Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

I can’t imagine McCain-Feingold applies to a radio host’s opinion - if it did, things like newspaper editorial pages would be violations, too.

I can’t find a text of the actual law - anyone got a link?

Technically, the examples you’ve cited couldn’t be interpretted as violating the law, since he’s advocating against Bush, not explicitly for Kerry. Apparently that distinction matters. However, I’m sure that he does advocate for Kerry directly as well. I just don’t think anyone cares.

Every single conservative radio show I listen to (Rush, Hannity, Boortz) all explicitly emplore their listeners to vote for Bush. What would become of talk radio if they couldn’t? (and as an aside, why didn’t you mention them? Hannity is always going on about “intellectual honesty”… so shame on you.)

IANAL, but I wouldn’t be worried about this in either direction.

This is what cracks me up about Republicans. When McCain wanted to really tighten up the rules on “soft money” his Republican colleagues trounced him.

The more candid Republicans said that restrictions would be detrimental to their party because they could raise tons more cash than the Democrats. The more disingenious came up with the wacky theory that politicians pandering legislation for election contributions is a First Amendment right.

Boy, now that Sorros is throwing around the big bucks, and the internet donations are piling up for the Dems, the Republicans are sure crying foul. Big crybaby hypocrites.

And isn’t it funny that they crap all over lawyers, but as soon as the Dems look like they’re going to pull off a win somehow, they’re the first ones filing a lawsuit, aren’t they?

If you guys are serious about campaign finance reform, make it illegal for an incumbent politician to recieve anything of value from anyone. Period.

I don’t see the difference between Al Franken’s remarks and the everyday remarks of hundreds of full-time conservative radio and television commentators from Bill O’Reilly to Rush Limbaugh. His comments - as an on-air personality - pale in comparison to the everyday flippant remarks of the likes of Fox’s owner Rupert Murdoch and Fox’s news cheif Roger Ailes, who both regularly state that they support Bush and AFAIK they plainly state that their network is pro-Bush.

I still wonder, though: even if Al Franken were to scream “vote for Kerry!” every day on Air America, would that be a crime? I would hope not.

-Cf

Agreed CF, at least on your last statement :), and I think that is why many on both sides did not support McCain-Feingold.

How would anything said on Air America be any different than the conservative brainwashing broadcast by FoxNews all day long?

It just goes to show you how ridiculous this whole campaign finance reform law is. A group of liberals (or conservatives) are only allowed to give so much money or run so many adds, but if they have enough money to start their own radio network which is just as effective in getting people to vote for their guy, suddenly thats OK?

The big money gets to affect politics, meanwhile groups like the ACLU are barred from advertising against candidates except within guidelines made up by the VERY SAME people they would advertise against. This is exactly what the first ammendment is supposed to protect against- politicians being able to control the ways in which public critisism against them can occur. I cant believe the campaign finance advocates dont see this. or perhaps they do and just dont care.

This is just too funny!!

“Oh look! The liberals have ONE commercial radio station that advocates liberal ideals and candidates! We have to shut it down lest it overshadow the DOZENS of conservative radio hosts on hundreds of stations across the country that advocate conservative ideals and candidates!”

Please don’t be scared of Air America. They’re having enough trouble just staying on the air. Bush’s policies threaten his re-election more than Air America could ever hope to.

joe-
I think it seems that people posting here are just pointing out that if there was to be a lawsuit against air america, it would effect all radio, and no one on the right wants that. And as for rush just being entertaining, well he is entertaining while trying to get people to vote for bush, as franken is entertaining trying get people to vote for… well not bush!

do you remember rush in the nineties? He was as anti-clinton as Franken is bush (if not more)so while two wrongs don’t make a right, Turn about is fair-play.

there is no wrong here from Franken or Rush- the wrong is that the campaign finance system is so ridiculous. I think thats the real point of the article.

Does anyone notice that liberals—or at least those who posted above—simply cant refrain from the kindergarten version of “well YOU did it TOO!”

/me points out the recent “yeah, well Saddam tortured people TOO” defenses coming from many conservatives on the prisoner abuse in Iraq

/me also points out that we’re merely showing why it’s hypocritical for you to attack Air America without attacking the rightist talk shows as well

Joe, you’re wrong. Nobody on this thread so far has said that Air America’s liberal advocacy was okay because conservatives do it too, nor has anyone said that what happens on conservative radio is wrong. We’re simply saying that it’s hypocritical of the right to criticise the left on this issue. You’re inferring that we think that we’ve earned the right to violate the law because the right has been violating the law. And you’re inferring that we think that political advocacy should be illegal - when the posts above show only that many of us, myself included, actually suspect that it may be the law itself that is the problem.

As a little exercise: In the last decade since conservative talk radio took the country by storm, have you ever once heard of a liberal questioning the right’s right to voice their opinions about specific candidates on the radio? I doubt it.

