Anti Kerry email glurge. Shall we refute?

The BBQ Pit
1

I got this in my email today. It’s obviously been around at least a week so far. Shall we pick it apart?

This was passed to me, but I can’t understand it. Maybe you can. I’m
trying to get all this political stuff straightened out in my head so
I’ll know how to vote come November. Right now, we have one guy
saying one thing. Then the other guy says something else. Who to
believe.

Lemme see; have I got this straight?

Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good…
Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad…

Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good…
Bush spends 87 billion in Iraq - bad…

Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good…
Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad…

Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian
terrorists- good…
Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator - bad…

Clinton bombs Chinese embassy - good…
Bush bombs terrorist camps - bad…

Clinton commits felonies while in office - good…
Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad…

No mass graves found in Serbia - good…
Mass graves found, but No WMD’s found in Iraq - bad…

Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good…
Economy on upswing under Bush - bad…

Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good…
Bin Laden masterminds World Trade Centers attack under Bush

  • bad…

Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good…
Bush says Saddam has nukes - bad…

Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good…
Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad…

Terrorist training in Afghanistan under Clinton - good… Bush
destroys training camps in Afghanistan - bad…

Milosevic not yet convicted - good…
Saddam turned over for trial - bad…

Ahh, it’s so confusing!

Every year an independent tax watchdog group analyzes the average tax
burden on Americans, and then calculates the “Tax Freedom Day”. This
is the day after which the money you earn goes to you, not the
government. This year, tax freedom day was April 11th. (Under Bush)
That’s the earliest it has been since 1991. It’s latest day ever was
May 2nd, which occurred in 2000. (Under Clinton)

Recently, John Kerry gave a speech in which he claimed Americans are
actually paying more taxes under Bush, despite the tax cuts. He gave
no explanation and provided no data for this claim.

Another interesting fact: Both George Bush and John Kerry
are wealthy men. Bush owns only one home, his ranch in Texas. Kerry
owns 4 mansions, all worth several million dollars. (His ski resort
home in Idaho is an old barn brought over from Europe in pieces. Not
your average A-frame).

Bush paid $250,000 in taxes this year; Kerry paid $90,000. Does that
Sound right? The man who wants to raise your taxes obviously has
figured out a way to avoid paying his own.

Pass this on. Only 16 days until the election.

2

Bill Clinton is running for president?

3

Oh, easy. Everyone knows there are only five days until the election. :smiley:

4

Well, there’s this part:
Clinton commits felonies while in office - good…
Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad…

Most of the above are let’s compare two similar things. So I guess Bush playing dress-up is felonious.

5

The first thing that catches my eye is:

The bombing of the Chinese embassy WAS bad. Did ANYONE say it was good? It was a terrible, tragic mistake.

I’m not sure what terrorist camp bombing this refers to, but if it was an actual terrorist camp, sounds good to me.

6

I’ll do some of the simple ones.

Crock’o’shit

Crock’o’shit. The Milosevic regime imploded. At no point did the US take control of Servia.

Let’s play “spot the pejorative term”

Errrrr, who said it was good? Certainly not Clinton.

Let’s pla …oh no, we’ve played that already.

WTF? This is surreal.

Wrong.

All together now…ENRONNNNNN

Reagan and Bush Mark 1 don’t grab him either - good/bad?

Now, once again, children, who can work out the difference in the actions of these Presidents?

Yep

So much ignorance and half-truths, so little time

Milosevic on trial at the moment, you ignorant fuckheads.

7

At work I have a point by point I sent to a coworker who sent the original to me. I’ll post it tomorrow, if necessary. (I fully expect to see this ripped to shreds by then, though!)

8

Gore invents internet - good. Bush invents spam - bad.

9

This should be more like
Clinton gets a blow job in the Oval Office - bad for his family, of no concern to the country …
Bush uses the war in which many innocent people died as a gimmicky political photo-op - very bad …
I guess the other items could be addressed, but I’m reminded of someone’s sig I saw a while ago, which was something like:
“Don’t argue with an idiot. Even if you win, all you’ve done is convince an idiot”

10

So much to refute…so very much to refute…but I can’t get beyond:

The idea that out of A.) rabid partisanship B.) rabid anti-Islamicism or C.) probably both, they’re willing to mischaracterize and dismiss what happened in Serbia-Croatia, is beyond disgusting.

Gee, I don’t know if any mass graves were found in Serbia…they were certainly found in Croatia, where the genocide was going on.

And I know some have made the claim that the Serbian suffered too…of course they did. But to characterize the Serbians only as “Christian” and their victims as (Muslim of course) “terrorists”…I’m speechless.

11

Wasn’t it NATO that bombed Serbia?

12

The fallacies are many, but most can be categorized under three headings:

  1. Strawman fallacy. This suggests that Democrats are saying everything Clinton did was “good” and everything Bush has done is “bad.” Many of the things listed as “Clinton: Good” are not things considered good by anyone, including Clinton.

  2. Lies. Some of the content is misleading or false. For example, the stock market crashed while Clinton was in office, but the crash was due to (a) widespread corruption where companies overvalued their stock or had inflated ratings from “independent analysts” who were actually on the payroll, and (b) naive and reactionary investors jumping on the daytrader/online investor bandwagon. Corporate malfeascence and get-rich-quick schemes are hardly the product of Clinton’s initiatives. Moreover, the so-called economic upswing is a flat-out lie.

  3. Loaded language. Use of terminology about “Clinton killing Christians on behalf of Muslim Albanian terrorists,” and “Bush liberating 25 million from a genocidal dictator,” just use loaded language to misrepresent the situations.

13

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1414735.stm

It’s amazing what you can find, with ten seconds of Google.

14

I got that glurge back in August under the title “Why I Hate Politics” from friends who confuse my unhappiness with Bush as being a “Liberal,” and who want to “save” me from the “libruls.”

My reply was simply “There are about as many misrepresentations and fallacies in that list as there are punctuation marks. If you’re so easily convinced by people who forward emails like that, then you have bigger problems than confusing my political stance with ‘liberal.’ Writing internet email screeds is about as easy as scrawling on a bathroom wall.”

15

I was going to point that out, too. At least Clinton decided to use our treaty organizations and use policies in place to enforce world law.

Sam

16

Good for you bughunter. I’m a Republican and I voted for Bush, but this type of stuff bugs the hell out of me. A “political” email forwarded to a bunch of people is still SPAM.

17

who needs mass graves when you’ve got containers?

What a shame that even with the “information superhighway,” some people still go to bed ignorant.

18

“Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good…
Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad…”

Yes, that pretty much says it.

19

Here’s another take. As I remember, we didn’t go to war in Iraq because there were mass graves: we invaded because our President, Vice-President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense told us there were WMDs. As far as they or previous administrations (both Republican and Democrats), who gave a flying handshake if Saddam was killing his own, or Iranians, or Kurds?

Clinton stepped into Yugoslavia (with UN/allied support) to counter a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing/genocide.-good.

Bush supporters are using this humanitarian rationale for the Iraq invasion * post hoc*-bad.

20

whoops: my stupid- I confused NATO with the UN.