Colbert Perhaps Not So Funny Afterall
This may also be in the “lighten up” category, but I have to admit that Eric Boehlert makes a point about Colbert’s fake candidacy, and the enormous media coverage it’s received. The joke is indeed on the press here, and as typical for the Stewart and Colbert crew, there’s serious news behind it.
I have enough personal interest in the process and the candidates that I’ve spent the time to read all about their stances, voting records and personal stories — so the ongoing campaign coverage doesn’t really do much for me. As such I find Colbert’s run pretty hilarious, but it could be argued that it’s not so funny when the media probably should be spending their time on more complete coverage of the real candidates in this the most important part of our representative governmental process.
Why is the media seemingly ignoring Ron Paul (who, while I wouldn’t pick him, is probably the candidate who America as a whole really wants) while continuing to cover a joke? Why is it that when I mention Obama to my coworkers, they still wonder aloud “isn’t he a Muslim or something?”
November 1st, 2007 at 4:17 am
I’ll take a stab at this one. I don’t think Colbert is that much different than the other goof balls that have run for president as a joke, Pat Paulson ran every election and I think Tiny Tim did as well. They are entertaining their fans, it’s what they do. I think this is just a little too close for you guys. This is the only time you guys on the medium far left have had a chance to actually get someone elected president. Hillary isn’t for you, she is certainly socialistic enough, but the war is your real hot button and she will not pull out prematurely. The war has taken a turn for the better and she would like to be the person to win it. Remember, she is going to start her campaign for the 2012 election the day after she is elected, even before she is the first woman president. She won’t do anything to hurt those chances.
Obama is your guy, the others aren’t even vaguely electable and he is. He has Soros’ money and as you can see from this article Soros is nervous, he doesn’t want to take a chance of even losing one vote. I don’t know if Obama is as anti war as he says, but Soros sure is, and Barack knows the money to get elected comes from Soros and the votes come from the medium far and far left. Now there aren’t enough votes on the far left to elect someone so the smear machine is going to have to make up the difference, but Move On and Media Matters are good at that, it’s what they do.
But don’t worry about Colbert, he’s just having fun.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Someone should come up with some kind of formula for shcb comments to determine what percent come from the fever swamp of rightwing fantasyland.
I’ll take a stab at this. There are 286 spaces in this comment, so I’ll round that to about 290 words. Since the majority of this comment seems to be from fantasyland, I’ll count the words that seem reasonable instead of vice versa.
The first 65 words (up through “I think this is just a little too close for you guys”) are all reasonable enough.
There’s a bunch of crazy talk up until the 8 words in the sentence ending the first paragraph. I also think the last 6 words are decent too.
That means about 80 words out of 290 are reasonable, giving us a total of 72% of that comment being way out of right field.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Hit a nerve there
November 1st, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Yeah, that veracity nerve is a sensitive one for Steve.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
zing!
nice one Steve
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:25 am
Yup, quite a zing there, accept the fluff and condescendingly dismiss the contentious parts, typical liberal. Throw in the part about fever swamp to satisfy your bigoted side and you have a great answer. It’s just an opinion based on observations, and it is a generalization, you all don’t fit all those criteria but as a whole it’s pretty spot on.
You guys are anti war, Hillary is a political animal and not all that ideological, Soros is, Soros is also very, very anti war, his groups are smear merchants, and Obama is a lightweight. Nothing wrong with any of those things, it’s just the way it is. Soros has made a lot of money legally, if he wants to spend it smearing people in the public eye so be it, it made 4 million for a good charity when he went after Rush last month, so some good even comes out of bad, we’re all happy, Harry Reid was embarrassed and some kids of fallen soldiers are going to college . Obama is a bright guy, good looking, personable, he just needs a little more seasoning, there have been plenty of presidents without a backbone, you just can’t let the folks see it.
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:27 am
lets see, by my back of the napkin calculations, the shcb post above is 87% rwnj blather. The following bits are actually informative/substantive.
“quite a zing there”
“you have a great answer” (this could go either way based on how sarcastic the actual tone might be, but I am trying to be liberal ;-) you know, generous, understanding, compassionate etc.)
“you guys are anti war”
“soros has made a lot of money legally”
“obama is a bright guy”
And the whole ‘Soros slime, Rush sublime’ meme? Sheer wingnuttery!
Bravo rwnj!
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
So what did I say about Rush and Soros that was wrong? Media Matters smeared Rush (and O’Reiley) by grossly misquoting him, Reid sent the president of Clear Channel a letter demanding Rush be punished in some way, a letter signed by several dozen Democrats. They of course took Media Matters at their word without listening to the tape. Big mistake. The Clear Channel guy gave the letter to Rush, he auctioned it off on E-Bay for 2 point something million, and matched the amount with his own money. Donated it all to a charity that sends kids of Marines and federal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty to college.
Preemptive: you’re going to say Soros doesn’t fund Media Matters, he does, just not directly.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:59 am
By the way, you took all those bits out of context, seems to be a pattern with liberals these days.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Yeah, liberals took all kinds of stuff out of context.
That’s why the world is more dangerous, Iraq has been a massive failure, worldwide terrorist attacks and recruitment are soaring, oil is almost $100 /barrel and the entire world despises the US. Yup, blame them liberals.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I think you’re a little behind the times, oil has been pretty stable for quite a while other than normal seasonal fluctuations, attacks in Iraq by terrorists are way down, as are American deaths and wounded, I haven’t heard of many terrorists arracks world wide, maybe I just haven’t heard of them. But yes I do blame liberals, if there weren’t so much decent in this country I think Iraq would have been finished a long time ago. I think the Islamofascists were hoping you would win this one for them. They should have held off on the 911 attacks for a couple years, the timing would have been better. But that is just the vagaries of war. Bush, like Lincoln has had to fight the enemy over there and his critics over here, it makes the job harder but hey, if it were easy women and children would do it.
Not going to comment on Soros and Rush NL?
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Sorry for the good news but it looks like deaths in Iraq were half of September that were half of August……. massive what?
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Great shcb. Mission accomplished… lets bring our guys home then, and stop wasting our money flushing it down Iraq.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
bravo rwnj! your wingnut % keeps rising
maybe you should stop drinking while the sun is in the sky?
oil is nearly $100 a barrel – that aint no seasonal fluctuation
true, much of that can be marked down to the US dollar plunging during the dumbya era (bad fiscal policy, massive debt, drunken sailor spending etc)
We have had exactly one month of lower casualties – good news, but it has fluctuated before… you freaks are so eager to declare great and total victory for dear misleader it is just plain sad. Casualties have been much much higher for over a year and a half.
And comparing gwb’s gwot and the American Civil War? Ridiculous, pathetic and insulting. You obviously have an extremely skewed view of history. Do you read books with your partisan hate colored glasses on?
rush is a moran
and your wrap up “presidentin is hard work! women n children caint do it!”
go fuck yourself jack, Hillary is going to be 10X better than the current idiot…
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
SHCB,
Rush is a drug-addicted nutcase that spews misinformation and incites hatred. Sorros is a rich dude that puts his money where his mouth is – regardless of if you agree with his views or not – that’s what he does.
That’s my comment on them.
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Actually Enki, shcb is right in that there have been two months of much better casualties. Negative hits on our side in Iraq (by our side I mean the invading force) is down in most every measure over the past two and four months. That’s not to say that dips in negative hits to our side hasn’t happened several other times in the past only to surge up again later, or that the it is not because the invading forces are keeping their distance through “Search and Avoid” tactics at the field level or the return to a greater dependence on aerial bombardments as opposed to gruntwork where it counts, but here is an interesting picture of the recent trend (which from past experience says NOTHING about the future) :
http://www.kenmccracken.com/iraqattacktrends.jpg
Now, if only the US $ could survive the deluge of economic mismanagement as well as the troops have survived this administration’s military mismanagement!
(Gold surpasses $800 & Cdn $ at highest mark against the US$ since 1957!)
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Btw SHCB, when you put down the crack pipe, have a look at this graph of oil prices over the past few years.
http://www.scotia-group.com/images/oilprice.gif
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:13 am
TV told me once that you know you’re getting to them when they call you names instead of rebutting your arguments. Boy have you guys called me names, crack head, alcoholic (that one may be true), I would have to get out the calculator to figure the number of times stupid or a variation of that came up. But not much substance. NL did get a graph showing high oil prices, and no doubt the war has contributed to those rising prices, but so has demand, Hugo taking over the Venezuelan oilfields etc. But at least he tried to make a legitimate point.
I don’t care how Soros spends his money, just realize who you are dealing with, he is an unaccountable Dick Armey, he plays by the rules, at the edge of the rules, and if he doesn’t like the rules, he gets them changed. You can do that when you have enough money to buy elected officials, or you get people elected that share your views, then you don’t have to buy them. If you are a small fry, you form an association or union so you and the others in the club can play with the big boys. I think Hamilton or Madison called it the multiplicity of factions. This is how the game is played, so your side has a bare knuckled fighter, he just might be your ticket to victory.
Why can’t you guys just concede that what Media Matters did was wrong, that Rush was right, and a bunch of kids of soldiers’ kids who gave their lives protecting you get a free ride to a better life. You don’t have to like Rush, you don’t have to approve of his lifestyle, but just in this one case maybe he did something good, and calling him a liar… you probably can’t find any more lies Rush has spoken than Bush, and at this point that is what, still 0?
Were you guys watching O’Reilly the week or two after Media Matters smeared him? I had never seen Juan Williams so mad in my life, seems Williams was involved in the conversation that they took out of context. Now you know Juan isn’t a rightwinger, but he was livid that Media Matters had so blatantly and viciously misquoted Bill. And remember the professor that called Williams a “happy negro” because he was coming to O’Reilly’s defense?
