(This was originally posted Jan 21, 2013 and the documentary was on my old [defunct] MRCTV account)
FULL MOVIE, one of my favorite Michael Moore responses from back in the day (2004).
(I cry every time I watch the beginning of this, the opener is here: https://tinyurl.com/yrhk6y84) This footage is a great example of how Democrats are joined at the hip with radicals. Again, this is one of my favorite documentaries, and while I doubt any of these have sold in years, get one, you won’t be disappointed (AMAZON). Citizens United Political Victory Fund’s (“CUPVF”)
This December 2004 comment from Amazon is a great intro to the video:
The vicious 2004 Presidential election is evidence of how deeply divided our nation is. The divide goes far deeper than Democrat/Republican or Liberal/Conservative. The divide goes deep into the hearts of all Americans. For over a generation now, our schools have taught that right and wrong is determined by each individual, that you should not let anyone tell you what is right or wrong for you. This has had a disastrous impact on our national soul. Because of this we have people like Michael Moore making films with no concern for truth or accuracy. In Mr. Moore’s eyes, the truth is not important. He truly hates America and he hates George Bush because Pres. Bush has the audacity to love our nation and to believe that all people on Earth should have a chance to be free. Celsius 411 and FahrenHYPE 9/11 were made as an answer to Mr. Moore, and to put forth the real story, if anyone really cares to seek out the truth. In the Bible, when life was good for God’s chosen people, they valued their possessions more than God and turned away from Him. The Bible says then “every man did what was right in his own eyes”. Which is to say they determined their own morality instead of following God’s law. This resulted in God’s punishment and great sorrow, which would then bring them back to the Lord, which then led to His blessings and then the cycle started again. Half of Americans still believe and look to God for guidance. In the other half, every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. This my fellow citizens is the root of our divide. As the numbers in the first group dwindle, the fabric of our society is further torn. How long until…
A combination of a few posts from 2010 that had dead media or bad links combined and reposted
This is a myth — that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian — that reverberates in the liberal community, never seeing the light of day. Here I will post what CNN’s Ali Velshi said back in August on 2010 via NEWSBUSTERS:
VELSHI: Did you know that, as an American citizen, you have two freedoms granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution, when it comes to religion? The first part is known as the Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause essentially says the government can’t pass laws that will establish an official religion. This is commonly interpreted as the separation of church and state. The second one is the Free Exercise Clause, and it prevents the government from interfering with or controlling a person’s practice of his or her religion. Religious freedom is an absolute right in this country, and it includes the right to practice any religion, or no religion at all, for all Americans.
After briefly touching on how many of the early American colonists came to North America for religious freedom, the CNN anchor moved on to his morally relativistic argument:
VELSHI: Suppose our government leaders or New York state leaders do step in, in some capacity, whether official or non-official, and assist in moving the mosque elsewhere. Then what? What kind of precedent does that set? Timothy McVeigh was raised Catholic. Do we then entertain petitions of moving Catholic churches away from the Oklahoma bombing site? I’m sure you’re thinking it sounds ridiculous, but ask yourself, is it ridiculous because Catholicism is familiar to you, or, is your argument that what he did was different, or is your argument that Timothy McVeigh didn’t kill in the name in Allah?
Actually, the comparison is ridiculous, because, as his own network acknowledged the morning after McVeigh’s execution, that the murderer was “baptized in the Catholic Church as a boy, but had stopped practicing and recently described himself as agnostic.” Moreover, as the terrorist himself admitted, he bombed the Oklahoma City federal building as a “retaliatory strike; a counter attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco).” McVeigh did not carry out the attack in the name of the Christian God or in the name of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, Al Qaeda issued a fatwa in 1998, which declared that killing “Americans and their allies…is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…in accordance with the words of Almighty God.”
Velshi concluded his commentary by stating that it didn’t matter whether Americans were for or against the planned mosque: “If you’re an American citizen and choose to remain in this country, then whether you are against or you are for the Islamic center and mosque should be irrelevant. I say ‘should be,’ in an ideal world, because, as an American citizen- well, we should all be for the Constitution that so many have fought, lived, and died for, including the 2,976 souls who died on September 11th at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and in a field in western Pennsylvania.”…..
Michael Medved interviewed the Reverend Susan B. Thistlethwaite (PhD, is Professor of Theology Emerita and President Emerita at Chicago Theological Seminary) on his show back in May of 2010. The discussion was initially about Anders Behring Breivik, the racist in Norway that killed 85 people (almost all kids). The conversation then turns to Timothy McVeigh where the Reverend said he was a Christian — this is simply not true:
A Caller into the Michael Medved Show tries to compare Christians to terrorists by bringing up Timothy McVeigh. After that myth is shot down, the caller then tries the “Bush said God told him to go to war.” Another strike.
UPDATED REFERENCES
Human Events Shot This Down — again — many years ago in their article “Timothy McVeigh was not a ‘Christian’ terrorist,” (HUMAN EVENTS, May 6, 2002 by Lofton, John). But the Left likes to attack straw-men. That is they set up a false premise as if its true then they attack it… all the while their opponents are waiting on the sidelines for them to stop circular thinking and engage the world. Here are some of the past contributors to the Liberal Mantra:
Objecting to Muslims and Islam being blamed for terrorism, Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation Of Islam, has said, according to the, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service (9/17/01): “Timothy McVeigh was from a Christian nation… and nobody said the Christian Timothy McVeigh, they said Timothy McVeigh.”
The Boston Herald (10/07/01) quotes convicted rapist/boxer Mike Tyson as saying: “Religion can’t be defined from one single person’s action. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian.”
The Providence Journal-Bulletin (9/18/01) quotes Reem Alkurdi, a Muslim, as saying, Timothy McVeigh was a Christian-American.” But, nobody is blaming “all the Christian-Americans.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (9/18/01) quotes Suleiman Badwan, a Muslim, as saying: “Don’t target me. . .. Tim McVeigh was a Christian … and he still blew up a federal building.”
