First, be there and see it. 
Which nobody (except Shodan, by insinuation) has claimed Kerry did, or even *said *he did.
You do know he was an officer, don’t you? Or is it your belief that military people have no way to stop atrocities?
That’s a rather novel take on the situation.
Regards,
Shodan
I think this is basically it. IIRC, he started a thread accusing Rove of planting the forgeries that CBS used, without anything more to substantiate it than that it was the sort of thing he would do.
In a way, it is like cries of “racism!” or “Bush lied about Iraq!” It’s supposed to end a debate without the bother of actually substantiating an argument. It’s kind of too bad, or at least is for those who fall for it.
Regards,
Shodan
Are you ready to tell us which atrocities he could have stopped but for some reason chose not to? :dubious:
Exactly. The bulk of the letter was specifically suggesting that he did not earn his medals and exaggerated or made up the reports of the incidents.
It’s Rove’s playbook: identify what others see as the strengths of the opposition, and then make up despicable lies to try to make them controversial.
Plus, the bandaids.
A far-less-effective approach would be to feign outrage and inquire something like
as if Kerry *did *see it personally, or even *say *he did, neither of which is the case. That gets in a cheap slander about his character without any actual basis in the world of reality.
OK, but here are the problems I see with that:
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You are suggesting an entirely subjective standard. Now, that might not be so bad if we can assume that we all have a great big area of overlap in that standard. When it comes to politics, I don’t think that’s true. For most people who are affiliated with a political party, they are going to see the actions of politicians through a pretty thick cloud of bias. They will give their own guy the benefit of the doubt and interpret what he says in the most favorable way, while doing the opposite to politicians from the other party. We see this day in and day out on this MB.
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The example you gave, that of making statements that are demonstrable untrue seems to be a bar that no politicians I am aware of is able to meet. In the one example you are able to give, virtually all politicians fail. That doesn’t seem like a very practical standard to use. So then we get into an argument about which politicians tell the worst lies, in which case I’ll refer you to point #1. And I’ll note that “slander” against a public figure is not an easy case to prove. I didn’t see any attempt by Kerry to pin that charge to the Swifites.
To me “fairness” in politics just isn’t something I’m too worried about. If we need the pols to play be certain rules, then we should codify those rules. If we can’t, then I don’t expect politicians to behave according to my own personal code of ethics. Power isn’t something people who want it are going to play “fair” in order to get it.
He’s demanding factuality. That isn’t subjective. Well, maybe to some it is, but I don’t think you want to sign up for it.
Of course they are - what, do you think psychopathy is required to be a public servant? Candidates only lie because it works, and that is only because there are enough people with a lack of interest in assessing factuality, but who pride themselves on their own “fairness” nonetheless while not grasping that they’re indulging mere false equivalence instead.
You know why he didn’t. Come on, show us you know why. Sheesh.
“Truth vs. lie” is not codified enough for you?
Only if enough people think that way and let them get away with it.
Not really. He offered “honesty” as one example. His general principle is entirely subjective:
Uh, that’s called a strawman. Not everyone who lies is a psychopath-- in fact, most aren’t because we all lie. Have you ever told a lie? Are you a psychopath?
JFTR, I wasn’t trying to hijack the thread into a discussion of Karl Rove. However his character is relevant to the claim that he was behind Swiftboat; backing by an arbitrary GOP publicist wouldn’t have the same meaning.
And, although I suppose you couldn’t know this for sure, I try to be careful about where I place URL tags for a cite. The tags would have enclosed “orchestrated by Karl Rove” were the cite intended as support for the orchestration claim; since they enclosed “Karl Rove”, the cite was about Karl Rove. (I realize many Dopers are less strict about URL tag placements than I.)
As for adding emphasis to the repeated mention of the NYTimes article, I continue to find your position bizarre: you repeatedly ask for cites, yet refuse to read the NYTimes article, even after taught how to do so with 2 extra mouse clicks.
Your “I’m not going to do your homework for you” is even more bizarre. If sensical at all, it implies you think my “homework” is to spoon-feed you information about the Swiftboat campaign. :smack:
Quote:…
“3. Affirm that the injuries for which you received your purple hearts never required any medical treatment beyond perhaps a bandage and that, in all instances, these injuries were self-inflicted and came from your own weapon. Further, that if any of these purple hearts were falsely awarded, that you would not have been eligible to leave Vietnam after serving only four months.”…
Debaser states: This is not something they should be accusing him of without proof. Absent proof of a self inflicted injury they shouldn’t make this claim. However, I see no reason to think they don’t actually believe that his injuries are suspect. I won’t believe this without proof, but I also won’t call them liars for it either. It’s he said/they said.
