So you'd think I'd maybe chime in on the whole raging political debate thing before now, seeing as how it's my blog and all, but no. But no. Too much Battlegroup 42, you understand, and it turns out that it's my fate this year to get hit by every single disease known to man, so it's been a fun week like that.
So I've got a little bit to catch up with. 30 posts. I think that's some sort of record for here, both in quantity and in relative quality. So I owe you all a big thank you for showing up and posting, and an even bigger one to the people who don't show up much (Hi Samson, hi Gris). And about all this apologizing for leaving long comments and making arguments and such, well, you can just stop that. I put up political posts for a reason, and that sort of thing is the reason. So just keep doing it. As long as we're all civil, I'm happy.
Lots to reply to, so if I don't get to something, gomen.
Anyway. Let us begin with, oh, the election. Specifically with Samson's quote here:
"Map or no map. Twisted representation of said map or not, we owned you guys. 52-48 is fairly convincing enough to me. You guys were the ones who whined and cried when Gore won the popular vote but due to electoral math, Bush got the victory. Now we have BOTH and you guys are still trying to claim we cheated. Go figure why I'm none to pleased with the reactions coming from the left. Up to and including those from Moore and the media elite."
I think Griselda said it pretty good, personally:
"Now, on to politics (eek!). I'm not saying that 52-48 percent means that Bush cheated, but he's been going around as if he won a landslide victory with his discussion of "political capitol". He was the winner, but I just don't see where he gets that "mandate"."
Mandates, you say. Mandates. Well, given the definition, yeah, he's sort of got one. Certainly more of one now than in 2k. It's a tad ludicrous to behave as if the whole country were behind you when it clearly isn't, however.
That having been said, the man did win. And I have yet to see a single credible, informed person on the left side of the aisle say he cheated to do it. Which isn't to say that he and/or his followers didn't use a fair number of tactics that were low down, dirty, and generally unbecoming of the Presidency, but he didn't cheat.
But maybe I'm wrong about that. So if you'd like to cite me a major newspaper or TV station (major, mind you), who flat out says Bush cheated to win the election, go ahead. No, Michael Moore doesn't count. Yes, you can stop holding the man up as some sort of figurehead of where all us liberals get our information, because he's not. And I think we've been over that elsewhere, so I'll refrain from going into it too far.
Continuing to run down Samson's first post, let's just keep talking about the media. and the next part of his post reads:
"Calling the liberal media elite incompetant is only the beginning, and that puts things mildly. When you consider the LA and NY Times, along with the major airwave networks, it's nearly impossible to find impartial reporting. You have to either find a local TV station, local paper, or listen to AM talk radio to find anything that balances them out."
First, if you'd ever seen either of the two local Corvallis papers (Gazette-Times and Daily Barometer), you wouldn't be trumpeting the supremecy of local papers. Because, quite frankly, both of them suck. I forgive the Barometer, because it's the Oregon State University student-run newspaper, but the Gazette-Times is unforgivably craptastic. I have never seen it report much of anything remotely worth reporting on. Now, the Eugene local paper (Register-Guard) isn't bad. It's not super great, but it's not bad. Decent reporting on a fair number of issues and topics, and a decent blend of local and national and international news. But not quite.
As for the TV networks, forget it. Just flat out forget it. I've watched CNN and MSNBC fairly extensively, and I've seen enough Fox to know that I'd like Fox to show something that isn't an aircraft carrier once in a while. And you know what? The problem with TV news is they go for sound bites. They don't cover a whole story in depth very often because they don't have the time to do it. And the whole experience turns into this meaningless babble of random people saying totally random shit that very rarely makes any sense. What's more, from what I've seen of the local news around here, it's even WORSE. And radio can have its moments, but I feel like when it comes to real news reporting, it has the same issues as TV.
Too, I have a pretty good idea of what talk radio you listen to, Samson, and it strikes me as a tad unfair, not to mention a tad ludicrous to hold up conservative talk radio as some sort of bastion of fair reporting while bashing the whole rest of the media as being biased and liberal.
