Text 8852, 291 rader
Skriven 2006-09-24 10:05:00 av Robert E Starr JR (9349.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My presidential pick
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:54:38 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
<nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:70q6h2dln6i144kfn1le04tvlg6c66cn9n@4ax.com...
>> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:51:47 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
>> <nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Amy Guskin" <aisling@fjordstone.com> wrote in message
>>>news:0001HW.C137FDAA024C5B74F0284530@news.verizon.net...
>>>>>> On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:36:39 -0400, Vorlonagent wrote
>>>> (in article <86SdnUjGE9w6lY_YnZ2dnUVZ_qqdnZ2d@comcast.com>):
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> That said, Ms. Clinton's crucial measure is if she can rise beyond the
>>>>> idology of her party to control terroism, which would be easier for her
>>>>> than
>>>>> any republican.  There's a whol media establishment that will give her 
>>>>> a
>>>>> pass that would never let up on a republican. <<
>>>>
>>>> This was a joke, right?  Because every study ever done on the subject by
>>>> non-partisan interested groups has shown that the Clintons have garnered
>>>> more
>>>> negative press per capita (per 'offense' if you prefer) than ANYONE else
>>>> in
>>>> politics, ever.  While I just read something at Media Matters yesterday
>>>> about
>>>> how Bush repeatedly gets a pass from the press, specifically on his low
>>>> poll
>>>> ratings (he's as low as Nixon ever got, but all the press wants to say 
>>>> is
>>>> how
>>>> he's doing fine, and in fact got a bump from his 9/11 speech).
>>>>
>>>> So I'll just assume you forgot the smiley emoticon there, because that 
>>>> HAS
>>>> to
>>>> be a joke.
>>>
>>>The (Bill) Clinton Administration had one really bad "offense" (Clinton
>>>lying under oath when sued for sexual harassment).  So a division of the
>>>admittedly large MSM attention it generated by 1 will give a misleadingly
>>>high number.
>>>
>>>On the other hand, the MSM has nourished a continual drumbeat of scandal
>>>reporting against the Bush admin from before Bush took office to now 
>>>(brief
>>>letup after 9/11 lasting about 3 months).  The New York Times drove 
>>>hysteria
>>>over the Valerie Plame outing to get something like a special prosecutor 
>>>on
>>>the case, only to find that investigating the leak evoked a backlash 
>>>against
>>>a reporter's ability to keep their sources secret.  The Times felt it was 
>>>ot
>>>on the scent of Bush Admin worngdoing, which looks now to be closer to a
>>>feud between the Colin Powell State Dept and the White House.
>>>
>>>Now consider Ms Clinton's time in the senate.  Has the MSM been hostile?
>>>Not that I've seen.  Some Republican sniping, but that's to be expected 
>>>and
>>>isn't "media"
>>
>> You seem to have been reading a different Times than I was. The Times
>> was full of nonstop scandal accusations against Clinton, who was
>> accused by the Republicans of everything from tying up an airport to
>> get a haircut to trashing the White House to rape -- I wish I could
>> say I was joking, but that's the literal truth. Comparable (except
>> insofar as they were a lot less likely to be baseless) accusations
>> against Bush received little if any coverage -- his illegal stock sale
>> (cf. Whitewater), for example, or his cheating during the Presidential
>> debate.
>
>The MSM repoted Repulican allegations, sure.  That's what it's supposed to 
>do.  And the R's went after Clinton with a vengeance because of the way 
>Reagan and Bush the Elder were treated.  Payback was a (mostly impotent) 
>bitch.  I wasn't particularly thrilled with the continual Republican attacks 
>on Clinton.  As with the Democrats and Bush, any minor misstep is ampliefied 
>into a -gate.

The problem is, the Dems didn't go after Reagan and Bush I
gratuitously -- they went after a wrong that had /actually been
committed,/ viz., the in-your-face illegal Iran-Contra operation.

