Right which makes him a bad debator, idiot, or misinformed. That does not change the fact that you still acted like a jerk.
That’s actually pretty funny, treis. Because calling someone an idiot does go beyond the bounds of Great Debates.
december, do you really not get the point? Or are you simply avoiding it? Neither works here in GD, kid.
Try to pay attention this time:
McCarthy had no knowledge of Communists in the State Department when he made that claim. He yanked numbers out of the air. In short, he lied. Subsequent events do not exonerate him of that.
Gingrich had no knowledge of drug users in the Clinton Administration. He yanked numbers out of the air. In short, he lied. Subsequent events do not exonerate him of that.
Now, do not try our patience by using the word “McCarthyism” again in this forum until you can demonstrate a knowledge of its full meaning. Perhaps your history teacher can help you with that after school.
That is all.
december and since when was it against the law to be a communist? You may not agree with it, but there was no law saying one couldn’t hold Marxist beliefs.
Elvis, do you have any evidence of this bizarre claim? It’s now confirmed that there were some C’s in the State Dept. Is it your assertion that McCarthy just made a lucky guess?
Here, Elvis, you are on firmer ground. His alleged number changed from speech to speech. No evidence was ever shown of any particular figure.
This is not only unproved; it’s flat-out false. Gingrich had specific knowledge of what he said, because he was quoting a senior law enforcement official. As I wrote previously, IIRC that law enforcement official was retired FBI agent Dennis Sculimbrene.
According to Newt, his figure came from that “senior law enforcement official.” Elvis,, do you have any evidence to the contrary?
as the doctors said to the district attorney. 
I actually remember McCarthyism. My Jewish family were all leftists to a greter or lesser degree, and they were in considerable worry.
America had a real threat of infiltration of various organizations by people who were secret members of the Communist Party in the 1940’s and early 1950’s. Plenty of groups were fighting Communist infiltration. E.g., the Garment Workers Union, which most of my relatives belonged to, was staunchly anti-Communist What was disgusting about McCarthy was that he demogogically used the real threat of Communism to attack liberals, who were not Communists. McCarthy deserves all the criticism he gets, but that doesn’t meant that there wasn’t a real problem.
Guin, you are correct that it was legal to be a Communist. It’s ironic that American Communists benefited from freedom permitted by a system, which they were trying to overthrow.
However, it should be obvious that it was a bad for the US to allow hidden Communists to serve in the State Department. In particular:
[list][li]Members of the Communist Party didn’t just “hold Marxist beliefs.” They supported and took instruction from the American Communist Party, which took orders from Joseph Stalin. Stalin rivals Hitler as the worst monster ever.[]As Communists in the State Department, they were acting on behalf of an adversarial foreign nation, but they had hired to act on behalf of the US.[]These Communists were not only aiding our enemy, but they were doing so secretly.[/li]
Are these three points not known to all?
It is with some trepidation that I step back into this morass, simply because it involves arguing with someone who isn’t listening.
The original proposition was that Representative Gingrich had been unfairly beaten up for saying that an unidentified person had told him that up to 25% of the staffers in the Clinton White House were recent drug users. With a few exceptions there has been a consensus that the statement was reckless, disingenuous, deliberately misleading and intended by the Congressman to be accepted as a factual and verified statement. It is pointless to say that there is information now available or that could have been available to the Congressman that might be argued to have supported the Congressman’s otherwise unsupported allegation. If Gingrich did not have the information at the time or if he did not produce that information when challenged, the claim was by definition an unsupported allegation. This is a tactic as old as demagoguery. What you do is make an allegation with the full knowledge that you cannot substantiate it on the view that your end will be accomplished by the mere making of the claim. It is even better when you can make your claim using weasel language on the order of “up to 25%” since one of any number qualifies as “up to 25%.”
The same thing with Senator McCarthy and his 205 (or whatever) Communists in the State Department. When you go out making statements like that, facts don’t matter, the allegation and publicity for the allegation are what matter. Facts were irrelevant to Senator McCarthy. If by chance he was right in any degree, it was just a bonus.
