What I want is balanced treatment. I don't want either party line. That's why this bothers me: we're being fed Obama's line with no treatment of the other side at all.
What does “balanced treatment” mean to you exactly? Balanced treatment isn’t or shouldn’t be a get out jail pass for stupidity and unpopular ideology. Balanced treatment to Republicans too often means artificially balancing the scales with fiction. Life is not balanced. Politics is not balanced. Republicans have severe problems with their ideology. It is not CNN’s job to patch over holes and pitfalls in Republican ideology with fiction in order to balance the scales and make Republican ideology more appealing as Fox does.
Additionally, the “party line” is part of the news. People need to know the Republican and Democratic positions on the issues. But news agencies cross the line when they become advocates for a particular ideology and actively seek to deceive their viewers/listeners. And no other news agency has crossed that line save one, and that one being Fox News.
You're trying to paint this as an all Obama's side vs all Republican side conflict, but you're just not correct about what I want -- while you defend the all liberal bias angle.
Is there a significant other party in American politics of which I am not aware? No, there are only two political parties of significance in the US. Obama leads the Democrats and Limbaugh leads Republicans. As for who I defend, I defend the side with the rational fact based agenda which will benefit most Americans. Right now, that is what the Democrats are offering. But that has not always been the case.
These stories are from the past two days and were not generated by Republicans, they were generated by the GAO. More to the point, you are mixing together two separate issues:
-You're talking about the actions of republicans in government.
-I'm talking about reporting by the news media.
Well yes those stories were generated by Republicans. The Congressional Budget Office, not the GAO, issued a report which contained a statement which Republicans immediately misrepresented (i.e. lied about).
“This Non-Partisan Congressional Budget Office Report Confirms That ObamaCare Will Cost America 2 Million Jobs”
http://www.nrcc.org/2014/02/04/shoc...s-obamacare-will-cost-america-2-million-jobs/ - National Republican Congressional Committee
This is what really happened;
“The Affordable Care Act could reduce the labor force by the equivalent of 2.5 million workers in 2024, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's annual outlook.
That doesn't mean employers will start swinging the ax or even that that many jobs will be lost, CBO says. Rather, more people will likely opt to reduce their hours, or leave the workforce entirely, so they stay under the income caps for Medicaid and federal subsidies.
"The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor," the report says. Therefore, it will more likely show up as a decline in share of the population participating in the labor force and in hours worked, rather than in spikes in unemployment or underemployment.
While the CBO projects that the share of Americans in the labor force will decrease in coming years, Obamacare will not be the driving factor. A bigger reason is the aging of the nation. But Obamacare will contribute to this and to the economy falling "slightly short of its potential" between 2018 and 2024, according to the CBO.”
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/04/news/economy/obamacare-work/
I don’t want a news source that cannot be trusted. I, and I think most Americans, don’t have time or the will to listen to a news source that deliberately lies and misrepresents information (e.g. Fox News). Given Fox’s record, I just cannot believe anything they say without verification. So it is really a waste of time.
Now if you want to restore “The Fairness Doctrine”, I am all there. The Fairness Doctrine required televised media to report honest, fair and contrasting views of major issues. It didn’t require balance. It required honesty and fairness. Republicans did away with the Fairness Doctrine in the 80’s which gave birth to Fox News and Republican talk radio. Republicans have steadfastly fought Democratic efforts to restore The Fairness Doctrine.
Whether the republicans are beating a dead horse or not, it would still be news (it isn't, though, so apparently they aren't right now).
Yeah Republicans have been beating a dead horse for many years now. Obamacare is the law of the land. It has been since March 2010, yet they are still beating that horse at every opportunity. How many times have House Republicans voted to repeal the law in the last year - 44 times and counting?