In a nation of laws, one does not use investigations as a bludgeon --
one investigates when there's just cause to do so. Or at least that's
how I see it. Had the Republicans merely set out to investigate actual
wrongdoing, I would have supported them, and I think much of the
nation is with me on that.

>The MSM did not participate in the attacks on Clinton.  They did not 
>research or question why the Clintons kept FBI files on their (the 
>Clintons') opponents for so long or why they culdn't accout for the files' 
>hereabouts until they suddenly materialized on a random table somewhere.

And you know this how?

I suspect that in such cases the vast majority of investigative
reporting efforts yield nothing. And the press can't report nothing.

>The exception was the Lewenski affair where the MSM did involve itself 
>directly.  Ratings greed overcame politics at that point.

The press (I dislike the term "media," which was a cynical Agnewism
calculated to replace a revered term -- "press" -- with a vaguely
sinister one) issued a constant stream of reports on the Clinton
allegations, from rape to stolen ashtrays. When I compare
point-for-point the coverage of the Clinton allegations vs. comparable
Bush allegations, it becomes clear that as Amy pointed out the former
received much more attention. Compare, for example, two roughly
comparable allegations, Bush's illegal insider stock sale and
Whitewater.

>OTOH, the MSM has spearheded and supported the drumbeat of allegations 
>agianst the GW Bush Admin.  The Times demanded an investigation into who 
>leaked Valerie Plame's name.

The disclosure of a deep cover CIA agent is a very serious act --
don't let Bush Administration propaganda fool you into thinking
otherwise, the CIA was furious -- and in some cases seriously illegal.
A respected former ambassador claimed that the Administration had
harmed national security and possibly broken the law to gain revenge
against someone who had gone public with information that harmed the
Administration's case to go to war in Iraq -- information that was
absolutely correct. A newspaper that didn't report on that would be
guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.

That being said, how could the /news pages/ demand an investigation?
The editorialists possibly did, but editorials are not supposed to be
unbiased -- they're opinion pieces.

>They revealed the names of countries ading the 
>US by allowing  us to hold important detainees.

So?

>CBS presented false memoes 
>pretaining to Bush's national guard service in the midst of a presidential 
>election.

CBS made an error. When it was shown to be an error, they retracted it
and their anchor resigned in disgrace. So?

>That's just off the top of my head.

That's not very much.

>>>This topic is about the coming election and influences on it.  When trying
>>>to get into the mind of the electorate as a whole, nuance and diversity 
>>>are
>>>lost and a simplified view of a group's POV is the rule of the day.  If 
>>>you
>>>think that Democrats are viewed differently than what I'm putting forward,
>>>please offer your pwn reasoning.
>>>
>>>Take an inventory of recent leftist rhetoric from the point of view of a
>>>casual news-consumer.  What I come up with is: The democrats want out of
>>>Iraq yeaterday.  The democrats are complaining about US treatment of
>>>detainees at guantanamo, opposing coercive interrogation techniques that
>>>don't sound a whole lot like "torture" and oppose Bush admin wiretaps of
>>>convos between known terrorists and parties inside the US.  The 
>>>alternative
>>>to Bush's dogged and tired "stay the course" is an unappealing mishmash of
>>>"consultation and coordination with US allies" but no distinct plan to
>>>consult and coordinate *around*.  Individuals may have ideas but as a 
>>>group
>>>the democrats appear vague and antagonistic
>>>
>>>What I take from that is much concern for the rights of the bad guys and 
>>>no
>>>concern for actually winning the war that has been thrust on the US.  I
>>>recognize the possibility that my own opinion is biasing but it's what I
>>>see, as should you.
>>
>> I guess I'd have to ask how making someone stand chained naked for 40
>> hours in a cold cell while being doused by ice water or waterboarding
>> don't constitute torture.
>
>Beause they aren't life or body threatening.  The people in the cold room 
>aren't freezing fingers or toes off.  Nor are the waterboarded people 
>actually suffocating.  They are being made very, very uncomfortable.