With regard to McCarthy’s Communists, the few that were produced were guys that had joined fellow traveler groups during the Depression and World War Two (when The USSR was our dear ally), or who had leftist political leanings on matters like voting rights for Blacks, labor organizing, poverty relief and, horror of horrors, social security. You will recall that the point of high drama in the Army-McCarthy hearings was when the Senator decided to go after an associate in Mr. Welch’s office as having been in a leftist law student group.
Echoing Spavined Gelding’s annoyance with people who only pretend to debate, and thereby discredit their own positions …
Bizarre? He never produced any names, or showed anyone the paper, and changed the number several times the same day. Not the acts of a man with any facts at his disposal. Ditto Gingrich’s claim. What’s “bizarre”?
See SG’s response. He knew nothing either way at the time, just made the allegation. Without facts, an allegation is morally a lie - even if facts turn up later.
This is not only unproved; it’s flat-out false. Gingrich had specific knowledge of what he said, because he was quoting a senior law enforcement official.
[/quote]
You mentioned the name of a single FBI officer - is that your definition, or Gingrich’s, of a “senior official”? Please. That’s called gossip from the staff, at its most credible. What reason is there to believe it, other than you wanting, and perhaps psychologically needing, to believe anything derogatory about people you pathologically hate?
In case it still isn’t clear: If you make a statement about someone without caring if it’s true or false, it’s morally equivalent to making a statement about someone while knowing it’s false. It’s a lie either way. McCarthy lied. Gingrich lied. Facts revealed later do not change the fact that they lied at the time. The only difference I see is that McCarthy was more successful at it.
Finally, your understanding of the full meaning of McCarthyism is deeply lacking. It is not, as you seem to think, a synonym for fighting Communism. The term does not have anything to do with that - Communism was being fought both before and after McCarthy came along, and it should be clear that it wasn’t his real focus but simply a tool he used for his own purposes.
The term “McCarthyism” instead means tossing out damaging allegations about other persons, regardless of facts, for one’s own personal or political advancement. It means destroying, or being willing to destroy, other peoples’ reputations and lives for one’s own gain. Communism had nothing to do with it, really. His campaign of endless allegations ended when it became clear that his own tactics were more damaging to the country than the foe he putatively opposed with those tactics. There are clear parallels in methodology to another recent campaign of endless allegations that turned out to have even less factual underpinning and less pretense of a loftier goal.
Your lack of understanding of the meaning of “McCarthyism” makes me deeply doubt your claim to have personally lived through it - which is partly why I suspect you to be a teenager.
Re: McCarthy- was his “Alger- heh heh heh sorry I mean Adlai” a example of demonization, or was it a reflection of his knowledge of Stalinist infiltration in the Democratic Party?
That statement allowed Richard Nixon to coin the very phrase (about Stevenson) that Papa Bush used so memorably against Dukakis: “I am not questioning his patriotism, but his judgement.” GHWB borrowed from the best. In the earlier case, though, Nixon had a slight defense, since he could say that he was responding to McCarthy’s questioning of Stevenson’s patriotism. Bush, OTOH, was the one who brought up the question in the first place (by saying he wasn’t asking it). Kind of like Ann Coulter’s 10/19 column. which opens with: “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.”
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/ac20011019.shtml. JDM
NG’s original accusation was vague and silly. And he was in a position to launch an investigation if he really thought it necessary. This was just more bomb throwing.
Since the current President won’t answer regarding his own past illegal drug usage (hashish was the frat boy drug of choice at Yale during the late 60s and my source (a coed during that time) says that President Bush’s friends were definitely heavily into hashish), and won’t fess up to having plainly been an alcoholic, I cannot reasonably hold the current administration up to any standard at all.
But here is what I would have expected of Clinton administration appointees who wanted to do illegal drugs: marijuana, not used while driving ever, not more than once a week, not high while working. And no, I don’t give a good gosh darn that it isn’t legal. The war on drugs is seriously misguided, and making pot criminal is simply stupid. As the gun folks say, “outlaw marijuana, and then only outlaws will have marijuana.” (Whatever the hell that means.)