So we come to the question of what "liberal media elite" actually means, and some cites from non-op-ed type articles to back it up with. While this is happening, an explanation of what makes, say, Fox News or any given local news source or talk radio of all things an impartial and credible source would be, well, good.
Now, in the course of a five year career at university, I've done a fair number of multiple source compare and contrast analysis papers on various issues, quite a few of which dealt with how different media portrayed any given event. So while I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the issue, I think I have a clue what I'm talking about. And it works like this. There are four news sources generally cited to me as being "good:" BBC, CNN, Fox, and the New York Times. Of these, I can't feel that any of them are unbiased, because it's pretty much impossible to have unbiased reporting, or unbiased history, as anyone who's been trained as a historian lately will tell you. That having been said, on any given issue it seemed that the BBC was generally the furthest left on any given issue, with CNN and the NYT being somewhere in the middle, and Fox being much on the right.
Consequently I get most of my news from the NYT, because it takes the time to cover things in depth, and covers more things than most of the others. I do, however, supplement from other news sources, including the other three named, as well as a number of blogs, including but not limited to, Atrios for the more militant left, Josh Marshall for some moderate leftness, The Volokh Conspiricy for being themselves, and Fafblog for being, well, Fafblog. But of course one can't really stop there, because it's not about taking other people's opinions for fact, it's about finding where they got their own facts, and making up your own damn mind. So we supplement all of those sources with whatever sources they might provide themselves, from government speeches to other news articles to statistics to whatever. Because I've come to the conclusion that that's the only way I can stay reasonably well informed on anything, without owning mind probes and spy satellites. I'm working on those, but there's only so much room in the garage right now.
There's probably a larger discussion of the media lurking in there somewhere, but I'm going to wait for somebody else to go there.
That was a pretty big digression for a half a paragraph leading into the rediculousness of exit polls. About the exit polls themselves, I actually pretty much agree. Exit polls mean about jack, which is why on election night I ignored them and waited for the actual results to start coming in. Because, well, I knew that. The media hasn't quite figured it out, but that's all part of that bigger discussion thing I'm not going to start.
"BTW, if you want a couple more names from the liberal side who did some "unsavory things" there's Al "he betrayed this country!" Gore, Howard "he knew about 911 ahead of time" Dean, Dennis "he concocted a war for political gain" Kusinich, Al "he's suppressing the black vote" Sharpton, Ted "he *hic* lied to the American people" Kennedy, and Al Franken, who I can't think up something witty to insert right now. Though I'm sure he had lots of nasty things to say."
Some specific cites would be sort of nice, there, I guess. But running down the list:
Gore: Don't remember him saying that, and the context in which he would have would determine the response I give it.
Dean: Now, that I don't believe. There's a lot of things I think about the President, but I don't think he deliberately let 9/11 happen. Which isn't to say there weren't well-documented, deeply troublesome issues that were involved with the day, but.
Kucinich is, well, crazy as best as I and most other people can determine. Not, I think, representative of the party as a whole.
And that goes for Al Sharpton, too. Because one of the things I regret about American politics as a whole is that the racial minorities can get some disturbing people as representatives.
And I happen to think Ted Kennedy's right about that particular thing, so I can't exactly bash the guy.
I'm blanking on Al Franken and who he is right now.
And the Swift Boat folks. And Bush in the Guard. I suppose I first ought to say that I don't particularly care about either, especially Bush's Guard record, except that the one casts some doubt on Bush's honesty, and the other is so far as I can tell a massive distortion of the truth, or an outright fabrication. To quote Griselda on the subject:
"Oh, and the Swift Boat vets. Heh. I know for a fact that they did not put a substantial effort into detemining that the people in their ads *ever* served with Kerry. One of the vets is from around here, and it turns out that he never served with Kerry. So, no, I'm not going to put much faith in a group that can't even check its own facts."