I’ll let you guys get back to the hateful name calling. This is so much fun!
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 am
Other than ‘freak’ no one has called you ‘idiot’ ‘crack head’ or ‘alcoholic’ in this thread (other than you, of course). Judging by your somewhat insane ramblings, I think these names might indeed be warranted.
You seem obsessed with stuff that normal people just couldn’t care less about.
Media matters? They play back actual film of real GOoPer RWNJs making fools of themselves, lying to the American people and generally behaving like idiots. I am sure they have plenty of nimrod Dem clips too (like that dipshit Conyers sending the whistleblower email addresses to their corrupt Rethug bosses… smooth move… when can we vote your incompetent ass out?). The problem for rwnjs is when one party is so deeply, amazingly corrupt and just plain evil (like say the Rethugs), the sheer volume – usually a self-righteous shriek – of their statements of lunacy and lies simply out number the garden variety violations of the Dems. Macaca moments are everywhere for the morans in power. Nov 08 can’t come soon enough
And Soros… only you freaks obsess about Soros. So there is one billionaire (or whatever) who actually supports progressive causes? The reich wing has legions of angry rich psychos.
Hateful name calling? If ‘freak’ is too strong for you, well… just “go fuck yourself”. And please recall I am just quoting dear vice-misleader Big Dick Cheney, so obviously no offense can be taken!
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Ok, so substitute freak or nutcase for idiot, it is still name calling in place of remarks with substance. And no, the name calling doesn’t bother me, it just reinforces my stereotype of liberals. I don’t know what Media Matters does on a regular basis, but I know they were way off base in these two instances.
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Sven,
Casualties are down, there is still a lot of work to be done. The job is not finished. We will bring them home when the Iraqis can handle their own security, a day sooner and we will have to go back. It’s not that difficult to understand.
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
shcb,
A short aside about you suddenly getting upset about name-calling. Seems to me that on previous threads you were quite liberal with the name calling.
In fact, even on his thread you use the term “lefty” or “liberal” in a derogatory sense, which is a pretty stupid thing to do unless you are complimenting people on their progressive, flexible, independent thinking.
Let’s look a bit further, from the on-line dictionary:
Now lets compare that to the “righty” or “Conservative” definition:
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
So you found out that the dictionary definition of liberal and conservative don’t match the working definition we use today. Alert the media! Get Dan Rather out of retirement, this is a story that will bring him back to power.
I don’t mind talking disparagingly of liberals, they are destructive to society when in power, a nuisance out of power. I expect you will call me names as well, doesn’t bother me, but I don’t use my disparaging remarks to duck questions or stick up for people doing dastardly acts. Unless it is to establish a pattern.
November 4th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Wow. Liberals are destructive to society now? When your “conservative” president is the one that bombed and invaded a country that did not attack us, did not have WMDs, was not a threat to us, and had zero to do with 9/11? Your president is the one who can’t even tell us what is and isn’t torture? Your president thinks the constitution is just a piece of paper and a nuisance to his power? Your president has started two wars while cutting taxes, resulting in astronomical deficits. eems to me “conservatives” want the war, they just don’t want to pay for the war. Yeah, leave that to our children and grandchildren to worry about. Meanwhile, we can’t even pay for a children’s healthcare plan at a fraction of the cost of your wars. Who exactly is destructive to society?
But then again, why bother.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Review time again boys and girls,
We are at war with not one country, but several. We attacked Afghanistan in retaliation, Iraq was preemptive, an attack on the least strong nation state that was a direct threat to our security in the loose coalition of Arab states.
The president has not harmed the constitution in any way, the laws you are referring to have been passed by congress in the first place, not the president, and they are targeted at our enemies, not political opponents or citizens not involved in terrorism.
Cutting taxes marginally, traditionally raises revenue by increasing financial activity. We are at or slightly above our average military spending as a percentage of GDP even with the war.
Yes our children will pay for debt incurred on our watch, just as the those in the 50’s paid for World War II and as our grand children will pay for our children’s debts.
The expansion of the SCHIP program into the middle class is a classic example of how liberalism is destructive to society, take a needed program and expand it into areas where it isn’t needed to take control of the best private health care system in the world. Before Lyndon Johnson’s great society high school dropout rates and births out of wedlock among blacks were less than whites, now they are triple, because a bunch of white liberals convinced the black population they were owed something at someone else’s expense. The black population has finally gotten tired of it and is now the most upwardly mobile group in America, thanks not to government largesse but to hard work and an education. Bravo Bill Cosby.
Taking over the health care system will lead to a similar fate, we will have the quality of care of Canada without the United States safety net Canada enjoys. We won’t be able to blackmail pharmaceutical companies or send patients across the border, there will be no border cross.
Yes, liberals are destructive to society.
There is an old story that goes like this; A conservative walking down the beach sees someone drowning 100 feet from the shore, he throws the man a 75 foot rope, encourages him to swim to the rope and then pulls him in. A liberal in the same situation throws the man a 125 foot rope, drops his end of the line and runs off down the beach to do another good deed.
November 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am
To fund World War II, the United States drastically expanded and raised taxes. (At the start of the war, just 4 million Americans had to pay income tax; by its end, 43 million did.) Beyond that, 85 million Americans—half the population at the time—answered the call to buy War Bonds, $185 billion worth. Food was rationed, scrap metal was donated, the entire country was on a war footing. By contrast, President Bush has asked the citizenry for no sacrifice, no campaigns of national purpose, to fight or fund the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, he has proudly cut taxes, heaving the hundreds of billions of dollars in war costs on top of the already swelling national debt.
http://www.slate.com/id/2125344/
So shbc, are you willing to sacrifice in any way to pay for this war as our country did for WWII? Or are you going to be selfish?
Why bother…
November 4th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
The reason we haven’t had to sacrifice the way we did in WW II is because it isn’t necessary. In WW II defense spending was over 30% of GDP, in this war it is something like 6 or 7, with a baseline of 5 or so. In Vietnam it was around 10, so we could double or triple the cost of this war before we got to the point of Viet Nam and that wasn’t a war that people were asked to sacrifice. By historic standards this is a small war, it is a potentially dangerous war but at this time it is quite small. Cutting taxes increases revenues at least in the short term, this provides a rise in real money to the government. Raising taxes would do the opposite. Now at some point there may be the need to raise taxes to pay for the war, but that point hasn’t been reached yet.
Would I sacrifice? The company I was working for never recovered from 911, I was out of work for a year and a half, I supplemented my unemployment with side jobs but still had to dig into my savings to the tune of $50,000 so this war has cost me one of my kids’ college education. So I have sacrificed, also, one of the guys was complaining about high oil prices being caused by this war, I guess that is a sacrifice as well.
If you really want to cut the national debt, social spending is the place you want to be. It has gone way up since 1960 while defense spending has remained constant.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
shcb,
You speak of tax cuts as if that is the goose that lays the golden egg, and tax increases as if that is the poison that kills the geese. Not so.
The increased economic activity – if any at all – that results from a tax cut depends on many factors. In simplistic terms, it is important to consider the initial tax level. If taxes are high (relative to competitors), then cutting taxes can cause an increase in economic activity from investment and consumer spending that is extraordinary. In the end, government may end up with higher tax revenues overall from collecting a lower tax rate from a higher performing economy. So why not keep cutting taxes? Because the economic benefits you get from each $1 or 1% cut in taxes keeps diminishing the more taxes are reduced. At some point cutting taxes results in less overall tax revenues for government over time, and cutting taxes further can actually lead to lower economic activity than with a reasonable level of taxes.
The question is always what is a reasonable level. That depends on taxes in competitor nations to some extent.
But to a greater extent it depends upon what a corporation or a private individual is going to do with that $1 in tax savings compared to what the government is going to do with that $1. If the corporation or individual is going to invest all of that dollar or spend it all locally, then you mayget your golden egg. That depends on whether the investment or spending is on something that helps the economy more than what the government would have spent that tax dollar on.
In a highly taxed country with a bloated bureaucracy, it is a safe bet that individuals & corporations will make better spending decisions than government. As you get to a leaner government, then government spending on roads and other infrastructure (yes, social infrastructure is critically important) may be better investments than what some people or some corporations would do with the money if they got to keep more money through a tax cut.
Bush has been criticised for giving tax cuts to the wealthy. “Well, so what, tax cuts are good for the economy” is what your stupid media tells you to think, and the analysis ends there.
Your media should be asking: are the wealthy benefactors of these tax cuts really spending or investing those tax cuts in ways that will benefit America, or are they just going to buy up more luxury real estate to store their growing collection of Porches and Bentleys and take more Mediterranean Cruises and invest in Chinese and Mexican factories? If the government would have spent those tax dollars on things like adequate levies for New Orleans (a little late for that now), needed highways, bridge maintenance and funding for state literacy or technological modernisation for government programs, well maybe those tax dollars might have been better kept in the government’s hands.
Here’s a simple example for you.
The government spending $1,000,000 to a construction company to hire local labourers to upgrade a bridge has big multiplier effect throughout the economy as the company buys materials and pays wages and those wages in turn are spent in the community and the community has more cash flow etc.
If the government simply gave that $1,000,000 in tax relief to the poor in that same community, well you’d have similar benefits in terms of increased economic activity but the bridge would still need upgrading.
If the government gave $1,000,000 in tax relief to a corporation that depended on that bridge to get its product to market, well, you might get an upgraded bridge and the economic benefits in the community. Or you might get a company that moves its operation to the other side of the river with little economic benefit – except possibly to the shareholders of the company. That’d be a good thing if the shareholders comprised a significant portion of the community so that those benefits flowed back into the community through their spending of those dividends. However, if the company was owned by a Saudi Arabian prince who used his dividends to order another solid silver Mercedes Benz for his car collection in the Arabian desert, well, lets just say that America could do better with a $1,000,000 than that.