This is not an instance of the left thinking that two wrongs make a right. Most of us are simply saying that it’s okay when the right does it and it’s okay when we do it, too.

-Cf

Just for the record, I loathe the anti-First amendment direction of campaign finance law and think any effort to take out Franken by such laws would illustrate their inherent evil. I also believe in the old adage that the best way for a bad law to be overturned is rigorous enforcement.

Clearly Franken has stated that his purpose is electoral, to elect a Democrat to replace Bush. That is not merely issue advocacy; that is admitting a specifically partisan electoral purpose. As if saying “My show is explicitly a running pro-Democrat anti-Bush campaign political advertisement/infomercial”.

Frankly (good word choice?) I think he should have such an unfettered right, so he should be challenged — either to show the absurdity of the law….

or to gain partisan advantage for the party I am registered in from its use/abuse, as an object lesson. :-)

Air America is pretty good so far. The O’Franken Factor has been excellent so far, in my opinion.

Didn’t take long for them to be baselessly accused of doing something illegal just for broadcasting…

Matthew-
Franken may have stated that HE wants to oust bush and those are HIS motivations for doing a show, but I am sure there are investors that would like his show to do more than unseat our president, regaurdless of personal motivation air america is a business.

Rush Limbaugh is entertaining?

Perhaps to a bunch of nodding ditto heads to whom thinking is anathema. Kind of the way a Grand Dragon is to a group of KKK members, I suppose.

You mean if I spend 100% of my time advocating the Repuplican agenda, but lie and tell you I have no position of advocacy for a candidate that meets your criteria for non partisan?

Oxycontin must be the new mind control drug.

Does anyone notice that liberals—or at least those who posted above—simply cant refrain from the kindergarten version of “well YOU did it TOO!”

In law, that’s called a precedent. I’m sure that if you were hauled off to jail for something that no one else is arrested for (say, letting your lawn get too long), you would certainly say that other people do it too. (Actually, that is basically Rush Limbaugh’s defense, even though thousands of people are in prison for drug possession.)

I hope that some bonehead actually sues Air America. That is the kind of publicity that money can’t buy.

Matthew,

The perfect opportunity for the RNC to prove its credibility on this issue, would’ve been to sue the Conservative group, Club For Growth, who ran soft-money ads against Arlen Spector in the recent Pennsylvania Senate Primary.

Oh, but no! Pat Toomey was the underdog, underfunded cause celeb of the Conservative True Believers! This was a grassroots, call to principles! Rush was on board, with the call going out to every frustrated ‘ditto-head’.

They were up against the organization and deep pockets of the RNC! Feingold…Sh-mine-goal-d! Money is Free Speech!

Yep…think I nailed it!

Frankly (well done Matthew Hogan) I can’t stand Air America as a liberal. While I know their motivations, I hate listening to my side chant the same thing over and over again in such a black and white way. Ignore grey areas, focus on the small picture, put the blinders on, and rah rah rah.

But then again it is an election year.

Air America may very well be in violation of McCain-Feingold, but it just seems so ridiculous and un-American for the courts to be in the position of deciding who can express their opinions when and where—or pay to see their opinions expressed. McCain-Feingold is more draconian than anything in the Patriot Act.

Air America is going down the tubes—it’s a bad idea, poorly executed. The left has seized a temporary advantage with the soft-money loophole exploited by the likes of Soros, Moveon, etc, but if the courts don’t stop them and the election looks like it’s going to be close, does anybody doubt the superior capability of Republican-affiliated groups to raise much larger amounts of money? Soros is not going to be able to buy this election.

It all depends on what kind of organization Air America is. If Air America is simply a private affair they can say whatever they damn well please. That’s why you can’t yank other talk radio organizations. If it is a 527 or a PAC, then the laws do apply. I seriously doubt that it is the last two. I searched opensecrets.org and got nothing. So, the likelihood is this just another projection of Republican anxieties about the election.

Look, Bush has basically emptied his six-shooter into his own foot as far as I’m concerned. He has taken a Successful invasion and turned into a fiasco of an occupation. We’re still struggling to gain control of cities we occupied a year ago.

His response to the burst of the stock market bubble, and multiple accounting scandals, was to basically sing hymns about the justice of the free market, even as many investors sang laments about theiving bastards who took their money which they thought was well invested, and which everybody said was a good investment.

His response to the problem of Homeland Security has been to fight two wars overseas, only one of which can be justified to the international community, and neither of which has resulted in a strong state replacing the corrupt one. In the meantime, a lack of regulations means that many organizations are falling back into the shortsighted pattern of not doing anything until their’s a major disaster. His Attorney General writes up a law so blatantly disrespectful of constitutional concerns he has trouble selling it to a nation rocked by 9/11. Imagine that: having difficulty selling anti-terror legislation at a time like this!

