[Shnabdabber]

Originally Posted by New Era

You've developed a false equivalency.

This ties into my point which you addressed about taking news at face value as the truth. The NRA clearly has a agenda, same as Mother Jones. You can call it a pink unicorn for all I care, same crap, different pile.

MSNBC does not report news. The channel is focused completely on political discussion, it does not claim to report the news, only talk about it.

I wonder why then even after the FBI clarified mis-reporting after the navel yard shooting, that MSNBC still pushed their version of the truth? That a ar15 was the firearm used and not a shotgun? I mean, Im not gonna argue with you on MSNBC not reporting the news, its more of an ideological entity to push political talking points on Americans. Really no argument here.

There is a big difference between the two. MSNBC's slant is also clearly a programming choice by the parent corporation. When you consider the other programming in their stable NBCUniversal is obviously producing content for specific markets and less intent on ideological delivery, which is exactly where NewsCorp and FoxNews land.

To even watch 5 minutes of MSNBC and not find them ideological in nature is incredible. Mind you, this may not be so hard to believe given that a certain segment of americans identify with that, just like they would with Fox.

That is driven mostly by corporations more than anything. You want to understand the media, try understanding the nature of the mother corporation and the politicians they buy with their monetary support. We can thank Citizens United and a conservative Supreme Court for the current media boondoggle.

Agreed 100% 25 years ago there used to be around 30 major mainstream media markets. They have all been consolidated into I believe 5 now.

Crime stats are bull####. They are fudged in each municipality, county and state, who feed their data into NCIC. There is so much politics in everything that goes on in the United States it is mind boggling. Police Chiefs, who are contracted for a period of time, then become at will employees, have to show positive improvements in fighting crime, so the numbers are routinely massaged and specific chunks of data precluded from analysis so the numbers look good.

I guess if we cannot use stats anymore then we don't have much to go on when it comes to this debate. So then all we have left is ideology to help form policy, which seems extremely fool hardy and short sighted to me.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Stats/numbers can all be manipulated, and if hammered enough, they will generally give you the answer you want anyways. When it comes to this debate I always try to look at FBI crime stats, but I guess we cant use them anymore, so again we are left in a ideological debate with no credible leg to stand on. Very dangerous IMO.

The whole system is broken. It is run by corrupt politicians and unscrupulous public servants. This has been caused by the duality which exists in the political system itself. X can't trust Y because they are from different parties. Issues don't matter, only party lines. The only thing that will fix anything in the United States is a third, fourth and fifth parties. There needs to be more choices and to have cooperation and compromise forced down the throats of the system. Without that, America will continue to flounder and become the failed state that some very wise thinkers are predicting.

Totally agree, and Ross Perot might have been Americas best shot as he certainly put the scare into the establishment. Wonder how a independant can gain traction when the American voting demographic is being fed only what the establishment wants them to hear through our beloved partisan news sources. When Ron Paul ran, he was rebuffed from public debates, had his time run short, and generally ignored as much as possible by the mainstream media.

Just curious about what your thoughts are on the possibility of states seceding from the Union? The states without a doubt have the power over the federal gov't, far different from what we have here in Canada. At what point do the American people finally have enough and stand up for real change?