One of my correspondents finds it hard to believe that anyone seriously argued that Bush was going to cancel the 2008 elections. Well, yes,
there were a bunch of lunatics who did--possibly including, according to one eyewitness acount,
Congressman John Oliver (Oliver has denied he said this to a group of liberal activists). Whether or not he said this, (and I'd be surprised if he did, since politicians are usually more keenly alive to their electoral fortunes) the fact that people on his own side were willing to believe he had said it says a lot. It was also popular among the
Ohio voting machine conspiracists. This is not anything like the mainstream of the Democratic party, any more than the militias and other lunatics are the mainstream of the Republicans. But yes, there really were people who gave every appearance of sincerely believing that this was a possibility.
Yes, I remember hearing this, and thinking at the time that it was idiotic (I am a liberal, and a few of my nutjob friends talked about it).
If anyone thought the beaten-down, hangdog man who left the Presidency, who was awakening to the fact that he had been _played_ on a major level, who was coming to the realization that he did not have the chops to run with the big dogs in DC, if anyone thought _he_ was going to cancel the election, they were not paying attention.
I could totally see Cheney pulling a Yeltsin, though.
"I could totally see Cheney pulling a Yeltsin, though."
If Dick Cheney had all that power, then why is Barack Hussein Obama the President?
Here's a guy raised as a Muslim in Indonesia and he's now the President.
Don't you think if Dick Cheney was as evil and powerful as you suggest that we wouldn't have a Muslim-raised President today?
And the tumors keep eating away at what's left of your brain, don't they fucknuts?
You cursed at him, so he's obviously right. Man, so Obama really IS a muslim?
The liberals really painted themselves into a corner with the "Bush is a moron" line of attack. They had to imagine some kind of evil genius that was pulling all the strings as Bush kept outmaneuvering them politically. First it was Karl Rove. Then he retired and nothing changed. So they had to settle on Cheney. But while Cheney is quite a bit more conservative than Bush, there's no evidence I can see he's more intelligent or that he ever amassed "power" in his role of VP beyond his ability to influence the president.
Interesting line of argument you have there: "I'm not crazy, although I had some crazy friends. Now let me tell you about my crazy theory..."
Nobody is seriously arguing that there aren't nuts on both sides. It is just that the Republican Party is more tolerant of its nuts than the Democratic Party is. (This statement is only true for now--20-25 years ago the reverse was certainly true).
Good work, I think you've walked it all the way back to an unfalsifiable assertion.
No, there's a simple quantitative comparison. How many people listen to media outlets which push birtherism and Obama as ready to kill grandma? Now compare that to the number of people who listen to outlets which plug the conspiracy theories MM mentions. You'll see the difference there.
O rly?
The MSM published forged memos about Bush's Guard service, claiming he avoided service when he actually volunteered for combat.
Lying sack of shit Michael Moore was feted by Carter at the DNC.
9/11 conspiracy buff Van Jones was appointed to Barack's cabinet.
I could go on...
But the birther theory is far less insane than the truther theory. One requires you to believe that a man would forge his birth certificate to be elected President, the other requires you to believe that a President would cold-bloodedly murder 3000 of his own citizens in order to make his foreign policy a bit easier.
That's not to say birthers are entirely sane or at all right, don't get me wrong. But it's a significantly less crazy theory than the ones truthers have.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "ready to kill Grandma". Do I think that Obama will send a death squad to off my loved ones? No.
Do I think that a consequence of national healthcare would be more "hard choices" and "democratic conversations" about denying care at the end of life so we could devote resources to people who will get "more benefit" from treatment? Absolutely, yes, I believe that.
Most people I know who talk about "death panels" mean it (of course) pejoratively, but don't mean we're going to have Logan's Run any time soon.
So, if you count those folks as crazy, I think you're right that non-Democrats (and many Democrats) are crazy.
I have to challenge this. Look at all those supporting the Bush brought down the towers and the Bush blew up the levies crowd. The brought down the towers people included Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney, granted she was pretty out there, but she was in Congress. I personally knew several respectable people that believed that Bush ordered someone to destroy the levies so he could clear African Americans out of New Orleans. That is pretty serious stuff and it was accepted.
You mention one Democratic Congresswoman. How many Republicans in Congress have pushed the birther nonsense? How many Republican Congressmen talked about Obama trying to kill your grandmother? You are talking an order of magnitude difference here.
The most accurate GOP counterpart on the nuttiness scale of Cynthia McKinney is Michelle Bachmann. Other Republicans listen to her. She's on GOP talk radio and Fox all the time. McKinney never was in mainstream Democratic circles. Nobody listened to her.
I will also add that it seems that the Left is rapidly catching up in the crazy factor.
But for now the Right still has the lead.
Frog Leg,
I agree with you.
I would consider myself on the right when it comes to economic policy issues and on the left when it comes to social liberties such as the right to mary or the right to consume what you want as long as it does not harm anybody else.
There is a natural rate of crazies on the extreme left and extreme right. I feel though that, Fox.. cough.. Fox.. cough, when it comes to the so called "middle" - there are more crazies on the right than on the left. There is more polarization coming from the middle right than the middle left (Fox). That might be because a lot of people who could constitute the middle right are currently considering themselves independent or libertarian (anything but Fox)?
Either way - I don't care as long as the political balancing act tends to give us the best of both worlds and not the worst.
The Birther thing isn't really a crazy conspiracy theory like "Bush knew!" It's just a legal question.
Yes, it's almost certainly wrong, but Obama's own relatives were reported saying he was born in Kenya and it only requires one person (Barack's mother) to have lied to the hospital and it didn't involve thousands of Americans being killed.
"How many Republican Congressmen talked about Obama trying to kill your grandmother"
Obama supports a committee whose job is to approve which treatments provide sufficient benefit to be paid for. Obviously this applied to a large number of events is going to include times when death is allowed to occur.