I've heard the same sort of things quite a few times. Further, some browsing through this is some interesting reading, as is a search on "swift boat" at Josh Marshall's blog and then following a few of the links. I guess if a good chunk of Kerry's crew, the guy he saved, and official records all agree on the decorations thing, I'm inclined to believe them.
As to Iraq, I am fully aware that before the invasion a whole host of people including myself were absolutely convinced that Saddam had WMDs. That doesn't mean I'm not unhappy with our intelligence services and our leadership, who ought to have shown some measure of sense when it came to this invasion thing. Let's start off with this timeline, which I've linked before and rather enjoy. I'd also like to link you to an interesting letter to Clinton in 1997 advocating the invasion of Iraq by a group including (IIRC) Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, but I can't seem to find it. Probably Googling on "Project For a New American Century" will get you there.
At any rate, the fun parts of the timeline involve the 9/26/02 accusation by Rumsfeld of Iraqi-Al Qaeda ties, Powell's exceedingly weak UN briefing from 2/03, and the nicely plagarized/outdated 2/03 British intelligence report. One also likes Osama bin Laden's call to overthrow Saddam and the US and the part where US special forces were operating in Iraq way the hell early in the game. Too, there's the Niger uranium documents forgery, which was always a fun one.
I'd also like to link you to some entertaining quotes about politicization of CIA intelligence, but I can't seem to find those, either. Truly, I do not have l33t search skillz.
I did, however, find this link, which I thought was exceedingly interesting in a number of ways.
Nevertheless, the conclusion I come to is that, whatever it was Iraq did, Bush was going to invade anyway. While I'm not exactly sure what I think about that at this point in time, I do know that I'm not with the apparent self-misleading about intelligence and the attempts to sell us on utterly bogus claims. I really dislike that sort of thing.
That I have thusfar been completely unable to determine an actual strategy or goal for what we're doing in Iraq is similarly disconcerting. In amongst a whole host of other issues about the thing.
As to the economy, there's a whole host of people who can do a better job at talking about that than I can, but to Oregon in specific, I can echo what Griselda has to say on the subject:
"As far as the economy goes, what I've seen here is a very different situation than you describe, Samson...But, the local economy has been hit hard, and at the moment there's not much of anything available."
I can but note that with a college degree, I can't seem to get hired anywhere, including McDonald's. So, yeah. Tax cuts, well, I don't remember them helping much. Certainly not me, and not the parents, as I recall. I do know that a job hasn't been forthcoming, and especially one that would provide me with any sort of living wage if I had it. I can also hear about things like record deficits and the falling dollar and wonder how this is a good thing.
Now, since I've been writing this for a few hours, I'm in need of a break. There's a rebuttal of Cole what needs to happen at some point, but I shall do it later. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves.
Posted by Dwip at November 11, 2004 9:40 PMKeep in mind when making your rebuttle some of the statements i've made were partially just to get people on the left quite irate and to see if they were going to miss my subtle points, which they did. Anyways, just thought i'd get first post on this one because i can :P Also, don't expect anything out of me for the next couple of days because i'm going to Chico state for the weekend.
Posted by: Clyos at November 12, 2004 1:35 AMNo one missed your subtle points. You didn't have any points worth making. Pretty much every argument you made was completely wrong from start to finish. Seriously, man, live a little longer and open your eyes. I don't know what you've been doing for the past 22 years, but is definitely wasn't paying attention.
Also, you migh notice here, that, as usual, it's the right side that's on the attack and the left side that's on the defense. That's how it almost always is. The right side is just too caught up in self-rightiousness to figure that out.
That's not to say that there aren't a bunch of left-wing nutjobs in the world, there just aren't any posting here. But you two have been constantly attacking everything anyone has said, regardless of the intent of the original comment. That, my friends, is zealotry.