We have a serious drug problem in this country and part of it is that the government lies about the dangers of pot. (Unbelievably after this rant you are all going to conclude that I am a pothead – I’ve never used it once, I just know a lot of people who have, and it is stupid to criminalize their silly and harmless behavior. Frankly, jaywalking is more of a public danger, assuming that they aren’t driving under the influence (and we do not outlaw alcohol for that reason.)
The war on drugs enriches smugglers and dealers by making the commodity scarce, it enriches the banks that launder the money “unwittingly”, it enriches the enforcement officers by giving jobs (which I am not opposed to), it enriches equipment manufacturers, lawyers, and b.s. rehab outfits. It impoverishes the users. It marginalizes the economies of Colombia and Afghanistan and other growing countries. In short, it is completely ass-backwards.
To begin with, we must start telling the truth. We have to stop calling it a “war”, it isn’t. We have to be precise about what the dangers of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocain, heroin, meth and other drugs are. Some are more immediately dangerous than others. Some, like tobacco, take years to do their deadly damage. We cannot have the same over the top response to every drug as though their dangers are identical, they aren’t.
We have got to have rehabilitation for everyone who really wants it, and we have to stop forcing people who don’t want it into rehab as that is a complete waste of time and money.
For this and terrorism reasons, we must control our borders much better. This means more employment for Coast Guard and Customs.
We must shut down financial institutions that allow money laundering.
I shall respond out of order to Elvis and then SG.
Of course, the real complaint isn’t a failure to debate seriously; it’s a failure to agree with their arguments.
Elvis, do you have any evidence of this bizarre claim [that McCarthy had no knowledge of Communists in the State Department.]?*
[/quote]
Bizarre? He never produced any names, or showed anyone the paper, and changed the number several times the same day. Not the acts of a man with any facts at his disposal. Ditto Gingrich’s claim. What’s “bizarre”?
[/quote]
Note that Elvis still displays no evidence. He does have an argument for his POV, but it’s not that strong. It’s quite possible that all sorts of facts may have been available to JM in 1950 of which Elvis may be unaware.
Here Elvis presents an opinion based on deduction, as if it were as if it were based on fact – the very thing for which s/he criticizes JM.
Let’s say that a Senior FBI agent working in the White House told Newt Statement X, and Newt said “A senior law enforcement official told me Statement X.” Then Newt’s statement was precisely true. I’m mystified at how Elvis could call it a lie.
I give more credence to Elvis’s point that a statement from one person might not given full credence. It seems to me, that’s the job of the listener (and of the Democrats.) Newt’s statement was true, but inconclusive. In fact, Newt’s statement wasn’t fully believed, so the public was able to deal with it.
Again, note the self-referential nature of this statement.
I fully agree with Elvis in his description and criticisms of McCarthyism
I’d like to believe that Elvis is alluding to the dozens and dozens of spurious ethics accusations filed against Newt by House Democrats, or perhaps s/he’s thinking of the calculated destruction of Judge Bork. I don’t think so. 
Good one, Elvis. 
Spavined Gelding argues that Gingrich behaved like McCarthy (as did Elvis). I will argue that in some cases they behaved quite differently, and in other the similarity was not a capital crime.
The term “unidentified” is slightly ambiguous. I agree that he did not identify his source at the time he first made the statement, although IIRC the source was identified later as Dennis Sculimbrene.
This is true, but is circular reasoning. It’s the point we’re debating.
[/quote]
It is pointless to say that there is information now available or that could have been available to the Congressman that might be argued to have supported the Congressman’s otherwise unsupported allegation. If Gingrich did not have the information at the time…
[/quote]
I agree in principle. E.g., if Gingrich made up the statement and made up the “senior law enforcement official,” then he was lying. However, this is not the case.
Trouble is, this is standard operating procedure at the highest levels of journalism. Look at page 1 of the New York Times and you’ll find an article beginning, “A senior White House official said that…” This isn’t McCarthyism on the part of the Times. It’s just a way of promulgating information when the source doesn’t want to be identified for some reason.