As far as I’m concerned, Bush, if he had been wiser, more competent, and less ideological could have won this election in a landslide. Instead, he’s have to struggle to do it.

By that logic, Stephen, we’re also still “struggling to gain control” over Washington DC, LA, and a number of other US cities.

The fact almost without exception these cities are controlled by Democrats is a big reason why many of us don’t want to turn the entire country of Iraq over to them (where despite the hardships of the last year, fewer Americans have died—in the entire country—than they did in DC alone did last year). It has to do with being tough and realistic instead of—well, the opposite.

The fact almost without exception these cities are controlled by Democrats is a big reason why many of us don’t want to turn the entire country of Iraq over to them… It has to do with being tough and realistic instead of—well, the opposite.

Actually, I think that the main reason that Bush’s approval rating is now in the low 40’s is precisely because his seemingly “tough and realistic” foreign policy is being revealed as rather naive.

I find it revealing that in comparing Iraq to American cities you are only counting deaths among the foreign occupiers. Why not count the dead Iraqis also?

Woody, if we compare the number of civilians killed in the Iraq war to the number killed by Saddam on a yearly basis (as well as by sanctions) then we see that on balance TENS of thousands more people are alive today.

It’s the moral arrogance of the left that prevents them from even thinking about this—they just want to be able to say they are innocent of all wrongs of the world and filled with care and compassion for everybody (even while blithely turning their eyes from the thousands of infants dying for lack of medicine and health care and the piles of dissidents buried month after month by the bulldozers of Saddam).

Martin wrote:
> By that logic, Stephen, we’re also
> still “struggling to gain control” over
> Washington DC, LA, and a number of other
> US cities.

You must not spend much time in American cities… or maybe your only impression of American cities comes from “Escape from LA”, “Bonfire of the Vanities”, or videos from the Rodney King riots. I mean, there isn’t a single city in America that isn’t a thousand times better off than Baghdad is right now. I suspect you might have been trying to be funny, but I can’t just sit back and let such anti-urban slander go by, especially when that slander is used so ludicrously to belittle the problems facing the people of Baghdad.

> where despite the hardships of the last year,
> fewer Americans have died—in the entire
> country—than they did in DC alone did last
> year

Oh please, that analogy lacks even basic logic. First you are ignoring the thousands of Iraqis who have been murdered in the post-war chaos and lawlessness. Second, there are probably 1/5th as many American soldiers in Iraq as there are people in DC, so naturally their death rate will be lower. There’s no way you’re going to make a credible case that American soldiers in Baghdad have it easier than the citizens of Detroit, or for that matter safer than the DC police force. You aren’t even going to convince anyone that the citizens of Baghdad have it easier. Your argument is, frankly, bizarre.

Believe it or not, I am genuinely interested in learning about America’s successes in Iraq. I wish the Bush Administration was able to do a better job of telling this story - if they were, perhaps we wouldn’t be so sunk by these abuse scandals, and perhaps our international reputation and trustworthiness wouldn’t be so tattered. You may not want to believe it, but I actually want America to have a solid reputation around the world, including respect for our ability to conduct a responsible and firm post-invasion occupation force.

So, please try to make your points about America’s successes in Iraq without having to use preposterous arguments predicated only on anti-city bias. You’re right that we urbanites have our problems, and we’re not proud of them, but we really don’t need to be written off as comparable to war zones.

-Cf

Martin wrote:
> if we compare the number of civilians
> killed in the Iraq war..

Do you have any idea what that number is? Even a rough idea?

Me either.

-Cf

Roughly ten thousand, Christopher, and that’s probably not counting those who have died for lack of basic needs.

Martin, according to the Justice Department, there were 16,204 murders in this country of approximately 290 million. The over ten thousand deaths that have occurred in Iraq take place in a nation of approximately 25 million individuals, less than one tenth of our population absorbing that loss.

If a foreign power invaded our country and killed a hundred thousand people, it would be roughly equivalent. If you think that such a proportion is worth getting hot and bothered about, you should take a moment to think that our War on Terror was inspired by an event that was an couple orders of magnitude smaller in effect in terms of the population.

As for how it stacks up against what Saddam did, I really don’t think that’s a moral approach. Every person that dies unnecessarily at an American’s hand stain the hands of the nation. As much as Saddam was a murdering bastard, The deaths on our watch are our responsibility. Any other attitude feeds dangerous assumptions about how far we can go with our treatment of the Iraqi people.

Martin,

Those sanctions against Saddam had far more opponents on the left than on the right.

Saddam killed a lot of people, but it is no secret that he was a bastard. We’re supposed to be the good guys. Without the WMD, the whole justification of the war effort is humanitarian.

Stephen, you seem to be using the high number off the low-high range projected by Iraq Body Count, a site that uses the Arab media as the source of the numbers. If not, then it’s likely you got it from a source that did.

