Gas prices: getting a foot in the door?
Looking at the high gas prices at the pumps the other day, I had the usual and obvious thought, “When Bush was president the press blamed it all on him, and now that Obama’s president you hear the sound of MSM crickets chirping.”
Then it occurred to me that one simple way into a discussion with a liberal about how incredibly biased the media is would be to point that fact out. I’m not so sure even most liberals could deny it. They might pooh-pooh its significance, but they might have trouble saying it hasn’t happened, or explaining it as anything other than bias.
And then you could point out that if the media would do that, how could you trust them to tell the truth about other things? What else are they distorting or omitting through bias?
It might be worth a try, anyway.
With leftists, don’t even try.
Obama spent the first four years of his presidency blaming Bush and he will spend the second term blaming the republicans in congress and the press goes along with it.
Barry ran against Bush in 2008 — and Bush wasn’t even on the ballot!
Instead, he was running against the Republican who was Bush’s most serious antagonist: McCain.
IIRC, McCain ran against Bush, too. In his case, both were aiming for the same nomination.
It’s transparent that the MSM is simply a wing of the Democrat party.
Hinderaker is on target.
Some number of years ago, I just plain stopped even thinking about getting “into a discussion with a liberal about” *anything* that is or could turn political.
I’m generally happier as a result. It’s done wonders for my hypertension.
Try it, you’ll like it . . .
Have you noticed that since Obama has been president, the media can’t find any homeless people?
Ray: “he will spend the second term blaming the republicans in congress and the press goes along with it.”
You reminded me of an observation I made on my blog in Jan 2013:
Naaaaah, gotta hit them upside the head every now and then, especially since gas has been higher under Barry from Day 2.
Homelessness has also been solved during every Democratic administration. It’s awful during Republican rule, however.
Unlike evil republicans, democrats care, so its OK to ignore the homeless. It’s not about facts or effective solutions, it’s about feelings of self-worth.
Nuts. Sometimes I get trapped. A neighbor, with no urging from me, started complaining about her friends’ health policies’ being canceled because of Obamacare, and then she went on a rant about how it was the Republican’s fault that the Obomacare Act was so poorly thought out.
Tried it a couple of years ago; and, they don’t deny it.
They just shrug and spin, like they do with everything else.
The response was “Good, this will ensure we look for alternative sources of clean energy and don’t rely on fossil fuels.”
High prices under Republicans enrich the Koch brothers, “savage” families, the poor and the middle class, and prevent single moms from putting food on the table.
Low prices under Republicans however, only allow us to avoid facing the dire need to end our reliance on carbon generating, planet threatening, energy sources.
High prices under Democrats help to wean us off polluting fossil fuels, and are a sacrifice well worth paying. We can correct the temporary hurt and achieve a more just society by taxing wealth, raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing all a living wage and income, building more mass transit, and taxing miles driven.
Low prices under Democrats however, should that ever occur, would only demonstrate that Democrats care more about the welfare of the working man and the poor.
Any more questions?
The few times I’ve tried to engage a liberal on the topic, they couldn’t even agree that Obama is not doing a good job. One person in particular kept insisting that “spending is down” and no figures or explanations I could offer made a difference. It was like talking to a brick wall. I’ve never seen such a level of cognitive dissonance in my life… and I get the impression it’s not that uncommon.
If logic rather than feelings dominated Democrat party supporters arguments, there would be many fewer Democrats.
There are people that will walk right over the cliff’s edge, swearing until the last moment that there is no cliff.
‘The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.’ – Harlan Elison
Gasoline could be $2.00 gal.
Think what it would do for the country and to our enemies.
And we have the greens to blame for this. People just need to connect the dots.
This is the Demoncrats solution to the homeless problem.
Under Bush, an unemployment rate of 5% was described as a “jobless recovery”.
Pretty sure Hussein has leaked the strategic reserves in order to fill his own pockets and so forth.
As for the Left’s barking and attacking dogs, you have to discipline them so that they know who not to challenge.
Until you poke and taze them a few times, they’ll be barking at you.