I agree with you here SG. So, it’s a little complicated. Passing on information without naming the source may be demagoguery or it may be high-level journalism. How can one distinguish? You can’t always tell at the time. However, after the fact, if the actual source has been revealed, and if the statement accurately quoted the source, then one can tell that it wasn’t demagoguery. That’s just what happened in this case.
Of course, in this case, Newt knew that he COULD substantiate the statement and he did so later.
I agree with you here, SG. As an actuary, I’m especially disturbed by the misuse of numbers. However, exaggeration of numbers is an everyday occurrence in political discourse. E.g., remember homeless advocate Mitch Snyder who flat-out made up a figure of “3 million homeless people.” So, I would criticize Newt for using the “Up to 25%” locution, but it doesn’t make him another JM.
Yes, one of McCarthy’s many. many failings was that he did not find Communists. “Adding insult to injury,” McCarthy probably hampered those on the left and on the right who were making serious efforts to root out Communist infiltration.
WHISTLEBLOWER PHILOSOPHY QUESTION
Suppose you’re an FBI agent working in the White House and you observe a significant number of staffers with drug habits, who are permitted to work there at specific orders of the President. This is bad for the country. What can or should you do about it?
Second question. Suppose you’re a Congressperson and this FBI agent tells you about the problem. What can or should you do about it?
I’d like them to do a thorough investigation and develop all the facts before going public, but that’s not possible. They have no authority. So, they have a choice of going public with partial facts or ignoring the problem. I, personally, prefer the former.
If some Democratic Congressperson is told of a GWB scandal, I’d like them to make it public. A false charge can be investigated and disposed of. But, sweeping a problem under the rug might lead to incalculable harm to the nation.
Congress has the authority to investigate whatever they choose to investigate and Newt was sufficiently powerful to have been able to get an investigation started if he thought it was a genuine problem–and not simply something to make into good political fodder. (And since he purportedly had a source that purportedly had genuine information, it would have been even easier to get an investigation going–had he thought that there was any purpose to doing so.)
I agree with much of your post, **tomndebb. ** Three quibbles:
-
Congress couldn’t investigate “without going public”
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Newt wasn’t yet Speaker of the House when he made the statement.
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Congress did eventually investigate this matter in 1996. From the cite in the OP,
“serious drug usage” is used to describe “some 30 or 40 who had drug usage”.
Here’s a news flash for ya:
Prior drug usage does not, repeat, does not mean the same thing as “serious drug usage” and most emphatically does not mean that there was a current ‘drug problem’. In addition, in that quote the raw number of those even alleged to have had ‘drug usage’ at some time in the past equates to the 1 or 2% that Sua pointed out before.
It is absolutely wrong of you to continue to trot out these things and pretend that some one testifying that some 1 or 2 % of the White House Staff having had some prior history of ‘drug use’ (undefined, so it can also be some history of mj use or even something as simple as recently taking the tylenol 3 prescribed for your back injury last spring), and using that as the basis of a claim that there’s white house staffers with ‘serious drug problems’.
The fact that you claim to work with numbers and stats for a living makes it more reprehensible since you can be presumed to understand that statements like ‘there’s a serious drug problem here’ cannot be supported with such flimsy evidence as ‘1 - 2% have a history of drug use’.
and yet you continue.
As a professional in the corrections community, let me assure you that the claim of ‘serious drug history’ is made, not by a Secret Service Agent, but by a trained Mental Health professional, and only after quite a series of tests and consultations. Unless it was done AND you can demonstrate that Newt had access to those sorts of reports, then Newt’s statements were without clinical factual basis, and therefore slanderous.
say it with me “past drug use does not mean current drug addiction or drug problem”
So the testimony gets us way back down to about 10% of Newt’s egregious claims and the testimony indicates a “history” rather than an ongoing problem.
Sounds like Newt earned whatever bad press he got on that one. (And Newt had plenty of opportunity to arrange an investigation before he became Speaker, he only needed to lean on some anti-Clinton Democrat, of which there were several, to support it. He was not lacking in power before he became Speaker.)