So let's add a box to your analysis where accusations which are actually true aren't treated the same as those which aren't.
Bizarre. Democrats put their nuts in office.
The Diebold voting machines have turned out to be fairly insecure, easy to hack, and buggy as hell. Among other things, they've been known to accidentally erase votes. Lots of info at Slashdot.org and Schneier.com about the bugginess and related insecurity of the digital voting machines.
Going from accident to "accident" isn't that far a leap (for the paranoid) when the head of the company manufacturing the buggy and easy to hack machines says he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year".
Personally, I think the risk of getting caught doing that sort of thing is a pretty good deterrent, for now. But I bet the Chicago Machine is interested in the possibilities.
Voting machines are a bad idea. I work in IT, so trust me when I say you do not want programmers anywhere near your vote. Easily manipulable data is not a plus in an election.
OTOH, the Diebold conspiracists seem utterly unconcerned with the fact it was proven by MIT statisticians that Chavez used voting machines to steal his recall election.
And yet your social skills are remarkable. Another stereotype shattered.
Congressman Olver
The Antidote to Conspiracy is Transparency
Unfortunately, nothing abetted conspiracy fantasies on the left more than the legally questionable behavior and absence of public transparency of the Bush Administration itself. I won't belabor the denial of secret prisons, torture, outing of a CIA agent, smear campaigns, abuses of "security issues," or programatic misinformation--all of which, no matter how interpreted, are well-established fact.
More to the point is the administration's behavior, ideological shifts, and legal claims during the first election (which, of course, the right would like to consider no longer relevant--selective history being the essence of ideology). Aside from Scalia and the GOP's abrupt reversal of "states rights" ideology, the Bush team was also prepared to contest the concept of the electoral college.
The Bush team had originally predicted a popular national majority for Bush and a state delegates majority for Gore, the exact reverse of what happened. Reports at the time in the NYT and elsewhere revealed a contingency plan by the Bush legal team to contest election results in favor of popular majority and raise the whole issue of the electoral college. (It is not hard to imagine the electoral college "elite" becoming a target of Fox, Rove, and Limbaugh.)
The case is typical. From the beginning, the Bush administration has shown a nearly unprecedented willingness to jettison principle, legal or otherwise, in favor of pure factional power. States rights, scientific evidence, and election standards are among the many pivot points where power blatantly trumped or even reversed principle. Added to this was the unprecedented level of "executive privilege" and "state secrecy," also well documented. Any "fringe" on the left has a sordid, tragic wealth of precedent to stoke its overheated suspicions.
Shrug. We also have contingency plans to invade Canada. That doesn't mean it will happen.
I won't belabor the denial of secret prisons, torture, outing of a CIA agent, smear campaigns, abuses of "security issues," or programatic misinformation--all of which, no matter how interpreted, are well-established fact.
Not so much. Valerie Plame was outed by Richard Armitage, or more accurately by her own idiotic decision to send her husband all over the national media to lie about Bush. Secret prisons were not invented by Bush. The biggest smear campaign was against Bush himself. The left leaked so many national security secrets that other agencies now refuse to share their intel with us.
"Secret prisons were not invented by Bush."
I don't think Clinton approved any. Nor Bush the elder. Or Reagan. Don't recall hearing of any built during the Carter, Ford, Nixon or Johnson administrations.
Actually, they all did. They've been around for decades. The CIA wasn't quite as riddled with partisans putting politics over national security, so you didn't hear about them as often, but it's been practiced for a long time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States
Also, the idea anyone should apologize for waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two other high-level AQ is ridiculous.
"The American Civil Liberties Union alleges that extraordinary rendition was developed during the Clinton administration."
Facts are your friends.
Rendition is a creation of Democrats. Stealing people away in the middle of the night, kidnapping them from their home countries, and storing them in secret prisons without due process was President Bill Clinton's idea.
He had that idea right after inserting a cigar into a 22-year-old intern's vagina.
CIA spook Richard Clark tells the story of how Democrat Al Gore convinced then-President Bill Clinton to violate international law and start kidnapping people:
"The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa.
"Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: 'Lloyd says this. Dick says that.' Gore laughed and said, 'That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action."
He would have got your vote if it had been a lit cigar, and a 12 year old's boy anus I suppose BF?
Especially if he's a suspected terrorist.
Go get your gun fruitcake.
I agree with your points about Plame and Canada and much of what the CIA does. But the attempted concentrations of power were not, shrug, simply par for the presidential course. They were dangerous, overreaching, poorly considered, and self-serving.
Since the real topic here was elections, we might also recall that Bush at first supported the first coup attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan elections (no matter what you think of spouting what's-his-name) and only reversed course when every democracy in the hemisphere expressed shock.
Like the "contingency plan" this was yet another indication that the Bush administration had a highly unusual, disturbing disregard for our traditional understanding of the democratic rule of law. This was not mere corruption or hypocrisy as usual, but a true philosophy of class elitism and extralegal power.
This is why the historical example of this administration proved unusually alarming to many conservatives and leftists (I count myself as both), including the overexcited "fringe."
Uhm, the US had a very long history of mucking around in Latin American politics prior to Bush coming to office -- pretty much throughout the entire Cold War. In many LatAm countries the moniker "CIA" was an ephitet of the same sort as "KGB" was here. So while Bush's open support of the opposition may have been very ill advised and unprudent, it was hardly evidence of some spectacular new power grab.
Re :Mouse for All, Certainly, I agree. My point being overt pattern of contempt, perhaps not new in Central America, yet a regression.
In other words...
----
I'm going to say a lot of things that tries to make me sound smart and reasonable and clearly demonstrates the other side is nothing but a bunch of power hungry morons, but end up doing nothing but reveal my clear biases by consistently focus on Bush.
----
Does anyone else thing "Bush" needs to become the new word for "red herring". Bush this bush that...
