Well, I predicted months ago that Bush would announce a troop pullout right around the time of the GOP national convention to try and take the sting out of the situation in Iraq. What I didn’t see coming was that he would pull them out of places where people weren’t shooting at them.
The statement he gave was, “Our service members will have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career.” Now I’ve got no problem with this. Pulling troops out from Cold War posts when the Cold War has thawed is a sensible, reasonable thing to do.
The question left open is, is he going to milk the “Our boys are coming home” cow for the convention and then keep them home once they’re here (a process that will take a year or two)? Or, once re-elected, is he looking to turn around and ship them off to Iraq? Is it short-term popularity gain, long-term planning to replace dying Americans…or neither? Or both?
PAD
• 
I saw a comment (where the blogger admitted they were into tinfoil hat territory, but nonetheless) that wondered out loud whether Bush was bringing these troops home to handle any domestic disturbances that may arise if he steals a second election (violating the Posse Comitatus Act in the process, natch).
Given that this is just getting the ball rolling, and estimates don’t have the movement completed until 2006 at best, I kinda doubt that.
This seems like on of those stories where the Head Line sounds good. Once you read some of the article, you realize that it is not as significant as you thought. Most of us will skip the rest of the news on the home page because we want to go to Newsarama.com and read about the aftermath of the Bendis panel form the convention this weekend or what is happening in the Jackson and Colby trials. My question is, what
Re Prozac man
you know that is really what scares me.The “hot”
lead story is shoved down our throats while the “real” news is in teeny ,tiny print on the
back page.Case in point the following.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5675992/site/newsweek/
The idea of pulling our forces out of Germany, France and Japan has been thought of long before this year. The idea is to put our forces where they are needed, and if they are not where they are needed, then they can be stateside (i.e. home). Getting our military out of the old Cold War structure is a good idea, in my view.
DW
I saw a comment (where the blogger admitted they were into tinfoil hat territory, but nonetheless) that wondered out loud whether Bush was bringing these troops home to handle any domestic disturbances that may arise if he steals a second election (violating the Posse Comitatus Act in the process, natch).
Actually, I wonder if it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The governors and even the President is allowed to call in the National Guard to quell domestic disturbances, patrol during curfews, and national disasters and such threats, even including guarding and searching for terrorists. They were called in to patrol airports after 9-11. Since the National Guard is so integrated into the regular Army, it’s almost indistinguishable from regular Army. So technically, the Posse Comitatus Act may be in direct vioaltion of the Constitution because it could conceivably prevent a governor from calling in the National Guard to help during a time of crisis.
I have been against the war since its inception. That being said now that we are there and have done what we have done to Iraqis infrastructure as well as the Iraqis we have a duty to the Iraqi citizens to finish the job right. At the same time we have a duty to our solders to bring them home safely and everyone agrees that we are woefully understaffed in Iraq. Bottom line is that our young men and women have died simply because we don
Re Deano
You think that article is bad. Check out this video that Michel Moore (of all people) got of Porter Goss saying why he him self is not qualified to work at the CIA.
You can down load the video here http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=128
“INTERVIEWER: [Y]ou come from intelligence. This is what you did, this is what you know.
REP. GOSS: Uh, that was, uh, 35 years ago.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
REP. GOSS: It is true I was in CIA from approximately the late 50’s to approximately the early 70’s. And it’s true I was a case officer, clandestine services office and yes I do understand the core mission of the business. I couldn’t get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified. I don’t have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We’re looking for Arabists today. I don’t have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don’t have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day, “Dad you got to get better on your computer.” Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don’t have.
— Rep. Porter Goss, March 3, 2004, Washington, DC”
Even if he is planning to move them to Iraq, it’s better than what we are doing now, which is using our reserves. Bringing the “professional” soldier home, retraining them, and sending them to Iraq is a more sensible use of resources.
Reserves are ‘professional’ soldiers. We are all trained and ready. We know when we join that we can be called up and should not complain.
I’m OK with Bush taking our soldiers out of Japan, Germany, France, South Korea, et al.
The Cold War is over, and has been over for a decade and a half now. Why are our soldiers “guarding” Cold War hot spots? Likewise, World War II has been over for almost sixty years. There’s no reason to guard Germany or Japan anymore.
