Obama Calls For Mandatory Voting In U.S.

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

The ignorant, the stupid, the uneducated, unsophisticated low info type. The unreal Americans.

Those are the Fox News viewers, vette; we've covered this just today.

 

[BotanyBoy]

This man has no concept whatsoever of the prerogatives of a free society:

Because there is no such thing....

Yes, a totalitarian practice. Not the practice of a free society.

There is no such thing as a free society...especially not in the US Mr.I love totalitarian police practices and federal supremacy....hypocrite.

Hahahaha, what an idiot.

Says the guy talking out his fuckin' ass about free societies and totalitarian police states as he actively condemns the POTUS from respecting states rights, the will of the people and asks for activist judges and a police force to go out and arrest 120 MILLION Americans...........LOL the scale of your hypocrisy is staggering vetteman.

Yes, studies like those refuted studies showing that 97% of scientists believe in man caused climate change.

Polls also show Fox to be the most trusted cable news source as well.

LOL that's just funny...IDC who you are.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

There is no logic on your side KO, it wasn't FOX News who produced the majority of Obama voters who have brought tyranny to the doorstep of the once free civil society, violence to the Constitution and chaos to the rest of the free world.

It is Fox viewers who are even worse-informed than people who watch no news at all.

 

[BotanyBoy]

There is no logic on your side KO, it wasn't FOX News who produced the majority of Obama voters who have brought tyranny to the doorstep of the once free civil society, violence to the Constitution and chaos to the rest of the free world.

When was our society free and how is it no longer so?.....I'm guessing you got nothing. LOL

Violence to the Constitution?


You're fucking insane you know that right?

 

[luvslingerie200]

I don't care if it's a totalitarian practice one bit, we're not a free society and you have no more interest in one than I do. Why would this require a Constitutional Amendment? It doesn't seem like anything that couldn't be handled with a simple federal law. "Thou shalt vote, here are the methods acceptable, here are the proofs you will require."

The problems with this are really that politically only the Republicans can push for this without being jack asses Republicans don't want people voting. History tells us when people vote Republicans lose which is why Obama wants it and why Vette doesn't.

From 1960 to 2012 the average voter turnout has bee around 55%. The highest percentage turnout was in 1960 with 62.8% of voting age adults voting....of course Kennedy was the victor, however the next highest turnout was in 1968 at 61.4% when Nixon won. No turnout has been in the 60% range since then. The lowest year was 1996 at 49% for Clintons second term.

Heard an interesting point of view on the radio today. If voting was mandatory, would the parties continue to take certain voting 'blocks' for granted? EX: Democrats expect the black vote and have historically won that vote and in 08 the turnout was unprecedented and had the predicted outcome.....yet has anything really improved for that segment in the last 6 years....no and yet they will continue to vote democratic. That is why neither party has done anything on immigration really. stringing along the argument benefits the dems, and the repubs have pretty much conceded that voting block....so both sides tend to pander to their respective voting blocks rather than actually trying to solve issues.

 

[phrodeau]

"Other countries have mandatory voting," said Obama "It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything,"

Tell me he isn't advocating it.

Suggesting that everybody should vote is not the same thing as requiring everybody to vote, no matter how loud the pundits scream it.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Obama complains about the money in politics but his own party injected more money into the political process than anyone else:

https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/

Why not? If you're a pol and you're against money in politics, you still have to play the game as it is now; you are not obliged to unilaterally disarm.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Another manufactured myth by the left.

Another truth discovered by studies.

Here are five such studies—and note that this list may be incomplete. This is just what I’ve come across so far:

1. Iraq War. In 2003, a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found widespread public misperceptions about the Iraq war. For instance, many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had been involved in 9/11, or that it possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S. invasion. But not everyone was equally misinformed: “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news,” PIPA reported. “Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions.” For instance, 80 % of Fox viewers held at least one of three Iraq-related misperceptions, more than a variety of other types of news consumers, and especially NPR and PBS users.

2. Global Warming. In a late 2010 survey, Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick found that “more exposure to Fox News was associated with more rejection of many mainstream scientists’ claims about global warming, with less trust in scientists, and with more belief that ameliorating global warming would hurt the U.S. economy.” Notably, there was a 25 percentage point gap between the most frequent Fox News watchers (60 %) and those who watch no Fox news (85 %) in whether they think global warming is “caused mostly by things people do or about equally by things people do and natural causes.”

3. Health Care. Earlier this year, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey on U.S. misperceptions about health care reform. The survey asked 10 questions, and compared the “high scorers”–those that answered 7 or more correct–based on their media habits. The result was that “higher shares of those who report CNN (35 percent) or MSNBC (39 percent) as their primary news source [got] 7 or more right, compared to those who report mainly watching Fox News (25 percent).”

4. Ground Zero Mosque. In late 2010, two scholars at the Ohio State University studied public misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”—and in particular, the prevalence of a series of rumors depicting those seeking to build the mosque as terrorist sympathizers, anti-American, and so on. The result? “People who use Fox News believe more of the rumors we asked about and they believe them more strongly than those who do not.” Respondents reporting a “low reliance” on Fox News believed .9 rumors on average (out of 4), but for those reporting a “high reliance” on Fox News, the number increased to 1.5 out of 4.