In other words shcb, you don’t know whether Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are doing a damn thing to improve life for Americans.
November 5th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Good post Knarly, see, you don’t need all those links and cut and pastes. I agree with your first three paragraphs, and that is really all Sven and I were discussing. Sven is using a static model, if the war is costing money over and above the budget, you have to raise tax rates to produce more revenue, but you and I are using a dynamic model where government can, to a limited degree, stimulate economic growth to produce more revenue. The rest of your piece is well written and correct from your point of view, a point of view I disagree with. Something I have personally noticed about liberals is that they are more controlling than conservatives. I think that is evident in what you wrote here.
Your bridge analogy is good, if the bridge needs fixing, that is a good use of tax funds, fix the bridge. I don’t like corporate hand outs so we’re on the same page there. Don’t give the money to the company unless there is an agreement the bridge will be fixed.
But your last paragraph, no we don’t know what people do with their money, but that is none of the governments business, their only concern is having the revenue to fix the bridge, whether that means raising or lowering tax rates and that depends on many factors, that is why presidents hire advisors.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Your last paragraph ignores everything that went before, and incorrectly assumes that we do not konw what people will do with the money – itès true that we do not know what any individual might do with the money but major fields of economics is built around PREDICTING what groups of people will do with their marginal dollars in aggregate. That is why preisdents ignore their advisors – so they can give tax breaks to their rich campaign contributors.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Sorry Knarly, I wasn’t very clear, I meant that it is not government’s place to tell us what to do with our money, within limits of course. Generally liberals don’t trust people to make good decisions as much as conservatives. That is why you would rather put more money into the governments hands (higher taxes) than someone like me.
We had a very liberal congresswoman here in the first district by the name of Pat Schroeder, at one point she made the comment that all money was the governments and whatever Washington decided to let people keep was theirs. She eventually said that isn’t what she meant, but you knew she said exactly what she thought and what many liberals think.
The purpose of any government is to encourage good behavior and punish bad, the problem is where is proper balance. And how do you make one group happy without pissing off another, and understanding that is impossible, how can you be fair to everyone.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Generally you seem to make shit up about “liberals” to give yourself the polish of righteousness.
If she meant that, she is out of her mind and needs to be stopped.
No, that’s what the cartoon of “liberals” that you’ve created for yourself thinks, and it comes from the self-serving pundits who continue to try to substitute that cartoon for real, reasonable people and opinion.
The vast majority of my friends are democrat/independents who are strongly critical of the Bush administration. But I have never heard them clamoring for more taxes because they like more government or expressed that the government needs to take care of everybody. It’s as ridiculous a characterization as the people who go on about Republicans being entirely comprised of xenophobic war-mongers. That’s just you — I talk to a lot of very reasonable Republicans (with whom I may respectfully disagree) here in the great state of Texas.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
ymatt,
I admire your ability to concisely cut through the BS. Must be a Texan trait.
November 5th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Steven Colbert is funny, but he’s not as funny as Pat Paulson was.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Well Pat meant it, she had a history of saying silly things and yet democrats kept electing her term after term after term, she went to Washington without any money and left a couple decades later a multi millionaire. At one point the democrats said if some bill or another wasn’t passed (raising taxes) the elderly would have to choose between eating dog food or buying drugs, so Rush joked the next day that he had sent his mother a new can opener and a case of dog food, Alpo, the good stuff. Patsy went to the floor of the House the next and cried a few crocodile tears that Rush was feeding his mother dog food, her voice actually cracked a bit. Of course Rush had a whole bunch of fun with that, he played that tape for months. She said she was just kidding on that one too. She was also blamed for the death of Kara Hultgreen seems Patsy loved using the military as a social laboratory and pressured them to get a woman in the seat of a fighter. Kara crashed and died.
No, of course liberals don’t want more taxes, unless it is raising taxes on someone that makes more money than they do.
For the most part, you don’t have to make up shit about liberals, they give you plenty of material.
November 5th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I don’t think Country Boy is the one making things up about liberals ymatt… judging from how many times he’s brought up Rush Limbaugh, I’m guessing he gets his news and views from the propaganda on right wing talk radio.
Hey SHCB, interesting that the only one’s in our country willing to sacrifice anything for this Iraq war would be the members of our military and their families. Losing your job over 9/11 is sad and unfortunate, but really has nothing to do with Iraq.
I’m remotely aware that Rush sold some silly letter of hysterical value on eBay for over $2 Million dollars recently, of which he matched of his own money. I also heard the letter was purchased by an Obama supporter as well. Go figure.
I’m not sure of the specifics, but I believe the $4 million from the auction went to a charity to help pay for the college education of orphans of American Service men and women killed in action. (Correct me if I’m wrong — I’m too lazy to look it up right now) That’s really a great thing, no doubt, although it doesn’t change the fact that Rush is a propagandist. But hopefully my son’s 4 year old best friend will be able to benefit from this one generous and admirable act someday. I’m pretty positive that he’d rather have his daddy back, however. His father was a Marine and was KIA somewhere near Baghdad this past summer. Yeah, but the war is going so well now, right shcb?
November 5th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
You have the story right, sorry to hear of your sons friend. I hope he does well, I’m sure he misses his dad. I’ll just leave it at that.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:58 am
I do listen to a lot of talk radio, have for the last 15 years or so. So why is talk radio propaganda? Is it because they are advocates for one side? Then is the mainstream media engaged in propaganda? Are you guys? This site is named “lies” read the manifesto, the Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly matters were certainly dishonest enough to have a thread started, but none was. Matt and John have no obligation to publish a thread that will make their side look bad, same with talk radio. I have always listened to Mike Rosen more than Limbaugh, I find that out of the 125 or so minutes of a 3 hour show, 80 or 90 is informative on Rosen, maybe 20 or 30 on Limbaugh. Rush is more of a showman. I routinely double check facts where I can and rarely found anything factually incorrect with what either man has said. Their logic holds up to my scrutiny as well. Is conservatism always correct? Of course not, but it is correct more times than not.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Ymatt is essentially right in what he says, but is it really fair to pig-pile on SHCB? He’s just doing what everybody else does, especially in a forum such as this. The only reason anybody debates “politics” on the internet is either take the piss out of somebody else (who acts as a stand-in for the media figure heads we’d each really rather be griping at) or to establish his or her own moral / intellectual / academic superiority by throwing around someone else’s “facts” or giving lip service to whatever pieties we thank make us look cool. Debate was replaced with Nova Bombing a very long time ago. That’s hardly SHCB’s fault, nor are there many of us on this blog, of all places, who are immune enough from it to cast stones at him.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Propaganda [from modern Latin: ‘propagare’, literally “extending forth”] is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
I think its fair to say Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Air America all engage in propaganda. As to mainstream media — perhaps sometimes. But not necessarily the side shcb might suggest.
I’d prefer a news source that doesn’t shout down and cut off opposing views while name calling and branding anyone who disagrees with them a liberal as Rush does. I also don’t care for shcb tossing around the word liberal as an insult, while insisting that everyone else here is calling him names. Pot, meet kettle…
I do, however, apologize if I offended anyone with my stones. Including shcb.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:38 am
leftbehind:
I think it’s entirely fair. Just because the average level of internet debate is low doesn’t mean I (or we) need to accept it here. I don’t just criticize shcb for this; in fact I find a poor argument from an opponent less annoying than I find a poor argument coming from somebody on “my side” of a debate.
I take more of a personal interest in this blog than others so I hold it to a higher standard. If you are interested in substantive discussion and criticism — and that absolutely includes going after members of any party for the lies they tell — bring it on. Don’t just make arguments to make partisan points; do it because there’s a reason: impact on lives, ironic humor, frightening precedent or personal connection, I don’t care. But I would very much like those who only have interest in partisan name-calling, however cathartic, to go away.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Fair enough all of you. Thanks. I think in these discussions some stereotyping is relevant, I probably do it too much (my wife thinks I do anyway) and sometimes I mean it in a derogatory way, but usually I am trying to be clinical, although it may come across as an insult, if I go overboard let me know, if you have a point I will recant or restate. If I meant it as an insult I will let you know I meant it and you are just going to have to be thick skinned enough to take it, I’ll do the same. Fair enough?
The one thing I really try and avoid is the Enkidu style of just throwing out insults for no good reason, I also try and not insult any of you personally, I try and impugn your ideology and it’s methods and tactics because I disagree with it as you do mine. Am I perfect in this quest, not hardly. For the most part I consider you all friends, a little misguided, but good honest folks.
Let the games continue.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
I feel you YMatt, and I agree with your vision, although I am as much a part of the problem as anyone else. Still, if you were to eliminate everyone from this blog who’s here for partisan catharsis, you would be the only guy who got to post.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Well, sadly I think there are some people who no longer post here, or post rarely, because of the noise level like steve, craig, onan, and even jbc.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:22 am
That’s not calling anyone a bad person – it’s just that it is rarely in the nature of a forum like this to engender other than “partisan catharsis” of a confrontational sort none of us feel comfortable pursuing in real life. I mean really, does this blog even pretend, outside of a “mission statement” nobody pays any attention to, to be anything but shrill and partisan? Is there any blog that does? Mind you, I’m not dismissing this blog or holding it up to scorn; I’m just saying it is what it is, and it attracts the sort of reaction it does. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
November 6th, 2007 at 9:24 am
I didn’t think JBC minded the noise level over much. I’ve always thought he engendered it to a certain extent.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am
No objections from me, ymatt. For my part I’ll try to be less partisan, as I’m not interested in the left right debate so much. I am more interested in highlighting how misguided shcb is in who and what he chooses to believe, his is a sorry case given his self-admitted exposure to extended binging on right wing talk radio – to the point he can’t even recognize the difference between that near total propoganda versus a balanced collection of facts.
shcb – Enkidu hasn’t posted here for a while; seems to me his insults grew in frustration with lefty and your ignoring what he had to say and peaked in tandem of shortly after a long spell of lefty’s juvenile yet insipid homo / racist jabs.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:33 am
*or shortly after*
November 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Enkidu has posted here within the last week, so I doubt we’ve run him off that far, not that anyone but you would notice if we did.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Your devotion to that clown is so masochistic even I’m embarrassed by it. I doubt he’d take up for you.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:00 am
My last post was a test. How quickly you fail.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Well, damn, Master Yoda – if I’d known that was really you I’d have tried to be much more zen in my responses
November 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Does this mean I have to cut my jedi rat tail?