The Denver Post (9/16/01) quotes Imam Tali Eid of the Islamic Center of New England in Quincy, Mass., as saying, “‘[A]t the time of McVeigh I haven’t seen any minister or priest’ having to defend his faith because McVeigh was a Christian.”
The Manchester Union Leader (9/12/01) quotes Shuja U. Saleem, who’s on the board of the Islamic Society of Greater Manchester, as saying that even though McVeigh was a Christian, “nobody points a finger at Christianity.”
The Minnesota Daily student newspaper (9/25/01) quotes Sarah Schadegg as saying, “Timothy McVeigh was a Christian but we didn’t label him the Christian bomber.”
The Canadian newspaper The Record (9/24/01), in Kitchner-Waterloo, quotes the mayor of Kitchner, Carl Zehr, as saying, “We don’t condemn Christianity because Timothy McVeigh was a Christian.”
The Los Angeles New Times newspaper (9/20/01) quotes Naji Harden, president of the Islamic Center of Hawthorne’s board of trustees, as saying, “The bomber of the Oklahoma federal building was a Christian, but we didn’t hear people singling out Christians.”
An article in USA Today (11/7/01) says, of many Muslims interviewed, that “several mentioned Timothy McVeigh. The media, they say, did not call McVeigh a Christian terrorist, but simply a terrorist.”
Nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist Mike Peters, whose cartoons appear in many newspapers, drew one cartoon labeling Timothy McVeigh as a Christian.
And in Reason magazine (12/1/01), Abdulwahab Alkebsi, a Muslim from Yemen, is quoted as saying: “Let’s call bin Laden what he is: He is a terrorist. It has nothing to do with Islam-just as much as you don’t want to call Timothy McVeigh a Christian terrorist or a Christian killer.”
MORE
WINTERY KNIGHT: Actually, according to this CNN interview with a McVeigh biographer, McVeigh was an agnostic. BREITBART:He told the authors of American Terrorist that he “did not believe in Hell.” If there’s one tenet that’s consistent with Christian religions, it’s a belief in Hell—and Heaven, for that matter. THE GUARDIAN:In his letter, McVeigh said he was an agnostic but that he would “improvise, adapt and overcome”, if it turned out there was an afterlife. “If I’m going to hell,” he wrote, “I’m gonna have a lot of company.” TOWNHALL:Reporting on his execution, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described McVeigh as “an avowed agnostic” whose sudden last-minute decision to see a Catholic priest just before his execution surprised everyone who knew him. As recently as July 2001, even a lefty like Barbara Ehrenreich (writing in the Progressive) did not portray McVeigh as having religious motives. She called McVeigh a “homegrown neo-Nazi mass murderer,” yes; Christian fundamentalist, no. RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK: When in fact Timothy McVeigh was an atheist who renounced the Judeo-Christian God and said his “god” was science. So in reality, McVeigh’s motivations line up closer with John’s political (and some would say, religious… because “atheism” is a metaphysical viewpoint) views rather than the “religious-right.” And most of the violence has been committed by people who have left leaning political views.
(Originally posted December of 2012) Just some notes on two pre-and-post-election articles from the Country journals “Concepts.” I will follow this post with one dealing with “Concepts” dealing with “free will” and how Mr. Van Huizum’s position is unattainable without the theistic view of God. But first this. In the October 20th, 2012 edition of the Country Journal, John said something I agree with. Whether he realizes it or not, he made a case FOR Romney over the horrible budgeting leadership Obama and the Democrats have shown. He says, and I quote:
The only purpose of a democratic government is to provide services for its citizens. Since the two purposes are totally different, it is doubtful to begin with that having a talent for business is going to be any yardstick as a talent for governing. When government money enabled Mitt Romney to hold a successful Olympics, does it speak well of Romney or of government?
And this is the point I think John was making… government monies create success (a broad generalization), I think he is arguing for the government spending success on “events,” it body-politic. However, he showed that Romeny took a failing Olympics where money, and more money, was being carelessly thrown to the wind via mismanagement, a lack of accountability, and corruption. Romeny took that, the classic end of Big-Government, and managed the resources well, organized opportunities to succeed for the most bang for the buck, and the Olympics were saved. Too bad this same experience John spoke of from the business sector, proven in the micro-sense with the Olympics didn’t come to Washington. Instead, you have a President who, unlike Bill Clinton who, yes, raised taxes but REFORMED social programs and CUT spending at the time. Obama is offering another stimulus (more government spending) that is about equal to any forecast gain in tax increases/revenue — the exact opposite of Clinton! (See my, “Examples/Evidence of Obama’s Policies Not Working, Thus Proving the Republican Position Works.“) At any rate, John I am sure voted for continued mismanagement, and the answer to John’s question is “Romney.”
Moving on.
This was torturous to read, honestly. More of the “blame Bush” mentality, what is called BDS: Bush Derangement Syndrome. I cannot tell you how many discussions I have had of late rehashing Halliburton, Iraq, WMDs, and other myths/conspiracies that came from the left in regards to these historical events.
The above is a great example of how the emotional argument from a non-sequiture making the above also a great example of an informal fallacy:
“Fallacious arguments usually have the deceptive appearance of being good arguments” (source). Recognizing fallacies in everyday arguments may be difficult since arguments are often embedded in rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical connections between statements. Informal fallacies may also exploit the emotional, intellectual, or psychological weaknesses of the audience. Having the capability to recognize fallacies in arguments is one way to reduce the likelihood of such occurrences. (Wiki)
What is being done is that the readers emotions are being “ginned up” by examples of real torture and death, and dictatorial regimes, and then… wayyyy at the bottom we read:
If our body is a shrine, the torturer delights in invading, defiling and desecrating that shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and often sexually. For our government to tolerate torture such as water-boarding should be a stain on our conscience.
One can see that John is still trying to connect something that didn’t happen to the U.S. governments use of water-boarding of three individuals. Three. Here is an old post on the subject… it is in-depth and is one of two (the other is found here) dealing with this topic:
From a friendly challenge to me on my FaceBook:
Rumsfeld said point blank that they did not get this info from enhanced interrogation but through regular interrogation. I had a Newsmax link which I knew you’d like better but it did not want to post for some reason. I’ll try again.