Let France and Germany pony up for the defense of their own countries instead of relying on our soldiers. Especially since they worked so hard to protect their oil interests when we wanted to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
As an Asian, it strikes me as incredibly unwise to remove troops from South Korea (and to a lesser extent,) Japan. Nth Korea and China remain *the* major organized military threat to the US and her allies. Lowering numbers that are directly or indirectly defending Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from aggresion by the PRC and the DPRK is simply not the way to go.
I mean c’mon, China can apparently over-run Taiwan in anywhere between 6 days (according to China) to 2 weeks (according to Taiwan).
I listened to a few military guys last night on the news about this. It definately seems like an election year ploy.
First, we now have troops from our bases in Germany in Iraq. The troops in Europe are closer to hot spots in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. We will have to spend a lot of money closing those bases and rebuilding bases here to take these troops back here.
Taking troops from S. Korea, when N. Korea is a much bigger threat than Iraq ever was is just a bad idea.
It’s apparent that this was just to allow Bush to say “Bring our troops home”. It’s a big shell game.
As to why we still had all the old Cold War bases still manned:
Germany and our other European bases — we’ve been mostly using them as staging points for wars in the Middle East, so they can probably be better replaced with bases that are actually IN the Middle East, perhaps in Iraq, Afghanistan (unlikely, though, given how out of the way that country is), or Israel.
South Korea and Japan — Two of our most dangerous potential enemies are China (this one is becoming less and less likely as the country moves further away from Communism and further toward capitalism, though) and North Korea. Though I’m tempted to say it’s very unlikely we’ll ever need to use the troops we have there, their sheer presence does act as a good deterrant to keep our allies in the region (namely South Korea and Taiwan) from being invaded. So it’s not really as completely pointless to have troops there as it may seem.
“Germany and our other European bases — we’ve been mostly using them as staging points for wars in the Middle East, so they can probably be better replaced with bases that are actually IN the Middle East, perhaps in Iraq, Afghanistan (unlikely, though, given how out of the way that country is), or Israel”
Bush has promised never to have troops perminently based in Iraq or Afghanistan. So Europe is our best option. He also said these troops would be brought back here, not redeployed to other countries. And as Al Franken says about Israel “You don’t want to ask.”
I can’t believe there are Americans who buy into this sh*t.
Gorginfoogle; I don’t mean you, I know you agree with me here, so I’m just adding to your post, not refuting it.
Moving troops out of Europe and South Korea is apparently something that’s been being worked on for years and which — as PAD says — makes sense now that the Cold War is over. Since it will be 2006 before the first withdrawals stop (and 2010 before they end), it’s not like the troops are being grabbed to be sent directly to Iraq, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Early reports on the plan suggest that the objective is to convert over to a more “deployable” military, so they can be moved to areas where they are needed from bases in the U.S. This all seems like a good idea to me.
I doubt Germany will be thrilled by it.
I doubt Bush will play it as “our boys coming home”, but rather as a move of making the most of military resources.
At best freed up troops would be used to relieve forces held over in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than originally planned, to limit negative backlash from over-extended deployments. That’s about as close to a cynically political spin as I think this story will get.
I doubt that Kerry will make an issue of it. If he does I’ll officially believe him to be off the deep end. The MoveOn.org / Michael Moore type, who have already gone off the deep end will however spin some tale of treachery over this, but that’s expected even when Bush does nothing more than wave to the cameras.
Bush has promised never to have troops perminently based in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Bush has promised a lot of things, most of them lies.
While this particular “bring the troops home” bit seems relatively benign to me, I don’t think using Bush’s claims about Iraq is really a sound idea here. Look at what’s actually going on, not what’s being said.
TWL
“Bush has promised a lot of things, most of them lies.”
Name the lies.
This is just not true.
People use the word “lies” to mean different things. I generally think that it is a lie when you knowingly say something that is not true. Has Bush done this? Probably, but I wouldn
Ken,
Well, one lie is that his tax cut is aimed at the middle class. Every objective study that’s been done of it has shown that the overwhelming majority of the cuts have gone to the top 1% of the country.
A second lie would be the claim that the Iraq war was a last resort, or even more specifically the claim that Iraq wasn’t on the table until the public run-up to war. Insider after insider has made it quite clear that Iraq was a significant agenda item from 1/21/2001 onwards.
For once, though, I don’t really plan to get down and dirty with all of this. Life’s just too busy.