November 6th, 2007 at 11:04 am
It seems you guys have a dilemma, as I have said on a couple occasions, I don’t feel I have a First Amendment right to speak here. This is JBC’s site and I am certainly an out of place dinner guest here. As such I have always kind of felt it is my position to offer the opposing view of the debate, without that there is no debate and since this is a political site and debate is central to politics here I am. If you just want to pat each other on the back I’ll go away, my wife would love to have me working on chores the hours I spend researching and writing. The threads that I don’t get involved in usually go two or three comments, “damn good piece”, “boy Greenwald nailed it there” that sort of thing. If there is a thread you guys want me to stay out of so you can pile on some hapless Republican that doesn’t know or care we exist, let me know, I’ll go build my wife a cabinet or something. The one thing I won’t do is let you fire a last salvo and then tell me to buzz off, once I’m in the fray, I’m staying.
On rare occasion I toss some red meat out there for the sole purpose of being provocative, but in the vast majority of cases I mean what I say and I back it up with facts or statistics. In the months I have been here the one notable time I was objectively wrong was in the war making powers of the president and congress, Matt called me on it and conceded his point. You may not agree with my opinions, that is why they call them opinions, but my facts and logic are usually sound.
I’m not far right, but I’m not middle of the road either, I think it is good for you to be exposed to that point of view, even if it is just the talk radio point of view, I’m doing you a service, I listen to three hours and give you a couple minutes of it.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
How about we come to our own conclusions on the issues. It’s quite apparent that Rush, Moore, etc. constantly spew misinformation or outright lies. So when one repeats them, one sounds foolish. Very foolish. I mean, there are entire organizations devoted to monitoring the crap that comes from these people and reporting their inaccuracies.
Do yourself a favour and stop listening to talk radio. Or at least listen just for entertainment, don’t expect to get any straight facts.
SHCB, I’m sorry about the crack pipe comment, but when you say things like oil prices have been stable in recent times when the facts show that the price has increased almost 300%, it makes me wonder if you are hitting the old pipe. In 2002 the price of oil was about $35/barrel. I think it closed around $97/barrel today.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
You don’t have to apologize, although I appreciate it, I can take any abuse, I don’t take this stuff personally. I thought the crack pipe barb was funny, can you imagine this 50ish conservative country boy trying to figure which end of the damn thing to light.
If you want to hear what well done talk radio sounds like, go to 850koa.com, click on shows, Mike Rosen and go down to Friday’s show, listen to the 10:00 hour, it is an interview with a couple self described liberal Canadian film makers who have made a documentary cataloging Michael Moore’s lies and distortions. It is worth the 40 minutes or so it takes to listen. You may have to register, but I think if you take that path you won’t.
We all get our information from different places, I find Rosen to be very well researched and level headed. I wouldn’t ask you to stop reading The Nation or Media Matters or Kos, or any of the others even though I find them much less reliable with recent gross distortions to hold as example.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I would like to address Sven’s post earlier regarding propaganda. I agree with your definition as it is. This may just be me, but I think the component you left out is that the people dispensing the propaganda need to a have level of control of the information that doesn’t allow or at least limits dissenting views. That may just be my interpretation but I think your definition edges into taking a side in an argument or being an advocate as propaganda, and I think that dilutes the meaning of the word. Now your definition has some merit if the people listening to the speaker choose to not listen to an opposing view. In Limbaugh’s and Air America ‘s case and in many religions that certainly occurs. Then the question is, is the speaker propagandizing, or are his listeners just not looking to alternative views. I don’t see talk radio, right or left as propaganda since there is so much opposing information readily available. I will be interested to see how many of you guys listen to Rosen’s show. It’s an hour of talk radio without commercials, not a small investment of time, you may have to register to listen. I’m asking a lot here. I picked an hour that is somewhat on topic with this thread and includes liberals from Canada. It’s a light topic you can listen to in the background. We’ll see how many here are self-propagandizing.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
850koa.com won’t work for me, just keeps loading forever without playing anything…
Maybe but I doubt it has anything to do with this message of theirs, but whatever
it is not working I’ll look elsewhere…
November 6th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
a little off topic, but nonetheless …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Dissent
November 7th, 2007 at 5:34 am
That’s too bad, thanks for trying, have you tried right clicking and saving the file? It will probably give you the same result it is a 16m mpg file, I downloaded it and tried to put it on my blog but it errors out, probably too big.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I’ll try that later tonight.
I must admit I’m a lot skeptical. Sounds like an Eskimo selling snow. Couldn’t imagine more compliant guests, unless maybe that gay prostitute “reporter” who lobbed softball questions at Bush and his press secretary (what was his name again?). The Wiki article mentioned a couple criticisms, if Rosen’s hour is filled with discussing a few criticisms of segments in MM’s movies, segments that would last a few minutes at most and which were contrived to illustrate a simple point, well that sounds like invalid criticism of all the hours worth of film and very misleading about the whole messages presented by the films.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:23 am
You probably don’t listen to much talk radio, Mike could probably fill a week with nothing but critiquing Moore’s films, they only touch on a few items in Roger and me and Sicko, and just a tiny bit of 911. The discussion sways into Canadian and Cuban health care, and they discuss the ethics of documentaries in general. Throw in a preamble by Rosen a call or two and some pleasantries at the ends of the program and the hour passes fairly quickly.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
You folks just keep up your scoring of who calls who the worstest names (boohoo! the internets made fun of me!) Frankly if you want to waste your time ‘debating’ the issues of the day with the 11%ers, that is your biz, more power to you. For me, I just enjoy rubbing the noses of the extreme partisans in their party’s sh!t. So many corrupt, closeted, psycho Rethugs, so little time.
I don’t insist that everyone use humor and mockery to make their point and I see absolutely no reason to stoop to certain loony rwnjs level and validate the ridiculous and pathetic ramblings of the more extreme amongst lies.com posters (farting in your general direction tv and lefty mcfruitloop. senator craig and shcb, not so much).
I do have a question for shcb… a few threads past you were the ceo of your machinery plant, flying to china, holland etc. boldly selling your widgets to whoever wants to buy them… yet in this thread you are a poor unemployed worker laid off after 9/11 with no work for a year and a half/two years sacrificing $50k of your child’s education to further the war effort. btw I hear your daughters could gain a college education by signing up for duty in Iraq! (crickets)
So, which is it? Rock ribbed gun toting über-exec or poor hapless worker caught in the jaws of history? And what will your online persona be next week? Do tell! ;-)
I’ll try to listen to your rwnj radio propagandist just for grins. I am sure he throws out insults that all have good reasons (name calling like libtard, asshole, insect, traitor and the rest…) I read a few of his columns and he does plenty of name calling. So… pot, meet kettle.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Great sage Mike Rosen has many of his wisest musing available for review on the intertubes. I found this one quite funny.
http://ww2.scripps.com/cgi-bin/archives/denver.pl?DBLIST=rm02&DOCNUM=7980
note that on the continuum from lefty to righty, he puts the KKK, Aryan Nation, Timothy (truck bomber) McViegh on the (wait for it…) right wing. So… when a rwnj proudly declares that his party is just a couple hairs away from the most extreme racists and nazis in America, can we just stop pretending that the Republicans are ‘mainstream’? Sure there are decent ‘conservatives’ but most of the sane ones left the Rethugs and registered as Independents long ago.
ymmv
November 8th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
You guys got my history mixed up a long time ago but it didn’t seem important enough to straighten it all out. So here you go. I moved to Denver in 1977 after two years in trade school, worked as a toolmaker for ten years, started my own machine shop after the company I was working for moved out of town, owned that shop for ten years. I employed between 3 and 8 people, small shop. A competitor bought me out and I went to work for him for several years, that is the company that I was laid off from after 911. After a year and change I went to work for a large international corporation as a process engineer. That is who paid the tab for my globetrotting. If installing equipment in China in 105 degree heat and almost 100% humidity is your idea of a vacation.
if those numbers don’t add up there were a some transition years between those timeframes where I worked as a machinest.
As to Rosen’s left right scale, at least we on the right aren’t proud of our far fringe.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Oh, one other thing that may have confused things. I do still own a small machine shop in my garage, I keep it as a backup plan in case I am ever laid off again. It will also be fun in my retirement. I have a couple customers that I do maybe 3 to 5 thousand dollars worth of business each year. It pays for my toys and reminds me that I don’t want to own my own business anymore. I have a wife and three daughters (one of them had a little boy today grandpa shcb (2x) with that much estrogen I need a place to hide and throwing red hot chips across the garage keeps them at bay.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
hahaha – okaaaay, so you are a Machinist who can’t spell his profession? really?
sure, whatever you say.
you should see a dokter for a thorough exam ;-)
on the other hand, congratulations on the grandchild!
Kids are a great joy. I am a few years from being a grandad myself as my eldest hasn’t even hit his teens. Not sure how I’ll feel to be a GP…
All the best to the new mom n dad (is it their first? big change, eh?)