The whole debate between the efficacious nature of enhanced interrogation is back in the news, thanks to the wonderful killing of Osama bin Laden. As the Atlantic Journal notes well the politically charged topic this brings to the debate between Left and Right:
The shot-up corpse of Osama bin Laden was barely wet at the bottom of the sea when conservative heavyweights began praising Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” tactics as a big reason why U.S. soldiers were able to know in which multistory house in which million-dollar compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the al Qaeda leader was holed up. With a spectacularly successful “end” to the bin Laden story, the we-told-you-so crowd evidently now wants to go back and re-litigate the legitimacy of the “means” by which they claim it all came about.
And, in the absence of any other juicy political conflict surrounding the news of bin Laden’s death, serious journalists were only too happy to oblige the counterfact festival choreographed (typically without attribution, of course) mainly by the nation’s various spies and spooks. One earnest reporter after another, from the right and the left and in between, dutifully stoked the suddenly “reignited” fires of debate over the effectiveness of torture as a means of gathering material information from terror detainees.
On Monday into Tuesday, as a running sidebar to the main story about how the bin Laden assault took place, there were a slew of news articles arguing the back-and-forth of the torture meme as if the two sides to the argument came to this august moment in American history on equal footing in fact or law. For example, NBC’s mighty Michael Isikoff tried to finesse the matter by describing the torture of terror law prisoners as “aggressive interrogations” or “sometimes controversial interrogations.” And then he wrote:
The behind-the-scenes story of how bin Laden was finally located is yet to be fully told, but emerging details seem likely to reignite the debate over whether “enhanced interrogation” techniques and other aggressive methods that have been widely criticized by human rights groups provided useful – or timely — intelligence about al-Qaida. While some current and former U.S. officials credited those interrogations Monday with producing the big break in the case, others countered that they failed to produce what turned out to be the most crucial piece of intelligence of all: the identity and whereabouts of the most important figure in bin Laden courier’s network.
One of the “behind-the-scenes” nuggets apparently involves Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, who was said by some unidentified analysts to have given up the nicknames of some of bin Laden’s couriers only after being subjected to waterboarding. One of those couriers, we now know, was brilliantly tracked by American operatives to the Abbottabad hideout and thus to bin Laden himself. But here’s what the Associated Press had to say about that:
Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.
Just exactly why the merits of waterboarding as an honorable tool of U.S. policy are “once again up for debate” based upon the Mohammed example was left unwritten by the AP.
Firstly, a shout out to the many years from multiple administrations and the intelligence community and our boys in uniform. Now down to business. I have gotten a couple of people pointing out some discrepancies in my previous post, Without Bush Implementing Water-Boarding and Guantanamo Interrogations, Osama Would Still Be Alive. What is actually happening – I believe – is a misconception of times and places on the part of the liberals entering into this discussion. It is important to know as well that “first reports” are always a bit confused. As you read the following you will see that the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and other liberal sites ran with responses to questions that don’t fit the outcome to the conclusions made. What the questions were that were originally posed to Rumsfeld seem to be a bit out of context, as we will see.
To wit I have been given multiple articles to read, some from liberal sources, others from conservative source… sources rejected except in this singular instance – speaking here of the NewsMax article. In it NewsMax starts out with this:
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Newsmax the information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches” and says the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”
Lets bullet point this for clarity sake:
1) information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches
2) the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”
Nothing I wrote or conservatives posted disagree with this notion, and it is beyond me why DailyKos, the Huffington post, and other sites take Rummies words and misconstrue them. A great post dealing with this issue is found over at SayAnythingBlog.com:
Liberals have been touting these comments from Donald Rumsfeld in which the former Bush administration Secretary of Defense says that the intelligence used to find Osama bin Laden wasn’t obtained through waterboarding because waterboarding didn’t happen at Guantanamo Bay:
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Newsmax the information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches” and says the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”
Rumsfeld also claims that elements of Pakistani intelligence could have been complicit in hiding the terrorist mastermind, asserts that his killing exonerates George W. Bush’s approach to fighting terrorism, and warns that terrorists will likely try to avenge bin Laden’s death with new attacks against America or its allies.
“Another wingnut myth bites the dust,” writes Bob Cesca, but I’m not sure this really disproves anything.
First, we know that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was interrogated not at Guantanamo Bay but at CIA detention centers in eastern Europe. We also know that KSM was subjected to so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” which is pretty much political speak for waterboarding.
Also, as Stephen Hayes notes on Twitter, the question isn’t whether or not KSM gave up the intelligence during a waterboarding session but whether or not the waterboarding we all know KSM went through made him compliant with his interrogators, something that lead to him giving up the intelligence at a later date.
But really, this is all a moot point. Even it we stipulate that waterboarding, or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” had nothing at all do to with KSM giving up key details which lead to bin Laden’s capture the intelligence was still gathered at facilities (Guantanamo Bay and the CIA prisons in Europe) Obama wanted shut down.
No matter how this is spun, the reality of how the intelligence which brought down bin Laden was gathered is a black eye for President Obama and the liberals who spent years campaigning against the very policies which made that intelligence gathering possible.
Excellent points! Also, many sources in the prevailing articles coming out hourly is another indicator of the factual points of the varying sides of this argument. For instance, over at the Denver Post (was at the Charlotte Observer):
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA’s secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida.
Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida’s operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden’s personal courier.
“Hassan Ghul was the linchpin,” a U.S. official said.
Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.
If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, they’d find bin Laden.
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.
Take note that the source that mentions that we did get the info via enhanced interrogations was sourced by name. Again:
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
The sources apparently saying different are simply referred to as former officials, But note that the article says this, “Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation.” In two separate posts on my FaceBook I pointed out the misunderstanding some seem to have:
The name of the courier did not come from KSM under enhanced interrogation. KSM cracked and agreed to share what he knew BECAUSE of enhanced interrogation. I don’t know how I can be clearer? …. (I read the Newsmax article.) KSM, after many short intervals of water-boarding combined with sleep deprivation, caved in. And over many months/years of “tea and crumpets” he divulged names, places, tactics, and the like. This info led to many plots being foiled [like the planned attack on the Library Tower in L.A.]. The codename for the courier was one of the items given up during these talks AFTER they water-boarded him, which could have been months after or years after this initial event. Clear?