TWL
Prozac Man:Have seen and read the transcripts from the interview.Not the most encouraging thing i ever read about our new director.
Anyone who believes that Bush is bring home the soldiers so they can be home is not paying attention to the news…and I don’t mean just the front page of the newspaper or the lead story on television. Our forces in Iraq are seriously stretched to the limit of their capabilities, and it’s only going to get worse. These guys are coming home in order to be deployed out to Iraq. Okay, this is just my humble opinion, but I’m hoping it’s an educated one, based on reading articles and watching broadcasts: they are going to be deployed to Iraq so that when Bush decides to go into IRAN to take out the theocracy we’ll have the extra manpower (although 70,000 troops isn’t much.)
(Actually, going into Iran would be way more justifiable to me than going into Iraq ever was…not that I want us going there…I just don’t think this administration is all that interested in working with other nations through diplomatic channels and/or economic sanctions to influence “rogue” states…go to newamericancentury.org–a think tank whose members included men with last names like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove and Wolfowitz) and check out its “American Manifesto for the 21st Century” (my quotes, I’m paraphrasing.)
One small story I heard on WABC-AM here in the NY area (which is a conservative station, to say the least!) is that we are being asked (told?) to leave by the French and the Germans. There hasn’t been any other coverage of ths aspect, as far as I know, but I DO know I heard this.
As for pulling our troops out of Korea and Japan…WHAT??? That’s like leaving the backyard fence open so your rabid pitbull can attack the neighbors when they go out to get a newspaper. BIG mistake.
Very, very scary stuff.
Mindy
Bush Lies,Daily
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df08172004.html
Edhopper,
I trust MoveOn.Org(who owns that link) as much as I trust Michael Moore to be honest, which is to say not at all.
“they are going to be deployed to Iraq so that when Bush decides to go into IRAN to take out the theocracy we’ll have the extra manpower (although 70,000 troops isn’t much.)”
70,000 troops isn’t much??? We conquered Iraq with less than 10,000. Exactly what country are you expecting us to go after wherein 70,000 men wouldn’t be enough to handle things? We’re talking Iraq and Iran here, not the Soviet Union or China.
“We conquered Iraq with less than 10,000.”
We conquered Iraq? When did that happen? Last I knew the country was still in a shambles, we’d set up a mock, unpopular government, and we were still fighting the citizens in the streets. Man, the things that happen when you stop reading the news long enough to go to bed!
Also, last I checked, we had 130,000+ troops staged in Iraq (according to CNN on 7/23/2004 we had approximately 140,000). Did they bring 120,000 troops home from Iraq? Ðámņ! There’s another piece of big news that I missed!
“I trust MoveOn.Org(who owns that link) as much as I trust Michael Moore to be honest, which is to say not at all.”
The funny thing about the left-wing “pundits” (to make use of the term so often employed to describe the likes of O’Reilly, Such, Hannity, Savage, and their ilk) is that, in order to distance themselves from their right-wing counterparts, they tend to meticulously research and footnote their work. Michael Moore, for example, has a team of researchers fact checking his movie, and several articles have been published indicating that the facts in F9/11 all check out. The same is true for Media Matters, Move On, and Al Franken.
I’m not saying that they don’t employ the same types of political spin that the right does, in fact I’m sure that MoveOn in particular does, but it’s hard to refute the footnotes if you actually take the time to check their references, which I do.
Of course if they say something you don’t WANT to believe, well, feel free to keep listening to the jerk-offs that reinforce what you already believe :p
Speaking of liars, how does everyone like Cheney blatantly lying to his supporters over Kerry’s record in the Senate?
Phinn
With regards to the Bush admin. and lying, I think Iain M Banks described it best:
“Oh, (he) never lies. (He) dissembles, evades, prevaricates, confounds, confuses, distracts, obscures, subtly misrepresents and wilfully misunderstands with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and is generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of his future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but (he) never lies.”
(From Look to Windward)
Mindy:
“One small story I heard on WABC-AM here in the NY area (which is a conservative station, to say the least!) is that we are being asked (told?) to leave by the French and the Germans. There hasn’t been any other coverage of ths aspect, as far as I know, but I DO know I heard this.”