Your very own reasons, Nelson A, seem to contradict each other. Transparency good! Hidden CIA agents good! (who just happen to value their "cover" so much they leak things to the media)
Your points are too ridiculous to rebut line by line, because you already proved yourself incapable of reason, and instead substitute the appearance of reason as reason itself. But really I don't think it's worth fighting over your points because I'm not a Bush fan, but I can recognized where he helped, such as:
- Keeping this country safe after the worst terrorist attacks in history, and the worst attack period in 50+ years. It's important to point out the plethora of pundits predicting more attacks any day now. I can't count the number of people I saw claiming 2-4 years after 9/11 saying, "well it takes about 5-7 years to plan an attack..." (as if they were hoping for another one)
- Cutting taxes for everyone
- Being willing to sacrifice his political image and fortunes for the good of the country in Iraq
- Putting two high quality judges on the Supreme Court.
He certainly screwed up in 100 other areas. But Pres. Bush and his administration certainly wasn't the useless, evil, scheming fools you paint them as. You may not like him, and you probably never liked him and now just grab whatever reason you can to like him even less. He had is problems, but the real problem is not him, but you, who can't even get over an administration which no longer exists. That's the problem with this country. Hacks like you (on both sides) who bite straight into party politics and believe the worst of the other side, while congratulating yourself at the same time for being so smart and your political opponents so dumb.
Thanks, Sam X, for once again telling me what I "really" said.
Especially about how "smart" I am. Sorry, I will try to hitch up my jeans, square my jaw, put on a sneer, swagger, and speak more like The Decider himself, so perhaps the logic will be more appealing.
I do not recall calling my opponents "dumb," but if you wish to describe yourself that way I won't pull the foot out of your mouth. As to "party politics," it is at least an improvement on pure insult, or at least this "hack" thinks so.
Out of your list of Bush's "accomplishments," I half agree, surprisingly for a socialist, that the Iraq invasion did have some logic. I was not opposed to it, though Bush certainly managed it about as ineptly as a hubristic, poorly educated rich kid with no sense of history could. And he left the "hard war" in Afghanistan for his successors.
With your other praise for the Bush legacy, I cannot agree.
It is not hard to cut taxes if you just run up the credit card and leave the federal government and state governments in unprecedented debt. Great accomplishment! Eighty percent of the cuts went the riches 20 percent, helping to fuel financial bubbles. Great economic management.
As for Bush "keeping this country safe", let's not forget that the largest attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor happened during Bush's watch. Personally, I would not consider this an entirely fair judgment (despite some evident mismanagement), but can you imagine what the Republicans would say if it had been Gore?
If Bush is eager to claim credit for "responding to 9/11" (after hiding for two days) then we should remember that his administration also failed to prevent it. There is also the small matter of over 1000 dead in New Orleans, while Bush was "keeping us safe."
It is true that I join many scholars and historians in seeing Bush as one of our worst presidents, up there with Andrew Johnson and Harding, leaving this nation badly weakened behind its nationalist puffery, but I do not accept your implication that this in itself indicates "an inability to reason" on the part of "hacks like me."
Yeah. That's almost as crazy as thinking a US President would order (ultimately innocent) people tortured to death in hidden dungeons. Or commit our country to a war based upon falsified evidence. Or have the Justice Department prosecute and exonerate based upon party allegiance.
Given the outrages that were actually perpetrated on the Constitution by the last Administration - all of which were utterly mind-boggling to Independents like myself, let alone Democrats, and excused by your compatriots on the Right under the banners of necessity and patriotism - what is the distinction in quality between them and "delaying" an election due to overwhelming threats to the homeland? Sadly, it is the actions of the Bush amdinistration that made the ravings of leftist lunatics suddenly believable.
Innocent people tortured to death on orders of a US President? I can't say I've heard of any of them doing that.
As a matter of formal US policy, we tortured quite a few suspected terrorists. This Glen Greenwald column has links to a bunch of US government documents released under FOIA requests. Among these, you will find reproduced autopsies of detainees who died as a result of torture.
This ACLU page has links to a huge number of FOIAed US government documents, which further describe our program of detention and torture of terrorism suspects.
This is all documented, and the documents are available for the clicking. Numerous long news articles have been written describing and summarizing these, if you're not up for reading these documents (which are admittedly pretty grim reading).
In order to doubt that we were torturing people and that some of them died under torture, you need to believe that the US government falsified the record to make itself appear to have committed war crimes, but kept those documents classified until forced to reveal them by FOIA requests.
It is always possible, in principle, that every single person tortured to death, and every single person tortured, was really an active terrorist, planning an attack on the US any day now. But in order to believe that, given the numbers, you have to also believe that the people who died under torture were much more carefully checked out (and determined to be guilty) than the worst of the worst, who ended up in Guantanamo, and many of whom were later cleared and released. You have to believe that US soldiers and CIA agents and contractors, in the heat of a guerilla war in Afghanistan and Iraq, were more accurate than our criminal justice system is.
It's also possible to argue that what we did wasn't really torture. But then you end up arguing that it was merely harsh interrogation that didn't rise to the level of torture, from which at least 100 people died. Also, if you read the available documents (again, not some leftist screed somewhere, but declassified US government documents), I think it takes a person of great ideological commitment (like the old Soviet Union's defenders) to make that argument.
Your Glen Greenwald link is wrong.
And I only went through the first 6 pages of 20 pages of links on the ACLU site, and didn't find anything relating to deaths by torture.
I have yet to hear about ANYONE who was killed by legitimate enhanced interrogation techniques.
I have heard about some who were killed by agents acting in an unauthorized manner, all of whom were tried and convicted of violating U.S. law.
I'm not sure I understand all your logic--I know of people who died after the cops used pepper spray on them. Does that make them victims of torture?