For those who have the time, I highly recommend Larry Elders dealing with this topic yesterday. I combine highlighted moments from his radio broadcast where he makes many similar point:
Gateway Pundit likewise deals with his topic in a way that refutes the many positions stated by my liberal friends:
Obama CIA chief admitted today that intelligence gleaned from enhanced interrogating techniques led the US to Osama Bin Laden. Today reported:
Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.
“Enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.
Panetta, who in a 2009 CIA confirmation hearing declared “waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong,” said Tuesday that debate about its use will continue.
“Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question,” Panetta said.
Additionally, Gateway Pundit has video of Rumsfeld saying the same (video is gone – poof… here is a rundown of the misquote):
RUMSFELD QUOTE FROM HANNITY: “CIA Director Panetta indicated that one of the individuals who provided important information had in fact been waterboarded… There was some confusion today on some programs, even one on FOX I think, suggesting that I indicated that no one who was waterboarded at Guantanamo provided any information on this. It’s not true. No one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the US military. In fact no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo period. Three people were waterboarded by the CIA away from Guantanamo and then later were brought to Guantanamo. And, in fact, as you pointed out the information from these individuals was critically important.” (GATEWAY PUNDIT)
There has been a lot of misquoted information surface on this topic because it came from 3rd, 4th and 5th party repeaters. Rumsfield was misquoted. He appeared on TV and stated that he never said that the information wasn’t obtained from waterboarding, only that the waterboarding of KSM didn’t occur at GITMO. Actually the correct information was that KSM gave up the info while being interrogated in the country he was captured and that’s where the waterboarding took place not after he was sent to GITMO. Congressman Peter King made the statement and stands behind it. (See more on how this misquote was used against people like Rep. Peter King, HERE). (AARP)
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:
“CIA Director Panetta indicated that one of the individuals who provided important information had in fact been waterboarded… There was some confusion today on some programs, even one on FOX I think, suggesting that I indicated that no one who was waterboarded at Guantanamo provided any information on this. It’s not true. No one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the US military. In fact no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo period. Three people were waterboarded by the CIA away from Guantanamo and then later were brought to Guantanamo. And, in fact, as you pointed out the information from these individuals was critically important.”
Once again… Ace of Spades put together the timeline that started back in 2003 during the Bush years that led to Osama’s death on Sunday.
The Obama Administration is lying. They don’t want to give Bush credit for leading them to Osama’s compound. And, they don’t want to admit they were wrong about waterboarding.
Once Again, my Democrats and Liberal friends are wrong as well as major liberal sites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post are wrong. Too bad, sooo sad. I wish to point out that many of the truther leftist out there seem to running into a wall of competing emotions and logical conclusions within their models. (Here I suggest my C-O-N-Debunker page for the truther.) For instance, one friend on FaceBook posted this in regards to Rossie O’Donnel:
The killing of Bin Laden must pose a dilemma for leftist truthers like Rosie O’Donnell, who think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. As a loyal liberal, she wants to praise Obama, but for what — killing the wrong guy?
Another person chimed in:
It’s worse than that Mike, if you include the rare bird known as the truther-birther. That guy not only believes the wrong guy was killed, but that the wrong guy ordered the killing. And now add the newly-minted, “deather,” who doesn’t believe OBL was really killed. Thus, you can in theory have someone who believes that the wrong guy issued an order to kill a guy that didn’t die for a crime he did not commit.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first try to deceive, which are what the conspiratorialists — of which I use to be one many years ago — are doing to themselves. But it sure is fun to watch.
Larry goes through some basics of why we call this a “derangement syndrome.” It was coined during the Bush years (Bush Derangement Syndrome) by Charles Krauthammer. Larry points out that it really is a madness in light of Trump’s positions.
This paper is in response to a conversation about voting in my son’s VISUAL ARTS CLASS that climaxed with the teacher saying “that the only reason that President Bush won the 2000 election in Florida was that he had a brother as governor and that some votes were not counted.” (I am assuming that because the teacher mentioned the two together – that is, disenfranchisement and Governor Jeb Bush – that she believes in a conspiracy through all levels of the Florida government and Supreme Court to make sure that then Governor George W. Bush would win the election. This is the clear implication of what was said in the classroom.) The Military vote, point-in-fact, is the only provable vote that was withheld.
I wish to say here that any teacher has the right to own her or his opinion. We all have that right, you, me, anyone. However, one cannot own his or her own facts. And this is where the teacher may have crossed the line when she said (mind you I am going off what my son told me, as I was not there in the classroom at the time), “the only reason Bush won…”, you see, this goes beyond opinion within the realm of impressionable seventh-graders. Unchallenged in this environment, teachers in many classrooms in this valley and elsewhere get away with bringing a point of view that is unfounded by the facts of a reasonable investigation of “what did happen” in Florida. It isn’t nearly as infamous as the teacher put it.
I will use a partial excerpt from a paper I wrote to my son’s sixth-grade computer teacher (who was really a parent volunteer). Obviously this incomplete outlook on the election is widespread enough for me to respond to it almost every year since. I will explain some of the reasoning behind this apparent acceptance of something so easily explained away once the panorama of facts about the Florida recount are brought together rather than isolated, such as in Fahrenheit 911.
RECOUNT ~ THE SKINNY
Eight counties were recounting ballots in Florida. All eight counties were using different standards to determine which ballots were to be allocated to Gore and which were to be allocated to Bush. First and foremost, all eight counties were Democratic counties, they had Democrats who were in charge of that counties election, and democrats devised the ballots themselves years before. Republicans were in the minority in these districts. This is rarely addressed. This aside, what would have been the outcome if the counts were allowed to continue? I want to answer this with an example (used in a prior letter to a teacher) from a poli-sci class I took at C.O.C.:
… last week I went to visit the professor at C.O.C. to give him a paper I wrote for his amusement, when I walked in the classroom the students were discussing the fact that President Bush went before the 911 Commission with Dick Cheney, one girl asked if Cheney had to hold Bush’s hand – sarcastically of course. Another student mentioned that Bush was not under oath or in a public setting for his hearing. I asked to interject; the professor gave me the green light, so I mentioned that President Clinton was not under oath, nor was his hearing public, and that he took along Bruce Lindsey and Sandy Burger. I then turned to the girl and asked if Bruce had one hand while Sandy had the other – sarcastically of course. Laughs abounded again.
