You have got to be kidding. Foreign policy and Commander in Chief? And we all know what a great job President GW Bush has done in those areas. What do you suppose all those other executive department agencies do? Do you suppose the President has anything to do with their functions and purposes?
Well, so far, as far as the “can prove/not full of shit” or “can’t prove/full of shit” you’re looking pretty brown-eyed. Offered the perfect opportunity, specifics supplied, dates, names, places, all you can do is your ol’ reliable ad hominem.
C’mon, Scylla put up some resistance! Its only fun making you look like a bigoted asshole when you don’t do a better job yourself.
Let me try and make this clear to you, though its increasingly like trying to hammer nails into jello…
I think I’ve said it…let’s see now…three times? I have no opinion as to Mr. Franken’s veracity.
I do know, as my beloved Natasha Stoideskova has made clear, he has made some very significant assertions as regards to the Bushiviks concern with Terra. He has also supplied dates, names, places. To considerable cries of outrage from the Tighty Righties. None of whom, to my knowldedge, and now including you, can lay so much as a glove upon the facts of the matter.
For all your masturbatory bluster, you haven’t said a word…not one…as regards the facts he lays out. Not one.
Franken stands at the plate, you pitch the ball to the left fielder and yell “Strike Three, yer out!”
Great, and I was just starting to like it around here.
Because I don’t dispute them. Franken uses adverse selection and selective perception, and that invalidates any conclusions one might draw from the facts collectively. I’ve said this to you a couple of times. I guess I have to explain.
For example lets say that their are two Candidates, A and B. They each engage in 15 public activities. For each candidate 5 activities make them look really good on an issue, 5 activities make them look bad, and 5 are ambiguous and could be argued either way.
If Ann Coulter favors candidate A, she will write an article and emphasize the five things that make A look good. She will contrast that with the five things that make B look bad. Then she will take some of the ambiguous facts and present them to drive her point home. The article will be entirely factual yet actually represent a lie. That lie would be that A is good and B is bad. The facts don’t collectively represent that, they only do when they are mined for that purpose. Selective Perception is only seeing what you want. Adverse selection is only choosing what you want.
Al Franken of course favors Candidate B. He will write an article presenting the 5 things that make B look good, and the five things that make A look bad, and spin some of the others to present a very clear and factual picture that B is great and A is bad. Again, it is factual yet the conclusion is a lie.
As grateful as I am for your tendentious explication of the blazingly obvious, you stretch the concept of “lie” far past any reasonable breaking point. By lumping Mr. Franken in with the PL, you veer away from a reasonable, if invalid, proposition: that Mr. Franken has misinterpreted the facts. Clearly, you mean to suggest a malign purpose, you don’t say “wrong”, you say “liar”.
To those of use who do not adhere to your unique interpretations of truth and meaning, the word “liar” means one who delivers non-facts as truth. GeeDubya, for instance. Mr. Franken has presented facts that do considerable damage to the Party Line that holds you in thrall.
Now, perhaps you have an interpretation of Mr. Franken’s facts that show the Bushiviks in a highly favorable light. As a lifelong observer of verbal chicanery, I would be interested in hearing it. But, so far, you avoided any contact with those allegations. much less any refutation, even though every opportunity has been offered by Mr. Franken himself. You don’t even have to track his cites, he offers them to you of his own accord. You advance the extraordinary claim that the truth of the facts don’t matter, you can peer into his soul and divine his malicious purpose.
Move over, Lamont Cranston!
But soft! It would be churlish not to recognize friend Scylla’s unique capacity for inspiration. As noted, this thread is a record breaker, a romping, stomping Baylor Bears of a thread.
December? Second rate. Earnest, sincere, but lacking the sustaining force of popular interest.
Collounsbury? Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? For invective force and sheer brutality, he has few, if any, equals. But, no. I don’t doubt that his Lifetime Pitting Ratio is exceptional, his Pitting Threads drooped away after a mere few pages.
There can be only one. And it is you, sir. There ought to be some sort of ceremony, some retiring-of-the-jersey, some sort of sculpture type award (a stern and sneering visage on level sand stretching far away?).
But I am soft-hearted and humane, the hamsters bleat in rodential agony “Have pity! Enough!”.