November 8th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Thanks! no it’s her second, I have never been able to spell that word, you know I was under the care of nuns the first six grades and even they couldn’t teach me to spell, none of my kids can either, must be junetic.
on being a grandpa, you deny it for a couple months, then you spend the afternoon with the kid and send it home with mom when it gets fussy, after that you say I’M A GRANDPA!!!
November 8th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
hope you didn’t have junetic trademarked
November 9th, 2007 at 5:03 am
See, Knarly – Inky was alright all along. There really wasn’t anything to get upset about.
November 10th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Well, it looks like no one is going enlighten themselves (a little liberal jargon there) enough to listen to an hour of good talk radio I’ll give you the highlights. I’m not surprised no one listened to it, just a little disappointed. It does reinforce my opinion that liberals really don’t want to know the truth, that would be too hard. They just want to have their biases reinforced by whatever means are available, the truth is best but in the absence of truth, distortions or lies will work. Thanks for helping me out. I want to get this in since JBC is starting to bury this thread.
The film makers are Debbie and Rick, they went to Flint to get information on Michael Moore for a biographical documentary, after they were there for a while they kept hearing stories of how he had made up so much of his film Roger and Me, including a fake news report that was completely manufactured, it wasn’t even an out of context cut and paste. Now remember they are both “lefties”, Debbie’s words and support his politics.
In Roger and Me he tries to track Roger Smith down at the yacht club and the polo club, Smith belonged to neither, and Moore knew this. Moore met Smith on camera twice, yet he says in his film Smith avoided him.
Larry Secca, I believe is his name, Larry is a friend of Moore’s, Larry used a thousand dollars of Democratic funds for Moore’s defense when he was being kicked off the school board. So Moore goes up to Larry at a party and asked Larry if he will tell the cameras how good life is in Flint to counteract the Forbes article that claimed Flint was the worst place in America to live. So Larry gives this glowing speech. Moore edits it with scenes of unemployed workers and makes it look like the upper crust of Flint are partying while people are being laid off. In reality this party was a benefit for battered women in which tens of thousands of dollars were raised.
He was fired from Mother Jones after just a few months because he was too unreliable.
At 16 he would hold press conferences. At that time he said that if you tell the media a lie enough they will believe you, who does that sound like?
He shows Reagan having lunch with auto workers in Flint, he makes you think it was in 1986 during the layoffs, but it was in reality in 1980 before he was president
He went to Toronto and showed a neighborhood where one door was locked, but all the rest were unlocked, showing that Canada is so much safer that you don’t have to lock your door. Debbie and Rick talked to the film crew and they said 40% of the doors they checked were unlocked, do the math, so 60% were. Rick said if you check locks on a sunny afternoon in the summer, many will be unlocked because people are in the yard working, check in the winter, many more will be locked.
They got suspicious 4 months into filming when they met Dave Barber, he told them that he had “acted” in a lot of Moore’s films, he said he played a news anchor for Moore in one movie, Moore gave him a script and everything.
Rosen made many of these same points in an article on March 16, 1990. Seventeen years ago. Rosen has had Moore on his show twice.
He sandbagged Charlton Hesston. When Hesston was in the beginning stages of dementia Moore went to his house and said he was a reporter for the NRA. Charlton agreed to be interviewed the following day. After a spell Moore asks him why he was in Cincinnati (?) for an NRA rally the day or week after a young girl was killed by another youngster. Now Hesston probably can’t remember the event anyway but according to Debbie, he never lets him answer. In reality Hesston made his appearance 2 months after the killing at a get out the vote rally.
In 911 he shows Bush saying “some people call you the elites, but I call you my base” turns out this was at a dinner where politicians make fun of themselves, at this same dinner AlGore made the statement that he invented the internet.
So there you go.
November 10th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
‘enlighten’?
after reading a double handful of great sage and angry crank Mike Rosen’s ‘writings’ (rantings really), I don’t care to darken my soul with his peculiar brand of hateful rwnj (audio) drivel.
hey shcb, why don’t you go see sicko , then go home and and watch an inconvenient truth and loose change? why? because you already know you disagree with everything these polemics have to discuss. Rush told you so.
Al Gore did indeed help make the Information Superhighway a reality (he helped get the funding, just like his daddy did with the superhighways that carry cars). He never claimed to invent it (tho rwnjs everywhere love to howl about this, see above post). And if you can’t see the diseased incontinent elephant in the room when shrub smirks “some people call you the elites, but I call you my base” Then you really DO need a dokter ;-)
The have mores have the ‘o ye of little brains’ crowd completely bamboozled.
rwnj your “truths” are angry subjective partisan screeds… why bother to ‘debate’ an extremist who fills their head with such nonsense?
November 10th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
So we have two lefty’s and one righty being very specific in detailing Moore’s lies, I haven’t subjected myself to his films, tell me where they are wrong.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
shcb,
They are not wrong, their facts are correct, their frame of reference, it’s that which is wrecked.
To pick one Moore film, most would agree, Farenhiet 911 is the must-see.
The reason for this: yes insights deep; but, the pinnacle? Humour that’s bliss.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Monty Python in Iraq:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si6CHruMn7c
November 10th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
To be fair, I don’t think Michael Moore was trying to prove or suggest that 100% of the people in Toronto do not lock their doors. This was in Bowling for Columbine, and it was a truly comedic presentation, it gets lost in the telling – you have to see it. The gist of it was that he walked up to people’s houses, opened the door slightly and called in “yoohooo, anybody home?” It was FUNNY to see different people’s reactions. His point was clear – even though he did not state this – that if you tried this stunt across the border in Detroit, well, actually you wouldn’t try it in Detroit because there’s a good chance you’d be shot multiple times through the door before you got to say “yoohooo”.
As for the Roger and Me thing, I think 2 things. First, it was his first big independent documentary & Moore probably took a lot of poetic licence that was not warranted (a poetic license that he is more careful not to take in later films); and second, I think it is explained very well in the wiki link that I provided earlier:
As for the Charlton Heston thing, I thought it was poorly done (in bad taste), not very funny and a whole lot sad. However, early stages of dementia or not, Mr. Heston proved himself to Moore’s cameras and to the world that he (Heston) was a prick rather than a gentleman.
As for Bush’s base being elites, I think Moore presented it in the movie fairly as something Bush stated in a self-roasting manner and the audience’s laughter reinforced that, but it also suggested something deeper, like it wouldn’t BE funny if there wasn’t some element of truth in it. Enkidu in his cryptic way already said that (but more succinctly and accurately than I just did):
shcb, you state:
I can think of only a few people off the top of my head, George W. Bush talking about repeating things to catapult the propaganda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGBuRitvoyg
and Donald Rumsfeld talking about Iraq using the Joseph Goebbel’s recipe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56SarVzh1K0
November 10th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
To be fair, I don’t think Michael Moore was trying to prove or suggest that 100% of the people in Toronto do not lock their doors. This was in Bowling for Columbine, and it was a truly comedic presentation, it gets lost in the telling – you have to see it.
The gist of it was that he walked up to people’s houses, opened the door slightly and called in “yoohooo, anybody home?” It was FUNNY to see different people’s reactions. His point was clear – even though he did not state this – that if you tried this stunt across the border in Detroit, well, actually you wouldn’t try it in Detroit because there’s a good chance you’d be shot multiple times through the door before you got to say “yoohooo”.
As for the Roger and Me thing, I think 2 things. First, it was his first big independent documentary & Moore probably took a lot of poetic licence that was not warranted (a poetic license that he is more careful not to take in later films); and second, I think it is explained very well in the wiki link that I provided earlier:
As for the Charlton Heston thing, I thought it was poorly done (in bad taste), not very funny and a whole lot sad. However, early stages of dementia or not, Mr. Heston proved himself to Moore’s cameras and to the world that he (Heston) was a prick rather than a gentleman.
As for Bush’s base being elites, I think Moore presented it in the movie fairly as something Bush stated in a self-roasting manner and the audience’s laughter reinforced that, but it also suggested something deeper, like it wouldn’t BE funny if there wasn’t some element of truth in it. Enkidu in his cryptic way already said that (but more succinctly and accurately than I just did):
shcb, you state:
I can think of only a few people off the top of my head, George W. Bush talking about repeating things to catapult the propaganda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGBuRitvoyg
and Donald Rumsfeld talking about Iraq using the Joseph Goebbel’s recipe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56SarVzh1K0
November 11th, 2007 at 6:40 am
But from what I understand, and I have never seen his movies, but from what I understand, he says they are documentaries, he get awards for documentaries and doesn’t say, “I can’t accept this, my flick was a comedy”. At one point in the interview Mike asked Rick and Debbie what their definition of a documentary was, and they said it was ok for it to be a biased, advocacy piece even humorous as long as it was true. For instance, no matter how untasteful the Hesston piece was, where he crossed the line from documentary to whatever it is he does is when he says Hesston was there a short time after the murder instead of two months. Rick (the one in the interview, not me) also made the point that TV, LB and I have made, that once you start messing with chronology in films like this you can take a bunch of facts that by themselves are true and turn it into a statement that is not true. The Pelosi piece a few threads above is a good example. Now that doesn’t mean editing isn’t sometimes appropriate. Someone may start to make a point, go off on a tangent and then come back to that point for instance. But in the CNN edit, they took a specific point Pelosi was making and turned it into a generic statement. Now you and I will have opposing views of what she said in the uncut version, but that choice should be left to us. Moore manipulates it, which is fine if he is billing his films as spoofs, but he isn’t. more dangerous is that most people aren’t taking them as spoofs, as you evidently are now, they see them as legitimate sources of information. I am glad to see you no longer thing of them that way.