The definition of "torture" is not "life threatening." Indeed, it is
not in the interest of the torturer to kill his victim if he wants
information.

>This contrasts with being whipped, beaten, red-hot pokers, pulling out 
>people's fingernails...

And that is torture too.

>If we caught Osma bin laden tomorrow, I'd sign the order to waterboard him 
>if I had the authority and the experts concluded it was the proper 
>technique.
>
>There would be a temptation to waterboard him just because he's Osama and 
>that would still be wrong.

If we caught Osama Bin Laden tomorrow, I would give him a fair trial,
confident in my belief that in doing so we would do far more good for
our country, and achieve a far greater victory, than we would by
obtaining questionable confessions through the utilization of morally
repugnant techniques associated with tyrants, thugs, and dictators.

>> As to Iraq, there's no clear Democratic solution because there's no
>> good solution. Bush has bequeathed the Administration a mess from
>> which there's no nice exit, no good solution. As in Vietnam, the best
>> we can hope to do is minimize the damage in the face of the
>> understandable reluctance of our allies to take on directly the
>> burdens of a mess we made for ourselves, despite their opposition in
>> the face of Bush's bullying. (They have been helping us out, but the
>> help has been subtler, e.g., by helping in Afghanistan and taking on
>> the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.)
>
>I am unimpressed by 100 (200?) engineers France volunteered for Lebanon.

So was everybody. They upped it to 2000.

>The Democrats have ever stuck to the simplication of Iraq = Viet Nam because 
>they wanted Bush = LBJ.

That sounds like a tendentious fantasy to me. To the extent that some
Dems have made that comparison it's because it's the obvious one to
make. In the beginning, it seemed to me overblown. Now it does not.

>>>This is where the 2006 of democrats differ from the 1994 Republicans. 
>>>With
>>>the Contract with America as their centerpiece, the 1994 Republicans 
>>>offered
>>>a clear, distinct alternative and specific policy alternatives.  The 2006
>>>Democrats remind us they're the alternative but their primary identity is
>>>"not-Bush", which doesn't give anything positive to vote *for*.
>>
>> For some reason, they haven't done a very good job of getting a
>> platform out. It's there -- Pelosi for one has spoken about it -- but
>> they do need a Democratic version of the Contract, particularly since
>> if as seems likely they gain control of the house the GOP will attempt
>> to blame them for the failings of the next two years -- a strategy
>> which hasn't been working for them lately because most voters can see
>> that the Dems currently have no power.
>
>When any senator can put a "hold" on legislation he doesn't like, that's an 
>over simplification.

In what significant way has the Bush Administration's agenda been
blocked by the Dems? They've won victories only when the Adminstration
proposed something so outlandish that Republicans crossed the aisle,
e.g., the dead out of the cradle Social Security proposal, or they
threatened a filibuster. But that's not much. The pres has gotten most
of what he wanted, more than most presidents have. And the results
speak for themselves.

>> The Gringrich strategy -- less the bellicosity, extremism, posturing,
>> corruption, callousness, and so forth -- could serve them well: pass a
>> laundry list of major democratic initiatives -- energy impendence,
>> protection for the American worker, border security, health care,
>> fiscal responsibility, defense against terror, honesty in government,
>> what have you -- and then let the Republicans reject them as they
>> surely would. That would show the public clearly where the Dems stand
>> and defuse the no doubt Karl Rovian nonsense about the Dems not
>> standing for anything (What do you do when your party has fucked
>> things up royally? Claim that the other side can't do better.)
>
>And when the other side is preoccupied with hatred nstead of policy, it 
>plays in Peoria.

More Roveian rubbish. There is much more bellicosity from the
Republican side, and has been for years. Or can you show me Democratic
legislators accusing President Bush of rape?

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
                    
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
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