so... im biting my tongue on what i would have normally said.
instead, ill ask a question: It the New Yorker trying to be independant? im not to familiar with the New Yorker at all so this is being asked in all honesty.
I got something for that little crotch rocket of yours(NO, REALLY). LOL I love that analogy. I'm not into the crotch rockets much but I am a racer and nothing is funnier to me than these ricers.
Look I had a Turbo MR2 in college, loved that car but I knew its limitations. I wasn't out trying to race Gixers. Would I tear a Mustang a new @sshole when given the oppurtunity, DAMN RIGHT. My Dad and I have been racing Corvettes for a number of years now. One that we ran for a good while was a 2001 Convertible, built for the high speed auto-cross. Everytime I put that car on the street I'd have some CRX or Integra trying to race. Usually I'd just laugh but occasionally I'd show them just enough to know this isn't a stock vette driven by a doctor or lawyer.
This one little green Integra kept pestering me on the interstate and he had his girlfriend(I'm assuming) with him. Well he pulled in front of me and I saw his plate "VETKLLR", I started laughing and thought I'd show this retard a lesson whipped into the left lane down to 4th gear at 60 mph(I easily coulda went into 2nd but why?) spun the tires at 60 and hit 150 mph and 20 car lengths on this kid before he found the next gear.
He follows me to the house hops out and wants to know what the hell is under the hood. I just looked and laughed. I had to ask the kid, have you ever raced at a track? To which I got the expected, "NO". Look kid the difference between a ricer, like you, and a racer is this ... I don't have a full roll cage, an obnoxious exhaust and stickers all over this car for looks. The roll cage is required when you run under 11 secs in a convertible, the exhaust is serving a purpose not there for sound effects, and the stickers are required by the sponsors. It always cracks me up when these ricers thank they have something real when they put an intake and exhasut on. 90% have no idea that in most cases that fart-can they stuck on is adding no horse power and the reduced back pressure is causing them to wear out their motor quicker.
If you wanna race, lets race but if you want a "hot car" take it to the car show.
I got something for that little crotch rocket of yours(NO, REALLY). LOL I love that analogy. I'm not into the crotch rockets much but I am a racer and nothing is funnier to me than these ricers.
Look man... Let's just face facts... Unless your vet has a 12ft tall wing off a DC-10 duct taped to the trunk you and I both know it doesn't stand a chance against my bike... LMAO
madurofan:
He follows me to the house
See, if you had went to Autozone and bought yourself a big ass tach to velcro to the windshield and attached a big bellows to the clutch so every time you shifted it would sound like blowback, then he wouldn't have been able to follow you cause you would've been outta sight in seconds...
madurofan:
It always cracks me up when these ricers thank they have something real when they put an intake and exhasut on. 90% have no idea that in most cases that fart-can they stuck on is adding no horse power and the reduced back pressure is causing them to wear out their motor quicker.
99% don't even know what the hell a dyno is... If they'd take the time to dyno the car before doing some dumb ass modification that their second-cousins brother's friend of his brother-in-laws first wife's sister's uncle told them would add 20hp and compare it to after, they just MIGHT start to get the picture... Of course 80% of them would probably still do it just because it "sounds cool as hell"...
I had a kid once stop me in a parking lot asking about my bike... Of course the first question was what it's top speed was... (they ALWAYS ask this...) After telling him that with the current gearing it was around 175 he goes on to tell me about his "friends" bike that'll do over 200... OHHH REALLY? So what kind of bike is this? OHHHHH it's a Ninja... of course it is... they're ALL ninja's right?!? I almost thought about trying to explain to the kid that the power required to overcome air resistance is a logarithmic scale and that doing 200+mph even on a bike requires some SERIOUS horsepower that can only come from a blown (i.e. turbo) engine and some serious work that I SERIOUSLY doubted his "friend" had done...
Instead I simply point out the switch under my seat... (It's a switch that's wired into the ECU that bypasses the timing retardation that's built in for 1st,2nd and 3rd gear... Basically it keeps dumb asses that have no business being on a 1k from killing themselves with sloppy throttle control...) Of course he asked what that was for... I told him that was the switch that turned on the turbo boost and let me go 250+mph... He just looked at me agasp for a second and says, "WOW!"
Anyway, point is... I think that might say something about our society as a whole... It used to be if you wanted to go fast, you actually took the time to learn about engines and power... Now you just watch "The Fast and the Furious" a couple of times and you're an instant street racer that knows EVERYTHING about "tuning" a car...
Would you not normally have said what you were going to if the piece had not been sarcastic? Does that, perhaps, say something?
no, the factor was if they were claiming to be fair and balanced. Rush says hes to to right so im ok with that. Al Fanken says hes to the left so im ok with that. CNN says they are fair when they are to the left. Im not ok with that.