But not with the information-processing procedures in place under either Clinton or Bush – the real failing in preventing 9-11 was at the field office level, with critical data and memorandum writtten by LEOs on the ground failing to be picked up and put into a coherent whole by their immediate superiors. Sure, in a parallel universe where the government’s information filtering was perfect it might have been prevented, but that isn’t the world we live in. **
Did it ever occur to you that I simply missed that post, or was in a hurry at the time I read it and so didn’t peck out a reply, or didn’t reply for some other reason? Really, minty, this kind of thing is bad faith on your part. This thread is, as of this writing, twelve pages long. I can’t be expected to respond to every post by every poster.
And it’s disingenuous of you, given that I’ve repeatedly stated I don’t hold Clinton or Bush particularly responsible for 9-11. That should be sufficient for you to take note that I disagree with the words of the poster you quoted.
But just FTR: yes, I think that quotation is absurd. I think playing the “blame Clinton” game is every bit as stupid as playing the “blame Bush” game insofar as 9-11 is concerned. **
Again, it’s not a blind spot, it’s just a post I didn’t respond to. Why don’t you stick to what I’ve actually said, instead of trying to read nefarious motives into silence?
I haven’t said anything resembling that. I’ve just pointed out that your partisanship causes you to give undue credibility to self-serving statements of Clinton administration offiicals and to minimize or ignore similar statements by Bush administration officials. Instead of approaching everything with a skeptical eye, you’re willing to rally 'round anything that props up Bubba and hurts Shrub.
We’re all guilty of that to some degree, I suppose, but at least I make an effort to recognize my own biases and filter them before I post.
That’ll be the day, Dewey.
Excellent. Sad, but excellent.
And don’t worry AD, you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and gosh darn it I like you!
As a Baylor alumni (BBA '95), I take issue with this remark. This thread romps and stomps much, much more than the Bears. It is an insult to this thread to compare it to Baylor football.
(Yes, I’m grateful that my law degree gives me license to root for the Longhorns, given that they actually manage to win every now and then.)
I fear I have been whooshed. To what part of my recent posts does this remark apply?
I’m gonna take a WAG and point to the last line, Dewey. good grief…
Wow, Stoid, I’m impressed. Apparently you’ve become an M.D. and have examined both Ms. Coulter and Mr. Franken as patients.
Why yes, milroy! Modesty had prevented me from mentioning it till now.
A little something for the pissed off about this damn fool war among us:
http://www.bushflash.com/ma.html
(Not designed to ease your anger, by the way)
No, it did not occur to me, given that your very first post in this thread and on this precise subject quoted my post, which quoted and directly responsed to milroyj’s nonsensical claim that 9/11 could reasonably be viewed as Clinton’s fault. Indeed, the language of mine that you quoted started “Fuck those lies, amigo,” which was an address to the language I quoted from milroyj. So I’m having a hard time believing that you were unaware of the Clinton-bashing that started this hijack away from the subject of Scylla’s weaseling re: lies vs. negligence.
Go ahead, check it out. milroyj’s post a little ways down on page 5, my post in response quoting his Clinton-blaming three posts below that, and your quote of my response–neither acknowledging nor condemning milroyj’s statement, but calling my statement “one of the stupidist things I’ve ever seen you post on these message boards”–on page 8.
Didn’t Dear Leader say something a few months back about “revisionist historians”?
But you can be expected to read the blasted post of mine that started you off on the accusations of horrible, horrible partisanship.
I think you’re putting way more emphasis on this challenge than is warranted, but I can play. I have no idea what Franken’s cites are. There are several “facts” in Stoid’s earlier post.
"According to an article in Time, after Cole, Clinton put Richard Clark in charge of coming up with a comprehensive plan to take out Al Queda, which Clark presented to Sandy berger and others on Dec 20, 2000. As a senior Bush official put it, the plan including everything that "we’ve done since 9/11"
Clarke was invited to stay on board to work this plan. This is hardly evidence of inaction.
**"It wasn’t implemented immediately because it was only a few weeks before Bush took over. A Clinton official said they’d be handing Bush a war when he took office.
Now here’s what Franken call’s Bush’s “Operation ignore”:
First we have Condi Rice lying about the briefing she had with Berger. Nice."**
Far as I can tell this is rumor.
**He then goes on to describe how a commission led by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman issued a report calling for the creation of a “National Homeland Security Agency” because mass casualty terrorism directed against the US was of serious and growing concern.
