Why, lookee here! Friend Scylla has deposited another steaming turd into the discourse! Just in the interests of pathology, lets dissect it. Going to need the extra long tweezers, don’t want to get too close.
We start by attacking the source. Must be a lie, its comes by way of me and this Michelle Goldberg. Yes, that’s the ticket, she made it all up, those quote marks are an affectation. Didn’t really say that, and even if he did, its all out of context. If you had all the context, you would readily see…what, exactly? That the quoted parts don’t mean what they say? That there’s another way to interpret the plain meaning of the words? Sadly, friend Scylla is too busy to advise us as to what other meaning they might have. Maybe when he has more time, he can clarify that for us.
We need the actual transcript, yes, that’s the ticket! Otherwise, we can’t be sure, now can we, given that the liberals are so provably prone to wild exaggerations and misquotes. Unlike the noble Pubbies, whose record for unvarnished candor is so demonstrably spotless. Yes. Mustn’t leap to conclusions, lets wait till…oh, say…Thanksgiving.
[Bugs Bunny] It is to laugh! [/Bugs]
My question was the same as hers, really. On which, apparently, you have no useful opinion. Congressman Cox (R, New Yawk) made a statement in direct contradiction to the facts, before a sympathetic audience. One wonders, as did I, whether his audience was already apprised of these “facts”, or if it were a revelation unto them. Certainly news to me. I suspect its news to you as well.
Of course, if that’s simply not so, this is an excellent opportunity for you to enlighten us as to recent developments which have escaped our notice. If you have such facts, you can bring them forth. Unless, of course, you’re just blowing smoke and flinging bullshit.
So, put plainly…you got facts, or are you full of shit?
Luc, just a quick question for my edification. Were I to write, “Why, lookee here! So-and-so has deposited another steaming turd into the discourse! Just in the interests of pathology, lets dissect it. Going to need the extra long tweezers, don’t want to get too close,” would you and/or others characterize it as vitriol, and say that I’m extremely rude?
I haven’t heard about this Sarin, atomizer thing beforehand, so I don’t know what to make of that. Chris Cox’s comments to the faithful trouble me about as much as Howard Dean’s stating he hated Republicans and what they stood for.
I suppose his comments are a “not lie” in that we did find that one chemical grenade that apparently was lying around by accident a year ago, and doubtless there’s talk about centrifuges and “program” being synonymous with “weapon,” and a potential dual use site qualifying as both.
Not that I mean to defend it. I think it is innacurate and false. It makes for a good political speech though.
It doesn’t really get my tits in an uproar that this schmuck exagerated to prevarication in such a setting.
Well, I know what you mean. “A politician is a liar” is a tautology. I guess what bothers me is when people applaud them for doing it. Incidentally, the atomizer thing turned out to be false. The CIA retracted:
Same question, now repeated again: did the people to whom he was speaking, true believers each and every one, already “know” what he was saying, or was it “news”? Or a third alternative, that it made no difference whether it was fact or not.
I give as good as I get, Libby, and if I go down, I go down swinging. Surely you don’t mean to imply that my brusque response was unprovoked?
So Scylla, given the link provided here, the questions then become:
Do you believe this to be an accurate transcription of Cox’s remarks? Or, do you have any reason to believe that the transcription is not accurate?
1a. If you think there’s something wrong with the transcript, could you help us out by saying why this might be the case, and what exactly the error/s might be?
If you believe that the transcript is accurate, or at very least a good faith effort to reproduce Cox’s remarks, then do you believe that his comments about the continued discovery of biological and chemical weapons, and the facilities where they were being made, are accurate?
2a. If you believe that Cox’s remarks are accurate, how do you explain the fact that those remarks appear to contradict every official report that has been releasaed by the Administration and its agencies regarding the presence (or otherwise) of such weapons in Iraq? Is there something that Cox knows that they don’t? Is he guilty of revealing secrets that were not supposed to be released?
