Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Some imput from factcheck.org:

State of the Union Fact Check.

Some people may scoff at the Fascism thing, but just look at some of the things we have seen. Below is a link, assuming I did it right, describing the main fourteen points of pretty much each fascist state.

How many do we fulfill?

14 Points

Im wondering what Hannity, Coulter, and Limbaugh have to say?! Rush is probably upping his dosage right now…but I’m not gonna be surprised if this news isn’t played up too big in the media and someone (FOX News *cough, cough*) tries to spin it as a Left-Wing smear campaign.

This is the portion that will end up getting more play than the investigation itself:

“…the scandal also keeps attention on the memo contents, which demonstrate the influence of liberal interest groups in choosing which nominees Democratic senators would filibuster. Other revelations from the memos include Democrats’ race-based characterization of Estrada as “especially dangerous, because … he is Latino,” which they feared would make him difficult to block from a later promotion to the Supreme Court.

And, at the request of the NAACP, the Democrats delayed any hearings for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until after it heard a landmark affirmative action case — though a memo noted that staffers “are a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case.”

Further reason to be disillusioned by the 2 Party system. One side potentially stealing memos from the other, and the Other side with pure stupidity documented and in their opponents hands (or Op-Ed pages).

“especially dangerous, because … he is Latino,”

You realize, don’t you that the sentence about Estrada is not being quoted as full as it should be. That ellipsis (…) means that somebody took a major chunk out of that sentence. That could be the difference between a perfectly innocent statement, and the racist meaning that you claim to be there.

I mean, it could be something like the difference between this: Those Republicans are not bad people, but the neo-nazis are acting like real bastards.

And this: Those Republicans are… acting like real bastards.

So would you do us all a favor, JT, and tell us what was there? And if you don’t know, could you tell us that?

Since all this information is on Government computers and, presumably not all of it is “Top Secret”…couldn’t we (the People) request or even subpoena our Congressmen (Republican or Democrat) for the information on their hard drives anyway? Now THAT would be a real test of the Freedom of Information Act, wouldn’t it? I bet, if the Democrats had all this stuff on their computers, that the Republicans would have it too - and we all know that deleting something doesn’t necessarily purge your harddrive of the data (or, erasing the tape doesn’t always work…).

I think you…missed the point. Maybe you should…read my post again. Specifically…the last sentence.

The issue isn’t who really had what on their computers, it’s the fact that one side was using their connections and power to spy — whether they installed a keylogger, a backoffice application to read certain “secure” files, or were intercepting emails and packets of data, what they (the Republicans) are being accused of (basically) is espionage, plain and simple. Like if McDonnell-Douglas was stealing Boeing information regarding Boeing’s PR efforts or Ford hacking into Firestone’s computers to find out information about their latest marketing push, so that Ford can then have a counter-marketing campaign ready.

JT, look at the placement of that ellipsis. First, it’s not a verbatim quotation, and even if it was, it would be quite an awkward pause.

If it was a quote from a memo, then the ellipsis tells you that it’s an incomplete quotation. That’s a standard practice and you can find it in any decent journalistic or academic style-book.

It’s normally employed when one wants to limit the quotation to relevant material about one’s subject, or if one wants to cut out a discursion. But it can also be used by the unscrupulous to remove context and qualifiers.

My instincts tell me that whatever is left out by that ellipsis is fairly important to the meaning of the sentence. The placement of the ellipsis is far too convenient for my tastes, and I wish to see the original. Or maybe I’ll look for it myself.

And having looked for it, I found it: (from The Washington Times)

In other words, they’re blocking him because of his politics, the fact that he hasn’t made enough decisions to demonstrate his positions, his appeal to those wanting to play to latino voters, and because the White House is going to use him to help them stack the court later on.

That’s not racism. That’s taking into account racial politics. Before you go complaining about that, let me remind you that Bush had his Latino namesake and nephew George P. Bush campaigning in Florida for him. So Democrats could count on Bush trying to appeal to hispanics with the nomination.

So the next time you see this: “…” don’t just assume it’s a dramatic pause. Who knows? Democrats might be able to use one too.

Thanks for the refresher on Strunk & White, however my point was that the quote will be played up as Democrats being Anti-Latino, not that Republicans know how to use an elipsis.

The problem is that the quote you got was from Robert Novak, who seems to have become the go-to guy on leaks. Remember Valerie Plame? This has become a game where Bush and his people can clam up as much as they want, but his enemies get their secrets leaked and reframed with selective quotation and sampling of the material

The media no longer is allowed, by it’s corporate overlords or the government, to perform it’s necessary check on the powerful.

There must be accountability in our government or their will be tyranny and hypocrisy without limit. Even if the current system benefits you, keep in mind that what is good for the gander is good for the goose. The systemic abuses you allow now could later be turned against you.

System abuses? What system abuses? You mean hacking into computers is an abuse of power? (read with heavy, heavy sarcasm)

And the Republicans wanted to impeach Clinton for sexual improprieties which (in the end) impacted the whole Presidency by cheapening it to nothing more than a bad “Surreal Life” episode (or, maybe “Simple Life” is a more appropriate analogy?) whereas, when caught committing espionage, we still have yet to hear any real peep from the media. Has anyone seen this news on CNN, ABC, CBS, or other broadcast media? I haven’t and that’s really starting to worry me.

When it comes to news, It’s usually PBS and Sixty minutes. Whatever you can say about Liberal biases, at least they’re telling about things I didn’t know, as opposed to browbeating me with what their network people have deemed info-taining.

If there is one program, more than any other, that has been informative for me, it’s been Frontline. The neat thing about it is that they have over twenty of their full-length documentaries available online. Liberal or Conservative, you should check it out.

Frontline Streaming Video Page

Frontline has opened my eyes to many, many things &mdash and though it’s off topic, thanks for the link Stephen!

Well, given Frontline’s track record, it may not be off topic for long. Who knows?