As we know, nothing was done."**
Which is here, dated 01/31/01, and is concerned with “the new strategic environment of the next quarter century (Phase I) and of a strategy to address it (Phase II)”. There is no evidence of haste required so not having one in place by 9/01 is, again, not evidence of inaction. It now exists.
"Meanwhile, Clark, who had stayed on at Rice’s request, was trying to get his anti-AQ plan going. He presented an updated plan. Nothing happened. Some meetings were talked about being scheduled. NEver were."
That’s a lie. ““From the first days of the Bush administration through September 2001, it conducted a senior-level review of policy for dealing with al-Qaeda. The goal was to move beyond the policy of containment, criminal prosecution and limited retaliation for specific attacks, toward attempting to roll back al-Qaeda. The new goal was to eliminate completely the ability of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups of global reach to conduct terrorist attacks against the United States. Between May and the end of July, 2001, four deputies’ committee meetings [that is, National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) meetings attended by subordinate officers and not by the heads of agencies and departments] were held directly related to the regional issues which had to be resolved in order to adopt a more aggressive strategy [For example, the US attitude towards the military regime in Pakistan] for dealing with al-Qaeda. This new policy might have produced a coordinated government response to the bin Laden threat or put the nation on more of a war footing with al-Qaeda before September 11. However as [Stephen] Hadley [the deputy national security adviser] noted: ‘The administration finalized its review of policy on al-Qaeda at an NSC principals’ committee [attended by heads of agencies and departments] meeting on September 4, 2001. President [George W ] Bush had not reviewed the draft policy [recommended by it] before September 11’.” [Thus, it took 34 months for the DCI’s declaration of war against al-Qaeda to be translated into a draft plan of action and this draft had not been seen and approved by Bush until after September 11.]” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH09Ak02.html
"Then we had the Kenneth Williams memo about the concerns over the middle eastern students at flight schools. He suggested that AQ operatives might be trying to infiltrate. Nuthin’."
That’s true. There is a lot of evidence of sustained inaction on the part of the FBI which transcended both administrations - Berger and Clarke both remarked on this in their testimonies. (See link above.)
**"According to the Washington Post, Clarke and Tenet were going nuts. In mid-July, tenet briefed Rice that there was going to be a major attack.
On July 16, a meeting was finally held. Where more meetings were planned. But given that George needed to take August off, (Franken points out that it was longest Presidential vacation in 32 years) the meetings were put off."**
That’s a lie. A quick search of “Bush August 2001” shows him meeting at the Pentagon, addressing stem cell research and the government of Macedonia, nominating Elliot Abrams, etc, etc. No indications whatsoever that any meetings were put off, and as mentioned a major one was held Sept. 4th.
"But Tenet sent a memo to Bush on vacation: “Bin Laden Determined to Striek in US” The report warned that AQ might be planning to hijack airplanes."
We’ve been warned for years that al-qaida might hijack airplanes, since like 1996 - just as much Clinton’s responsibility and the ultimately the task of FBI and intelligence agencies.
Etc.
No one is the least bit threatened by this “truth” of which Franken speaks. Take Airman’s advice and dismiss the guy as a hack already. You can do better on your own.
I find the usage entirely appropriate. Romping and stomping galore, but at the end of the day it is still pathetic. Net gain at the end of this thread in terms of fighting ignorance? A big goose egg.
And minty, what did I tell you about this thread? I mean it mister. Balance will come later, right now it is a good thing to be completely absorbed in your life. Now get back to the important stuff.
Enjoy,
Steven
By the way, this is incorrect:
The investigative and intelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to occur were not just “field office” failures. They were failures and refusals on the part of high-ranking FBI officials to pay attention to the reports and requests made by the folks in the field offices. Coleen Rowley’s story is representative.
Relax, Mtgman. She’s sleeping like a baby. Which, of course, she is.
I don’t like it, Stoid. Too “old left” for my tastes. Surprised it doesn’t present an image of a pig in formal attire with “Wall Street” blazoned on his porky pot belly. I check out Buzzflash every day, they provide valuable links, all well and good.
But their hysterical style renders every minor event apocalyptic “Bush buys kitten! Already owns blender! We know whats next!”
Offending the rational and reasonable promotes the agenda of the Forces of Darkness, not ours. We’ve got the facts. They can have the spin.