2b. If you don’t believe that Cox’s remarks are accurate, what, if anything, should we infer from the fact that he made such remarks, and that he made them at the CPAC conference, in a speech in which he introduced the nation’s Vice President to a hall of assembled conservative citizens and elected officials? And, if his statements were incorrect, and if they contradict all offical reports by the current Administration and its agencies, what should we infer from the fact that the statements have apparently drawn no official repudiation from the Administration, nor from any of the conservative politicians who were in attendance?
Now you’re just being disingenuous. These are quite different things.
Whether or not you like Dean and his statement, the fact remains that his remarks were merely an expression of his own feelings. A statement that one hates Republicans is merely a statement of opinion; it makes no factual assertions about Republicans themselves. To the extent that it was a factual statement, it was nothing more than a factual statement about Dean’s own feelings.
This is quite different from an assertion that is in direct contradiction to the evidence provided by the speaker’s own political allies. You, of course, waffle by saying that Cox’s “comments are a ‘not lie’ in that we did find that one chemical grenade that apparently was lying around by accident a year ago.” But you are incorrect. If you are basing your position on the finding of a single grenade, then you have failed to make your case, because Cox uses the phrase “continue to discover,” implying ongoing acts of discovery, something that can hardly be applied to a single grenade. Unless, of course, they kept putting it back and “discovering” it again, like a conservative Easter Egg hunt. And if you truly believe that your weaseling about what may or may not constitute “a potential dual use site” excuses Cox’s statement, then i suggest you’re delusional.
Of course, you make a nod to what you know to be right when you refer to Cox as a “schmuck” at the end of your post; it’s just a shame that you’re so willing to overlook the fact that his “innaccurate and false” assertions were apparently swallowed by so many others who share his politics.
Of course, if anyone can point to any conservative politician or commentator who repudiates Cox’s lies, i’ll happily subtract that politician or commentator from the list of the delusional.
On preview, i guess that elucidator has already asked the sort of questions i’m aksing above, but i’ve spent time composing my post, and dammit, i’m going to post it.
No. You did not ask a question in your previous post.
What an incredibly stupid question. Do you actually expect me to tell you what those people at the function knew or didn’t know? Are you so simplistically minded that you actually think they all shared exactly the same knowledge base?
How can you expect me to know? I don’t know who was there. I wasn’t there, and if I had been I doubt I would have had time to inventory each and every individual’s beleif system and present you with a summary.
I leave the ill-conceived, vapid and prejudiced generalizations to your purview.
No. I guess it’s accurate. I did want confirmation since Michelle was pretty rabid and presented such a brief bite.
No. It’s been asked and answered as I thought I made clear in my response to Lib. Two independant corroborations of the statement suffice.
I guess you must have been writing this while I was responding to Lib. I do not beleive Cox has accurately represented the situation.
This one doesn’t apply to me, since I don’t beleive the particular quoted statement was accurate.
First question: You may infer that Cox is willing on at least one occasion to exagerate to prevarication in order to serve his rhetorical needs.
Personally, I find this only mildly off-putting as it is common. For example, in this very thread Elucidator suggests that Cox’s statement prove a moral lassitude of the GOP in general. This is a classical logical fallacy. Doubtless he knows better, but he did it anyway.
Squink also says based on this that “The trouble here is that these GOPer’s belief system is not flexible enough to accomodate reality.”
exact same exageration to prevarication.
Eleanorigby suggests “By no means do I blindly endorse any candidate’s position or any party’s. But as the BS gets piled higher and deeper–I have to question the intelligence of most Bush supporters.”
Cox’s comments do not reasonably support this conclusion.
pochaccos based on Cox’s comments writes “I put Republican voters in three categories: Millionaires, fundamentalists, and dupes.”
That’s just the first couple of posts in this thread. People say things that are unsupportable, and exagerate like hell to the point (and beyond) of prevarication when they think they can get away with it.
