WinePusher wrote:micatala wrote:Still, getting to choose between private health care providers (e.g. end of life counselors) A, B, C, D, E, . . . N is different than being told you MUST go to a government panel for that care. Sorry, you are still throwing out red herrings and avoiding the fact that the bill does not have death panels, when a bunch of people said the bill did.
I never denyed anything about the curent bill having death panels, I'm saying that exagerration is based on truth (a provision in the Baucus Bill). An inconvient fact you forget to mention when trying to push the narrative that Fox and other Conservative media outlets do nothing but lie.
That the lie points back to a truth does not make it not a lie.
This is like saying if someone says "Alice just kills me with her wicked sense of humor", then someone else pointing to this and saying "Alice is an evil murderer" is only engaging in "exaggeration" and pointing out that this second person is lieing is somehow not appropriate.
And, in fact, I did acknowledge the reality of what is in the bill, I did not ignore it as you say here.
And it is not a "narrative" that FOX and others have lied about this, it is a fact. THis is not a subjective statement like "Obama is arrogant." Those types of things, while they might reflect partisan or ideological bias, are not blatant lies.
The death panel claims are.
I understand and acknowledge you have not claimed that the bill includes death panels at least in this thread. YOu have, however, gone to great lengths in trying to avoid acknowledging that the death panel claims are lies, throwing out quite a number of red herrings in the process.
If you now acknowledge that these claims were lies, then we can certainly go on to something else. I am certainly open to other examples of media unreliability with respect to any particular issue and from any particular quarter.
WinePusher wrote:And, you have not addressed the constitutional aspect of this.
micatala wrote:Yet another red herring. What does this have to do with people lying about the bill, specifically lying about death panels?
Nothing, but I could understand if you don't want to address this aspect of the law.
I would suggest another thread. I would certainly be willing to debate or discuss the issue, but it is just not relevant to this thread.
WinePusher wrote:Is it within the government power to regulate a person's healthcare? Is it within their power to force citizens to buy any type of product? Or is the constitution simply irrelevant?
micatala wrote:More red herrings. However, I will address this.
Do you use red herrings to mean that another person has brought up a subject or topic that you don't approve of? In a topic as broad as this, topics will be injected into the discussion that aren't directly germane to the original post.
No, a red herring is an argument made to distract from the issue under debate. My approving or disapproving of the constitutional arguments being made is not the issue. The issue for the thread is media reliability. I called this a red herring because you were responding to arguments related to the dishonesty of the death panel claims with other issues that are not relevant to those claims.
Sure, a thread can get into other topics and wander a bit. My labeling some of your arguments as red herrings is simply me pointing out that these new claims and topics are not relevant to the death panel claims in particular, or media reliability in general. It is not meant to imply these issues are not worthy of discussion, only that they are irrelevant to the particular argument.
If the topic of discussion was a broad debate on the merits of the health care bill, then I would not label your points as red herrings.
micatala wrote:Second, we already force people to buy car insurance, for example, and we force people to buy certain features as part of the products they buy through product safety laws of all sorts. We prevent people from buying things to, but that is another matter.
Yea, not an equivalent comparison. Do you think that healthcare (a choice that affects the individual person) is equatable with car insurance (a choice that affects the public at large)?
Again, this is off topic, but I would say health care involves both the individual and the public at large, which car insurance does as well, by the way. We all end up paying when someone without insurance has to go in for emergency care.
micatala wrote:Thirdly, the bill does not force people to buy insurance. People can decide not to buy insurance, but as a result, will pay higher taxes. You choose, insurance or taxes.
Not true. Under Obamacare the mandate is all the uninsured will be brought intota government plan under penalties that the IRS will enforce. Also, it isn't within the governments pwoer to threaten a citizen with higher taxes if that citizen does not succume to the governments demands.
You say my statement is not true, and then you more or less repeat it.
Will a person go to jail for not having health insurance?
No they won't.