Torture on orders of the US President I'll buy - waterboarding isn't exactly stretching on the rack, but it qualifies. Torturing innocents I'm not so sure of - I keep hearing that it was only ever used on three people, which to me means that it was pretty selective and thus one of them being innocent is unlikely. I may be wrong about this, however. Someone being tortured to death by the US is a claim I've never heard before, and I see enough left-wing stuff that I am pretty sure I would have if it was true.
Seriously though, 100 people tortured to death? I'm definitely going to need a link for that. I have never heard anything even remotely like that being done by Americans to prisoners this side of Andersonville.
The ACLU link leads to, among other things, FOIAd autopsy reports of detainees who died in US custody. Here is a direct link to a summary page.
Most of the deaths there were perfectly normal looking. Some were apparently caused by injuries sustained as the detainees were being tortured. For example, here's a small excerpt from one:
According to report provided by the US army CID, the detainee was shackled to the top of a doorframe with a gag in his mouth at the time he lost consciousness and became pulseless. The severe blunt force injuries, the hanging position, and the obstruction of the oral cavity with a gag contributed to this individual's death. DOD 00329 refers to this case as "gagged in standing restraint" DOD 003329 refers to this case as "1 blunt force trama and choking; gagged in standing restraint." DOD 003324 refers to this case with a note indicating "Q[uestioned] by OGA [Other Governmental Agency - non-military, often refers to CIA], gagged in standing restraint."
Now, I'm no expert on law or torture, but if you hang someone by their wrists, gag them, and beat them to death, I don't think it's a stretch to say that you've tortured them to death. I expect a true expert from the KGB or the Inquisition would sneer at the lack of sophistication involved, but the outcome is the same.
From the evidence, a lot more than three people were tortured. I think three people have been acknowledged to have been waterboarded by the CIA. We don't know whether more people were waterboarded. We do know lots of people were subjected to other horrible stuff, ranging from beatings to sleep deprivation to simulated executions to threats to rape and torture their relatives. This is all documented, and the links I gave before are a good starting point for it.
The claim of 100 people dead from interrogations came from a Human Rights Watch report. Greenwald quotes Gen. Barry McCaffrey saying that we probably murdered dozens of detainees, and includes a Youtube link. I don't have a better source than that, and maybe this number is too high. (I hope to God it is.)
Let's be clear: I'm morally certain George Bush never ordered anyone to torture a detainee to death, and equally sure he never wanted anyone innocent tortured. He and his administration brought a program of torture of detainees into existence, because they thought it was the best way to protect the nation. But as a consequence of that, we got people being tortured to death, and surely also got innocent people tortured. (Assuming minimal competence, how many people had answers beaten out of them, if anything like 100 died from their treatment?)
We may not agree on the moral issue of whether this was justified, or whether it ever could be. But since this is well reported, and declassified US government documents are out there filling in so many of the details, we should not have any trouble agreeing about the facts.
Do the "If Bush is re-elected there will be a DRAFT!!!!111!!!!!111" rumors count? 'Cuz that was all over the place. Then again I probably tend to hang out with more crazies than your average square, you dig?
Projection. People believe such things because it is what THEY would do if they had the power they imagine others have.
It causes me no end of pleasure, every time I see Nelson Alexander show up here.
What's funny is that Palin is now being derided as crazy for her "death panel" comments -- even as we get story after story about things that sounds pretty much like actual death panels in socialized medicine countries. Here's yet another:
What part of the United States did that happen in?
That's the point, we'd rather it didn't happen here.
I'm all for it if it shortens your lifespan even by a few days.
You know, I've met a lot of monumental jerks on the Internet over the years, but that comment might just take the cake.
Alsadius, If it's managed to raise your heart rate excessively, then it's an even bigger bonus.
Nah, not really. Might have sprained something with the facepalming, but that's about it.
But when you link to a tabloid newspaper mocked by most of the British population, as you have done repeatedly for your health scares, it's obviously gospel.
You are a pathetic cunt.
I respectfully request that you refrain from using such language on this site. It degrades both the content and tone of discourse.
Go fuck yourself.
Hey, give me a break. It's not like I linked the New York Times.
So, regardless of how you feel about the Daily Mail, true or not true:
It's a guideline, it's not compulsory, so it's down to individual doctors to decide.
I've no idea if any of the story is true; but given you only using one source makes me think you are certain.
However nothing stopped this woman from having the baby in a private clinic - thousands of women in the UK do so - so by your reckoning she's probably to blame because it's no different from car insurance.
or whatever fucking deranged nonsense you're claiming today.
Compulsory, shcompulsory. The guideline is there, so it's a policy.
If your argument is the Daily Mail is lying, find your own source that disagrees. In the meantime...
Gee, I'm sorry it upsets you, but that sounds like a guideline set by some kind of, I don't know...
DEATH PANEL!!
(cue scary music)
Well, if you want to ignore the words you don't like, fine. Not the first time.
And if it is a death panel, then it's their own fault for not getting insurance - correct?
So, your argument is death panels are fine as long as people can opt out of them by buying additional insurance?
Good luck next November with that message.
Oh - I thought you'd claim people were unable to get private health care? Didnt the Mail cover that?
No, my argument is that you are a hypocritical, deliberately fraudulent cunt.
I will have great success with that message in November.
The best part about this is that Britain doesn't count these kids in their infant mortality statistics. So not only do they let them die, George Soros then comes along to do a "study" with his Commonwealth Fund and finds -- omg! Britain has better infant mortality, and therefore better infant care. Naturally lefties here in the U.S. just eat that stuff right up.
What a beautful little self-licking ice cream cone.
You just change the argument when your fraudulent, moronic nonsense gets called out, don't you?
Pathetic.
Shrug. I don't know what you're talking about, I haven't seen anything resembling a coherent rebuttal from you.