As to the “not public” aspect of the investigation: I’m not sure why that would be important. Launching an investigation would have gotten him the same press without requiring him to lie and hint darkly about the size of the problem. (Of course, it would not have allowed him to boldly proclaim a gross exaggeration based on mere speculation, either. And where is Sculimbrene’s testimony–or was that simply more anti-Clinton rhetoric that looks better when it is attributed to “law enforcement” than when it is discovered to have simply come from a cop passing rumors?)
December, your refusal to reply to any of the substantive arguments made against your position speaks for itself. Your pretense to have done so fools only yourself.
Here’s your pat on the head, kid. Stay in school - maybe you’ll learn something, but only if you’re open to it.
To all: I am through feeding this particular troll. Who’ll join me?
Elvis: From what I remember, december is actually long, long past school age. Which makes this whole thing even sadder, actually.
the OP calls december an “ignorant slut.”
december is definitely not “ignorant” as he/she has learned to play this board like a fiddle. He/she ranks about #3, IMHO, behind Perlman and Heifetz.
JDT ultimately secumbed to posters who badgered him until he lost it and degenerated into name calling, thus allowing Mods to ban him.
december is too clever for this. This cancer will continue to choke the board until someone cuts off the blood supply. While it is almost impossible to do, the only thing that will kill it is a lack or responses.
As someone said before, DNFTT.
it was Guin who started the "december you ignorant slut’ thread in the Pit.
I understand your post here, but one minor disagreement - some times (and it’s mr. december), we need to actually post the rebuttal for those merely lurking. For, as opposed to some that you named, and my latest theory (found in the aforementioned pit thread), there are times he almost sounds thoughtful and precise, and we need to lay open the lack of foundation so that others can learn to question blatatent appeals to authority etc.
On the other hand, we did have fun with the Rosie thread.
You’re right, wring, as a matter ogic. However, these words were spoken under oath by secret service agents who were in the White House at the time. Shouldn’t we accept the sworn testimony of several Secret Service agents?
As I said earlier, Senior FBI Agent Dennis Sculimbrene was Newt’s source. In 1996 he gave a similar statement to the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1996/mw19961001stud.htm
In a spirit of conciliation, here are lists of points against Newt, which I’m willing to concede. Following is a list of points in favor Newt, all of which have been proved in this tread. I invite wring, Elvis, tomndebb et. al. to honorably acknowledge those points on the latter list that you cannot refute.
Against Newt: [ul][li]Newt had a deservedly bad reputation for attacking Democrats. []Perhaps Newt ought not to have repeated the story about drugs in the White House, since he had only one source. []It’s possible that Sculimbrene’s 25% figure was exaggerated.[]Newt chose to present the situation in a dramatized way.[]Newt’s statement sounded like a used-car salesman, with the “up to 25%” and other weasel words.[/ul][/li]
For Newt:[ul][li]Newt’s statement on TV was true. Senior law enforcement official Sculimbrene said just what Newt claimed he did. []Subsequent Secret Service testimony as well as retired FBI agent Gary Aldrich all confirmed that there was indeed a serious change in how the Clinton White House took on a number of staffers more likely to be drug-users. []It was appropriate for the nation to know about the White House’s change in their policy for dealing with drug-use by staffers. Newt’s 25% figure may have been numerically correct. Sculimbrene worked in the White House, so his estimate merits some credence. I acknowledge that the Secret Service identified far fewer than 25% of staffers as potential drug problems, but they didn’t say that these were all there were. There could have been lots of others. So, the 25% figure hasn’t been directly contradicted. [/ul][/li]
Thanks for your attention.
Dennis Sculimbrene is a whack job with a serious axe to grind against the Clinton administration. Prior to his resignation he was known to whine that his democratic colleagues in the FBI would purposely knock over his prized photograph of he and Newt. He was also known to complain that Clinton should never have been allowed into office and penned a unpublished novel inspired by his white house experiences about a KGB mole being elected president. Some suspect that a serious 1994 head injury sent him right over the edge.
To rely on garbage statements from the likes of a man like this is irresponsible in itself particullarly given the presence of contradictory secret service sworn testimony.
I can find no record that even a nutbar like Sculimbrene asserted, as you allege in a previous post, that any staffers ever failed a drug test.
Give it up.