People are hanged. Pictures are hung. (Okay, some of us people are hung, too, but that's a kettle of different colored horses.)
You walk farther down a road, but you take ideas further.
I'm a grammarjack and I'm okay.
Since we're talking about abuse of grammar, I laughed so hard at this that I banged my head on my monitor. (Warning: political humor.)
Urby, the grammar in that thing alone will get me started on a Thursday rant, and I haven't even touched on the evil that is Sarah Palin... but thanks for the new tagline! So tell me .. were you laughing so hard at the writing, or were you laughing so hard at the, um, writing?
Also, did you notice that the articled had been EDITED? This is the published product after two dim-wits got their hands on it. How many editors need to review front-page content for this publication?
Whew.. ok.. now that I've recovered from my morning stupor, I can see that this was plainly a sarcastic column meant to impersonate the "average" Palin supporter. It's just funny now. Don't scare me like that.
Oh, and before I click "Post" one more thing: PTFTW!!
I was gonna say, Duty!!! I thought you were a little off yer game there fer a minute.
How about that dude from England, with his "modest proposal" about eating kids and whatnot?!?
I'm not so quick off the line on my bicycle, but when you guys stop to get gas and I roll by at 25mph, the ratio of my speed to your speed is ∞.
The New Yorker is well established as left-leaning.
I don't find CNN liberal at all.
On TV, I find Fox News to be way right, MSNBC to be way left, and CNN to be reasonably unbiased. On the web, I find MSNBC to be very unbiased. CNN actually seems a little left-leaning on-line.
MSNBC has some left-of-center programs, but I don't know that they're "way left" overall. I don't watch it that much. I don't watch CNN that much, either.
In general, I think those networks look liberal to American audiences because we don't have any truly liberal national news sources. What do I mean? Well, think of the run-up to the Iraq War. All of the news networks saluted and supported it in a big way, for fear of being called unpatriotic. A truly liberal news source, such as exists in many European countries, would have been much more skeptical and demanding of explanation than any of our networks were. That's just one example.
Overall, as every scholarly study ever conducted has indicated, the American news media are a bit right of center. Whatever the reporters' personal preferences might be, their reporting is slightly right of center.
MSNBC has some left-of-center programs, but I don't know that they're "way left" overall. I don't watch it that much. I don't watch CNN that much, either.
In general, I think those networks look liberal to American audiences because we don't have any truly liberal national news sources. What do I mean? Well, think of the run-up to the Iraq War. All of the news networks saluted and supported it in a big way, for fear of being called unpatriotic. A truly liberal news source, such as exists in many European countries, would have been much more skeptical and demanding of explanation than any of our networks were. That's just one example.
Overall, as every scholarly study ever conducted has indicated, the American news media are a bit right of center. Whatever the reporters' personal preferences might be, their reporting is slightly right of center.
Wait just a minute there...as a former newspaper reporter, I can tell you there is a clear and documented liberal media bias.
This is just one example I can point to...taken from UCLA's web site
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."
"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co-author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.
The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low-population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.
Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.
"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.
"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."
The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.
Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op-Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.
"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."
Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.
"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government-funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."
The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.
"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.
The results break new ground.
"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."
Look man... Let's just face facts... Unless your vet has a 12ft tall wing off a DC-10 duct taped to the trunk you and I both know it doesn't stand a chance against my bike... LMAO
Tube chasis, all Aluminum, Carbon Fiber and Fiberglass body weighing about 1700lbs. 572ci big block(built from the ZZ572 crate motor) putting down over 800hp and 850lb-ft of torque. Approximate under-estimate .41 hp per pound not to mention weight to torque ratio. We've owned professionally built Busas in this car . Of course its a full drag car and not streetable but I didn't say I had a street something for your crotch rocket, just that I had something for it
rusirius:
99% don't even know what the hell a dyno is... If they'd take the time to dyno the car before doing some dumb ass modification that their second-cousins brother's friend of his brother-in-laws first wife's sister's uncle told them would add 20hp and compare it to after, they just MIGHT start to get the picture... Of course 80% of them would probably still do it just because it "sounds cool as hell"...
LMAO, plus it comes with the awesome GReddy sticker, that'll add another 5hp or so, AT THE WHEELS!
rusirius:
I had a kid once stop me in a parking lot asking about my bike... Of course the first question was what it's top speed was... (they ALWAYS ask this...) After telling him that with the current gearing it was around 175 he goes on to tell me about his "friends" bike that'll do over 200... OHHH REALLY? So what kind of bike is this? OHHHHH it's a Ninja... of course it is... they're ALL ninja's right?!? I almost thought about trying to explain to the kid that the power required to overcome air resistance is a logarithmic scale and that doing 200+mph even on a bike requires some SERIOUS horsepower that can only come from a blown (i.e. turbo) engine and some serious work that I SERIOUSLY doubted his "friend" had done...