Posted by: Whir at November 12, 2004 1:47 AMWow. Dwip. You invest way too much time into this :P
Anyway, as I am at work and of late I have a serious distaste for anything computer related when I finally do get home...
You mentioned that you don't agree with the statements made by all of those example people I gave you. If so, then why don't you do something about the leadership in your party because, sadly, those people are it right now. Nominate someone more mainstream and not so socialist and you might get somewhere. Although it scares me to see 48% of the people vote for someone I count among that crowd.
As far as the media, I don't sit around doing extensive research. I simply read ( assuming I don't puke at it first ) and notice that the LA and NY Times are as biased as they get. Take the LA Times Arafat article for example. Nowhere in it did they call the man what he was: A terrorist. They referred to him as a guerilla and a stateman, and even as a freedom fighter. The man who orchestrated the Pan Am bombings. Practically invented the tactic of hijacking airplanes and ships full of civilians, and opelny sponsored the use of homicide bombers. Then gets a Nobel Peace Prize for this?!?!? I'm sorry, but cruel as it may sound to the left, the world is better off with him dead and buried. There is actually some chance for peace in the region now. But if you listen to the media, a terrible tragedy has ocurred instead - except on Fox News, who is rightly calling him a terrorist. So no, I don't accept that the LA and NY Times are centrist news organizations. They are part of the left wing elite media. Bill O'Reilly regularly does some good analysis of this sort of thing and I'm sure he has plenty of links on his Fox News pages, assuming you can set aside your misconceptions about the network long enough to read it.
As for Bush lying, you yourself have now conceded that even you beleived Iraq had WMD, and as I stated before, a whole mess of other nations as well as folks here thought he had them, up to and including the UN. Yet, you think that somehow in all this with all these different nations and the UN saying he had them that Bush should have stopped and said "But suppose this is all bullshit" when the evidence was so overwhelming? Even John Kerry said he had them and gave it as the reason he supported the invasion. You can't then turn around after you've executed the invasion and say "Oh, there aren't any WMD here, you all lied, Bush lied, and we should never have come." It's called hindsight, and we don't have that luxury prior to an event taking place. You can't now go back and declare the war unjustified just because it turned out that so many people were so wrong. You have to remain objective and remember WHEN the information was made available.
With regard to your linking of that wikipedia article, thanks for that. Been looking all over trying to find it again. It proves my whole point if you read all of it and not just the first page.
My favorite part:
October 31, 1998
* Iraq ends all forms of cooperation with the UNSCOM teams and expels inspectors from the country.
* U.S. President Clinton signed into law HR 4655, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Yes, your own man, right here, decided the very policy Bush is now carrying out to conclusion. Was Clinton wrong? Did he lie? ( wish the link to the act itself worked, I hate searching government websites )
I'm also partial to this one:
August 26, 1998
* Scott Ritter resigns from UNSCOM, sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed.
Was Ritter wrong? Yes. Did he know this at the time? Clearly not. Did he lie?
The timeline goes on in spots to indict France for its cooperation with Iraq. So getting the UN Security Council behind an invasion would have been impossible. They have a veto position. France has acted against us and many now consider them an enemy, myself among them. But I digress.
"Nevertheless, the conclusion I come to is that, whatever it was Iraq did, Bush was going to invade anyway."
I think a reading of HR4655 may be in order. It's entirely possible Bush had little room to maneuver under this act. In any case, the timeline makes it painfully clear Saddam was never going to comply. Besides, you appear to be taking the position that we should have left him in power. You do realize that leaving an evil madman in power would amount to sponsering the raping and torturing we all know he was guilty of......
Posted by: Samson at November 12, 2004 5:02 AM*head goes kablooie*
Yeah. I'll resume commenting once everyone dumps some ice in their drawers.
