Carl Levin on Dick Cheney’s Lies
Check out the op-ed in today’s L.A. Times from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI): Cheney lied. Again. It discusses Cheney’s recent appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s show, and gives a nice summary of the highlights of Cheney’s dishonesty with respect to Iraq and al Qaeda.
Levin’s conclusion:
By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president’s words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?
I listened to Rush Limbaugh for a few minutes on my way into work the other day (I was stuck in a traffic jam and was patrolling the AM dial trying to find out why). And at this point, I really can only see three possibilities if you choose to listen to his show:
1) You’re aware that he’s completely full of shit, and just listen for entertainment value.
2) You’re aware that he’s full of shit, but you’re so ideologically committed that you believe it’s fine for him to do that. It’s all part of fighting the good fight, and the other side is lying, too, so good for him. Stick it to those liberals.
3) You’re so swaddled in right-wing propaganda that you actually believe Rush is telling the truth.
Have I missed any categories? If anyone reading this actually listens to Rush Limbaugh, can you enlighten me? Thanks.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I try to stay away from drug taking hypocrites, but if I had to guess, I would say that your number two category is probably the most correct.
I admit I tune into Bill O’Reilly on occasion. But only for the reason specified in category number one.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Sorry to post again, but you wouldn’t happen to have a login I could use to read that editorial sometime, would you? (too lazy to create account!).
April 12th, 2007 at 11:22 am
NL – try one of the logins at:
http://www.bugmenot.com/
usually the first one works, but if not the second or third always do.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
John
Since I am probably the only one here that has listened to Rush on a daily basis for any length of time, I’ll give it a shot. Rush has said on numerous occasions that he validates beliefs that come naturally to conservatives. I think that is exactly right. I have been a conservative all my life with the exception of about three weeks when I was twenty years old. I worked with a bunch of guys that with the union mentality of it’s us against the rich. I found the whole philosophy to be very depressing. My grandfather always taught me to be self-sufficient, it seemed these guys waited for someone to help them. They seemed to hate people who had more than them instead of finding out how to get more themselves, alienating the very people who could help them. The very government they bitched about was the government they were depending on to give them someone else’s money. It just didn’t make sense. After being barraged by the media and Hollywood that your beliefs are wrong you start to question your beliefs, and then along came Rush.
During the first election of Clinton a guy that was working for me listened to Rush, after a while I said “this guy makes sense” he put all the fragments of what I believed into a single philosophy. Over the years I have rejected some of the religious aspects of Rush and the conservative movement but I have kept the bulk of the philosophy.
After getting interested in American history and the Constitution I came to the conclusion that today’s conservative ideals are closer to the concepts that this country was built on and have made it the greatest country in history in the shortest period of time. I also came to the conclusion that liberal ideals will do nothing but drive any country into mediocrity because conservatism rewards excellence and liberalism punishes excellence.
I have been lucky enough to live in Denver all these years because we have an excellent talk show host on before Rush, Mike Rosen. While I like listening to Rush for the entertainment value and the cheerleading, he is a little light on substance and a little heavy on rhetoric. Rosen on the other hand is a little calmer and more rational. Mike worked at the Pentagon for several years, and was a financial executive for Samsonite before starting in talk radio several years before Rush. So I get substance in the morning and pontification in the afternoon. I haven’t listened to Rush much in the last couple years simply because radio reception in our new building is very poor. But I am still able to listen to Rosen online most days.
I hope that helps, let the questions begin.
Rick
April 12th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
“liberalism punishes excellence.”
Nonsense. If Rush has convinced you of this, or reinforced this odd conclusion in your mind, then that’s a very good reason to stop listening.
April 13th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Matt,
It would probably be more accurate to say socialism punishes excellence, and then say that liberalism is the home of socialism. Would you buy that? In socialism equality of outcome is the goal, in capitalism, whose home is conservatism, equality of opportunity is the goal, with Adam Smith capitalism, you accept there are some that are going to fail. But the sky is the limit for the ambitious or creative. With equality of outcome, the ambitious will tend to peak closer to the lowest common denominator because what is the point of working harder I you aren’t going to get some benefit from your labors, you may as well go fishing.