5. 2010 Election. Late last year, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) once again singled out Fox in a survey about misinformation during the 2010 election. Out of 11 false claims studied in the survey, PIPA found that “almost daily” Fox News viewers were “significantly more likely than those who never watched it” to believe 9 of them, including the misperception that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.”

It’s important to note that these studies do not prove causation. In other words, they do not prove that watching Fox makes people believe incorrect things. After all, it could be that those who are more likely to believe the incorrect things listed above are also more likely to watch Fox, to seek out Fox, etc. The causation could go in the opposite direction.

Still, the evidence above is striking.

Well, whichever way the causation runs, you, vette, are clearly part of the problem.

See also:

In these pieces, I identified 6 separate studies showing Fox News viewers to be the most misinformed, and in a right wing direction—studies on global warming, health care, health care a second time, the Ground Zero mosque, the Iraq war, and the 2010 election.

I also asked if anyone was aware of any counterevidence, and none was forthcoming. There might very well be a survey out there showing that Fox viewers aren’t the most misinformed cable news consumers on some topic (presumably it would be a topic where Democrats have some sort of ideological blind spot), but I haven’t seen it. And I have looked.

There really does seem to be a “Fox News effect,” then, and one that is playing a central role in driving our political divide over reality in the U.S. And now comes a true tour-de-force seventh study showing that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed, this time once again about global warming.

The new paper, already flagged here by Farron Cousins, is just out in the International Journal of Press/Politics, by communication scholar Lauren Feldman of American University and her colleagues. The paper is quite sophisticated, and performs several powerful analyses. But for our purposes, here’s what matters.

Feldman and her colleagues reported on their analysis of a 2008 national survey, which found that “Fox News viewing manifests a significant, negative association with global warming acceptance.” Viewers of the station were less likely to agree that “most scientists think global warming is happening” and less likely to think global warming is mostly caused by human activities, among other measures. Viewers of CNN and MSNBC were the opposite.

And no wonder: Through a content analysis of Fox coverage in 2007 and 2008, Feldman and her colleagues also demonstrated that Fox coverage is more dismissive about climate science, and features more climate skeptics. That’s no shocker, but the paper does a very good job of linking up the coverage itself with the reality denial that results in Fox viewers.

There is also a fascinating finding that those Republicans who do watch CNN/MSNBC are more persuaded than Democratic viewers are to accept global warming. In other words, Republicans in the study seem much more easily swayed by media framing than Democrats. Put them in the Fox information stream, just add water, and watch denialism sprout. Put them in another information stream, though, and something very different might happen.

I noted in my prior posts that the studies documenting the “Fox News effect” do not necessarily show causation. In other words, watching Fox may make you more misinformed, but people who believe lots of political misinformation may also gravitate towards Fox.

I actually think both things are going on simultaneously—but the new Feldman study does make a strong causal case that Fox is actively driving a lot of the problem.

In other words, why are Americans so divided today over reality and what is factually true? There are surely many causes—but one is that a news network with a powerful sway is constantly sowing right wing misinformation, and an army of followers are watching and believing it.

See also:

Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.

In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just aint so:

•91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
•72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
•72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
•60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
•49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
•63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
•56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
•38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
•63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP benefited from the ignorance that Fox News helped to proliferate. The results were apparent in the election last month as voters based their decisions on demonstrably false information fed to them by Fox News.

 

[KingOrfeo]

See also:

Tests of knowledge of Fox viewers

A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, as published in the Winter 03-04 issue of the Political Science Quarterly,[59] reported that poll-based findings[60] indicated that viewers of Fox News, the Fox Broadcasting Company and local Fox affiliates were more likely than viewers of other news networks to hold three misperceptions:[59]
##67% of Fox viewers believed that the "U.S. has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization" (compared with 56% for CBS, 49% for NBC, 48% for CNN, 45% for ABC, 16% for NPR/PBS).
##The belief that "The U.S. has found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" was held by 33% of Fox viewers and only 23% of CBS viewers, 19% for ABC, 20% for NBC, 20% for CNN and 11% for NPR/PBS.
##35% of Fox viewers believed that "the majority of people [in the world] favor the U.S. having gone to war" with Iraq (compared with 28% for CBS, 27% for ABC, 24% for CNN, 20% for NBC, 5% for NPR/PBS).

