Spend some time reading the thread, will you? FOX absolutely is both more slanted, less honest about their slant, more dishonest, has less well-informed viewers, and treat their viewers like morons.
Next time you here someone talking about Benghazi, ask them were it is. When they pause, say, “Isn’t in in Kenya?”
Yeah, Kenya, that sounds right.
“Equate” does not mean the same as “contrast”.
Sorry for the really late thread bump
What scandal was there in 2006? I only know that the gun walking program “Operation Wide Receiver” *started *in 2006.
No, the “investigative portion” of Operation Wide Receiver ended in 2007. link
What she said was
[QUOTE=Rachel Maddow]
“Fast and Furious” refers to A law enforcement strategy that started during the George w. bush administration…
…now whatever you think of that style of law enforcement program and that George W. Bush administration starting it and the Obama administration continuing it…”
[/QUOTE]
Operation Fast and Furious started in 2009 under the Obama Administration. And supposedly, while they were similar programs, unlike Wide Receiver, Mexican officials were left in the dark about Fast and Furious. So this doesn’t seem to be simply a case of a law enforcement program starting under the Bush administration and just continuing on all the way through Obama’s tenure. Maddow is either being intentionally misleading for partisan reasons or unintentionally sloppy with the facts.
That said, I feel that I need to be clear and say that I don’t think that FOX and MSNBC are the same. Although I see the obvious bias in MSNBC’s reporting and commentary I still occasionally watch it and enjoy the editorial segments. I can’t watch FOX News at all unless it’s too laugh at something like the War on Christmas.
Or she isn’t dumbing it down enough for you. She didn’t say it was the same program; why would they change the name if it was the same program? She said it was the same strategy, and the same style of program, meaning gunwalking. I can see how a casual listener could get the wrong impression, but I honestly can’t see how you could quote what you quoted, and then come to that conclusion.
My problem with her is that she did dumb it down. To the point that she never mentioned the name of the other program which was Operation Wide Receiver nor did she mention that they were two separate programs at all.
No, it wasn’t the same strategy. Wide Receiver was done in cooperation with Mexican law enforcement officials. Fast & Furious was not.
[QUOTE=Rachel Maddow]
Now if you don’t know anything about the Fast & Furious thing you are forgiven. But if you have heard of it from your uncle or because you happen to be visiting from Fox, hello, I hope you will forgive me while I explain that Fast & Furious refers to a law enforcement strategy that started during the George W. Bush administration. It was a program to let some sketchy gun sales go through in the hopes that following those guns after they were sold could lead the ATF to Mexican drug kingpins that they could arrest. Now whatever you think of that style of law enforcement program and that the George W. Bush administration starting it and the Obama administration continuing it, to this militia blogger guy, to the break-their-window- break-them-now guy, this got reimagined as a conspiracy to eliminate the 2nd amendment.
[/QUOTE]
From her segment on the Fast & Furious scandal.
The basic strategy was gunwalking, both with Bush and Obama. Informing the Mexican authorities was a tactical detail, and evidently a failed one. I’m surprised Bush even considered it, since their corruption and penetration by drug cartels was notorious.
And I can add emphasis to quotes, too:
[QUOTE=Rachel Maddow]
Now if you don’t know anything about the Fast & Furious thing you are forgiven. But if you have heard of it from your uncle or because you happen to be visiting from Fox, hello, I hope you will forgive me while I explain that Fast & Furious refers to a law enforcement strategy that started during the George W. Bush administration. It was a program to let some sketchy gun sales go through in the hopes that following those guns after they were sold could lead the ATF to Mexican drug kingpins that they could arrest. Now whatever you think of that style of law enforcement program and that the George W. Bush administration starting it and the Obama administration continuing it, to this militia blogger guy, to the break-their-window- break-them-now guy, this got reimagined as a conspiracy to eliminate the 2nd amendment.
[/QUOTE]
Actually the strategies involved in both Wide Receiver and Fast & Furious were very different.
Which is most likely the reason why Operation Fast & Furious kept Mexican officials in the dark, and not as some plan to turn public opinion in favor of more gun control laws.
Good. But with or without emphasis in the quotes you can see that Maddow never mentions that there were two separate operations. Never mentions the name of the first program. Never mentions it ended in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration. Never mentions that Fast & Furious started under the Obama administration. Never mentions the differences between the two programs.
I have no problem with her debunking a flawed conspiracy theory played up by FOX News. I do have a problem when she lets her political bias get in the way of objectivity when it comes to reporting of the facts.