Yes, shrug all you like you fraudulent fuck. I was so incoherent you changed the subject.
did you come back to this thread because you made yourself look an ass on the other one?
So why aren't these mothers getting insurance? Clearly it's their own fault their babies die, right?
dick.
LOL it's the same subject. Sorry you find it so upsetting.
It seems like an unreasonable burden to tell expectant mothers they'd better buy insurance because the state-provided medical care doesn't cover very early births.
I'm sure this message will be wildly successful in 2010. Good luck with that.
you made yourself look an ass
Oh, the irony.
I told you my message, that you are a lying, fraudulent cunt.
It's clear, concise, and unlike your messages, backed up by plenty of evidence.
So long as Megan is still here along with her archive, I would have no problem with that message.
But if you want to go back to 'death panels', which was your original Sarah Palin comment, just before you came on your screen no doubt, then go ahead.
Tell me how it's a death sentence when you get private care elsewhere.
That was your original point I believe, via Palin's ghostwriter.
And, as you went on and on the other day, how is losing your baby any different from losing your car? You seemed to show equivalence between individuals and objects, as it's only a financial decision I imagine.
I'll leave you on the other post thanks TD.
In even simpler terms, as you struggle with things that you disagree with:
Why are you calling it a death panel, when it's actually an extra insurance/cost/tax panel?
And if people have the choice to pay for extra private care and they don't, they get what they deserve, right?
Awwww........guess it's not a death panel - scary music and all.
Anyway, I'm out for the rest of the day.
That should give you enough time to make lies up and attempt humor.
happy hunting fucknuts.
Megan: Not that I'm a wilting flower, but i appreciate the level of discourse on this site. Mr Basic Fact doesn't seem to live up to the not too high bar. I vote for kicking him off.
Derek
Must see health reform ad from Scrubs Stars. Hilarious!
http://axisofreason.com/2009/09/09/health-reform-worries/
Megan, you have a knack of expression that generates proof of your point.
Excellent.
Derek
One can always collect the rantings of the nuts on either side of a debate. But I think there is a difference: Every day, I can turn on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, (...) or Fox News and I hear and/or see the right wing conspiracies hinted at, repeated, or shouted. Where could I find a similar loudspeaker for the nuts on the left? In the mainstream media?
The Obama fist bump. Is he born in America? Is he a fascist? All of this is repeated on Fox News and right wing radio.
There is no comparison in my mind--the loudspeakers are different--and to cherry pick in order to find a comparison is nonsense.
"Where could I find a similar loudspeaker for the nuts on the left?"
The New York Times op-ed page. I believe Paul Krugman writes every Monday and Friday.
Total nonsense. Give me examples of Krugman espousing 9/11 conspiracy theories. Or any other conspiracy theories. Yes, he's argued that Bush was incompetent. But that's an arguable opinion--not conspiracy.
Krugman with the Diebold conspiracy theory.
"The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?"
Looks like Krugman was arguing for a more secure voting system. He says that voting systems shouldn't be gamed by political pressure.
Makes sense to me.
No conspiracy there.
Ha ha.
"For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. ... Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software — which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary — on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.")"
Nope, no conspriacy theories here!
GenSpec: And just today the exalted Tom Friedman celebrates one party autocracy. China is his model country.
"One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Yes, the wise and learned writers in the Times are certainly not leftwing nuts are they?
Krugman points out that poorly engineered voting systems created by companies with leaders who say things like "we'll deliver the election" create an environment in which conspiracies can thrive--whether right or wrong.
He's right.
Please find some real evidence that the NYT was pushing conspiracy theories. Or fist bumps. Or birther arguments.
Michael Moore is pretty wacko, and he's got a sizable megaphone.
I thought that was his beer gut.
The American left generally doesn't consume these types of media formats (witness Air America's whimpering efforts), but start looking into the consumer demographic for Mother Jones, Who Killed The Electric Car?, Morgan Spurlock, anything Michael Moore, the latest coffee shop talk about how Walmart has been linked to the antichrist, ad infinitum, and let me know what you find. Then there's been the spectacular media flameouts of persons like Mary Mapes, Jayson Blair, and Dan Rather, who made their living at "respectable" (i.e. Not Fox) outlets and yet were ultimately caught with their pants down while spinning stories generally designed to attack the right-wing or at least appeal to a left-wing audience.
I despise all and generally do not watch any national televised news apart from ocassional and brief headline catches on CNN, but at least with Fox, you know you're in for a shovel full of manure and that it will be pitched from the rightward direction. With the other mainstream outlets, it usually gets pitched from the left, but they guild the turd first by telling you you're not getting bias or spin, and some liberals actually believe it.
Before you simply dismiss the conspiracy types as nutjobs, consider the context: as a base, elections everywhere, including in the US, are frequently believed biased, especially by those who have little power. Some of us were adults in 1972, when the White House performed blatantly illegal acts to manage an election, “unbelievable” at the time, but true. There had been a hotly disputed election in 2000, with a friendly Supreme Court making an exceptional (not to be used as a precedent) ruling to shut down lower courts' normal resolution. The White House, together with its Fox News lackeys, pushed blatant disinformation about Saddam Hussein's 9/11 role as part of its control of domestic operations, well after his 2006 execution. And knowledgeable, distinctly non-lunatic-fringe types like Tom Ridge reported pressure from the White House to subvert the 2004 election by playing the terrorism card.
Yes, outright cancellation of the elections would've been problematic were there not an Al Qaeda (or Saddam Hussein?) attack within a week preceding them, which the White House nonetheless felt it would lose. (That's probably the biggest reason to write off the notion of a cancelled election.) Still, efforts to win by all sorts of over-the-edge means were out there for all of us to see. Fortunately, with McCain hardly likely to advance the dirtier parts of the Cheney crowd's agenda, and with strong poll numbers for Obama, it was all just TOO audacious for even Haldeman-class WH operatives to consider, and for too little benefit. There would have to be more deniable ways, or capitulation.