If you told him the motor had to be blown to do that, he would have been out redlining his ricer that night tryign to blow the motor to get over 200mph.
Not to mention the fact that Japanese bike makers came to a truce at what 187mph, (wasn't it?) as a top speed.
On a side note a buddy of mine just bought the ZX14, I can't wait to see that damn thing.
rusirius:
Anyway, point is... I think that might say something about our society as a whole... It used to be if you wanted to go fast, you actually took the time to learn about engines and power... Now you just watch "The Fast and the Furious" a couple of times and you're an instant street racer that knows EVERYTHING about "tuning" a car...
Tube chasis, all Aluminum, Carbon Fiber and Fiberglass body weighing about 1700lbs. 572ci big block(built from the ZZ572 crate motor) putting down over 800hp and 850lb-ft of torque.............. blah blah blah ........
Yeah, whatever man... If it doesn't have a 12ft wing it ain't nuffin.... Cause you know man... when you're taking those high speed turns into starbucks at 30mph you gotta have that extra stick...
madurofan:
Not to mention the fact that Japanese bike makers came to a truce at what 187mph, (wasn't it?) as a top speed.
186 if i remember right... But there is a way around it... The switch I was talking about earlier that's under my seat feeds the ECU with a signal that makes the bike always think it's in 5th gear (when it's not in neutral that is)... That does two things... It bypasses the timing retardation that the factory builds in to the first 3 gears, and also stops it from killing the 4th cylinder at 186...
The speed limit actually doesn't know anything about "Speed"... It goes by the tach... It uses the rev limiter that's already built into the bike but when the ECU sees it in 6th gear it limits it way earlier... At whatever rpm that factory gearing/tires will give 186... So the above mod keeps that from happening since the bike never thinks it's in 6th gear...
it also of course changes the fuel maps, which normally would be a bad thing... but fortunately I have a fuel/air computer stuck between the engine and ECU anyway, so the ECU outputs are just ignored and my custom maps used... (Custom maps because of race exhaust...)
Not really an issue for me anyway since like I said, with my gearing and my fat ass it tops out at 175 anyway... When I do track days it's all road courses anyway, usually at VIR... They usually configure the course with a pretty short straightaway.. Usually the straight you only hit about 140+ anyway... Between that and the fact that I'm normally on the street anyway I have it geared down quite a bit to get more punch in the lowers...
Takes a lot more control on the throttle, but it will stand itself up in 3rd gear with just a semi-quick roll on the throttle...
madurofan:
On a side note a buddy of mine just bought the ZX14, I can't wait to see that damn thing.
I've had a little fun on a 12 a few years back... I really didn't care much for it... My gix is light and can be thrown around pretty good... The 12 was just too heavy and slow in the corners...
From what I hear though, the 14 supposedly addresses a lot of that and still maintains pretty respectable cornering... That'd be sweet if so!
Luko -- The Groseclose & Milyo study has gotten a lot of criticism on methodological grounds (mostly having to do with the mathematical model, which I frankly don't understand). The other studies I was referring to turn out to be fairly spotty, too, according to a scholar friend of mine. So I retract my statement about studies showing a slight conservative bias in the media.
However, I still stand by my statement that the major news networks are not notably liberal.
Only because its difficult to get out of the harness to back the car up. The dragster we used to run didn't have reverse, we just used to grab it and pull it back after the burnout. lol
Only because its difficult to get out of the harness to back the car up. The dragster we used to run didn't have reverse, we just used to grab it and pull it back after the burnout. lol
Comments
instead, ill ask a question:
It the New Yorker trying to be independant? im not to familiar with the New Yorker at all so this is being asked in all honesty.
Would you not normally have said what you were going to if the piece had not been sarcastic? Does that, perhaps, say something?
I got something for that little crotch rocket of yours(NO, REALLY). LOL I love that analogy. I'm not into the crotch rockets much but I am a racer and nothing is funnier to me than these ricers.
Look I had a Turbo MR2 in college, loved that car but I knew its limitations. I wasn't out trying to race Gixers. Would I tear a Mustang a new @sshole when given the oppurtunity, DAMN RIGHT.
My Dad and I have been racing Corvettes for a number of years now. One that we ran for a good while was a 2001 Convertible, built for the high speed auto-cross. Everytime I put that car on the street I'd have some CRX or Integra trying to race. Usually I'd just laugh but occasionally I'd show them just enough to know this isn't a stock vette driven by a doctor or lawyer.
This one little green Integra kept pestering me on the interstate and he had his girlfriend(I'm assuming) with him. Well he pulled in front of me and I saw his plate "VETKLLR", I started laughing and thought I'd show this retard a lesson whipped into the left lane down to 4th gear at 60 mph(I easily coulda went into 2nd but why?) spun the tires at 60 and hit 150 mph and 20 car lengths on this kid before he found the next gear.