[QUOTE=Press Briefing by Jay Carney]
The issue here has been the operation known as Fast and Furious, and that operation is being thoroughly investigated by the Inspector General, who has access to all these documents, including the ones that you’re asking about. And when it comes to the operation itself, everything has been provided to congressional investigators. And that is really the issue, isn’t it? It is, how did this operation come about? And it originated in a field office during the previous administration. It was ended under this administration, by this Attorney General.
Q The operation began in fall 2009. The operation Fast and Furious began –
MR. CARNEY: The tactic began in the previous administration.
Q Okay, but the operation – you keep saying –
MR. CARNEY: Okay. The tactic began in the previous administration, and it was ended under this one when this Attorney General discovered it and believed it was a flawed tactic. He then referred it to the Inspector General.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t expect the White House Press Secretary to be objective in that case but I do expect it from someone like Rachel Maddow who has been known to criticize the policies of the President at times.
Jesus Christ, you’re calling her a liar because she didn’t give the entire history of both programs in her one-sentence, throw-away comment that gunwalking was not invented by Obama.
The story wasn’t about the history of the ATF, or even of Fast and Furious. The story was about Congress citing the Attorney General of the US for contempt, which grew out of some nutbar conspiracy theory that F&F was a ploy to repeal the Second Amendment.
Nobody (but you), not even the most fanatical gun nuts, cares whether the Mexican authorities were informed. All they care about was that the US government was deliberately allowing guns to be sold (indirectly) to criminals, allegedly to cause so much gun crime that the public would demand stronger gun control. That’s the “conspiracy.” And it’s a load of crap because Bush used the same IMO misguided strategy of deliberately allowing criminals to obtain guns, not because of whether or not the Mexican authorities were involved.
There were a lot of problems with both programs. A lot of dropped balls, a lot of ineptness. But the story wasn’t about that. It was about the nutball theory that caused the Attorney General to be cited for contempt for “covering up” a non-existent conspiracy.
What she said was accurate. I’m sorry she didn’t mention Bush’s program by name, and compare and contrast every facet of it with F&F, but those details aren’t important to the story. The conspiracy theory was about the strategy of gunwalking, not informing Mexican authorities, and all you need to know about how bogus the conspiracy theory is, is that Bush used gunwalking, too.
And anyone can see that it’s all part of the same package. In June of 2012, when the show aired, phony Congressional witch hunts were demanding more and more documentation on F&F because they were trying to defeat Obama. Now they’re doing the same thing with Benghazi, because they’re trying to defeat Hillary.
I made the mistake of taking you seriously, because like most people, I never took the F&F “scandal” seriously, so I hadn’t seen much rhetoric like yours. But in googling around, I see that F&F in general, and the episode of Maddow that you quoted in particular, is a huge issue among right wingnuts, e.g.
http://www.bonzerwolf.com/today/2012/6/23/liberal-fascist-rachel-maddow-explains-fast-and-furious.html
These nutbar websites sound exactly like your posts. I won’t be wasting any more time on them.
I said she was either being intentionally misleading or sloppy with the facts. And nice strawman by the way. She wasn’t talking about the tactic of gunwalking, but of a specific ATF operation.
Me personally, I was unaware of the FOX News coverage of F&F. I came across the gun-walking story at a movie site forum and the news link posted was from CBS. I would like to have her opinion on the issue of Fast & Furious not about some crazy guy that FOX News gave a mega phone to.But yeah, I agree with you that the purpose of that segment was to debunk that guys claims and the Republican accusations that it was part of some conspiracy to restrict gun rights.
You wouldn’t need to compare and contrast every facet of the two programs to say they were two different programs. And those details are important to the story. Sorry but she wasn’t accurate with the facts. But I won’t argue this with you because I already posted a portion of the transcript that speaks for itself.
I agree that the Republicans are grasping at anything to hurt Obama, the Democratic Party and Hilary. And yet they had no problem with the levels of deceit used to get the public and congress to support the Iraq War Resolution.
I made the mistake of thinking you were someone to have a good discussion with. Instead you jump to the conclusion that I believe in the conspiracy theory that FOX News advanced.
Thanks for lumping me in with “right wing nuts” and “nutbar websites”, even though I agreed with you on the levels of corruption in Mexico and said that was probably the reason why the ATF was not working with Mexican law enforcement.
[QUOTE=Me]
Which is most likely the reason why Operation Fast & Furious kept Mexican officials in the dark, and not as some plan to turn public opinion in favor of more gun control laws.