Another student blurted out that Bush stole the election in the Florida debacle – so called. I responded simply to him that the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and four Florida newspapers: the Orlando Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the St. Petersburg Times all recounted the votes multiple times, and each time Bush came out the winner. (In fact, they recounted the votes for the entire state eight-times and Bush won all eight-times. They did it eight-times so they could try each of the different counting “techniques” that each of the eight counties were using in their recounting efforts due to Gore bringing the matter into our courts.)[1] This is not including the military vote that Gore successfully withheld a part of, which would have even widened Bush’s lead considerably. This student had never heard a good response to this objection that he had been blurting out for four years to conservative classmates, friends and family…
This answers one aspect of the problem in regards to what would have happened. However, I want to explain why Florida was so “close.” I have a documentary that shows the actual graphics displayed by ABC, NBC, etc, during the original counting of the Florida ballots, what did their numbers show? At no time during the entire period of ballot counting in Florida was Bush ever behind in actual hard votes cast! One vote tally showed a 100,000-vote lead, another showed 150,000 lead prior to its drop.
TIME ZONES
The real problem lies in Florida being in two time zones. So when the polls closed in the eastern side of the state, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and the like (except FOXNews), all said the polls had closed in Florida. Then CBS called Florida for Gore even though the hard tally count said otherwise, the other media moguls followed. The voters in the western part of Florida turned away from the polls in droves.
These voters who were told that Florida had already been called for Gore, and that the polls were closed, lived in a part of the state that is predominately Republican. Three groups did separate investigations into what type of voters decided not to go to the polls. All three came to the separate conclusion that anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 Republican votes over the “disparaged” total [which included voters from both parties] were lost to this miscall by the media. So, if one were to add the military vote kept out by Gore and the lost votes from the western part of Florida, the gap in Bush’s lead would have been beyond the state recount minimum.
In fact, no news organization put Florida back into Bush’s column until after the polls closed across the country. The media outlets up to this point all mentioned that without Florida, Bush would lose the election, even FOX. The amount of Republicans deciding it useless to go to the polls in other time zones has not been calculated. I believe, though, it would mirror the three separate organizations that tallied western Florida’s disparaged voters, but on a grander scale. In fact, I believe that the popular vote would also be in Bush’s hands in 2000 if the media had not so egregiously miscalled the state of Florida. (Keep in mind this is my “opinion” based on the voters reactions, both Democratic and Republican, tallied by scientific means from three organizations investigations in western Florida. You see, this is opinion based on logic and science, not un-founded paranoia and suppositions alluded to by my son’s teacher.)
Again, though, even with all the above put aside, Bush won all the recounts, and the New York Times simply states that if the recount was allowed to continue by the U. S. Supreme Court that Bush would have been the clear winner.
WHY THE BAD CALL?
Part of the miscall in the 2000 election can be tied directly to the early miscall in the 2004 election, in way of example. “Exit Polling” is the main culprit in this aspect of the problem. MSNBC and FOXNews had computer models of who was winning this time around that included the Exit Polling information. This skewed the election as going strongly to John Kerry. In fact, Kerry was gearing his thinking to a win. However, when MSNBC, FOXNews, ABC, CBS, and the like, dropped the Exit Polling info from their computer models half-way through the day, Bush surged about 5-percentage points.
These statistics were even worse during the 2000 election, allowing for the early and thus incorrect call for Florida. Let me state once again unequivocally, in the hard tallying of actual votes minus Exit Polling data, both in the 2004 election as a whole, and specifically in the 2000 debacle, Bush was never behind in the count.
5 TO 4, OR 7 TO 9
Some are under the impression that the U.S. Supreme Court was split on the final decision along party divisions that had the five “conservative” Judges voting along demagogic lines for Bush, and the four “liberal” Judges for Gore. This is in fact untrue. On the heart of the case (that is, equal protection for the voter as well as for Bush and Gore) the U.S. Supreme Court was almost unanimous. A seven/two split! The most liberal Supreme Court Judge agreeing that the eight differing standards in what is and is not acceptable for a Gore/Bush ballot allocation shouldn’t be allowed to continue.
These seven Judges took into consideration the Constitutional aspects of the problem, as well as the Florida Constitution’s limitations to time in regards to a recount. All seven agreed that there was insufficient time to bring a fair and homologous procedure to all these eight (and possibly more) counties.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
So why all the “hub bub, bub?” Partisan politics, period! I can speak from experience, using in fact, an example from my own past. When Clinton became president, there were documentaries released by the “right” that had all kinds of conspiracy theories as to all the “misdealings” within the history of the Clintons political road to the Whitehouse. The most popular of them being The Clinton Chronicles. This montage of clippings, newspaper headlines, testimonies, and video shown in this documentary is quite convincing at first glance. And I was convinced. However, as I am one to poke and prod (which is why my home library has ballooned to over 3,000 books and hundreds of video/DVD documentaries), the conspiracies revolving around the Clintons have been shown quite baseless. What are, if any, the equivalent to the Clinton based documentaries? Michael Moore!
FAHRENHEIT 911
While space here is limited to the subject at hand, that is, the Florida recount, I am open to discussion about any “fact” thought to be authoritative that was presented in any of Moore’s documentaries.[2]
Near the beginning of Fahrenheit 911 we are shown a newspaper headline that states Gore won one of the recounts in Florida. Yes, an actual photo of a newspaper headline, or so we are led to believe. What isn’t shown is the original article. In fact, this wasn’t an article at all!
