Hat tip: Self Evident Truths
Tag Archives: bias
Give people the benefit of the doubt. You can always overreact later.
I sometimes use the line in the title with my team at work and when giving leadership and management presentations. It is a corollary to the one bad argument can undermine ten good arguments truism. Charity about the motives of others is usually a win-win proposition, and you don’t want to lose credibility by making mistakes. When performing audits or investigations we don’t want to make false accusations. Our initial assessments are almost always right, but if you are wrong people will remember it for a long time and not take your views as seriously as you’d like.
The reactions to the Ft. Hood shootings make an interesting study. Many were so quick to avoid assuming it wasn’t Islamic terrorism that they swung the pendulum too far the other way and insisted that it wasn’t. They had no evidence for that, and it appears that they were wrong. They had no qualms about saying it was probably post-traumatic stress disorder, even though the guy had never experienced the original stress that this malady requires. If it is good not to speculate, then why speculate about potentially non-Islamic related causes?
Side note: Looks like the Army dropped the ball on this one. I wonder how much political correctness influenced it? This isn’t religious discrimination, it is common sense. Regardless of your type of organization, you should not employ members of ideological groups bent on your destruction. If churches would have booted false teachers 100 years ago we wouldn’t have the anti-Christian nonsense taught in countless churches today.
Side note 2: Hopefully many peaceful Muslims and Muslim countries around the world will denounce these actions. The Koran does indeed teach to harm enemies of Islam, but I am grateful for disobedient Muslims who don’t follow that teaching. If they have created a new religion that ignores those teachings, good for them. They should call out their “false teachers” the same way that I and others freely point out the errors of fake Christians. You do your movement no good to have false unity with those who believe the opposite of what you do.
Oh, and there is a is just one major problem with the the peaceful Islam message: You can never be completely sure if those denouncements are authentic because Muslims are allowed to lie to advance their faith. So CAIR’s repudiation of the actions might be advancing a distorted (i.e., better) view of Islam. Or they might be advancing the real Islam and just using their free ticket to lie.
Roundup
The State of Illinois refused to let citizens purchase the “Adopt — Choose life” license plate. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it. I don’t know the legal particulars, but I am disappointed at just how transparently pro-abortion the “pro-choice” groups are in Illinois. If they are really pro-choice, why wouldn’t they be glad to see those license plates out there? The license plates concede that there is a legal choice and simply encourage people to consider a choice other than abortion.
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More fossil marketing— “Ardi” is just (bad) capitalism in action. The Ida fossil, while a truly spectacular find, turned out to be an overblown embarrassment with respect to the “missing link” schtick. It had a very effective marketing approach that earned some people big $$ before everyone realized how over-hyped it was.
Oh, and of course, macro-evolution is totally as well documented as gravity, even though they keep finding “missing” links (I didn’t know gravity had missing links, but hey, I’m not a scientist.).
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“You know the old story about free milk and a cow? Make up your mind to keep the cow in the barn.”— a current and candid analysis of some always timely advice.
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Absolutely amazing, even for the grossly biased mainstream media: CNN criticized SNL for a skit about Obama! But hey, I remember them fact-checking all the Palin skits as well . . . or do I? At least the White House was smart enough not to comment.
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see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Roundup
Headline: Teacher Steals IPOD in Public School–Student Laughs — we need more teachers like this.
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Amazing(ly bad) Leftist video shown to countless schoolkids — Lots of gross errors and unrestrained bias. She’s like the alter ego of the crazy Texas guy on The Simpsons who lives to destroy the environment. The problem is that he is a cartoon character and an obvious parody. She is real and being shown by the authorities to your kids.
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But wait, there’s more: School Kids Taught to Praise Obama: Lyrics and Analysis — Super creepy. This verse may sound familiar to you, though the original was about Jesus, the real Messiah. “In his sight?!” Think about this, people. Teaching public school kids to praise Obama the same way church kids are taught to praise Jesus?
Hmm, hmm, hmm
Barack Hussein Obama
He said red, yellow, black, or white,
All are equal in his sight
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Watch me Get the ACORN Lawsuit Dismissed in 15 Minutes (or Less) — ACORN just can’t get enough attention drawn to their failures so they are suing journalism heroes Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe. Great move, ACORN. More opportunities for the public to watch the videos.
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Nice job by Sarah Palin in laying out why conservatism is so preferable to Liberalism.
We don’t believe that human nature is perfectible; we’re suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it’s trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is.
Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks.
Gross MSM bias
Check out The Van Jones (non) feeding frenzy — I blogged on this and have seen lots of articles on other blogs. Yet if you only get news from the MSM you’d have no idea about this guy.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.