The most optimistic result of talking to a member of the Left is that they look at you like you are the stupid and degenerate one. If you are unlucky, they’ll bite you and tear out your throat for speaking heresy.
I think we have to begin engaging Liberals (NOT Leftists – they have hardened their hearts to anything conflicting with their ideology) by treading softly.
Don’t spew all that we have learned – yes, I know it’s a temptation, as we really have worked hard to educate ourselves.
Instead, take ONE point – such as the media bias in ONE aspect – and gently ask questions.
Our goal, after all, is to persuade the potential allies to evolve their thinking. That won’t happen if they feel pushed.
I continue to chuckle at your insistence that there is a difference between a “liberal” and a leftist. One may seem more open to listening, but they are the same. Guano or goat dung, it comes from the same place and generally serves the same purpose. Love blinds, I suppose. Well, it blinds some.
Nice try but you would be told that high prices are intentional, and aren’t high enough. According to the genius in chief and his loyal followers, this is a great thing. Higher prices encourage alternative sources of energy. Because the more you pay for energy, the better it is for the earth and the economy and whatever else the idiots who believe in things they don’t understand believe.
When gas prices are high under a republican president, it’s because he’s in the tank for the oil companies who just want to gouge hard working Americans. And then the same retards who were being ripped off by the evil oil companies will happily elect a democrat, who will double those same prices for the good of mankind. Good luck reasoning with a liberal.
I’d say half the democrats support comes from people simply conditioned by media saturation to hate republicans. Which should be a good sign in that they can be swayed to think in differing ways.
Yes, the excellent link Minta Marie Morze posted yesterday explains the problem very well:
The Unified Field Theory of Madness
It’s easier to think of the Leftist alliance as a 1% leading the 99% of the zombies. So what people generally think of Leftists are merely their leaders, priests, and upper echelon.
But like any aristocracy, the upper echelon is supported by the bottom super majority.
There is little difference between the person that orders the war crime and the person that obeys the order. At least, that is modern Western thought after Nuremberg. There are problems with that, such as extenuating circumstances, but there currently are no extenuating circumstances for the Leftist alliance. They know they are part of the Left. You can feel it when talking to them. They don’t reject their own home and allies. Some are dupes that can be recovered, but most are war criminals, whether by intent or not.
Using the Left’s own logick against them, if Bush is a war criminal, what does that make them?
So either the Left has their own ethics system and you hold them to it, like the upper echelon staff of a raping army or… you treat them as the zombie cannonfodder that they are.
And zombies don’t get human rights.
rickl
Interesting link – It will certainly take a while to absorb it all. An interesting observation he made that struck a chord with me is that presentation of any fact to a modern day liberal is treated like an act of aggression. That’s certainly an observable phenomenon when watching debates between conservatives and liberals on news channels, not to mention personal experience. Mentioning an easily verifiable statistic or something that is relatively well known (but inconvenient to a liberal argument) is often met with a sense of outrage and indignation that I might actually believe something to be true, and that it’s not really a debatable matter. For example, something simple like ” it takes more energy to produce corn based ethanol than it yields.”
As the article points out, To many modern liberals, nothing is true, making it impossible to have even a simple discussion. And taking it a step further, it is treated with aggression and derision to suggest there is certainty about a particular thing.
Southpaw, the truth the article addresses is some of epistemology. That subject can get complicated, but epistemology defines what makes something a truth or knowledge.
In the case of the Left for example, they consider anything coming from their Divine Messiah’s mouth to be truth. What comes from empirical experimentation, experience, and reasoning… that can never be truth to the Leftist alliance of human perfected utopia.
Ymarsakar: “What comes from empirical experimentation, experience, and reasoning… that can never be truth to the Leftist alliance of human perfected utopia.”
Not “never”. They have truth filters.
Any result of “empirical experimentation, experience, and reasoning”, or their opposite for that matter, is truth if it passes their truth filter.
No empirical truth has ever passed the Left’s filters. By definition, it’s impossible. What people think the LEft has in terms of science and reason is more like a cargo cult in actuality.