What it was, was a letter to the editor from a reader of a newspaper who wrote in responding to the recounts all going Bush’s way. This person was a private citizen whose letter was placed in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the opinion part of the newspaper. What Moore did was take this column-and-a-half letter to the editor, expand and enlarge the headline to stretch across the entire top of the “page,” even going so far as changing the font, and then spreading out and enlarging the letter portion to more columns, thus making it look like a newspaper headline. In other words, Michael Moore used deception to tweak information to legitimize his view that Gore won the election. Which ALL investigations have shown to be false.
And I do mean all. For instance, all the examples of people being stopped from voting by force in Florida have proven vacuous. One example:
POLICE ROADBLOCKS
One story still mentioned by partisans today, and mentioned by Moore is that of a roadblock by police officers stopping black voters from making it to the polls. When a civil rights group went down to Florida and held hearings on this (and other) matter[s], they found that there was a robbery nearby, and the police were setting up a perimeter to catch the suspect.
In fact, the possible[3] irony of all this is that most likely, taking into consideration the racial population in the area where this crime was committed, and that a disproportionate number of crimes committed by said racial group that populates this area of Florida all point to the disenfranchisement of these minority voters by a fellow minority resident. Irony at its best… if proven true that is.
TO CONCLUDE
So the point of this long, drawn-out response to a statement made as a fact in my son’s seventh-grade Visual Arts class, is this:
When statements like these are made as de-facto-truth – de-facto because when the teacher is in a position of authority over these malleable young minds and are given the benefit of the doubt by the students thinking that these adults have researched what they state as fact within the realm of the classroom in a fashion deserving that of an adult mind – when in fact they are easily dismissed as “other-than,” then we as parents must not allow such misstatements to be made without challenge.
The matter of who won the Florida recount has been put to rest, almost four years ago. Partisan politics keeps it alive however. And to engender students to look upon their President, no matter what political affiliation that President finds himself or herself to be aligned with, with suspicion is a serious matter. This is not the place for a teacher to steer their students towards unfounded opinions based on unsupported suspicions that would cause or call into question the respect due a President in the classroom setting.
While a parent has the right to engender whatever they wish with their own children, the teacher must be diligent to keep such misgivings about such matters to themselves and their own children, teachers lounge, or wherever such opinions are relevant or warranted. I am not angered by such an opinion stated within the classroom, in fact, I have come to expect it. I only wish that the teacher[s] understand that when they speak on such matters, that they do so in a manner that engenders our sons and daughters understanding of government, rather than the political opinions of said teacher[s].
I hope to hear back from the school on this matter. I also invite those teachers on the Heart Team who enjoy political discussion as much as I do to feel free to open up lines of communication with me. I don’t bite. Sometimes within the limited time people have and the demographic they find themselves in, their opinions are passed unchallenged or without taking into consideration another point of view. I understand this.
“Thank You! ~ Much Thought, Sean G”
Thank you for you patience in reading this parent’s rebuttal and concern about something said in the classroom. I hope this letter will engender positive discussion among the teachers on my son’s team, and a greater understanding of an excitable topic.
Footnotes
[1] In fact, there is no newspaper headline in the entire United States that showed Gore ahead in any of the recounts. I will deal with the only headline produced that showed gore ahead, it can be found in Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 911.
[2] My e-mail address is at the top of the page. I will discuss these matters as I have here: in a calm, logical manner that takes the sociological extremisms (e.g., The Clinton Chronicles on one side versus Fahrenheit 911 on the other) from both sides into consideration. For instance: in a recent poll, 29% of Democrats polled believe Bush stole the 2004 election. No evidence of foul play, just paranoia that any sociologist could do a doctoral thesis on.
[3] I am only guessing here and do not know all the parameters of the case – more of a thought experiment.
UPDATES
This first addendum comes from NEWSBUSTERS: (May 2008)
George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 “undervote” ballots that were at the center of Florida’s disputed presidential election….
That look was followed in November by an analysis by a consortium of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN and AP. It determined that George W. Bush still would have won under either legally possible recount scenario which could have occurred: The Florida Supreme Court ordered recount of undervotes statewide or Gore’s request for a recount in certain counties. The New York Times led its November 12, 2001 front page article, “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote,” by reporters Ford Fessenden and John M. Broder:
A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.
Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.
Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations….
In the first full study of Florida’s ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.
The study, conducted by the accounting firm of BDO Seidman, counted over 60,000 votes in Florida’s 67 counties, tabulating separate vote totals in several standards categories.
While the USA Today report focused on what would have happened had the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount not been halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Herald pointed to one scenario under which Gore could have scored a narrow victory — a fresh recount in all counties using the most generous standards.
In their reports, the newspapers assumed counts already completed when the court-ordered recount was stopped would have been included in any official count. Thus, they allowed numbers from seven counties — Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward, Hamilton, Manatee, Escambia and Madison — to stand, but applied the most inclusive standards to votes in the rest of the state. If those numbers did not stand, the Herald reported, a more generous hypothetical revisited recount would have scored the White House for Gore — but with only a 393-vote margin.
Under most other scenarios, the papers reported, Bush would have retained his lead…..
HEH, here is a VERY recent update via PJ-MEDIA (August 2017):
Al Gore told Bill Maher on his HBO “Real Time” show that he thinks he carried Florida in the 2000 election.
Gore also believes that rising temperatures will doom mankind to extinction unless we revert economically to the Middle Ages. Which ignorant belief is dumber?
[…..]
Anyone not named Al Gore (or apparently, Bill Maher) knows that two independent studies by media organizations proved that Bush won the 2000 race in Florida and hence, the election.
The most comprehensive review was done by a consortium of media companies, including:
The [New York]Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots.
The consortium examined the 43,000 ballots that remained to be counted when the Supreme Court stopped the process. They determined:
Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.
Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.
Another media group headed up by USA Today and the Miami Herald also conducted an extensive study and came to the same conclusion:
A USA Today/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study after the election concluded in May 2001 that Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots, called “hanging chads,” if a standard advocated by Gore had been used.
“Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes,” the study concluded.
But liberals hate it if they’re not being seen as suffering under the yoke of oppression. The election was stolen! Gore should have been president!