Since the overwhelming majority of documentary film makers have integrity these two are worried that this type of film making will lead to people not having any more faith in documentaries than a normal Hollywood entertainment film.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:19 am
You really do not understand. Any person seeing his films will realize that he uses humour to make very serious points, points that are sooooo depressing that it is amazing the way he can inject humour into it and make the point even stronger.
Analyse it all you like, but you’ll never “get it” – you’ll never be right, unless you can view the irony, satire and ridiculousness of the humor first hand. Bowling for Columbine is the classic, but feel free to turn it off when the Heston bit appears – I don’t think it added anything except a sense of sadness for Heston who met his match with this iconoclast.
By the way, isn’t there a word for someone who critiques others without viewing their works, and ignorantly repeats what others say without any comprehension of the context or lack of relevance of their criticism? Something like an ignorant parrot, stupid dufus, *moran* or just another talking head shill.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:53 am
By the way, just so you have a teensy weensy bit of idea about the utter lack of context of your criticisms: in all that you have said you have touched upon about half of one percent of the content in any single one of his films. From someone who has seen two of his films I have only partially acknowledged one aspect of your poorly aimed criticisms, the Hesston thing. In contrast, I’d like to hear you argue against his points about blacks as portrayed in the media, as lampooned in Bowling for Columbine: you’d get real quiet real fast.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Then he needs to start introducing himself as a satirist and not a documentary filmmaker. I have said I haven’t seen his movies and that denies me a little credibility in this matter, I have been very careful to say “this is so and so who have seen his movies says, what is wrong with their statements”. Evidentially you don’t disagree with what they have said.
In the interview, Debbie says that she had always gone to his movies and thought they were good. Since they fit her stereotypes and since she agreed with his politics she assumed as you did that most of what he was saying was true, but he was presenting it in a unique fashion. So she was duped, and she is in the business. After really researching him she found he is just flat out lying in many cases. Unless of course he categorized his films as fiction.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:40 am
However this debate pans out, let me just say that it is good to see everyone so back in form. About ten posts ago, everyone was being so false and chummy, it was like a bunch of little kids trying to convince their parents they could all get along so Santa Claus would come. This is much more like it.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Whatever his pros or cons, and he racks up in both columns, Michael Moore is a has-been. Nobody ever brings him up anymore except right-wing radio hosts who need a commie boogie man and chat room left wingers who still need a loudmouth to make their points for them. Did anybody besides Rush Limbaugh go see “Sicko?” He and Bill Bennett seem to be the only ones who thought it was a big deal.
Do I agree with a lot of the points Moore tried to make in a film such as “Bowling For Columbine?” Yes. Do I trust his methods and his willingness to prove those points without resorting to sensationalism and distortion? Fuck, no, nor would anybody else with a brain.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
We aim to please. I’m just glad Knarly has avoided 911…..dot com.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
just for kicks I should see Bowling for Columbine since it happened in this area. Is there much about Columbine in the movie or is mostly just in the title?
November 11th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
There’s quite a bit about Columbine, of course. The film deals with what forces in society Moore feels might have contributed to a national climate which might have spawned such a tragedy. Even if you don’t agree with a lot of his opinions on the matter, he does assemble some compelling arguments – just don’t take all of them at face value. Moore’s historical take or the NRA, for instance is complete bosh, and the idea that the Columbine shooters were somehow encouraged by the subliminal influence of nuclear warheads being shipped in and out of their town while they were asleep (the rest of you know I’m not making this up) is weird in the extreme. You have to give it to Moore that his film does raise some very serious issues regarding American gun culture, race and urban violence – it’s just that is a better idea to investigate these issues yourself after viewing “Bowling,” and leave a lot what Moore has to say about them in the theatre.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Thanks, here are a bunch of ifs that would have to come together for me to see it. If I feel like spending 10 bucks for 15 minutes of entertainment, since that is probably all I could stand, if I can make it more that 15 minutes, and if I am just that bored. Does he ever make the point that maybe these kids were just crazy?
One thing that is a bit interesting that was only local was the day after the paper was wall to wall coverage as you can imagine. One of the papers found a neighbor of one of the parents that was willing to talk and they said something to the effect that “they are just normal people, they are both very liberal….” He then went on to describe what they did for a living and said the wife volunteered at some shelter or such. That was the only reference to them being liberal I ever saw. Some time before or after another kid in the South had killed someone and they media went crazy that his grandpa had taught him to shoot.
The thing that got this community was that these kids could amass the weapons including bombs in their basement and the parents knew nothing. This included notes and writings and other weird behavior. Basic over permissiveness. If the kids were just plain crazy nothing probably would have made a difference. We had a kid, Nathan Dunlap I think was his name that walked into a Chuckie Cheese and killed everyone, I don’t think they ever found a motive other than a simple robbery.
November 11th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
“Crazy” doesn’t enter into “Bowling for Columbine.” If those kids were just “crazy,” then Micheal Moore wouldn’t have had a movie. You can’t construct a social critique around “crazy.” You can’t hang your own politics on “crazy” and you can’t use “crazy” as a platform to scold people who you feel need to be blamed for the incident, but weren’t directly involved, and certainly can’t be blamed for “crazy.” For the whole Michael Moore “thing” to work, these had to have been fairly normal kids who were acted on by some personified outside force.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
My favorite part of Bowling4C was the little cartoon about the Protestants coming to America.
By the way, shcb, for $1.99 you can rent a CD. I doubt it is still playing in a theatre, even in your neck of the woods ;-p
If you see it then maybe you would understand that his films are documentaries, but might be a little difficult to categorize, they are more or less documentaries – less than National Geographic was a nature program but MORE than Jon Stewart’s Daily is news. In any event, probably one of his movies contains more valuable insights than 12 hours of Mike Rosen.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Knarly,
I doubt Moore holds a candle to Rosen, actually I know he doesn’t , I heard one the two interviews Rosen did with him. No contest. Molly Ivans and Nina Totenberg didn’t fair much better, Nina hung up on him because he insisted on asking her questions, the nerve. With Molly they ended the session 15 minutes early because it was just too sad to continue. When he interviewed Dan Rather he asked Dan why he refers to it as a tax cut sometimes and a tax rate cut others and Rather said that his audience wasn’t smart enough to know the difference and the Republicans call it a rate cut and the Democrats call it a tax cut, so he just uses both to keep everyone happy. Too bad you can’t hear some of his shows. His background is an economist. You two have something in common.
Lb,
The liberals always talk about the Industrial Military Machine, but they have made an industry out of their causes as well, trashing the current Republican in office is Moore’s niche market.
November 11th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
The Bush years have been his most lucrative, certainly. He didn’t get nearly as much press when he was criticizing Bill Clinton over what Moore termed a loss of jobs in every sector outside of the service industries during the 1990’s.
I think Knarly hits the nail on the head as to what so many people have against Moore’s movies: not even his supporters can decide how much of them are to be taken at face value, and how worthwhile any of them ultimately are depends upon how willing you are to make excuses for them, based on how much they seem to articulate opinions you already had before you saw the movie. If you go in feeling like Michael Moore is right, you cut him slack on the particulars of his arguments because you trust his conclusions. If not, there are certainly holes to be punched. This is not to completely discredit Moore, or to call him a liar, or any of that – but it must be said that there has to be a better way to get across the points Moore and his fans want to get across.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Sure, understand when I call him a liar it is only because he presents his films as documentaries. I hate to repeat myself but I think it bears repeating in this case. I know some of his facts are true but when they are presented in deceptive chronology it gives the viewer a distorted view. This is the same thing the folks here say Bush did in our lead up to the war, and yet they are willing to give Moore a pass. Without rehashing that whole debate again I think the difference is that sure, the administration enhanced the points in their favor and downplayed the points that went contrary to what they wanted to do, but that is what any advocate does. But I don’t think they told anything that they knew for a fact was untrue. Moore does. I know the two are on vastly different scales of importance, I just find it interesting.
I think this thread is about finished but one final point, there is something about people like Knarly, and I don’t mean this personally, I’m just using him as an example, but they seem to need a more complicated answer to questions than is necessary. As you said a couple posts ago Moore feeds this need. The kids were crazy, 19 Arabs crashed planes into some buildings, there are evil people in this world, mistakes are made in war, sometimes it’s just that simple.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
love the talking bullet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBHtjZmSpw
I think the dog at the end has a LAWS rocket.
Purely for hunting purposes, of course!
Frankly I think it is pathetic that rwnj has so many string opinions about Michael Moore’s polemics without having ever watched any of them. I read your rwnj ranter Mike (nucking futs) Rosen, but I will not give such a extremist my email address just to listen to him rant. I don’t want him counting me as a listener or fan in any way.
I wonder, I am sure we will be hit again during Hillary’s 8 year Presidency: will all you rwnjs loudly proclaim your support for our war president when it is Hillary? no way… you freaks will just go back to bombing Federal buildings and shooting anything that scares you (which is quite a lot judging by your posts).