They would only go to jail if they don't buy insurance and then also refuse to pay their taxes. Anyone who does not pay their taxes is liable to penalty, no matter what the reason is for not paying taxes. And it should be pointed out that one has to be extremely recalcitrant over a long period of time in flaunting tax law before one goes to jail.
If one chooses to get divorced, for example, and that changes their taxes owed and they end up going to jail for not paying, we would not say they got thrown in jail because they got divorced.
So, I really don't see how you can say I am wrong, and I think it is fairly clear those that say "if you don't buy insurance you will go to jail" are really not telling the truth. This may be slighly less blatant of a lie than the death panel lie, but it is still a lie.
AND I should point out that another lie was that O'Reilly claimed no one on FOX had talked about "people getting thrown in jail for not buying insurance" when in fact such statements had been made ON HIS OWN PROGRAM. He then had the temerity to castigate Republican Tom Coburn for correcting a constituent of his who had parroted this lie back to him and for COburn alluding to FOX as one of the sources for people's misperceptions.
micatala wrote:Still more red herrings. Just because I do not address other errors or dishonesty, even if that were the case, does not negate the fact that I am pointing out documented errors and lies on the part of FOX, nor that I have an ideological reason for doing so.
The question is why Fox? Why is Fox your target? Is it because their influence is vast and you are concerned about a vast flow of mis-information to the public? You agree that MSNBC lies and has peddled false stories, so is your general concern with the entire media, or just conservative outlets. I don't see any condemnations of people like....Mike Malloy, or Rhandi Rhodes, or Stephanie Miller, just Limabugh, Beck and Hannity.
The short answer to "why FOX" is because their lies come to my attention, which is probably because they exist in greater numbers than on other outlets.
I agreed we had ONE example of a false story on MSNBC. I have agreed that MSNBC is biased, but that is different than being factually unreliable.
I'll ask again, what lies have you heard on MSNBC or are you aware of on MSNBC? I am quite open to hearing about them.
I'll certainly point out any lies I see while I am personally watching a program. The lies I point out on FOX regarding death panels and "going to jail" are ones I saw personally myself live on FOX. I also allow some lies come to my attention because I would be watching MSNBC and they point them out. However, I do not simply take MSNBC's word for it, I go back and watch the clips on FOX or verify from some other source.
If you could verify that MSNBC lies as much as FOX, and I acknowledge that I watch both but somehow don't catch or ignore the lies on MSNBC, then you might have a case that I am somehow unfairly picking on FOX. However, you have no grounds at this point for claiming my comments on FOX are somehow unfair or even reflect an intentionaly singling out of FOX.
Winepusher wrote:
micatala wrote:Is O'Reilly an Op Ed show? Does he not claim to be fair and balance? Doesn't he label his show the "No Spin Zone?"
Yes, I would consider him an op-ed show. Putting that aside for a moment, his politics are clearly moderate. He's gone after cosnervatives such as Coulter, Ingraham, Palin just as he does liberals. When Palin is on his show, he asks her tough questions, unlike Hannity.
I would certainly agree O'Reilly will push guests of all stripes with hard questions, and he does have more liberals and dems on, at least based on my casual observations, than Hannity. He even seems to get along with a lot of them, even when he has contentious interchanges with them. I have seen Anthony Wiener, for example, on his show several times, and in fact, Wiener pointed out the same false "jail issue" to Bill on Bill's show, I think the day before Bill had Coburn on.
I would label Bill a conservative and not a moderate, but that is a subjective judgment we can agree to disagree on.
I do have issues with O'Reilly's truthfulness, as I think that has been documented. It does not mean nothing he says is worth considering, but it does, to me, mean he is not factually reliable and it seems to me he does not care to be as
long as he thinks he is believable and persuasive to his target audience. I will note that he more than occasionally will try to deflect criticism of his comments, including their truthfulness, by pointing to his ratings, as if we should believe him simply because fo those.
As i pointed out previously in this thread, ratings are a rather poor indicator of reliability.
" . . . the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart . . . ." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