We’re seeing the exact same effort to delegitimize Trump. Hillary didn’t lose the election. Trump colluded with the Russians and stole it! Outrage! Call for a special counsel. Start the impeachment!
Well, my cruise to Hawaii and back (2013) went as well as one could expect. One of my favorite parts was being “buzzed” by the USS Vinson (Carrier) on our last sea day. Not only did we see a floating military airport, F-18’s, Sea-Hawks, and E-2C Hawkeyes… but we also saw a pod of whales and dolphins.
A great trip.
But I wouldn’t post just this on my blog… which is called “Religio-Political Talk”! I mean, Who cares about Hawaii!?
I wanted to recount a conversation, really a landslide of a conversation I had with an older gentleman (Walter) in a jacuzzi on board the ship. Now, many of the people on board were vets of some sort on a twilight cruise to Pearl Harbor… so political views lined up with most on board. Conversations — when political — were for the most part neutral or in agreement. And the many Canadians and Brits on board are suffering from the same political correctness in not dealing with immigration and Islamic radicals. We are in the same boat, so-to-speak. But while talking to a police officer from SoCal on vacation with his beautiful family, an older gentleman got into the jacuzzi and proceeded to blame — in general conversation — everything on Bush and Republicans. His ability to weave politics indiscriminately into conversation was amazing! I was impressed.
At first I decided to ignore the references, I took his age into account. However, after a while I caved and proceed to challenge him on many points he made. One topic was welfare, and I pointed out that more people are on food stamps than the population of Spain, he mentioned that many single mothers needed help… to which I used an analogy to help explain how social programs assisted in making single-parenthood an option.
Lets say that the government determined that tennis was the best way to create community and health in society, so it subsidized a small portion of classes, training courses and courts to be built. As the price of tennis dropped more and more people took classes and started playing tennis. Government saw that this was a good thing and subsidized more of it dropping the price even more allowing for easier access to the sport. The opposite is done with smoking. To decrease smoking government raises the cost of cigarettes to dissuade the action of smoking.
I asked if he agreed with my analogy. He said yes. I then referenced shortly Thomas Sowell’s interaction with an official from the welfare administration and pointed out that in effect the government is doing precisely what my analogy he agreed with promotes… that is, making it very easy for men to choose to leave their families because they know the government will feed their children, pointing out — as Larry Elder points out — that 75% of black children are born into homes without a father. Mentioning that THIS is why the poverty and crime levels are so high in these neighborhoods. NOT because of racism as he had eluded to, but because of subsidizing irresponsibility and fatherlessness!
He also intimated that the banks were also racist in their ravaging the poor by loans for homes they couldn’t afford. I pointed out that Bush and McCain tried to reform Fannie and Freddie a total of 17-times and each time were shut down by Democrats. Walter, the gentleman in the hot-tub, hadn’t heard that before, and I mentioned that Bill Clinton himself blames the Democrats, while still others rewrite history.
Conversation went to education and educational costs. Here is where we had a sharp disagreement. Walter said the schools only get $5,000 or so per student to teach them. I mentioned that each student in L.A. gets about $13,000 spent on them. Actually, I was wrong, it is closer to $30,000 dollars a year. But every point of disagreement or complaint Walter had focused around racism. Which led me to my final point of the discussion with his. I asked him why he was so sensitive to the topic of race/racism. He responded that he had a family member who passed in a concentration camp during WWII, mentioning his Jewish roots. Awesome!
This led me to my favorite analogy, which I asked Walter to allow me time to build. He agreed, revealing ultimately his political inconsistencies:
Walter, I will use Bush in my analogy. Let us say for twenty years Bush attended a church that twice prominently displayed David Dukes likeness on the cover of their church’s magazine which reaches 20,000 homes, and a third time alongside Barry Mills (the co-founder of the Aryan Brotherhood). Even inviting David Duke to the pulpit to receive a “lifetime achievement award.” Even selling sermons by David Duke in the church’s book store. Authors of sermons sold in Bush’s church’s bookstore teach in accordance with Christian Identity’s view that Jews and blacks are offspring of Satan and Eve via a sexual encounter in the Garden of Eden. In the church’s bookstore, the entire time Bush attended, books like Mein Kampf (Hitler), or, My Awakening (David Duke), and other blatantly racist books. Even members of the Aryan Brotherhood felt comfortable enough to sit in the pews at times… being that the pastor of the church was once a reverend for the group.
Now Walter, if Bush had gone to a church like that I would walk arm-n-arm with my Democratic comrades in making sure he would never be President. You would expect me to I am sure?
He confirmed my suspicion. I then shared my knowledge of Obama.
I purchased from Obama’s church’s bookstore online 3-books: A Black Theology of Liberation, Black Theology & Black Power, and Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. In these books Walter, God is said to be against white people, and mirror in their hatred of whites to that of Jews in Mein Kampf, calling both devils.
[Take note I didn’t recall the exact quotes I am using below]:
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” ~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
Another was a montage of faces – black leaders, past and present, with the title “The legacy lives on” – that included Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran. (Weekly Standard, Newsmax, and WND)
Obama’s pastor not only was a minister in The Nation of Islam, an anti-Semitic/racist group, but the church’s book store sells sermons by Louise Farrakhan, who teaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus by a mad scientist, Yakub. (Mr. Farrakhan also believes he was taken up on a UFO to meet God, and was told he was a little messiah, take note also that he was directly involved in the deaths of police officers as well.) Louise Farrakhan was featured twice on the church’s magazine which reach 20,000[plus] homes in the Chicago area. Even placing on the cover with Louise Farrakhan a third time the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad likewise taught that the white man was created by Yakub 6,600 years ago. Walter, Louise Farrakhan teaches that the Jews in Israel do not belong there, and that the true Jews are the black people. Louise Farrakhan was invited into Obama’s church, to the pulpit and given a “lifetime achievement award.” In fact, the New Black Panthers and members of the Nation of Islam often times sat in the pews for sermons by Rev. Wright, whom Obama called a mentor. Not to mention Obama’s wife pictured with racist, anti-Semetic, UFO cult members.