FWIW, you lose me right here. This is not he-said, this is a lie. No evidence, but they demand he affirm self-injury. Hand-waving or minimizing this point is just a fail. Where do you get “but I think they believed it, without evidence” as any sort of defense? It’s not, it’s indefensible.
Has Jerome Corsi every publicly apologized for that book suggesting that Mr. Rogers was the real life inspiration for the book and TV character Dexter?
I provided three independent citations. You completely ignored the first, even though it directly provided exactly what you demanded. You hand-waved away the second. And you ignored the third, even though getting around the NYT paywall is as simple as pressing “stop loading” before the page has finished loading the backend (that’s how I get all of Krugman’s articles each month). Sod 2 clicks, that’s one click - just wait until the text loads, then press the x on the URL bar before the address changes. So excuse me if I’m a little skeptical that you’re actually interested in citations.
Well excuuuuuuse me, princess. You asked for citations and I gave you 3. I didn’t expect to need to back it up, because it’s the kind of thing that’s pretty much common knowledge at this point. And if you can’t deal with the NYT paywall, then that’s your problem. The DU link was convenient in that it was literally exactly, exactly what you were demanding. I could have quoted it directly, but I honestly couldn’t be fucked. Not for that claim, and not for you.
This would be a lot more convincing if, you know, I didn’t back up my claim. But I did. Even John Mace sided with me on that one. What do you want, a fucking master’s thesis?
Well, there we go. There’s your answer. “I won’t read every cite”. And then you wonder why people don’t try very hard to provide citations for you.
Kerry’s “wounds”-reminds of the 3 Stooges (back in the Army in 1933). Larry got a Porple Heart (he had cut his ass, sitting on a potato peeler).
You’re quite right; fairness is a subjective standard. Some things just are. As far as “no politician being able to meet the bar” of not lying, so what? We should just accept that?
You don’t believe that he was struck by enemy shrapnel three times? Do wounds only count when suffered by Republicans? Or should W have gotten one for his bravery exhibited by escorting Tricia Nixon?
Yes and no. Of course it would be nice to have a presidential candidate who doesn’t lie, but if you only vote for non-lying candidates, you’re not going to be voting very often. Otherwise, you’re left with deciding who lies less or whose lies matter less. And then you’re back to your own subjective evaluation. Democrats are going to care about certain lies more than others, and Republicans will care about different lies.
I’m just not that interesting in trying to figure out who is playing “fair”-- rather, I prefer to concentrate on the issues.
OK. Against my better judgement I went back to this first cite which you claim backs you up.
It is a complete fail. First of all, it doesn’t back up your claim that “many” people flip flopped on Kerry. It’s only a quote about Lonsdale, and a quote that we’ve already discussed in the thread. One person isn’t “many” so it fails to back up your claim even if we accept that it’s true.
Second of all, I don’t accept it since I have no idea if it’s true or not. It’s a post on the Democratic Underground which is a hyper partisan message board. I don’t know who Ohio Dem is and I’m not impressed with his over 1,000 post count on that board.
Yes, he provides cites for his claim, unlike you want to ever do. However, since the post is about ten years old both his links are broken and don’t go anywhere.
Boy is there egg on my face.
:rolleyes:
I stand by my original decision to ignore this cite. I was correct in my assumption that it would be a waste of my time. Posting to another random persons post in another message board from ten years ago is not a cite.
Yes, there’s no evidence. But that doesn’t make it a lie. They were there. Their memory obviously differs from Kerry, but that doesn’t make them automatically liars. You need evidence to make a claim that you didn’t actually witness yourself. Such as with Kerry talking to Congress about Atilla the Hun style atrocities. But you don’t need evidence if you are making a claim that you actually saw something for yourself. Then I’m more willing to take you at your word.
This cuts to the heart of the matter. You admit what I suspected is true. You didn’t expect to be called out about your claim and it annoys you to have to back up your assertions with cites since it’s “common knowledge”.
You post on a message board where most people share your views, and you lazily toss out accusations that you either can’t be bothered to back up or lack the capability to back up.
When pressed, you insist on me doing the work of researching your poorly thought out ideas for you.
It’s pathetic. It’s unworthy of the time I’ve already spent refuting it.