This is of course simplified, there is usually a degree of capitalism in socialistic cultures and a level of socialism in capitalistic. It is just where that sliding scale is positioned.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:16 am
shcb, you have been drinking too much of the poisonous koolaid that rush spews. I am a small business owner and an independent voter and I find your robber-barons-r-us philosophy ridiculous.
and to paraphrase Dr Seuss “a lie is a lie, no matter how small”
April 13th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Socialism is a very broad term that’s applied to a lot of philosophies and policies. Only in the very extreme case is the goal total economic equality — that’s mostly limited to soviet-style communist socialism (which is of course deeply flawed).
Today’s American liberal philosophy may, on balance, contain more of a commitment to providing a social safety net to those who may be disadvantaged. But even the most ardent supporters of these programs I think will tell you that the goal is to get people to the point where they can start to support themselves, compete, and be rewarded in proportion to their labors. Rush spouting off that Democrats hate business, capitalism, and the American way of life is nothing more than repackaged McCarthyism.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I would like to add that Canada is probably once the most liberal states in the world – indeed SCHB has referred to Canada as a “socialist country”. (obviously he has never visited, more Rush nonsense)
Interesting though, that over the last decade Canada has enjoyed the best performing economy of the G8 countries, under 12 years of Liberal Party rule nontheless.
Being a capitalistic society does not mean that you have to let the poor old lady across the street choose between buying medicine or food. You can have a very prosperous country and still take care of others through social programs. Those are my thoughts for what they are worth.
I’m goona go read the post on the cats because those pics really warmed my heart…
April 15th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Hi guys,
I’m not using Rush as a source here, Rush has fewer qualifications as an economist than I do. People like Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Mike Rosen, Jack Kemp, the late Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman and Adam Smith have all said the same thing. I find it interesting that after a conservative makes a point, the liberal response many times is that the poor guy has been brainwashed, he is listening to people who are feeding him lies, he is drunk, high, stupid. No one could possibly come to those conclusions on their own after listening to and agreeing with other more well informed individuals, mentors if you will. I guess liberals come to their core beliefs through divine intervention or osmosis.
NL you make a good point that a socialistic country can be relatively successful if it doesn’t fall to the level of communism. The key word in that sentence is relative. Most if not all countries in the G8 with the exception of the US are more or less equally socialistic, with America headed that direction as well I’m sorry to say. The question is how much more productive would they be if they were less socialistic.
Canada’s per capita GDP is 15% or 20% less than the US, granted there are many other factors than just the form of government for this disparity, but would it be 5% or 10% were Canada less socialistic? I don’t know. I graphed the annual growth rate of GDP for Canada and the US from 1970 to today, and the lines matched almost perfectly. Adding several other developed countries showed definite trend lines, giving validity to this being a global economy, but no other countries matched as well as the US and Canada. Why, I don’t know, could be geographical, NAFTA wasn’t around but a small portion of that time, so it couldn’t be that.
My guess is that one of the reasons Canada has the luxury of being able to live in a more socialized society is their economy is an extension of the United States. Canada also has the advantage of not requiring a large military since we protect her. Canada’s socialized medicine is also subsidized by Americans. We pay for most of the research and development costs of pharmaceuticals while the Canadian government circumvents international patent laws. Forcing American companies to sell their products at below market prices, if they refuse, the Canadian government will allow Canadian companies to produce these drugs at generic prices. But if we go to a socialized medicine who will subsidize us?