So I expect you, Walter, to join arm-and-arm with me on finding out why the media, and Democrats who are so concerned about racism let such a man into office, when, if the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want in office.
Do you know the next thing out of Walter’s mouth was?
✫“Didn’t Bush speak in a church that forbid interracial marriage?”
I responded that no, it was a speech at Bob Jones University…
… and you are making my point Walter. If that bugs you soo much to mention it during the course of a conversation, why doesn’t Obama’s history more-so irk you? Not to mention the university overturned its silly rule, even Bob Jones said he couldn’t back up that policy with a single verse in the Bible (CNN). Obama’s CHURCH OF TWENTY YEARS has made no such concession.
At this point Walter started to get out of the hot-tub finishing with “well, that’s just your opinion.” (Meaning, my carefully laid out facts and years of study combined with an analogy was hogwash.) Walter went his way, and even avoided me when he saw me in the international caffe — even though our conversation was calm, rational, and reasoned. I even asked him permission twice to make my analogies, being polite and respecting his age. Walter is a great example of how Democrats ignore following their own concerns to their logical conclusions, when applied to their own candidate. Sad.
The Miami Heraldreported in 2002 that Jeb Bush initially attended the public Grady Elementary School in Houston before mother Barbara enrolled him in the private Kincaid School closer to where they lived.
Brother George W. attended public schools in Midland, Texas – Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High – before being enrolled at Kincaid when the family moved to Houston.
As such, would you like some salt for that shoe, Mr. Damon?
Update: Tweep @bzaz points out that George W’s kids Jenna and Barbara both attended public schools – Preston Hollow Elementary in Dallas and Austin High School in Austin – and Jenna a few years after graduating college worked as a teacher’s aide at Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School in Washington D.C.
Megyn Kelly took on Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, on Friday night, grilling him on the colossal trainwreck of the health care law’s rollout and asking whether President Obama’s failed promises were “intentionally misleading or grossly mistaken.” Kelly told her all the issues with insurance companies restructuring plans and employers altering policies were “foreseeable,” and argued a minimum floor of coverage might not sit well with some people. Emanuel shot back that the main thrust of the Obamacare law is to cover millions more people, saying the GOP “never had a coherent plan or alternative.” Emanuel argued employers cut back on coverage en masse under Bush, but Kelly said there are still plenty of issues with Obamacare, like young people not signing up and the “huge swelling of the Medicaid rolls.” Emanuel dismissed the numbers already coming out as “totally irrelevant,” shouting “You have no idea whether you’re on track or not!” Kelly shot back, “Kathleen Sebelius won’t tell me!”
Newsbusters has this great blurb on a left leaning
Even a radical leftist like Seymour Hersh thinks the media are obsequious toward President Obama. In an interview with the leftist U.K. paper The Guardian, Hersh said “It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy.”
Hersh claims the Obama administration “lies systematically,” yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him:
▼ “It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.”
The big difference is that Hersh was a “mainstream” media star during the Bush years when he was warning of a dangerous rogue president. Good luck finding him now when he’s singing the same song about Obama. Hersh now claims he has a big scoop coming on the takedown of Osama bin Laden:
▼ Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011….
Firstly, I must applaud John for saying something not too many on the left say, and that is when he slighted the U.N. properly, “The mere fact that it is not even on the United Nations agenda shows how impotent that organization is in enforcing its own Charter due to the Security Council’s veto power.” Awesome. For those reading this, I recommend a great documentary entitled, “U.N.Me.” A great and actually funny look at the uselessness of that body.
Now, to discuss quickly John’s ending sentence.
“I do feel sorry for Sarah though: she still thinks there is a difference between God and Allah.”
I know John is illiterate in his theology, comparative-religious studies, historical depth, and the like. Because there are huge differences between Allah and the God of the Bible. And they express themselves in their founders, Jesus, and Muhammad:
MUHAMMAD ordered his followers (and participated in) the cutting of throats of between 600-to-900 persons. Not all men, but women and children. He was a military tactician that lied and told others to use deception that ultimately led to the death of many people (taqiyya). We never see any depictions of Muhammad with children, we just know that he most likely acquired a gal at age 6 and consummated the “marriage” when she was 9. He was a pedophile in other words. While the Qu’ran states that a follower of this book should have no more than 4 wives, we know of course that he had many more. Many more.
JESUS, when Peter struck off the ear of the soldier, healed it. Christ said if his followers were of any other kingdom, they would fight to get him off the cross. Christ invited and used children as examples of how Jewish adults should view their faith… something culturally radical – inviting children into an inner-circle of a group of status oriented men as the Pharisees were and using them as examples to learn from. Jesus, and thusly us, can access true love because the Triune God has eternally loved (The Father loves the Son, etc. ~ unlike the unitarian God of Islam). Love between us then, my wife and I, the love in community/Body of Christ, has foundations in God. Even the most ardent Muslim still leaves his or her entrance into “heaven” as an arbitrary choice of “god.” The love of Christ and the relationship he offers is bar-none the center piece of our faith… something the Muslim does not have. Which is why the Church evolved because they have a point of reference in Christ to come back to. We would not want the Muslim to fall back to his point of reference but to look to Jesus as a referent.
Remember, in Christian theology, Jesus IS God. This is lost on an old-progressive soul like John however… so to my real reason for posting on this recent “Concepts.” And it is surely John’s, like most liberal Democrats, BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) that is driving this painting of history the wrong way.
“George W told us he obeyed a higher father than his earthly father, but we see what that accomplished: nothing.”
If you [the reader] are not familiar with this mantra John is referencing, deals with “Dubya” supposedly praying to God and getting confirmation to go into Iraq (the key back-and-forth begins at 1:35… listen to it all after that):
This mantra and myth is still alive in the likes of “Concepts,” where history and reasonable thought are something akin to the abundance of the Blackfin Cisco. The left leaning (really it fell over) Guardian Newspaper sums up the myth well:
George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.
Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.”
Mr Bush went on: “And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”
Joe Scarborough and New Yorker editor David Remnick clash over the New Yorker’s endorsement of Barack Obama, in which the magazine writes of Obama helping to relieve the “national shame inflicted by the Bush administration.”
