president of the US other than a conservative does so at the expense of national unity. That’s the real meltdown the modern media moguls will never admit, but it also is true.

The liberal media pushed McCain upon the Republicans, and then talk radio and foreign interests pushed Obama upon the Democrats. Hasn’t this been a real cordial electoral cycle. This time around the Democrats have control of nearly all three branches of government, but its the majority of Americans that are really conservatives that are expected to turn the other cheek as usual.

Obama has won the election, what is the problem with releasing the sealed copy in Hawaii?

If its the principle of privacy, I beg to differ with the morality of withholding information that can resolve a simple question of where he was actually born and what the status of his citizenship has been throughout his lifetime.