I don’t think so. First, I’m a German, and I haven’t heard anything like that in the news. On the contrary, as I understand it our Government is pretty miffed because the relocation of the troops means something like 80.000 jobs lost for Germans who work for the bases.
Also, I don’t think Chancellor Schroeder could draw any political capital from this; he’s working hard on the “we disagree about Iraq but otherwise we’re the best friends” picture, and going against America would screw him on both fronts: Telling Bush to get his troops out of Germany wouldn’t lead to the best working atmosphere between the two, and Germans would only see the lost jobs and ask how wise it is to anger our biggest ally without a reason. I certainly would. Schroeder wouldn’t win anything, which means he wouldn’t do it.
Benjamin Gaede
originally posted by Ken: “I trust MoveOn.Org(who owns that link) as much as I trust Michael Moore to be honest, which is to say not at all.”
Here’s what I find ironic. MoveOn.Org, Michael Moore, and others have accused Bush of lying. Many of the examples of things they claim to be lies are cases where Bush chose his words very carefully and said things which may have been literally true but listeners took to mean something very different from what Bush now says it actually meant.
For instance, the Bush administration talked repeatedly about links between Saddam and Al Qaida, often in the same breath with mention of 9/11, which gave many people the impression that Bush and Co. had said Saddam was involved with 9/11 even though this is not true.
Or, also for instance, the Bush administration talked about Weapons of Mass Destruction in a way that sounded as if they had evidence that Saddam had nukes and was close to being able to use them against the US. Now that we’ve invaded Iraq and no such things have been found, Bush and Co. say that, no, they were careful not to actually say he was an imminent threat, and that if people got that misimpression it’s not the Bush administration’s fault.
A really good example, I think, is the reference to how British Intelligence has learned that Saddam tried to acquire weapons-grade uranium. US Intelligence had investigated this claim and found it to be dubious. Bush knew (or should have known) this, since he was told this several times by the intelligence agencies. So by putting the phrase British Intelligence has learned into the statement, he made the statement literally true but completely misleading.
People hearing him speak heard the main clause Saddam Hussein tried to acquire weapons-grade uranium, and thought that was what he was saying. But Bush (and Bush apologists) later defended the statement by saying the point of the sentence was actually the part that a reasonable person would have taken as the minor clause — that British Intelligence had learned…
Why do I find this ironic? Because the “lies” that Moore and MoveOn are accused of telling are generally examples of the very same thing! In a recent thread about Fahrenheit 9/11, most of the charges against Moore were that he had presented things which were literally true (such as actual camera footage) but had done it in such a way that viewers were likely to get the wrong impression. He (and MoveOn) are accused of omitting additional information which might lead the listeners to come to a different conclusion than Moore / MoveOn wish to convey.
Now, if you call it lying when Moore and MoveOn say things that are literally true (and carefully footnoted) but which leave out additional information and result in people reaching a false conclusion, then the defense of Bush doing the same thing somewhat collapses. If Moore and MoveOn are lying when they accuse Bush of lying, then Bush was lying when he talked about the links between Saddam and Al Qaida, when he talked about WMDs, when he talked about his tax cuts being targetted for the low and middle incomes, and on any number of other issues.
If, on the other hand, one says that Bush and Co. were not lying when they said those things, then by the same standard Moore and MoveOn are not lying when they accuse Bush of lying.
So which is it? Is it a lie to craft misleading statements (as both Bush and Moore appear to have done) or is it not a lie? We can blame either the person who crafts the misleading statements, or the listeners who fall for them, but we need to follow the same standard for Bush’s statements and Moore’s statements.
“We can blame either the person who crafts the misleading statements, or the listeners who fall for them, but we need to follow the same standard for Bush’s statements and Moore’s statements.”
I would suggest that the President should be held to a higher standard, but that’s just me.
-Phinn
I think it is funny that the same members of the GOP that attacked Clinton for his sex scandal, claiming that the President should be held to a higher standard seem to have ignored these higher standard with Bush.
Either Bush is lying about the wmds or his administration is incompetent. One or the other.
“I think it is funny that the same members of the GOP that attacked Clinton for [insert topic here] claiming that the President should be held to a higher standard seem to have ignored these higher standard with Bush.”