November 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
‘string opinions’
heh
should be “strong opinions”
not used to my new iMac kbrd
November 12th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
enkidu, “string opinions” made sense to me: an infinite number of opinions strung along in a row, bending and curving usually according to what Mike Rosen thinks, but always following the simplest path. by the way, thanks for the pilgrim video, but I liked it better the first time I guess due to the way it was sandwiched between more serious segments – the contrast was hilarious.
shcb, so simple explanations make the most sense? That means Roosevelt had no idea the Japanese were sailing to Hawaii and was not watching the Empire’s military moves closely even though the USA was enforcing an embargo on Japan, the Gulf of Tonkin was just a communication screw-up, Watergate was nothing but the imaginings of vindictive democrats, the CIA never administered LSD and other drugs in mind contol experiments that got way out of hand, and since then have been doing nothing nasty along the same lines, and the torture conducted over the last few years is, how did you explain it a few months ago? Oh yeah, I think you said it was highschool hijinks or something like that, and that the “privates” involved would be duly disciplined. No room in your simple world to get the Attorney General to redefine torture, no effort by the administration to gain amnesty for war crimes relating to any administration act post 911, nope, the simple explanation is that it was just a few out of control GI’s up to silly highschool hijinks.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Enkidu doesn’t like to hear extremists rant.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
That’s just a fun thing to type. Enkidu doesn’t like to hear extremists rant.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
You know Knarly, both you and SHCB can be right. Just because some things are a conspiracy doesn’t mean everything is, any more than saying some things have simple explanations means there are no valid conspiracy theories. Certainly, Columbine and 9-11 are two different animals, even if you believe 9-11 was what you believe it to be.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Surely, for those that have watched Bowling for Columbine, you guys thought that a bank that gives you a new gun when you open a checking acount was rather funny, in a sad sort of way, didn’t you?
November 12th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Fahrenheit 9/11 cost $6 million and has grossed just shy of $120 million
that is 20X the investment
it has been out for 3.5 years
Sicko cost $9 million to make and has grossed $25 million in 4 months
currently 3X the investment
it has been out for just 1/3 of a year
When any of you rightwing nutjobs make 20X your investment, you let us know.
Oh that is right, I forgot, facts (and especially math) have a left wing (islamonazicommie) bias.
November 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I think that is why I said “sometimes it is just that simple.”
How much did old Joe Kennedy make bootlegging liquor? I don’t begrudge Moore for making money any more that Bruce Willis, it’s just that Willis has a disclaimer at the beginnig of the movie that says it is fiction.
November 12th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Actually, math is fairly neutral. I could use the same money argument to argue the superiority of Rush Limbaugh over Air America, since Rush has been a consistent financial success, while the Air America has courted bankruptcy over and over again for years. But then I’d sound as dumb as you do right now.
Don’t have an ROTC building to firebomb or something?
November 12th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Leftbehind,
whatever pills you started taking the last few days, keep taking them. You are nicer, making some sense, and funnier.
So both shcb and I can both be right, it’s just that he gets to pick which issues have the long convoluted explanations and which are simple? SHCB is like: “Bush never lied, he just deceives or repeats deceptions and that’s ok, everyone does it!; But Moore is a fuckin liar because some people on Mike Rosen told me he picks his facts and besides Knarly says he uses humor and ridiculous sight gags to make his points more entertaining and that’s just not allowed in a documentary. Moore makes me mad, he claims to make documentaries but knarly says they are funny so that proves Moore is a liar he should come clean and tell everyone he makes comedies.” Sheesh, what a bunch of crybabies.
Northernlite – The gun/bank scene was funny, in a sad way. I seem to recall that Moore critics shat all over that gun thing, claiming that by the time Moore got to filming the free gun with every new account special was over, or something like that, and they re-enacted it for the movie, therefore it was just another one of what they call Moore’s faked facts. Again, you have to enter the twilight zone of rwnj logic to understand that one, perhps shcb will explain.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I think the issue with the bank scene had to do with whether or not the guns were actually in the bank, as suggested in the film, and whether or not guns were given out without background checks, which the film insists to be the case, although the bank this this was not how things really happened. These are quibbles when one is dealing in Greater Truths, to be sure, but the bank scene has been the subject of some controversy- controversy that is at least worth hearing. Moore has his points, but he’s hardly more trustworthy than George Bush, when you get right down to it. Again, I think Moore brings up a lot of good points in a film like “Bowling…” but he ultimately fails the issues he attempts to tackle by constructing set pieces that look great on screen, but don’t always hold up under greater scrutiny. A documentary that can only be described, by a supporter of the film, as “more or less a documentary” is, ultimately, more or less useless.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I’m willing to bet that, if you looked hard enough, you could find another documentary, made by a liberal film maker that makes many of the same points as Moore’s “Bowling…” without as many dubious “wow” moments, such as the bank and the unlocked doors in Canada, and it would ultimately serve the gun control cause far better. It might not be as cute, and it probably doesn’t have a cartoon in the middle of it for those youngsters with lower attention spans, but I’ll bet it’s out there, and I’ll bet the talk radio pundits that found fault with “Bowling…” would have a hell of time refuting it.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Here’s a link to an interesting article by Roger Ebert, a personal friend of Michael Moore, who ultimately defends his work, but who does have this to say:
“The pitfall for Moore is not subjectivity, but accuracy. We expect him to hold an opinion and argue it, but we also require his facts to be correct. I was an admirer of his previous doc, the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine,” until I discovered that some of his “facts” were wrong, false or fudged.
In some cases, he was guilty of making a good story better, but in other cases (such as his ambush of Charlton Heston) he was unfair, and in still others (such as the wording on the plaque under the bomber at the Air Force Academy) he was just plain wrong, as anyone can see by going to look at the plaque.
Because I agree with Moore’s politics, his inaccuracies pained me, and I wrote about them in my Answer Man column. Moore wrote me that he didn’t expect such attacks “from you, of all people.” But I cannot ignore flaws simply because I agree with the filmmaker. In hurting his cause, he wounds mine…”
freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1157177/posts
November 12th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
In another article, Ebert looks at the “gun in the bank” scene, presenting both sides of the debate:
rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030406/ANSWERMAN/304060303/1023
On this same page, Ebert also echoes shcb’s call that Moore put some sort of disclaimer on his films:
I sometimes suspect that Moore takes as his motto these words by Huck Finn about an earlier book in which Huck figured: “That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
Moore told me: “I don’t know what category to put my films in. They’re like a film version of the op-ed page, and not a traditional documentary. They are cinematic essays presenting my point of view. I may be right or wrong, but if I state something as a fact, I need the viewers to trust that those facts are correct.”
The debate about specific facts in “Bowling for Columbine” has grown in such intensity and attention to detail that it requires the dedication of a Kennedy assassination buff. The Answer Man recommends you read both of the sites above, as well as michaelmoore.com, where he says he is posting a point-by-point reply to his critics, complete with documents, affidavits, etc. I also recommend that Moore preface his next film with the quote from Mark Twain.”
November 12th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Thanks for that LB, so Knarly, I’m intrigued by the Roosevelt knew the Japs were coming remark. We had an oil embargo on the Japs but I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a ring of ships around the country to stop their vessels from coming or going at will. My reasoning is that the bulk of our capital ships were getting the hell bombed out of them on 7 December, not ringing Japan. I’m sure we had some destroyers and subs watching them, but they had some patrol boats and subs watching our destroyers and subs. Remember, radar was in the very early stages of deployment. Tracking ships on the high seas was mostly done with a good set of eyes and intuition. The Bismarck evaded the entire British navy by steaming in a reverse circle. He probably would have made it to the safety of France if his captain had not decided to make a half hour phone call back to base.
To say the President had to know the Japanese were going to attack is preposterous. To be able to track a task force in the open seas in that day and age, especially one that took as round about a route as Nagumo chose was extremely difficult.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Alex Jones is all over this one, too.
prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_022403_pearl.html
I’m especially fond of the assertation that FDR forced Hitler to declare war by allowing Pearl Harbor to occur. What a shame that such an inherently peaceful guy was tricked into a costly, disasterous war by the mechanations of the sinister Americans.
Another page at Infowars, which lashes out at “hit pieces” aimed at Alex Jones and the 9-11 Truth movement, further explores American complicity in Pearl Harbor, and provides a link to the “McCollum Memo,” a pre-war document that “proves” that the peace loving Japanese were provoked into attacking Hawaii. True, the McCollum Memo outlines Roosevelt’s plan to manuever the Japanese into forcing the US into the War in the Pacific, but it’s hardly a “smoking gun” – unless you believe that 1) US involvement in the War was not inevitable 2) the Japanese had no motive in attacking the U.S. beyond the scheming of the Roosevelt administration 3) the Japanese would have taken over the Pacific while their German allies took over Europe and then left the U.S. alone and 4) Japanese domination of the Pacific / Nazi domination of Europe would have been a good thing for the U.S.
infowars.com/articles/sept11/911_hit_pieces_get_just_plain_stupid_1.htm
November 13th, 2007 at 8:11 am
So it seems the prevailing theme is “America bad rest of world… well… America bad” and they say my thought process lacks nuance.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:17 am
ah yes, great sage and mighty political mover Alex (whackjob) Jones is who I look to for up-to-the-minute wingnuttery of a lefty/libertarian bent. I understand dKos also has a brain implant that Alex controls from Al Gore’s moonbase (via the Intertubes, of course).
;-)
Have I connected all the dots for the rwnj anger management crowd?
Oh wait, I haven’t blamed Bill Clinton yet… let’s see… oh yeah, when Bill E Bob was giving a speech recently, someone heckled him about 9/11 being an inside job, Clinton’s response was: how dare you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEGnllIW0PY
I bet Bill would change his tune if the government ever turns over all the emails, docs and phone recordings from the shrubco era. But these guys watched Nixon get skewered for some petty recordings (o and the break ins etc) Dick Cheney learned one lesson from the Nixon era: never get caught. The neocon warmachine will just paint this turd of a presidency red white and blue then polish it to a shine for decades to come (just like the Reagan ‘legacy’).
Hey looks like shrubco’s one moderate success is unravelling: how is Pakistani president Busharef doing these days? Seems to me these guys already have the atomic bomb (perhaps a few dozen?), resurgent Taliban, hosting Osama bin Forgotten, angry radicals, right wing dictator, martial law, the works!
heck of a job bushie!