Now, add in the fact that it's impossible to prove, as the article implies, that there was NO “Plan B” in case of some extreme event. Why make unsupportable claims to counter supposedly baseless worries?
I'd call it a standoff: there were lots of known efforts by the Administration around the distortion of democratic rights, of which cancellation is merely a more extreme example. Claims of planned cancellation were never claimed to have been informed, so should be taken as “just sayin’,” a time-honored part of politicking.
But bloviation that only nutjobs could have suspected serious skulduggery is patently false.
The White House, together with its Fox News lackeys, pushed blatant disinformation about Saddam Hussein's 9/11 role
Huh? Such as?
Such as, he supported Al Qaeda, their operatives met with his operatives, Al Qaeda was in Iraq, etc.
He did support Abu Sayyaf, an Al Qaeda affiliate.
The Czechs claim Iraqi intel met with Atta in Prague. Others dispute this. No one actually knows for sure.
AQ was in Iraq. Zarqawi was there for some time -- and yet there were no AQ car bombings going on.
None of this is "blatant disinformation." The facts seem to indicate AQ and Saddam's regime were wary of each other but neither openly hostile to one another nor working hand in glove.
These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.
Generally, the link between 9/11 and Saddam was one of policy: after 9/11, it seemed like a bad idea to leave an extremely hostile, terrorist-sponsoring regime in Baghdad. That isn't "blatant disinformation" either.
So. I really, seriously mean no disrespect honestly. But does this post confirm that many non-whacked people on the left seriously considered that Bush might cancel the election? And, if so, does that prove Megan's point?
I think it proves any suggestion from anybody that their paranoid fantasies are bat-shit crazy sends the lefties into a tizzy.
I'm gonna make some popcorn. Watching comments on this post should be fun.
Did you know the CIA puts listening devices in your popcorn kernels?
Why do you think so many of them don't pop?
Anyone who doesn't understand that the worst of the attacks on Obama are based on racism, pure and simple, is in complete denial of reality.
So where is the line between the "worst" racist attacks, and legitimate complaints about policy? And what about non racist political opportunism?
Opportunistically using the racist crowd to attack your opponent, eg. Palin, is racism.
Oh? Is there any evidence for this?
This is wrong. The attacks on Obama are milder than the attacks on Bush, and Obama is trying to make massive changes the electorate doesn't want. If racism was the underlying issue Obama would never have been elected president.
The worst of the attacks are coming from a racist minority, plenty of those in the forty-some percent who didn't vote for him.
And what is your evidence for this supposition?
Yes - the attacks are mild, only accusing him of faking his birth, being a muslim secret agent, wanting to kill off helpless people - very mild, you deranged fruitcake cunt.
You mendacious, dumb fucking moron.
Isn't there some rule about personal attacks? Didn't I read something about comments getting deleted for that sort of thing?
Ken
Tsotha said the attacks on Obama are milder, so my comments shouldn't bother him really.
The left wing Basic Fact stole the original (conservative) Basic Fact's nick some time last year. Megan never bothered to do anything about it. Why this idiot wasn't banned long ago is a mystery to me.
I agree. But when the original advocated violence against the president, and that all abortion supporters were literally baby murderers, and got a pat on the head in return from Megan, it's clear that wasn't going to happen.
I expect to banned today when the good lady sobers up.
and you gotta love libertarians screaming for someone to be banned.
Carrying guns in public - great!
Using a naughty word - BAN HIM!
and you gotta love libertarians screaming for someone to be banned.
Last I checked, Megan wasn't the government.
"and you gotta love libertarians screaming for someone to be banned."
It's not a freedom of speech issue, its a property rights issue
:)
Man, you really just see whatever you want to.
Which given how many times you've knocked one out to Sarah Palin, It's hardly surprising.
Yes, like I said, that's all pretty mild compared to the accusations leveled at Bush.
property rights - fine.
Megan can push a button and I'm gone. No complaints.
It's just pathetic to have little pussies screaming ban when words offend, especially when they've been screaming about carrying guns in public.
incidentally, I'm fine with carrying guns. I'm also fine with naughty words. Don't usually call people carrying guns naughty words. But thats fine, since apart from Rob Lyman, most of the people on here haven't shot anything apart from their load.
A "pussy" is someone too cowardly to post under their own, anonymous nick, and must steal someone else's anonymous nick.
All to be a troll, no less.
And on that note, time to put away the troll food.
Stole as opposed to register a free anonymous name. Are you BF the original? I thought it was movertypeguy.
And fraggle rock is completely original.
Yes let's take the troll food away, I'm happy to starve if it takes you with me fucknuts.
Basic Fact, I would hate to ban you, but I will if you don't call off a) the profanity b) the sexist epithets and c) the personal attacks. (Many of these categories overlap). You can be as scathing as you want about peoples' ideas. But profanity isn't necessary, sexism definitely isn't necessary, and personal attacks drag down the comment section. You may be okay with naughty words, but I'm not
Meanwhile, could everyone else please refrain from emulating him/her?
Thanks much,
~M
How about the libertarian concept of freedom of association, meaning we intend to be free of yours?
Derek
Re: Obama is trying to make massive changes the electorate doesn't want.
This is way overstating the situation. Obama is trying to make some changes that a significant minority of people oppose-- but which a similar significant mainority also support, with a lot of people in the "don't know, don't care" category. Please don't pretend that the whole country shares your opinion. Much as I excoriated Bush's disasterous policies, I never tried to fool myself or others that he lacked some pretty serious support among the population.
Actually, the latest AP poll has more than 50% of people against Obama's health care plans.
I thought the troother/blow levy movement was much crazier than either the birthers, or the canceled elections crowds.