He follows me to the house hops out and wants to know what the hell is under the hood. I just looked and laughed. I had to ask the kid, have you ever raced at a track? To which I got the expected, "NO". Look kid the difference between a ricer, like you, and a racer is this ... I don't have a full roll cage, an obnoxious exhaust and stickers all over this car for looks. The roll cage is required when you run under 11 secs in a convertible, the exhaust is serving a purpose not there for sound effects, and the stickers are required by the sponsors.
It always cracks me up when these ricers thank they have something real when they put an intake and exhasut on. 90% have no idea that in most cases that fart-can they stuck on is adding no horse power and the reduced back pressure is causing them to wear out their motor quicker.
If you wanna race, lets race but if you want a "hot car" take it to the car show.
I had a kid once stop me in a parking lot asking about my bike... Of course the first question was what it's top speed was... (they ALWAYS ask this...) After telling him that with the current gearing it was around 175 he goes on to tell me about his "friends" bike that'll do over 200... OHHH REALLY? So what kind of bike is this? OHHHHH it's a Ninja... of course it is... they're ALL ninja's right?!? I almost thought about trying to explain to the kid that the power required to overcome air resistance is a logarithmic scale and that doing 200+mph even on a bike requires some SERIOUS horsepower that can only come from a blown (i.e. turbo) engine and some serious work that I SERIOUSLY doubted his "friend" had done...
Instead I simply point out the switch under my seat... (It's a switch that's wired into the ECU that bypasses the timing retardation that's built in for 1st,2nd and 3rd gear... Basically it keeps dumb asses that have no business being on a 1k from killing themselves with sloppy throttle control...) Of course he asked what that was for... I told him that was the switch that turned on the turbo boost and let me go 250+mph... He just looked at me agasp for a second and says, "WOW!"
Anyway, point is... I think that might say something about our society as a whole... It used to be if you wanted to go fast, you actually took the time to learn about engines and power... Now you just watch "The Fast and the Furious" a couple of times and you're an instant street racer that knows EVERYTHING about "tuning" a car...
How about that dude from England, with his "modest proposal" about eating kids and whatnot?!?
The New Yorker is well established as left-leaning.
I don't find CNN liberal at all.
In general, I think those networks look liberal to American audiences because we don't have any truly liberal national news sources. What do I mean? Well, think of the run-up to the Iraq War. All of the news networks saluted and supported it in a big way, for fear of being called unpatriotic. A truly liberal news source, such as exists in many European countries, would have been much more skeptical and demanding of explanation than any of our networks were. That's just one example.
Overall, as every scholarly study ever conducted has indicated, the American news media are a bit right of center. Whatever the reporters' personal preferences might be, their reporting is slightly right of center.
Wait just a minute there...as a former newspaper reporter, I can tell you there is a clear and documented liberal media bias.
This is just one example I can point to...taken from UCLA's web site
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."
"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co-author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.
The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low-population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.
Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.
"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.
"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."
The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.
Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op-Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.
"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."
Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.
"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government-funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."
The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.
"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.
The results break new ground.
"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."
-UCLA-
LMAO, plus it comes with the awesome GReddy sticker, that'll add another 5hp or so, AT THE WHEELS! If you told him the motor had to be blown to do that, he would have been out redlining his ricer that night tryign to blow the motor to get over 200mph.
Not to mention the fact that Japanese bike makers came to a truce at what 187mph, (wasn't it?) as a top speed.
On a side note a buddy of mine just bought the ZX14, I can't wait to see that damn thing. Exactly my point.
The speed limit actually doesn't know anything about "Speed"... It goes by the tach... It uses the rev limiter that's already built into the bike but when the ECU sees it in 6th gear it limits it way earlier... At whatever rpm that factory gearing/tires will give 186... So the above mod keeps that from happening since the bike never thinks it's in 6th gear...
it also of course changes the fuel maps, which normally would be a bad thing... but fortunately I have a fuel/air computer stuck between the engine and ECU anyway, so the ECU outputs are just ignored and my custom maps used... (Custom maps because of race exhaust...)
Not really an issue for me anyway since like I said, with my gearing and my fat ass it tops out at 175 anyway... When I do track days it's all road courses anyway, usually at VIR... They usually configure the course with a pretty short straightaway.. Usually the straight you only hit about 140+ anyway... Between that and the fact that I'm normally on the street anyway I have it geared down quite a bit to get more punch in the lowers...
Takes a lot more control on the throttle, but it will stand itself up in 3rd gear with just a semi-quick roll on the throttle...
From what I hear though, the 14 supposedly addresses a lot of that and still maintains pretty respectable cornering... That'd be sweet if so!
However, I still stand by my statement that the major news networks are not notably liberal.