However, if you think it can be reasonably inferred from Cox’s comments that all Republicans are millionares, fundamentalists, and dupes, or that the Gop and Republicans in general, are, as persons more prone to prevarication, or that all Republicans are stupid, than maybe you can explain it to me.
Just because they are different does not mean I am being disingenuous. It is not for their differences that I am equating Cox to Dean, but for the similarities. The main similarity is that they are both saying reprehensible things to play to their specific audiences.
I think I just responded to this. Again, illustrating the differences isn’t necessary. No two things are the same. When I equate them as I did, I am asking you to consider the similarities, i.e. reprehensible statements made to what was assumed to be a sympathetic audience.
I am not weaseling. I think Cox’s statement was a misrepresentation. I said so, quite clearly. When I am saying it is a “not lie” I am suggesting how Cox might weasel from his carefully crafted statement were he to be called on it. Please read me carefully before you level an accusation.
The accusation you have made is really uncalled for and insupportable in light of the fact that I wrote “Not that I mean to defend it. I think it is innacurate and false.” and “It doesn’t really get my tits in an uproar that this schmuck exagerated to prevarication in such a setting.”
In light of those two statements that I made in the post to which you refer, the accusation that I am defending Cox’s statement cannot be reasonably inferred by a person showing integrity and intelligence.
You are in fact, exagerating in creating this strawman, distorting the facts to serve your rhetorical need.
You see, you do it, too.
There you go. You just acknowedged that your previous statement was a strawmen and that you were in posession of the truth. You quoted my saying “innacurate and false.”
As to your point. I have no idea how the assertions were taken by the audience. If I had to guess, I would say that most of the intelligent ones were aware they were receiving standard political fare, you know, generalized statements, sweeping conclusions, lofty rhetoric, ritualistic demeaning of the adversary, and treated it accordingly.
If a member of a group says something false, all other members of the group must specifically denounce or repudiate it, otherwise they are delusional?
You cannot be serious. I think you are being delusional to attempt to apply this standard. Do you really expect everybody to walk around denouncing stuff?
Do you apply this standard evenly? Do all Democrats who have not specifically denounced or repudiated Howard Dean’s statements also hate all Republicans and everything they stand for?
When some half-wit on Moveon.org calls Bush a Nazi in a commercial do all Democrats who do not specifically repudiate or denounce it assumed to share an identical statement.
Assuming that one speaks for all is an usually stupid assumption under the best of circumstances. I’m surprised to see you put forth such a position.
No, i don’t believe that all Republicans are any of those things. Misguided is probably the only blanket term i might use. I’ll reserve terms like “millionaires,” “fundamentalists,” “dupes,” and “stupid” for the particular subset of Republican to which they apply.
But don’t you see that there is still an important philosophical difference here?
Whether or not you believe that Dean’s statement about Republicans is reprehensible is largely beside the point. The fact remains that, reprehensible or not, Dean’s statement was nothing more and nothing less than a statement about what Howard Dean believes. No-one, even people who agree with him, would assert that it’s a statement that can be supported or verified by evidence and objective facts.
Cox’s statement, on the other hand, can be measured directly against specific evidence (or the lack thereof), and can be evaluated in light of particular knowledge about the presence or absence of WMD programs in Iraq.
Ask yourself this question: Do we or don’t we “continue to discover” chemical and biological weapons in Iraq?
This question is actually amenable, within bounds upon which reasonable people can agree, to a factual answer that transcends subjective political positions of the parties involved. Howard Dean’s statement that he hates Republicans is nothing more than his personal opinion, and whether or not one should hate Republicans is a question is only ever really going to be a matter of subjective personal opinion.
But it’s not even a “not lie” if we assume, rather reasonably, that a single grenade can only be found once, and that we cannot “continue to discover” it.
And while it’s true that you specifically say that you’re not defending his statement, in your earlier post you gave no indication that your “not lie” statement was merely an illustration of “how Cox might weasel from his carefully crafted statement.” It seemed to me that you offered it not as his hypothetical self-defense, but as your own statement.