I mean, a birth certificate could be falsified. And a president, could, potentially turn himself into a dictator (it has happened in other countries). But a super secret mission involving thousands of conspirators all remaining silent? I don't care how evil you believe bush to be, it just can't be done.
Please, someone reveal the objective, generally agreed-upon method for measuring the proportion of the adherents to a particular political ideology who are clearly members of a conspiratorially paranoid lunatic fringe. And then please point to the research project, study, or poll, where the results of using such a method can be referenced.
Until then, might I suggest that maybe the best we can do is to admit that all movements and parties have their fair proportion of crazies, that they tend to come out when out of power, and that this is inherent in politics and human nature. Perhaps it is proper to judge parties and leaders on their courage to decline blind loyalty, police, and disavow the ravings on their own side.
I always enjoy these "your crazies are worse than ours!" fights. They're educational for people: as with the Van Jones debacle, half the country just doesn't even realize a problem exists because of how their news is filtered.
It's much easier to be ignorant of the right's arguments because the left control most of the major avenues of information dissemination -- schools, TV, newspapers, Hollywood (Oliver Stone is now fellating Hugo Chavez in his latest pic). I think this is why as a libertarian I'm much more sympathetic to the GOP, even though I disagree with their positions on abortion, gay marriage, drugs, etc. They've never had a level playing field.
Even funnier then when Megan says it.
I'll agree with you on the entertainment value of who's got more crazies fight, but I gotta call BS evil liberal media claim.
In all honesty I've never understood the basis for the claim, it's like one of those things that gets the repeated so often it must be true crown. I mean I'm pretty sure the "FOX News isn't really fair and balanced" secret is pretty much out, CNBC's got Kudlow, and Ann Coulter sells books by semi-load. Yes, I know the NY Times Op-Ed pages are wildly liberal but it is like (a) the NY Times, and (b) the Op-Ed section right? Does it shock anyone that the WSJ's Op-Ed section has a pro-business stance?
And college campuses tend to be rather liberal but all that does is re-enforce the tendicies of those that lean that way already. There's a fair amount of college educated conservatives and how could that be if all the pointy heads at the unis were so effective at brainwashing people?
In all honesty I've never understood the basis for the claim,
Pew polling supports this going back many decades. Media self-report something like 7% conservative while the population self-reports around 35%.
It's not evil, just self-selection. People who want to do advocacy find it a perfect fit.
Op-eds are all over the spectrum, of course, but they're not claiming neutrality.
As for schools... it's not just colleges, teachers are overwhelmingly liberal from K-PhD. Again, self-selection. It's hard to say how much more conservative America would be if this weren't the case, but surely it has some effect.
I think there are two factors at play here. One is that nuts on your side are going to seem less crazy than the nuts on the other side. Sure, they both say nutty things, but you have some ideas in common with the nuts on your side, unrelated to their nuttiness, while the other side's nuts seem like complete aliens. And wear funny clothes too.
The other is the basic appeal of a conspiracy, in that, by just being aware of it, one believes himself to be "special", fighting the forces of evil and such. I mean, people have to work hard to be some sort of heroes, while conspiracy theorists get to make heroes of themselves by just waking up in the morning and not being sheeple. How great is that?
File under the heading "Lunatic False Equivalents.”
So some people on the left likely believed some crazy things and one leader of the left may have said something supporting this crazy belief (but only said it at most once in public and then regularly and publicly said it was false thereafter).
Now compare to “death panel” claims made by Sarah Palin. Echoed by Chuck “You have every right to fear” Grassley. Add in Limbaugh, Steele, and any of a number of others. The Republican party and its supporters at the very highest levels have been lying repeatedly, encouraging crazy beliefs. But somehow let’s focus on the Dems.
Have you no shame Megan?
I've come to suspect that leftists are so used to operating with an aura of authority they think simply asserting something is false will convince people to believe them. The only alternate option is that they think saying something isn't true actually makes it untrue.
Obama supports a committee whose job would be to approve which treatments provide sufficient benefit to be paid for. Obviously such decisions applied to a large number of events is going to include times when death is allowed to occur.
This is rhetorically called a death panel. So while leftists may not like the term either substantively nor politically, it is in fact not false. You can say it would be rare. You can say this unfairly describes the vast majority of decisions. But you cannot accurately call it false.
Such BS. The majority of repubs supported the same type of committee when they pushed through the deficit-busting medicare drug plan three years ago. Such BS hypocrisy.
Maybe. But now let's summarize your argument:
Those referencing death panels are crazy consiracy theorists because some Republicans in addition to Obama and other Democrats support death panels.
So I'm not seeing how this advances the leftist assertion that those against death panels are crazier than truthers. I do see how anger causes an inability to think logically.
According to your obvious working assumption that truth and common sense have no connection to logic, you're quite the logician.
Based on your "logic", you would be convening your own personal "death panel" every time you made a decision to avoid stepping in front of an on-coming bus. Under your definition, decisions about life and death (our own and others) are made millions of times a day by anyone who starts a car or opens a can of beer.
The use of the term "death panel" has an intentionally misleading connotation when used to describe the current health reform measures. You and every one who uses the term knows this and chooses to mislead and misinform anyway.
converse:
I think it obvious everyone is their own death panel of one. Any that's the way they like it. What they object to is someone else being appointed to the panel without their approval.
The term is not misleading. It intentionally draws out the worst attributes. Supporters of IMAC are misleading when they deny that these events will occur when they know otherwise. Those who hear the term make up their own minds about how accurate they think it is. If it weren't obvious the effects described will occur the death panel term would backfire. Since it hasn't I'd say you're losing this argument, which is probably why you're arguing about the termimology instead of something substantive.
But let's remember the argument: being against death panels is more crazy than believing that a POTUS deliberately allowed 3,000 Americans to die. And you're down to "Death panels are unfair because the language is too harsh". Not much of an argument.