In response, Fox News frequent guest Ann Coulter characterized the PIPA findings as "misperceptions of pointless liberal factoids" and called it a "hoax poll".[61] Bill O'Reilly called the study "absolute crap".[62] Roger Ailes referred to the study as "an old push poll".[63] James Taranto, editor of OpinionJournal.com, the Wall Street Journal '​s online editorial page, called the poll "pure propaganda".[64] PIPA issued a clarification on October 17, 2003, stating that "The findings were not meant to and cannot be used as a basis for making broad judgments about the general accuracy of the reporting of various networks or the general accuracy of the beliefs of those who get their news from those networks. Only a substantially more comprehensive study could undertake such broad research questions," and stated "that the correlation between viewing Fox News and holding misperceptions does not prove that Fox News' presentation caused the misperceptions[,]" inferring that causality is not necessary to prove correlation.[65][66]

PIPA also conducted a statistical study on purported misinformation evidenced by registered voters before the 2010 election. According to the results of the study, "...false or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment..."[67] but viewers of Fox News were more likely to be misinformed on specific issues when compared to viewers of comparable media,[68] that this likelihood also increased proportionally to the frequency of viewing Fox News[68] and that these findings showed statistical significance.[69] Media critic David Zurawik pointed to what he saw as weaknesses in the study, such as that certain government agencies are defined as holding the "true" positions on issues and that the study didn't differentiate between the influences of FNC shows as opposed to political ads that aired within shows.[70]

A 2007 Pew Research Center poll of general political knowledge ("Who is the governor of your state?", "Who is the President of Russia?") indicated that Fox News Channel viewers scored 35% in the high-knowledge area, the same as the national average. This was not significantly different than local news, network news and morning news, and was slightly lower than CNN (41%). Viewers of The O'Reilly Factor (51%) scored in the high category along with Rush Limbaugh (50%), NPR (51%), major newspapers (54%), Newshour with Jim Lehrer (53%) The Daily Show (54%) and The Colbert Report (54%).[71]

A 2010 Stanford University survey found "more exposure to Fox News was associated with more rejection of many mainstream scientists' claims about global warming, [and] with less trust in scientists".[72] A 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation survey on U.S. misperceptions about health care reform found that Fox News viewers had a poorer understanding of the new laws and were more likely to believe in falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act such as cuts to Medicare benefits and the death panel myth.[73] A 2010 Ohio State University study of public misperceptions about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", officially named Park51, found that viewers who relied on Fox News were 66% more likely to believe incorrect rumors than those with a "low reliance" on Fox News.[74]

In 2011, a study by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that New Jersey Fox News viewers were less well informed than people who did not watch any news at all. The study employed objective questions, such as whether Hosni Mubarak was still in power in Egypt.[75][76][77]

 

[unregistered]

 

[about_average]

Polls also show Fox to be the most trusted cable news source as well.

Eliciting trust doesn't mean honest or accurate. That's why so many people fall victim to scams every day, they trust the wrong people.
So your comment about Fox is completely meaningless as a response to the topic of people being informed or not.

 

[rainsol]

Eliciting trust doesn't mean honest or accurate. That's why so many people fall victim to scams every day, they trust the wrong people.
So your comment about Fox is completely meaningless as a response to the topic of people being informed or not.

I would not trust any network, CBS, ABC, and NBC or CNN. They all have an agenda of promoting liberal causes.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Yawn

FOX news didn't produce those Obama voters who supported and elected the most subversive failure in U.S. history.

^^ in total denial about the fact that Obama is leaving the US better off than the Republicans have in nearly 30 years. Mad as fuck about it too LOL

I would not trust any network, CBS, ABC, and NBC or CNN. They all have an agenda of promoting liberal causes.

Congratulations....you're already head and shoulders above the average trusting FOX lemmings that vettey touts as so shit hot.

 

[Que]

All the libtards that love point to the fox survey ALWAYS leave out that the LEAST informed "Fox viewers" (who probably watch NOTHING, but were embarrassed to say so) self identified as LIBERAL.

 

[BotanyBoy]

All the libtards that love point to the fox survey ALWAYS leave out that the LEAST informed "Fox viewers" (who probably watch NOTHING, but were embarrassed to say so) self identified as LIBERAL.

OF COURSE THEY ARE!!!



Anyone who trusts any of the major news networks at face value is a fucking moron.

 

[Que]

OF COURSE THEY ARE!!!



Anyone who trusts any of the major news networks at face value is a fucking moron.

Absolutely. TV news is entertainment, period. To contrast the minuscule audience of MSNBC (100,000 nationwide???) and Fox is idiotic. No serious statistician would draw the parallel. Each viewer is unique, and their reasons for choosing which brand of entertainment is unique. At least compare to comedy central so audience size is similar, but it would still be meaningless.

A serious study would seek to determine what sources the person did read and watch. What percentage of time was devoted to each activity?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Another manufactured myth by the left.

FOX has plenty of Leftie blabbermouths, last time I checked.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

There is no logic on your side KO, it wasn't FOX News who produced the majority of Obama voters who have brought tyranny to the doorstep of the once free civil society, violence to the Constitution and chaos to the rest of the free world.

Perfect example of low information "conservative" bullshit and why FauxNews viewers are less informed than those who watch no news at all.

 

[miles]

FOX has plenty of Leftie blabbermouths, last time I checked.

I just saw Geraldo on Fox this morning. He's rather confused.

 

[sr71plt]

FOX has plenty of Leftie blabbermouths, last time I checked.

Just as CNN gives time to a lot of rightists.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Perfect example of low information "conservative" bullshit and why FauxNews viewers are less informed than those who watch no news at all.

dude, you live in a trailer and can't afford new tires for your home. who cares about what you think. drink more juice