But, in no dictionary i can find, do “generalized statements, sweeping conclusions, lofty rhetoric, ritualistic demeaning of the adversary” appear under the definition of “lie” or “intentional falsehood.” One can make generalized statements without stating factual untruths. One can offer sweeping conclusions that are not lies. One can engage in lofty rhetoric without uttering verifiable falsehoods. And one can certainly ritualistically demean the adversary without ever making an untrue statement.
Of course, perhaps i’m being too harsh on Cox in my use of the term “intentional falsehood.” It is entirely possible that he actually believes that we “continue to discover” WMDs in Iraq. If this were the case, i leave it to you to determine what we might infer about his intelligence.
No, actually i don’t, and this is a fair comment. I’ve made exactly the same argument in other contexts on this very message board.
I guess that what interests me is that i have yet to hear even a single GOP official (from the Party, from the Administration, from Congress, anyone) repudiate the statements. I don’t expect every Republican or every conservative to make an official announcement, but the fact remains that a member of the GOP made, in a very public forum and while introducing the Vice President of the United States, a statement that runs contrary to the information given by that Vice President’s own Administration, and by its official agencies. Under the circumstances, the complete silence is deafening.
Well, i’ve refined my statements on this issue above, but i will simply say again that, at the very least, when a statement warrants repudiation, it should at least be done by the people who are the public face of the party.
The MoveOn example is completely irrelevant here, because the commercial was created by one particular individual who had no connection at all to the Democratic Party. In the case of Dean and Cox, however, both were speaking in their offical (or at the very least, their public) capacities as members of their political parties.
And again, i think there’s a fundamental and important difference between a statement of personal feeling (“I hate Republicans”) and a statement that can be checked against verifiable evidence. It’s not just a matter of repudiating the statements; in Cox’s case, it’s also a matter of saying, plain and simple, that he is factually incorrect. If Cox had said “I hate Democrats” or “I hate liberals,” we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because i really wouldn’t care about that, and i wouldn’t care if the GOP denounced or supported him. “I hate X” is not a truth claim in the way that “We continue to discover…” is a truth claim.
Actually, I had considered it as a given that Howard Dean’s statement was a bald-faced lie told for rhetorical effect and everybody saw it as such.
If you are going to tell me that he really really… really hates 50% of the country and “everything” they stand for, than, well, I would think it would be much better if he were lying.
What does it say that the Democrats put forth an admitted psycho to lead the party?
Well, let’s assume that both Cox and Dean were telling the literal truth as they understand it. Cox is a moron and Dean is a psycho. Y’all made Dean the head of your party after he told us all how he hated Republicans and everything they stand for.
I never heard of this Cox guy before Elucidator brought him up. He’s just a half-wit that either said something stupid or told a lie at a party. Just a single congressman. Dean represents your entire party!
Well, the first I heard of it was at this message board. Why would they make waves about it if it’s not a big deal presswise?
If they repudiate it or denounce it, they are bringing attention to it.
All I can say is that when I fart in public and nobody says anything, I just pretend nothing happened.
I don’t know. People stay stupid and false shit all the time. I don’t expect the GOP to go back and retroactively fact check and approve or denounce every statement by every member. Wouldn’t be practical.
Similarly, if it didn’t cost them anything, why piss off Cox by denouncing him.
This is politics Mhendo. You seem to have some extraordinary and high standards that you apply to the Republican party. I’m sorry to disapoint you that they don’t live up to them.
The particular failing we are talking about here is so common and pervasive that to attempt to lable it as the provenance of one group is misguided or disingenuous.
Most people bullshit.
Every statement made by every individual in every circumstance? The fact is that it is simply an unreasonable expectation to think they will bring attention to a fart if they don’t have to.
Oh I dunno. I guess if the Swiftvets had no connection to the Republicans than Moveon had no connection to the Democrats.