November 13th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I’m sure that in some bizarre way, all of…that was somehow on topic and had something to do with something somebody was talking about on this thread. I’ve never gotten the impression that Inky actually reads anything anyone around here writes – and I don’t really expect him to anymore – but I’ve gotten the sinking feeling he’s actually stopped reading his own posts as he types them. At least he was able to get through 21 lines without mentioning gay sex once, which is a positive step for him right now.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Here’s a link to a youtube video detailing the Bush Administration’s plans to prepare for an impending war with extraterrestrial enties that have been impacting world events for the last 60 years or so. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything being discussed here, but it’s certainly no more of a “re-direct” than Inky’s last post. Besides, it’s a really cool video:
youtube.com/watch?v=uj1nRDgmks0
November 13th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Enkidu,
Sheesh, we had almost run out of topics and then you HAD to go and mention Busharef in Pakistan? Next thing you’ll be shining the spotlight on $100,000 wired to Mohamud Atta by Pakistan’s top ISI guy a few days before he met with top insiders like Porter Gross on the morning of September 11, 2001 to watch their events unfold… http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO308C.html
Shcb, yeah, too bad the brass in 1941 spent all their resources on sentry duty and counter espionage around the Honolulu base and forgot that potential enemies might actually approach by means other than foot.
But who could ever have imagined back then that an imperial naval fleet would actually use airplanes and modified torpedoes to attack ships in a harbour? Why Kristy Almity, that’d be as ridiculous as suicide terrorists hijacking airplanes and crashing them into buildings, I mean no-one could EVER foresee something like that (according to Bush, Rice, et al despite actual war games playing out nearly identical scenarios at the exact same time.) I mean come on, they told us it was unimaginable so we have to believe that it was unimaginable, right?
Also, just because two Japanese submarines were encountered near Pearl Harbour (and sunk?) shortly before the attack, that could not have been a sign that the enemy was scouting the area for an impending attack force, naaaah. It must have been coincidence, the sub captains were probably just checking out the tanned babes on the beaches. It’s like all the 2001 FBI staff and field agents’ warnings (see Sibel Edmunds and see Able Danger), nay, pleas for action is more like it, that were repressed by seniors who were never held accountable for their ____ (treason, mistake, incompetence, dereliction of duty, or etc.)
Yup, too bad that in all the history of naval warfare the concept of patrol boats had not been invented by the 1940’s. Perhaps a few strategically placed eyes or competent staff at radar stations might have seen that Japanese armada approaching the main base at the center of US Pacific operations.
Wonder why there were no orders to have effective patrols so that the fleet would have advance warning to prepare for an attack? The Japanese must have invented the military sneak attack on December 7 , 1941 , shifty eyes you know, that must be it. Anyway, after ten inquiries into the event (seven or so of which were useless due to the lies told within to cover supposed top secret info., that was subsequently revealed – along with the lies, by subsequent official inquiries) we will likely never know the truth. Some historians like John Toland, will do some painstaking research and get it published, but that will be criticized, fairly, because there is no smoking gun. I mean it’s not like there were 9 shots fired from a handgun that holds 6 (7?) bullets; and it is certainly not like something flew into perhaps the heaviest defended building in the world (ringed by a myriad of surveillance cameras) and the authorities withhold the video evidence and do not comment on the sudden 10x jump in background radiation downwind; nor is it like large pools of inexplicable molten metal witnessed and photographed below three collapsed buildings.
There, are you satisfied shcb? For all I know, Roosevelt likely had no advance knowledge and no inkling that something like this might happen, and John Toland might be a fool. On the other hand, declassified documents show MK Ultra was real and very sick, and evidence has come forward over the years to indicate such activities did not end when they stopped calling it by that name. Likewise, Gulf of Tonkin is now well documented, and you would not last ten minutes as a Guantanamo inmate before admitting your grandfather trained some of the other inmates how to use box cutters while conducting his FedEx training sessions.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Your last two paragraphs try to make connections between at least three separate issues that, even if you’re right about any one of them, have no connection each other. You and Inky both need to try and calm down and stay on one subject.
MK Ultra? Isn’t that where Canada allowed the US to experiment with LSD on Canadian mental patients? What does that have to do with either Pearl Harbor or 9-11? No wait, I’ll bet if I go to infowars.com right now, I can find some Alex Jones article or another that will explain everything.
November 13th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
It’s all one big web. Beware the spiders.
November 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Just kidding (about the spiders – the webs are real.) However, now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m curious what you find over at your Alex Jones site and am looking forward to your report from the dark side.
As to what ties it all together, you have my sympathies as I realize how difficult it is for you to keep track of more than one thought at a time. You can refer back to my November 12, 2007 at 1:34 pm post, as my remarkably coherent, comprehensive and concise reply was to shcb’s fragmented response to that Nov. 12 post.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I find Moore’s films result in people “attacking the messenger, ignoring the message”, but for the most part, I think Moore highlights serious problems in society and gets people talking. That can’t be such a bad thing.
However, a 300 pound man preaching about health care and being healthy is sort of funny.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
America bad, bad America bad.
Why did Hitler spend so much on the Atlantic wall when all you had to do was paratroop behind it? Why did the Japanese spend so much on battleships when aircraft carriers and submarines were the future of naval warfare. Why did Rommel go to spend time with his family when the Allies were going to attack Normandy the next day, do you actually believe he didn’t know the date the largest armada in the history of the world was going sail? Come on, he had to know. The story is that no one wanted to wake Hitler, are we really supposed to believe that, Hitler was awake, he knew the attack was taking place but held the Panzers back because of sweetheart deal he had worked out with Halliburton. Want proof? Go to http://www.shcb.blogspot.com the Wizard, the world’s expert on this little known fact will have an article on it in a few days if I get the chance.
Why did Kurita turn the Yamato around and run for Japan, there was nothing but a few tin cans separating him from Halsey and the main invasion force invading Leyte. Someone must have paid him off, there is no way he could not have known he was a short distance from what would have surely been Japan’s most decisive victory. Speaking of Halsey, why did he chase those old aircraft carriers when the Yamato was coming up behind him, he left the troops exposed to those 18 inch guns, rumor has it Howard Hughes had something to do with that decision. It was the only bad decision Halsey made in his career, are we to believe there wasn’t something fishy there?
Why did the Japanese not bomb the oil depots or the dry docks or the subs at Pearl, surely they knew battleships were a thing of the past. They just wanted the industrial/military cabal in Japan to have full employment making millions for those fat cats at the top.
All mistakes look stupid in retrospect if you can’t put them in context. And no, there were no conspiracies in any of these cases either.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Knarly – MY Alex Jones site? The only time I usually get over there is when I follow links you post here.
Enkidu says that he thinks that Alex Jones is a “wack job,” so I suppose he thinks anyone who spends a lot of time on Infowars.com must be a wack job, too – so I wouldn’t want him to think I spend a lot of time there. He might think I’m an extremist, and he really has a thing against extremists. You spend a lot of time on Infowars – maybe you could go there and let me know what Alex has to say. Maybe you could read a couple pages on Infowars, then paraphrase them here and pretend the information came from somewhere else, like you usually do. That way, we can get the scoop, but Inky will think both of us are still cool.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
shcb – okay, you are a whole lot better at making up stupid conspiracies based on coincidences or 20/20 hindsight about mistakes. Yes, much better at it than myself or the historian John Toland, yes much better, our theories only seem stupid to those who blindly accept what they are told is the “expert opinion” or the “common wisdom” (history has shown that often to be lies – Gulf of Tonkin anyone?? Anyone?). Toland’s theories, may, yes, just might, be credible (after all, they held 10 Inquiries into the debacle and there were plenty of high placed naysayers about the official story at the time – they didn’t hold those inquiries because there were no unanswered questions). Your theories, however, … yes indeed, the conspiracy theories you present are infinitely stupid. Well done for a Moran.
Damn cat sat on my mouse. Where was I? Oh yeah,…
Leftbehind I don’t have prisonplanet bookmarked, I just follow links occasionally when directed there by other sources so I have not the ongoing knowledge of the site that you have shown us you possess. However, I do peruse 911blogger fairly regularly, and there is this nice little piece that sort of relates to the theme of shcb believing most anything about Pearl Harbour, or about that other “public opinion catalyzing event like Pearl Harbour” that the authorities would like him to beleive. It goes like this (kudos to the author, Tzo):
November 13th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Isn’t anyone going to dump on Enkidu for mentioning Busherriff in Pakistan??? Or castigate NL for calling Moore ironically fat (good zing, NL!)?
I think shcb should be ashamed for his 4:35 pm post, where he starts off by trashing America. For your information shcb, America is not bad and I am sickened that you of all people would continue to repeat such a hateful assertion. America is a brilliant beacon, it just needs to get back to some founding principles… hey, speaking of principles, how is Ron Paul doing? (And by the way, is Ghouliani going to be promoting any more criminals for key positions in his campaign or does he have enough already?)
November 13th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
shcb,
If you think America is so bad, perhaps you should lighten up a little and listen to funny-man George Carlin call it like he sees it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih_Xk-zrvwI
November 13th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Seriously, folks. Either keep the pointless and irritating bickering vaguely on-topic, or else cut it way, way back. I’m really getting tired of this nonsense and I’m kinda feeling like asking that a couple of you be banned.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Matt,
This thread has been going on for two weeks and well over a hundred comments, after about 15 comments all these threads stray off topic, or at least the original topic, the comments are still on topic, the thread just morphed into something else.
Carlin’s satire used to be funny but as he has gotten older he has turned into a bitter old man. Have you seen any interviews with him recently? He is just worn down, it’s just depressing. I probably disagree with Robin Williams’ politics more than Carlin’s but Williams is fun to watch on stage or in an interview even if his barbs sting a bit, but Carlin is just sad.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Yes “after about 15 comments all these threads stray off topic” is exactly the problem, not a justification for it.
I’m halting comments on this thread.