I’ve mentioned it before that I think it’s odd that, to this day, there are folks who would refuse to vote for Clinton despite all of his successes because he lied about having an extra-marital affair. At the same time, these people either refuse to admit that Bush has in any way dishonest (preferring to believe, apparently, that the man in charge of our armed forces and nuclear arsenal is a gullible simpleton) or, in the very least, that he is ‘technically’ accurate even while confusing the issues with misleading statements.
So refusing to vote for a man for telling lies unrelated to his position while at the same time supporting a man who routinely uses his position to give ‘technically accurate’ but misleading speeches that push his agenda forward. An agenda which, by the way, has resulted in the deaths of at least 11,000 people so far in Iraq alone.
I’m still trying to figure out his math:
Osama bin Laden + 3,000 dead Americans = 10,000 dead Iraqis
– Phinn
“Michael Moore, for example, has a team of researchers fact checking his movie, and several articles have been published indicating that the facts in F9/11 all check out. The same is true for Media Matters, Move On, and Al Franken.”
Well, color ME convinced! Wow! SEVERAL articles?
Hmmmm, GWB could walk on water and neoCOMs would say, “Look at that dumb sob, he can’t swim!!!” 😀
b>originally posted by Bill Mulligan: Well, color ME convinced! Wow! SEVERAL articles?
What matters, of course, is whether some people write articles saying his facts do check out whether anyone can point out any significant factual claims in his movie that don’t check out.
I have not seen the movie myself (and don’t expect to have any chance to see it anytime soon) so I don’t know how honest or dishonest it is. But there was a thread about it here not that long ago. The main criticism made was based on an article by David Kopel. There were a lot of things Kopel claimed were misleading, but this was generally because he thought people would get the wrong impression from watching the movie, not because Moore actually said anything factually inaccurate.
For instance, the first example was that Moore had shown footage from a Gore rally early in the day on election day (before the polls had opened). Kopel calls this a deception because he feared people would think the rally took place after the polls closed, even though he admits Moore never made any such assertion. (Not having seen the movie, I can’t say whether I’d have gotten that impression or not.)
Or for instance, take Kopel’s second example. Fahrenheit 9/11 says thatFox was first to call the election for Bush and the other networks quickly followed suit. This is true. Kopel feels it’s misleading because Moore omits a lot of other stuff, such as that the networks initially called the election for Gore before the polls closed, thus (according to Kopel) possibly costing Bush “thousands of votes”. Which may or may not be true, but it doesn’t in any way contradict Moore’s assertion.
If things such as these are examples of lies, then I defy you to find anything which can’t be shown to be a pack of lies.
It is impossible to bring out every single fact relating to a matter. Unless the facts omitted directly undermine or contradict the assertions being made (as some of Bush’s omissions did) then the fact there are other points that could be made is irrelevant — because there are always going to be other points that could be made.
Kopel appears to have set a ridiculous, impossibly high standard of truth for Moore, one which the many of the people applauding Kopel seem to be entirely unwilling to apply to Bush and Cheney, who are being held to a ridiculous, impossibly low standard of truth. All I’m asking is that we set one standard of truth (preferably a reasonable one) for all parties and apply it even-handedly.
AAARGH! The first line (quoting Bill) should be in bold to show it’s Bill’s words, and the first sentence of mine should have a not and a but in it: “What matters, of course, is not whether some people write articles saying his facts do check out but whether anyone can point out …”
Sure would be nice to have a working Preview feature!
Nova Land–
I understand where you are coming from, but you have to understand that most of the attacks made on F/911 are simply following an old legal maxim for lawyers in the court room:
If the law is on your side, pound the law.
If the law is not on your side, pound the facts.
If the law and the facts are not on your side, pound the table.
The GOP critics of F/911 are mostly pounding the table.
Let’s face it. They have to concern themselves with discrediting the movie-one way or the other. Otherwise, people won’t be distracted from the most dámņìņg seven minutes of recent history.
Well, one lie is that his tax cut is aimed at the middle class. Every objective study that’s been done of it has shown that the overwhelming majority of the cuts have gone to the top 1% of the country.
Actually, Tim, that’s not quite true. Bush never said the tax cuts were aimed at the middle class. He said they were aimed at the people who pay income tax. Ergo, the more tax you paid, the bigger your refund. Somebody will have to ewxplain to me why that’s not fair. Furthermore, I think you KNOW Bush never said that so that makes you a liar, Tim.
