What's good for the goose...
The rightwingers are all in a tizzy over the Nicholas Kristof's coverage of Bob Mintz's claims in the NYT: JustOneMinute: Is Nick Kristof Lying, Or Was He Duped?.
The outrage! Imagine, the media not doing its job and merely objectively reporting something before it has been vetted. Amazing. Must be some evil liberal media conspiracy. They must be in league with the "terrorists"!
I have two things to say to this:
1. Where was all this outrage on the part of the conservatives when the(ir) Swift Boat Liars were getting free (and over blown) press coverage of their widely and thoroughly refuted claims?
2. Since when does the Republican party have exclusive rights to exploit the media's incompetence?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Of course, there's no mention of the fact that while the Swift Boat Liars' claims have been proven to be... well... lies, or that the Texans for Truth ad's claims are increasingly being borne out by evidence that has been withheld by the White House despite their repeated claims that they have released everything.
Miraculously, the administration "found" and published new documents just after they were disclosed on 60 minutes last night, . Gee, I wonder where they found them? Dan Bartlett has admitted that "he must have misspoken" when he claimed that aWol served in a National Guard unit in Massachusetts after the Boston Globe called him on the discrepancy between his words and the documentation that they have uncovered. (note that "misspoke" is a euphemism for "lied through my teeth").
Now the only talking point that they are left with is "because aWol received an Honorable Discharge, that he must have fulfilled his service obligations". On the one hand, they expect us to believe that aWol's claim that he fulfilled his obligations should be based on his military discharge papers and on the other hand that Kerry's 5 medals, awarded by the U.S. Navy, are to be disbelieved? What tortured reasoning!
True to form, they placed the blame for the previously missing documents squarely on someone else (the Pentagon). Isn't it amazing how quickly that darned incompetent Pentagon "found" them.
Does any of this matter? I think it does. It goes to the moral character of the candidates. One may have confused the dates he was in Cambodia 30 years ago or was possibly trying to punch up the retelling of what went down by using a nearby holiday, the other has repeatedly (smirk) insisted (smirk) that he fulfilled his service obligations (smirk) and that 41 had nothing to do with the special treatment he received to get into the National Guard so he could avoid having to serve in Vietnam like all the little people.
Smirk claims that "when he was young and irresponsible, he was young and irresponsible". Well, now he's demonstrated quite undeniably that he is now simply middle-aged and irresponsible.
Not only that, but Smirk and co have wrapped themselves in the flag, and through sheer repetition of, now debunked, lies and cherry-picked intelligence, led us into believing that a pre-emptive war against Iraq was an integral part of the WOT. They repeated this lie during the recent RNC despite the fact that the 9/11 commission and the Senate investigation debunked the claims of any association of al-Qaeda and Iraq. I guess "the bigger and more often repeated the lie, the more likely people will believe it" is their motto.
We have Hiding-in-an-undisclosed-location-Cheney threatening us that if we vote for Kerry, we're all gonna die! Only he and Dubya can save us from those terrible terrorists. This from the crowd that felt it more important to clear brush in Crawford than to worry about how to deal with a PDB that screamed we're all gonna die?! The administration and the DHS have done more to terrorize us since 9/11 than the terrorists have, and notably with a pattern that suggests that Dean was pretty close to the mark in his comments that the terror alerts are politically motivated (did you notice that Ridge made yet another terror announcement that "the terrorists" want to disrupt the elections the same day as the 1,000th soldier died in Iraq?)
They would have us believe that "the economy is wonderful and improving daily thanks to the tax-cuts for his "base" (as in the have's and the have more's) despite the fact that theirs is the first administration since Hoover to lose jobs?
They would have us believe that all is wonderful in Afghanistan despite the fact that the Taliban is resurgent and threatening the elections scheduled for October and the poppy trade is back in full swing funding... the same terrorists that the administration claims it is fighting and winning against?
That we are winning in Iraq while the Pentagon admits that we have ceded huge sections of the country to the insurrection?
That the horror of Abu Ghraib was the acts of a few rogue enlisted personel despite the fact that the commision chartered by Rummy himself basically said that the responsibility ran right up the chain of command to the top?
Do they really think we are THAT stupid?!
Now, the Rove smear machine is beginning to spew out its invective against Kitty Kelly to impeach her credibility in advance of the release of her new book. Why? Because they have nothing else with which to counter. They are doing the same with Senator Graham (now he's a whacko conspiracy theorist and disgruntled and failed presidential candidate) as they did with O'Neill and Clarke and the others before them who have had anything even remotely negative to say about aWol or his administration.
Sadly, some people will believe the administration talking points fed to the rabid right-wingnuts like Hannity and Limbaugh.
Bush and Cheney have no moral character regardless of how tightly they align themselves with the bible thumpers and the right-to-lifers. They have done more to damage our economy, our environment, our standing in the world community, and our trust than any administration in history and very nearly more so than al Qaeda itself.