From the previous post:
Gotta love the eloquence of Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” when he obviously couldn’t think of a real answer:
Republicans are a**holes. Barack Obama is not an a**hole.
The Democrats in the audience really seemed to be taken with that logic. Classy. What a bipartisan uniter! I saw elsewhere that he may have apologized, so that is good.
Seriously, that is just the tip of the iceburg with Van Jones. Read all about him and his unelected, unaccountable role here.
Update: Turns out he is a 9-11 “Truther” (i.e., he publicly stated that he thought it was an inside job).
“Lights, Camera, Blasphemy”
These videos highlight the dramatic influence movies have had on public perceptions of Christianity.
If you only have time for one, please watch the second (along with the last minute of the first). It addresses the major errors in the movie Inherit the Wind, a pro-Darwinian evolution / anti-Christian propoganda piece about the “Scopes Monkey Trial” that has been shown to countless public school children in the name of “science.” It is reprehensible and dishonest, with one premeditated lie after another designed to put Christians in the worst possible light and to make the atheists appear to be the nice, reasoned people. Also see this with more background about William Jennings Bryan and common mischaracterizations about him.
The same thing is going on these days with Al Gore’s infomercial An Inconvenient Truth. Any school that shows either movie should have to follow it up with Ben Stein’s Expelled!
Hat tip: The Bumbling Genius
Balance — updated
I wanted to update the post below with some thoughts based on the Zogby poll and an interesting discussion I had with a liberal over the holidays. I just let him ramble with his pro-liberal, pro-Obama, anti-business rant for a while.
Instead of pointing out the flaws in his facts and logic, which history demonstrates he would have ignored, I just asked a simple question: How much conservative media do you view or listen to?
His answer? “None.” It spoke volumes, and he knew it.
I calmly pointed out what I had mentioned in the post below, namely that I consume plenty of liberal media: My Yahoo feed is from Reuters and I update it many times each day, I read the very liberal Houston Chronicle, etc.
Does that make me right? No, but it proved beyond all doubt that only one of us takes the time to listen to both sides.
That response saved me a lot of time and frustration. I hope it planted a seed with him as well. If he has any intellectual honesty he’ll realize that if he only consumes liberal media then his views are likely to mirror their output. Brainwashing and indoctrination, anyone? Any critical thinking going on?
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I am always a bit amused when someone accuses me of imbalance on my political reading / viewing habits. I have heard it from strangers on this blog and from friends and relatives. But who is really unbalanced here?
I refresh my Yahoo page countless times per day and scan the news headlines and articles. The source is Reuters, hardly a conservative outlet. I read the Houston Chronicle, which leans heavily left (they are strong supporters of Planned Parenthood, for example, and their religious section has lots of fluff pieces on pro-gay theology and such). I read pro and con editorials. I also read some liberal blogs, though they are virtually indistinguishable from the MSM views – e.g., 90+% pro-legalized abortion.
So while I read plenty of conservative blogs and sites, I get plenty of balance. I am familiar with the issues on both sides.
What is ironic is that those who accuse me of imbalance rarely read anything of a conservative nature. They are just mimicking what the media tells them.
Media bias
Here’s a must read update on the controversial Zogby poll that demonstrated the overwhelming bias and influence of the mainstream media.
The survey has been validated by a second survey, again demonstrating that people who were better informed voted for McCain, watched Fox over the more liberal outlets, etc. Of course that doesn’t prove that Fox informed them better, as perhaps better informed people watch Fox.
But it demonstrated that Obama viewers were more ignorant in several key ways, and it was clearly tied to what the mainstream media reported:
- Ignorance of basic facts such as which party currently controls Congress
- Believing lies about Republicans
- Unaware of the truth about Obama / Biden
Can you imagine what the election results would have been if the candidates had consistently been introduced this way?
- Joe Biden, who dropped out of the 1988 Presidential campaign because he was caught plagiarizing . . .
- Barack Obama, who has less experience than Governor Sarah Palin . . .
- John McCain, who is well known for real reform and has a record of working with Democrats . . .
- Sarah Palin, the most popular Governor in America . . .
- Governor Sarah Palin, who has accomplished real reform and successfully fought corruption in her own party . . .
- Governor Sarah Palin, who knows more about energy issues than all the other candidates . . .
- Governor Sarah Palin, who has more executive experience than Barack Obama . . .
- Governor Sarah Palin, who successfully governs a larger and more complicated state than Bill Clinton did . . .
- Barack Obama, who was the lone vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois . . .
Eternity Matters 