“Or for instance, take Kopel’s second example. Fahrenheit 9/11 says thatFox was first to call the election for Bush and the other networks quickly followed suit. This is true. Kopel feels it’s misleading because Moore omits a lot of other stuff, such as that the networks initially called the election for Gore before the polls closed, thus (according to Kopel) possibly costing Bush “thousands of votes”. Which may or may not be true, but it doesn’t in any way contradict Moore’s assertion.”
Actually, Kopel’s site says that “At 10:00 p.m., which networks took the lead in retracting the premature Florida win for Gore? They were CNN and CBS, not Fox. (The two networks were using a shared Decision Team.) See Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations” (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)”
“In fact, Fox did not retract its claim that Gore had won Florida until 2 a.m.–four hours after other networks had withdrawn the call.”
“Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.”
“At 3:59 a.m., CBS took the lead in retracting the Florida call for Bush. All the other networks, including Fox, followed the CBS lead within eight minutes. That the networks arrived at similar conclusions within a short period of time is not surprising, since they were all using the same data from the Voter News Service. (Mason, et al. “CBS News Coverage.”) As the CBS timeline details, throughout the evening all networks used VNS data to call states, even though VNS had not called the state; sometimes the network calls were made hours ahead of the VNS call.”
If this is true it seems awfully hard to reconcile with Moore’s statement. If Fox was not the first to take Florida away from Gore how can one claim that “something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy…All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.'”
I don’t even think that this particular example is the worst of Moore’s deceptions but if you want to use it as an example of Moore being unfairly critiqued then I think F-9/11 is probably even more untrustworthy than I’d assumed.
EClark:
Actually, Tim, that’s not quite true. Bush never said the tax cuts were aimed at the middle class. He said they were aimed at the people who pay income tax. Ergo, the more tax you paid, the bigger your refund. Somebody will have to ewxplain to me why that’s not fair. Furthermore, I think you KNOW Bush never said that so that makes you a liar, Tim.
That’s quite possibly the most bald-faced incorrect accusation I’ve seen from you — and I’ve got quite a list I can look back through.
Here is Bush’s exact quote from the 2000 campaign:
“The vast majority of my [proposed] tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum.”
That statement is entirely false. It was entirely false at the time. It is entirely false now.
I don’t expect an apology, but it’d certainly be nice if you admitted an error once in a while.
TWL
Oh, and here’s another lovely quote, this time from 2001.
“the greatest percentage of tax relief goes to the people at the bottom end of the ladder.”
I’d really like to see the Bizarro-world mathematics in which that statement is anything other than misleading.
I assume you’re familiar with the bûllšhìŧ ways in which many “average” claims are calculated (not just Bush — this goes back a ways). Talking about averages is silly — talk about medians. As the old saying goes, if Bill Gates walks into a downtown Seattle bar the average income of the patrons goes up by hundreds of thousands of dollars — but the median doesn’t budge significantly, and that’s the far more relevant number.
I also seem to recall promising myself I wasn’t going to get involved with a political battle just now. I guess it’s easy to get me to change my mind on that when you flat-out accuse me of dishonesty.
TWL
Originally posted by Bill Mulligan: “Actually, Kopel’s site says that ‘At 10:00 p.m., which networks took the lead in retracting the premature Florida win for Gore? They were CNN and CBS, not Fox’.”
There are two separate factual assertions here: (a) the retraction of the call that Gore had won (which is what Kopel is talking about) and the announcement of the call that Bush had won (which is what Moore was talking about).
It’s a nice little bit of sleight-of-hand on Kopel’s part, but it doesn’t change the fact that Moore’s assertion was factually correct and Kopel is simply adding an additional fact that Moore did not choose to include.
Kopel’s fact does not contradict Moore’s. Both men are correct in their assertions. And it is quite possible to make a point about one of these events without having to go into detail about the other.
The fact that Moore was only interested in one does not necessarily make him a liar, any more than someone criticizing the early evening call for Gore would be a liar if they failed then to dwell on the sins of Fox for later calling the election for Bush. Both events can be examined and criticized separately.
TWL posted: “Well, one lie is that his tax cut is aimed at the middle class.”
eclark 1849 replied: “Actually… that’s not quite true. Bush never said the tax cuts were aimed at the middle class. He said they were aimed at the people who pay income tax.