So I sorta agree with you (and even Palin to some degree), although I'd say both sides are guilty of asserting their position correct by definition and proceeding from there. In fact I think there's even some scientific evidence for the effectiveness of the technique.
That said, "Death Panel" is clearly a loaded phrase and hardly just a factually correct statement. I also have a technical issue with the assertion that Obama would somehow be the creator of these "Death Panels". Since insurance companies, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. already decide what they will and won't pay for (I presume based on the effectiveness of the treatment) must they not have "Death Panels" in place already?
Death Panel is a loaded phrase, so what? The left invented the strategy but those on the right can't use it?
I think your comment about them already being in place is largely correct. They are lesser in degree since the old system has multiple boards competing, all of which are subject to public pressure (including government). But you miss one very important fact: their existence in the currect structure is highlighted to delegitimize the current system. Obama has merely made obvious what rigorous thinkers already knew: while leftists ranted about how unfair this feature was in a "for profit" context it was never going to be different under any other system. The entire basis for government control of healthcare depends largely on this and similar distortions.
naz,
There are many logical techniques and mechanisms for exposing faulty reasoning, and false equivalents, which you mentioned, is one of them.
We really do need to beef up our scholastic toolbox and keep logic and symbolic logic in the curriculum, as well as a good dose of Civics.
The natural evolution of what you mentioned may well be that Obama must prove gender.
I'm not a nutcase lunatic conspiracy theorist. I'm quite sure of that. My conspiracy theories are TRUE!
Derek
The danger to our cognition and free speech is once again FEAR.
If we are afraid to entertain an argument because of our fear of that subject, then those who are paid the big bucks to manipulate us will have a go at us.
The 4th President and "Father of the Constitution" mentions that conspiracies are natural and real entities we must be on guard against.
Nuttiness is probably not correlated with the binary political divide of the United States, but it is definitely correlated with the subcomponents at the far ends of both.
However, it only appears to be increasing because nuts have access to media they didn't have 20 years ago. Neither side really does anything to quiet their nuts, nor should they. Nuts are best ignored.
Which is why so few people reply to you.
Now, to spend time with some of my old favorites. "Basic Fact. Ingredients: Salt, artificial honey roating agents, crushed peanut sweepings." Mmmm....
Mouse, the only way you could be entertaining is if you were on fire.
I live in hope to see that one day.
I'm confused as to why this is newsworthy enough to be brought up.
Was former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards leading the charge? Was it former speaker Tom Foley?
I do read every day on Huffington Post and like-minded blogs that the birther-types are the mainstream of the GOP. Then I hear Rep Bachmann saying that stuff and I don't hear Eric Cantor beating her down for it. Is Eric Cantor a birther?
Megan,
There probably were people who believed the 08 elections were in danger, but your evidence seems pretty poor. You linked to the same story in 2 different formats - one of which looks like it's a New Zealand news aggregator.
In fact, if you google: "John Olver 2008 elections cancellation" you just get a bunch of stories that link to the one post by this Bob Feuer guy...with not a single other source that I could find.
Now, maybe Bob Feuer is an unimpeachable source, but it still seems a little shady to make it seem like a number of people reported on Olver's remarks, when in fact it's all just one guy.
Ack! Wrong link! The first was supposed to link to the google search. Thanks. I'll fix.
Wow, this is making the "Chimpy"/"Chauncey" stuff look tame.
Let's see if we can find some agreement:
- There are crazies on the right (say, birthers)
- There are crazies on the left (say, truthers)
- People on the left think it's outrageous that some of their fellow countrymen would let their love of markets stand in the way of a more equal distribution of healthcare.
- People on the right think it's outrageous that some of their fellow countrymen would let their love of equality lead to governments deciding who may receive or be denied care.
If you can pay for the health care yourself, then it doesn't matter who thinks a treatment is necessary or beneficial. However, if someone else is paying for your health care, then they will decide what you can or cannot get. Insurance companies deny treatments all the time - or decide that you're better now and won't pay for further treatments. How is that different than a government entity making the same decision?
In the end, as far as health care goes, unless you're super rich, would you rather a company that wants to make money deciding what health care they'll pay for, or a government agency that treats you as a number deciding what they'll pay for? Neither are good choices in my opinion.
bah, sorry about the double post, had a 500 internal error and didn't realize it'd posted.
If you don't like the decisions of an insurance company, you have right of exit. Exercising that right might be expensive because of the weird way insurance is tied to jobs (because of past government action). I certainly favor separating insurance from employment.
If you don't like the decisions of a government board, you have very little ability to change the decision.
Megan,
There are and were crazies everywhere, but I'm not sure it's always easy to decide whose creepy story is really crazy.
Imagine I had claimed, a year before the details came out, that the US government was engaging in massive wiretapping of US citizens without warrants. Or that we were running a network of secret prisons, in which we were torturing people we'd abducted off the streets of cities all over the world. Wouldn't both of those have sounded like fairly far-out conspiracy theories to you?
Suppose I'd told you, in 2004, that before it left office, the Bush administration was going to more or less hand a trillion dollars over to the financial industry. Wouldn't that have sounded like a crazy story?
Suppose I'd told you the anthrax bomber was a US government employee, and that the case would be resolved by proclaiming that he was obviously the perp right after his apparent suicide, which happened a day or two before he was to be arrested by the FBI. Moonbat stuff, right?
I'm sure you're more plugged in than I am, and maybe none of those would have shocked you. They all came as pretty big shocks to me (the wiretapping less so than the others), and I think to a lot of other people. In that environment, it's not crazy to realize that you're not so good at predicting the future, and to think about the possibility that more shocking bad things might happen in the future. Obsessing about them isn't smart, and Bush in 2007 staging a coup wasn't remotely realistic, but once you've seen that your model does a bad job predicting how bad things might be, you should be worried about what other things you're not predicting, that you should.