They need to go, and the conservative community should take a step back and think about exactly what 4 more years of a Dubya dictatorship would mean for our country.
The outrage! Imagine, the media not doing its job and merely objectively reporting something before it has been vetted. Amazing. Must be some evil liberal media conspiracy. They must be in league with the "terrorists"!
I have two things to say to this:
1. Where was all this outrage on the part of the conservatives when the(ir) Swift Boat Liars were getting free (and over blown) press coverage of their widely and thoroughly refuted claims?
2. Since when does the Republican party have exclusive rights to exploit the media's incompetence?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Of course, there's no mention of the fact that while the Swift Boat Liars' claims have been proven to be... well... lies, or that the Texans for Truth ad's claims are increasingly being borne out by evidence that has been withheld by the White House despite their repeated claims that they have released everything.
Miraculously, the administration "found" and published new documents just after they were disclosed on 60 minutes last night, . Gee, I wonder where they found them? Dan Bartlett has admitted that "he must have misspoken" when he claimed that aWol served in a National Guard unit in Massachusetts after the Boston Globe called him on the discrepancy between his words and the documentation that they have uncovered. (note that "misspoke" is a euphemism for "lied through my teeth").
Now the only talking point that they are left with is "because aWol received an Honorable Discharge, that he must have fulfilled his service obligations". On the one hand, they expect us to believe that aWol's claim that he fulfilled his obligations should be based on his military discharge papers and on the other hand that Kerry's 5 medals, awarded by the U.S. Navy, are to be disbelieved? What tortured reasoning!
True to form, they placed the blame for the previously missing documents squarely on someone else (the Pentagon). Isn't it amazing how quickly that darned incompetent Pentagon "found" them.
Does any of this matter? I think it does. It goes to the moral character of the candidates. One may have confused the dates he was in Cambodia 30 years ago or was possibly trying to punch up the retelling of what went down by using a nearby holiday, the other has repeatedly (smirk) insisted (smirk) that he fulfilled his service obligations (smirk) and that 41 had nothing to do with the special treatment he received to get into the National Guard so he could avoid having to serve in Vietnam like all the little people.
Smirk claims that "when he was young and irresponsible, he was young and irresponsible". Well, now he's demonstrated quite undeniably that he is now simply middle-aged and irresponsible.
Not only that, but Smirk and co have wrapped themselves in the flag, and through sheer repetition of, now debunked, lies and cherry-picked intelligence, led us into believing that a pre-emptive war against Iraq was an integral part of the WOT. They repeated this lie during the recent RNC despite the fact that the 9/11 commission and the Senate investigation debunked the claims of any association of al-Qaeda and Iraq. I guess "the bigger and more often repeated the lie, the more likely people will believe it" is their motto.
We have Hiding-in-an-undisclosed-location-Cheney threatening us that if we vote for Kerry, we're all gonna die! Only he and Dubya can save us from those terrible terrorists. This from the crowd that felt it more important to clear brush in Crawford than to worry about how to deal with a PDB that screamed we're all gonna die?! The administration and the DHS have done more to terrorize us since 9/11 than the terrorists have, and notably with a pattern that suggests that Dean was pretty close to the mark in his comments that the terror alerts are politically motivated (did you notice that Ridge made yet another terror announcement that "the terrorists" want to disrupt the elections the same day as the 1,000th soldier died in Iraq?)
They would have us believe that "the economy is wonderful and improving daily thanks to the tax-cuts for his "base" (as in the have's and the have more's) despite the fact that theirs is the first administration since Hoover to lose jobs?
They would have us believe that all is wonderful in Afghanistan despite the fact that the Taliban is resurgent and threatening the elections scheduled for October and the poppy trade is back in full swing funding... the same terrorists that the administration claims it is fighting and winning against?
That we are winning in Iraq while the Pentagon admits that we have ceded huge sections of the country to the insurrection?
That the horror of Abu Ghraib was the acts of a few rogue enlisted personel despite the fact that the commision chartered by Rummy himself basically said that the responsibility ran right up the chain of command to the top?
Do they really think we are THAT stupid?!
Now, the Rove smear machine is beginning to spew out its invective against Kitty Kelly to impeach her credibility in advance of the release of her new book. Why? Because they have nothing else with which to counter. They are doing the same with Senator Graham (now he's a whacko conspiracy theorist and disgruntled and failed presidential candidate) as they did with O'Neill and Clarke and the others before them who have had anything even remotely negative to say about aWol or his administration.
Sadly, some people will believe the administration talking points fed to the rabid right-wingnuts like Hannity and Limbaugh.
Bush and Cheney have no moral character regardless of how tightly they align themselves with the bible thumpers and the right-to-lifers. They have done more to damage our economy, our environment, our standing in the world community, and our trust than any administration in history and very nearly more so than al Qaeda itself.
They need to go, and the conservative community should take a step back and think about exactly what 4 more years of a Dubya dictatorship would mean for our country.
posted by Chris at
Thursday, September 09, 2004
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