Interesting. I was under the distinct impression that I had heard say his tax cuts were especially going to bring tax relief to the lower and middle tax brackets.
And by the Kopel standard that is being applied to Moore, that is enough to make Bush a deceiver. If he makes statements that mislead the people listening to him into saying something that is false, even if he didn’t actually say the false thing, Kopel says that’s a deception.
I think Tim is correct and that Bush actually made those assertions about who would benefit from his tax cuts a number of times. But even if he didn’t actually say that — if he carefully worded his statement to give people the impression that’s what he was saying while his exact words said something else — he is a deceiver by the standard Moore is being held to.
Phinn was right earlier: the president of the United States should be held to a higher standard. But I’d be happy to settle for holding him to an equal standard.
Nova land,
I see your point about the confusion regarding the various calls and uncalls during the Florida count but one of the “facts” that Moore says is “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy
rk Guse.gov.
EClark,
Nice try, but the “percentage” arguments can be used in just as shoddy a manner as the “average” arguments, and this would be one of those times. (Among other things, there’s the question of income taxes vs. payroll taxes, so that a family at a low income level might get a “100% tax cut!” that only changes their total tax burden by a few percent.)
Bush is counting on the fact that most of American doesn’t understand math beyond basic arithmetic. It’s becoming clear to me that he has a good chance of having that bet pay off.
As for the calm, reasoned discourse you’re presenting here … my observations over the last few months have made it clear that you
(a) have a serious bug up your ášš about two individuals here, namely Glenn and myself;
and (b) are a bitter, paranoid individual. Note your statement that you’d never post here if you had to give a real name because of the teeming multitudes of people who’d refuse to give you a job or accept manuscripts if they knew your true views, not to mention your belief several months back that my request for information was an attempt to entrap you. One can even note above that you acknowledge you probably should apologize, but you won’t “in order to make a point.” Where I come from, that’s not the behavior of a civilized person interested in discussion.
Feel free to call me a liar as much as you want. Hëll, call me a sheep-raper if it floats your boat. We’re done here.
Bill — thanks for the support. There’s a reason I keep talking to folks like you and David Bjorlin: mutual respect and willingness to recognize valid points regardless of who’s making them. (Granted, we may disagree on a few of what those points *are* from time to time…)
When does school start up for you?
TWL
Sorry — make that “most of America” in the second paragraph above, not “most of American”. English is my first language, honest…
TWL
Geez, Tim, you ol’ sheep raper, you.
You must be online 24-7. You know Bill made me think about calling you a liar, so I logged back on just to issue you that apology. After reading your latest post, I have to admit I was tempted not to, but I’m going to anyway. So, Tim, I formally apologize for calling you a liar.
I still think you’re wrong and full of bullsh*t though.
Now, let me address a few points you made.
First: Glenn. I like to tease Glenn. I like the guy actually, and don’t have a problem with him. So where you get the idea that I have a bug up my butt about him, well, I just don’t know.
As for you, you give yourself far more importance in my life than you rate. Only on rare moments such as this do you even get my attention. And it’s only on PAD’s forum that we seem to have any friction because we seem to get along amicably enough on Kath’s blog. Unless, I’ve missed something, that is.
As for my alleged paranoia, well, I don’t like using my real name on the internet, period. I’ve already had my identity stolen once in my life, and that was plenty enough for me. I get enough “scam spam” just giving out my screen name without worrying about what damage they could do if they had my real name.
I don’t get the bitter part, but if it has some meaning to you, so be it.
Tim says:
“When does school start up for you?”
In about 2 and a half weeks ago.
Yep, that’s right, here in North Carolina I have to face a bunch of surly 9th graders in the first week of August! What up wit dat?
The governor just signed a law saying that school can start no earlier than Aug 15 or 25 or something…not sure of the details but the important thing is that I will have a few more precious days to hide in my home, face pressed against the air conditioning vent. This man gets my vote, so let it never be said that I never vote Democrat.
The kids are alright this year, except for the one who claims that he’s there only because his probation officer insists on it and vaguely refers to his supposed record of violent behavior. I don’t know if this is supposed to scare me, a man who has a vhs copy of Cannibal Holocaust for those slow Sunday aftyernoons, but I’ll happily flunk him if his work doesn’t improve, even if it results in my having to type these comments by holding a pencil in my mouth and slamming my face onto the keyboard.