April 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am
shcb,
It’s interesting how you talk about how well informed you are with your sources, but then you insult liberals about how they conceived their beliefs. I believe in the equal opportunity of Adam Smith also, but conservatives fail to realize that to have equal opportunity, you need to have equal education. You have obviously been out of the education system for a while to realize there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor and the opportunities that their children receive. I convinced my parents to send my much younger brother to private school after I realized that the private school kids had a huge advantage over me in college because of their high school education despite the fact that I graduated with a 3.95 GPA taking all honors classes in high school. He is now studying topics two years before I did. The disparity is the same with colleges. I have a friend who received an full soccer scholarship to a very expensive and exclusive private college ($46,000 a year not counting room and board). Despite his average 2.7 GPA, he received multiple job offers before graduation upwards of $80,000 just because of the name of the college. He was one of the few exceptions of students that came from a modest background. A number of his friends had multimillion dollar trust funds. How many graduates from a state school get those type of offers?
I can’t speak for everyone, but having liberal views does not mean that you are brain washed by drunks and stoners. It means you have a heart for people who weren’t raised with every opportunity to succeed. You are right that some people are bound to fail, but they should not fail because they have to work infinitely times harder than some rich kid to reach the same success. The wealthy will always have advantages, but there are steps we can take that will narrow the gap. Conservatives talk about capitalism and equal opportunity but all they do is continue to make the wealthy richer and keep the poor in poverty. Being liberal means caring for people less fortunate and not giving them up to social Darwinism.
April 15th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Js,
(To clarify a little, did you mean kids should have equal education, or equal opportunity in education? Everyone is different, so I’m not sure if equal education is possible.)
For the most part I couldn’t agree with you more, I am all for vouchers, why should your parents have to pay for all of your brother’s education at a private, school. Let the money the school district is now keeping follow your brother, then your parents could take the money they are now spending combine it with a voucher and send him to a better school or save it for college. This competition would make public schools better as well.
I think you have most conservatives wrong, note I said most, we don’t want to hold the ambitious poor down, we want to help them. Their skills and education may not allow them to reach the top heights, but perhaps their children will.
I am an engineer without a degree, I got here after twenty five years of owning machine shops and being really clever, I live comfortably in a half million dollar house, I grew up in a 1200 square foot house in a small town in Kansas. We weren’t poor, but I am more successful than my folks. I have two daughters who have excelled in high school and more than likely will graduate from college. They will be the first kids to graduate from college on either side of the family……ever. Since my ancestors came from Germany, no one has ever had a degree. Imagine how proud I will be. They will likely send their kids to better schools and on and on.
I don’t know if that last paragraph had a point but it made me feel better. Sorry.
In many cases, liberals helping hurts, conservatives not helping hurts too, common sense needs to be used in either case. Thomas Sowell, a black man in case you are not familiar with him, has written of cases where low income black kids were given scholarships to elite schools where the classes were too difficult for them. They were given the money so a liberal could feel good about helping a poor kid. If they had really wanted to help the poor kid, sending him to a good community or state school would have given him a degree that was actually earned. From there he could have gotten a good job and been able to afford to send his kids to that elite school, instead the kid drops out of college and goes back to the ghetto.
It is good to have a new voice in the fray, welcome.
April 15th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
are you back on your meds again, shcb? you seem to be talking more sense of late.
April 15th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
That would imply I was ever off my meds (dark Bacardi and coke, thanks)
April 18th, 2007 at 7:28 am
SHCB I would really like you to come visit sometime. When you say things like your pharmaceutical companies subsidize ours it is evident that either a) you really have no understanding of your neighbours to the north, or b) you are getting your insights from people like Bill O’Reilly or Tucker Carlson and taking them as fact. Canadian medical research is second to none. Insulin anyone?
Actually, more money is spent on advertising drugs in the US than is spent on research in most other countries. Thankfully, this practice is banned in our country. We don’t believe that you should go to the doctor to ask for a particular drug because you have been bombarded with ads; the doctor should prescribe the drug that will help you feel better.
Perhaps that’s why more and more Americans are buying their drugs from us – the cost is lower because the industry doesn’t have to spend hundreds of millions on ads and the like.
Also, we have very limited restrictions on stem cell research which has allowed Canadian researchers to make major medical advancements. Quite contrary to your assertions.