There are actually no firm numbers on civilian casualties, but the Iraq Body Count numbers are definitely not correct. After major conflict, they were already throwing around a 3000+ number, but an independent and well-financed study by the LA Times (hardly an administration mouthpiece) came up with the number 1200. With high level bombing less frequent, civilian casualities have probably continued at a MUCH lower rate, but we can’t actually know. I’ve seen numbers as low as 2500, but the ten thousand number you use is the absolute ceiling—the best even that Arab propaganda could do.

Woody, if those UN sanctions had far more opponents on the left than the right, then what did the left actually want to DO about them? Twelve more years of pointless ineffectual debate? You know who finally lifted the sanctions—George Bush.

According to the UN’s own numbers (which can still be seen on the left’s own websites, though you’d think they’d be better at burying this info) 5000 children under the age of 5 died in Iraq every month under sanctions. This equals over 600,000 since their implemenation.

Saddam himself is said to be responsible for two million deaths (over 300,000 of which have been discovered in mass graves so far). I’m willing to half this number, however, since one million of it reflects the number that died in the Iran-Iraq war, a number I don’t think should be counted with the number of his own people deliberately killed.

Even if we use the highest number supplied us via Arab propagandists, and even if we don’t include the hundreds of thousands of Kurds and dissidents murdered, we see civilian casualites over a year later that equal ONLY the two month toll under Saddam of children under 5 (children who now ARE getting the treatement they lacked, according to the UN).

Even matching low estimates of Saddam’s death toll against high estimates of coalition-caused casualties shows that at least SIX TIMES as many people have been saved than killed because of the Iraq war. Using more balanced numbers would show this ratio to be even higher. Feel free to check my numbers—blondes aren’t always good at math.

that martin still doesn’t chage the fact that perpotionately more people are dying in Iraq that america, so your anti-urban comment still is kinda B.S.

My anti-urban comment? I believe I made an anti-Democrat comment, pointing out the relative chaos in Democratic-controlled cities. I live in two of these cities, dividing my time between San Francisco and NY, so I feel perfectly entitled to criticize cities in general (though I didn’t mention either of these two—even though SF in particular is a horrid mess). Why is that Democrats just assume that conservatives must be hillbillies living in mobile homes way out in the woods?

Part of my comparison with Iraq was hyperbole, but I still think that if the media dwelled on everything violent that happened in LA, for example (CNN breaking in every time somebody was murdered, the NYT editorializing about every lawless act), it would be very easy to create an impression that LA was in fact a total war zone. This is the trick the media has pulled with Iraq—ignoring the dramatic drop in infant mortality, the building of schools and hospitals, and dwelling instead on everything that goes wrong. As I love to point out, just look at the twenty pictures on magazine covers of the same burning truck taken from every angle. Could LA stand this kind of scrutiny? Hell, could Palm Springs?

point taken, but martin can you name a major metropalitin city that isn’tr by and large libral? I keep thinking about it I can’t name one that I am sure about. I have lived in chicago, seattle, minneapolis, and philadelphia, all were extremely libral. Maybe in texas? I don’t know, so martin that is why people (espescially urbanites) think conservatives aren’t city people. (although I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying any such thing)

point taken, but martin can you name a major metropalitin city that isn’tr by and large libral? I keep thinking about it I can’t name one that I am sure about. I have lived in chicago, seattle, minneapolis, and philadelphia, all were extremely libral. Maybe in texas? I don’t know, so martin that is why people (espescially urbanites) think conservatives aren’t city people. (although I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying any such thing)

Martin, I made no assumptions about you being a hillbilly - I merely assumed, incorrectly, that you weren’t very familiar with America’s cities. I still wonder how much you get out and walk around.

In any event, it’s fairly common for people who actually live in cities to hold the opinion that they live in a violent dangerous war zone. These people typically are the kind whose life plans are to escape the city someday, people who don’t really see themselves as vested in the city’s future. If you have any intention of remaining a resident of New York City or San Fransisco, you’d do yourself a favor and stop disparaging your home(s). You were perpetuating a stereotype that, frankly, only serves to hurt cities and the people who want to live in them.

Anyway, if tomorrow we start hearing about US Soldiers getting blown up in LA, then the situations will be comparable. Until then your analogy is still totally ridiculous.

-Cf

I think you outraged defenders of urban America have overlooked—no completely ignored—my original point. I was responding to Stephen’s claim that we have “lost cities,” which I consider an exaggeration. I said that “by that logic” we have “lost American cities”—which I’d also consider an exaggeration. I was countering hyperbole with hyperbole of my own.

My intention was not to spit on everything you hold dear about your beloved cities (so long as you don’t live in New Jersey), so relax willya?

sorry martin, but you do say some pretty outragous stuff sometimes :)