[/QUOTE]
It seems like you view things through a political filter, simplifying and reducing people and their opinions to either Left or Right. It reminds me of when I tell people about dissatisfaction with Obama for things such as the NSA spying revelation. “You didn’t have a problem when you’re heroes Bush and Cheney were doing it!” Actually I did have a problem with it back then. I didn’t vote for George W. Bush, I didn’t and don’t support the loss of our rights, and I voted against members of congress who supported the Iraq War Resolution.
I didn’t call you a right wing nut; I said your posts contain the same rhetoric on this particular issue, and they do. If you’re a flaming liberal on other issues, great, see you at the parade.
You only need to google quotes from that show to see that it’s a minor cause celebre among the political fanatics, with very clear lines drawn. You keep claiming that the transcript you quoted shows that you’re right, but stick it in google, and you’ll see that right wing sites say exactly what you did about it, while left wing sites call it a brilliant debunking of Fox. You’ll also see that Maddow went on Bill Maher’s show that week, and got into the same kind of argument with some right wing guest. The RW websites say she got schooled; the LW websites say she schooled them.
You think it’s obvious that she misled the viewers, intentionally or not. I think it’s obvious that she made a convincing case that the F&F issue was just another partisan witch hunt, and so the right is doing what they always do to muddy the waters, going after some very minor side issue and acting like it’s the most important thing in the story.
So you lumped yourself with the right wing on this one. I’m not saying you’re a teabagger; I’m not saying you’re a bad person; I’m not saying you’re dumb. I’m saying you are clinging to a position that depends on an interpretation that right wingers insist on, and that liberals don’t see. Like it or not, that makes you a right winger on this issue.
I hadn’t heard that one! I thought the actual operation was bad enough; it doesn’t need to be amplified.
(Like “Arms for Hostages.” We don’t need to imagine GHWB flying to Paris to meet secretly with Iranian representatives. What actually happened was plenty bad enough!)
Conspiracy fantasies are so damn weird!
First off, thanks for responding. I thought you were going to dismiss me with the break-their-windows guy.
So because a one group agrees with my criticism that automatically invalidates the criticism? What kind of logic is that?
And I did see Maddow on Bill Maher’s show that week. From what I remember she made some good points as well as Nick Gillespie. I felt no need to cheer lead one “side” or the other.
A very political black and white world you live in. The only way I would be considered a right winger on the Fast & Furious issue is if I came to the same conclusion they did: that Operation Fast & Furious was an elaborate plot by the Obama Administration to escalate gun violence on the border to sway publican opinion in favor of stricter gun control laws. I do NOT believe that.
Have you heard of that expression “there’s three sides to every story? Your side, the other side, and the truth”?
I knew there had to be a term for it.
*Also Known as: Bad Company Fallacy, Company that You Keep Fallacy
Description of Guilt By Association*
So because a group of global warming deniers agrees with your views that automatically invalidates my criticism?
If you’re talking about the score of the last Super Bowl, then it shouldn’t. If you’re talking about global warming, then it probably does mean that your view is not in line with the scientific consensus. In which case, just look at the scientific consensus.
The fact is that your interpretation of this is only shared by biased, far right wing groups exclusively. This is a good reason to be suspect of them. They tend to be outraged over things which aren’t very outrageous or make mountains out of the great plains. Which is what you are doing with regard to Maddow’s comments.
But we don’t just say “well, you agree with them so you must be wrong.” Instead we can see that you’re wrong because Maddow’s words in the context of what she was reporting was accurate.
Your view - shared by a side which has a habit of seeing what they want to see and delving into minutia where it is simply not prudent to do so (“she didn’t explain every last detail in her two-minute news segment, how misleading!”) - is based on the same “logic” that that group has.
And that “logic” was satisfactorily addressed well before it was revealed whose side agreed with you. Pointing it out was just icing on the cake.
On the positive side, I can repeat something I said before in this very thread when this same issue came up and was dealt with: The fact that this is the best that anti-Maddow people got is more evidence that she is very trustworthy.
Maddow is smart and honest. Nobody on Fox is either, much less both. She will be picked-apart by Fox and they will look like fools trying. The right fears her. Good.
I’ll say this: there appears to be legitimate questions to at least be asked about the Berghdal thing, but when a Fox anchor wonders on air why the guy’s dad hasn’t shaved his beard (a beard grown long because he wouldn’t shave while his son was hostage) because it makes him look like a member of the Taliban, it really makes me questions their interest in asking legitimate questions.
nm