It is a truth claim depending on whether or not it he really believes it. If he really does and the people that put him in charge of the party also believe it, than that is far far worse than a rhetorical lie.
We’re talking “hate” here. That is not a word used lightly. Dean hates 50% of the country and “everything” they beleive?
Goddamn!
If that is a true statement of Dean’s feelings, do you want to be a Democrat?
It’s fucking scary, if you beleive it.
Anybody who literally believes that statement of Dean’s and chooses to maintain their allegiance with the Democratic party without working deliberately and overtly to remove him is also a scary psycho.
(Personally I don’t. I think he was just being a blowhard.)
Howard Dean is the leader, we of the lefty hive mind carry about little red books of Chairman Dean’s Thoughts, we march in lockstep obedience to The Dean, just as we still revere his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, whoi ruled the Democratic Party with an iron fist in a Velveeta glove. Yeah, Terry McAuliffe, that was his name. No, really, no kidding, absolute ruler of the Democrats, before Dean. We all trembled at his name, those of us who had the slightest idea who the fuck he was.
Yeah, right. You betcha. On the other hand, the attendees at this little wing nut soiree included just few a lightweights, like, you know, whats his face, the vice-president of something or other. Really, not a big deal, just sort of a meeting of civic boosters at the Lion’s Club. Nobody important, not like the Maximum Leader of the Democratic Party.
This is getting too silly for words. The question is not whether or not Dean hates the Republicans, nor is it whether he’s a psycho. You’re perfectly welcome to believe that he is, and for the sake of my argument in this thread, i could actually agree with you and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the point of logic that i’m trying to make, to wit: the two statements, whatever they tell us about the people who made them, are different types of statement by virtue of the truth claims they make or do not make about independently verifiable evidence. If you don’t understand that fundamental difference, you’re not as smart as i gave you credit for.
Furthermore, you said in your previous post that i should not expect all members of a particular group to repudiate or take responsibility for the statements made by one particular member. You were correct, and i clarified and amended my position accordingly. But surely a similar principle of debating (dis)honesty can apply to your tactics, in that it is insufficient to excuse Cox’s behavior in this case merely by making reference to Dean’s remarks. If what Cox did is defensible, it should be so independently of anything that Howard Dean did or did not say.
Well, first of all, the Democrats are not my party. You’re making rather typical error, which you also made above in comparing Cox’s and Dean’s comments, in assuming that if a Republican is accused of doing something wrong, it is sufficient to point to something a Democrat did that is just as bad. It may surprise you to know that people can be strongly critical of both major parties, and that i don’t define my criticism of the Republican by Democrats’ standards.
I’m not a US citizen so i can’t register or vote anyway, and even if i could, i certainly would not register as a Democrat. Although i admit that in some elections i might be tempted to vote for them simply because the American political system offers virtually no choices to people whose politics fall outside of the two-party hegemony.
If you traced the history of my posts over the past four years, you’d see that i’ve spent far more time and energy criticizing the Democrats than i have supporting them. I’ve made no particular attempt in this thread to defend the Democrats or to boost them, and my whole argument in this thread can be made independently of any feeling that i have about the Democrats one way or the other.
But if you farted into the microphone while introducing the Vice President of the United States at one of the nation’s most important gatherings of conservative activists and politicians, i’d hope that at least a few people in the crowd would have the decency to apologize for your behavior.
So what if you only heard of it via this message board. Some people probably heard of the SE Asian tsunami by browsing these forums—does that mean it was an insignificant event? And while you might interpret the relative media silence on the issue as evidence of it’s non-importance, might there not be other conclusions we can draw from media reticence? What liberal media, indeed.
When did i label it the “provenance of one group”? As i suggested above, calling attention to one person or one group’s failing is not, in my formulation, a tacit admission that everyone else is doing the right thing.
And again, you might be right if this was some offhand remark to a few friends in a corridor. But CPAC is, by its own estimation, an “annual reunion of conservatives from all across America” and “the premier annual gathering of conservatives and one of the most important political events in the nation.” This year’s list of speakers, moderators and panelists included not only the Vice President, US Senators and Representatives, former Senators and Representatives, and state-level GOP officals and elected representatives, but important and influential conservatives from a wide variety of foundations, organizations and institutions across the United States. And Ann Coulter.
And, as i’ve pointed out before, the remark was made in a speech introducing the Keynote Speaker, who also happened to be the Vice President, at this large and important conference’s Presidential Banquet. To tell you the truth, given the magnitude of this event, the types of speakers it highlighted, and the number of important conservatives present, i actually find it quite staggering that simply getting a transcript of Cox’s remarks seems to be a rather difficult thing to do. CPAC’s website doesn’t seem to publish any of the transcripts, and Cox’s own US House website does not yet have a copy.
Straw man.
I never said MoveOn had no connection to the Democrats. I said that the “half-wit” (your term) who created the commercial had connection to the Democrats. And he didn’t. And MoveOn put the film on its website along with dozens of other commercials, also made by private citizens. The commercial with the Nazi reference received no official endorsement from MoveOn. In fact, in what i thought was an act of toadying and cowardice, they explicitly rejected it and took it off the website after GOP criticism. It wasn’t getting any votes anyway, and would have been eliminated from the competition in short order.
But you know all this already, because it was all hashed out months ago on these very boards.
But it is not a truth claim that can be checked against or verified by any evidence outside of Howard Dean’s own head. Cox’s claim can be, has been, and is a blatant untruth. Again, i stress that the point about Cox and his mendacity exists independently of anything that Howard Dean might have said.
No, it’s not a word used lightly, but then, these are not times to be taken lightly.
As for your 50% figure, where do you get that from? I’d be surprised if 50% of Americans were registered Republicans. And if you’re relying on election results, the most you can claim is 51% of the people who voted, or about 30% of the voting age population, or just over 20% of the total US population.
I’m not a Democrat, and couldn’t be even if i wanted to. Which i don’t, and didn’t, either before or after Dean’s statement. As for how scary it is, i guess i’ll cut him a little slack.
The current administration doesn’t use the word hate. In fact, it uses words like “compassionate conservatism” and “freedom.” Hell, the CPAC website even had the hubris to claim that conservatives in America are “Preserving civil liberties while combating terrorism.”
But despite all the rhetoric, the actual policies and actions of the administration and its supporters suggest nothing so much as hate for a considerable percentage of the American population. And, given their current power and influence, right now their actions speak a lot louder than Howard Dean’s words.
There’s one other thing i should have emphasized in the last post, and it relates to your overall implication tha Cox’s statements are, in the scheme of things, hardly worth noticing.
I made the point about the importance of CPAC more than once, but what i should also have noted is that Cox’s assertion didn’t concern some trival matter. It was about the existence (or otherwise) or weapons of mass destruction. This whole issue was one of the most important, perhaps the most important precipitating factor in the US-led invasion of Iraq. And that invasion was, without doubt, the most significant foreign policy decision—possibly the most significant policy decision of any kind—of the last four years.
For anyone, especially someone who supported the war, to now suggest that public statements at major conservative conferences by GOP politicians regarding the existence of WMDs are nothing to be concerned about absolutely beggars belief.
Can’t say. Often, when I feel provoked, I’m surprised to discover that others are surprised I felt that way.
There is definitely an eerie Orwellian quality about it. Aw, shit, I’m just going to say it: there is a Goebbelsian quality about it — a bizarre, in the face of facts deliberate propoganda lie on the scale of “We continue to find the shells fired by Poland before we launched our liberation.”
Which of those sites constitutes holocaust denial? I checked the first one and did a quick google and it appears to be a resource dedicated to fighting holocaust deniers. Do you have other information to the contrary?