Posted by: Rachael at November 12, 2004 2:41 PMI realized that I misspelled "capital" in my comment, and since I know spelling errors bug me, I wanted to state, for the record, that I do know how to spell the word. :P
As far as media bias goes, I would think that balanced coverage of Arafat's death would include many different aspects of his life and character. To refer to him as a terrorist, and nothing but a terrorist, is overlooking the huge impact he has had on world affairs. Also, I believe that Arafat's decision to recognize Israel has gradually been bringing the moderate Arab mindset closer to the opinion that Palestine could coexist with Israel, under the right circumstances. Before that, it wasn't just the extremists who did not believe that they could coexist with Israel under any circumstances. It hasn't happened yet, but it might never have happened without Arafat.
I'm *not* saying that I don't see the bad aspects of his legacy as well, but it seems to me that unbiased reporting should include both sides. If Arafat was "just" a terrorist, why did the USA send their Assistant Secretary of State to his funeral?
I think that both the New York Times and (gasp) NPR have done, overall, a pretty good idea of trying to paint a balanced picture of Arafat's legacy. If you looked at any one article or story, you might see a bias, but both sources provided a variety of stories related to Arafat's death, including some of the current questions about Arafat's finances.
Plus, isn't it customary to highlight the more positive aspects of a person's life when writing something like an obituary? That's standard practice, as far as I know.
-Griselda
Posted by: Griselda at November 12, 2004 4:20 PMI'm sorry, but I just can't accept anything other than Arafat's ultimate legacy as a barbaric murdering bastard at the very least. For anyone to show any kind of respect for the man just seems wrong to me. Especially when France and such went out of their way to give the scumbag the equivalent of a state funeral. Speak ill of the dead? Why not? When the dead man deserves it, then it should be said. This country is so obsessed with being PC and not offending anyone that it's just gotten insane, and anyone with guts enough to speak the truth about something, like Fox News..... yeah, you can see where I'm going with this. More later if I'm inclined to respond.
Posted by: Samson at November 12, 2004 7:40 PMThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to get worse. I'll bet stuff. With the giant gap in power Arafat left, yeah. Worse.
Posted by: Whir at November 13, 2004 12:41 AMFirst, anyone that uses Fox News and O'Rilley as its main source of venom (it certainly isn't news) gets their opinions moved down about 8 notches on my credibility list. That kind of regurgitation of out of context facts without any rational thinking to go along with it is everything I have against EVERY SINGLE conservative I know. Doesn't matter what they use as source, they just spew points and facts seemingly with no regard to having done any critical thinking of their own about it.
Next, I'm not going to stand up for Arafat, but name me a leader at the inception of a country that WASN"T considered a terrorist by the people he was trying to take the country from. At least in his case, he was trying to get HIS country BACK from Israel, who won it in the poker game pot that the Middle East became at the end of WWII. I know, it was like '48 when Israel was formed (I'm too lazy to double check my history) but the forces that put taking Palestine away from the Palestinians started during reconstruction.
He did a lot of shitty things in the 60's and 70's, but by the end of the 80's he had lost control of the most radical parts of the PLO, and by the mid 90's was totally for peace with Israel. I believe the biggest reason Al-Quada came to prominence in the last decade was because Arafat controlled the purse strings for the PLO and wouldn't fund the worldwide stuff anymore.
I will not fault a man for crimes against people that took his land away and made him a prisoner in his home. The best thing the PLO could do is what the American Indians have done, and start building casinos. They should skip the 100 years of being pissed and surly though.
Sooner or later Americans will have to stop feeling they need to get even or get revenge against people and just be the bigger country and let it drop. It has nothing to do with being PC, speaking ill of the dead for no other reason than to appear hard is part of the problem. He had a lot of bad things done to him, he did a lot of bad things to other people, let it rest, move on. Point your stare at the new leadership, and tell them we won't put up with that kind of shit anymore.
Posted by: Tim at November 13, 2004 10:36 AMWow. Dwip. You invest way too much time into this :P
Something to do, dontcha know. Something to do. Keeps me entertained.
Anyway.
You mentioned that you don't agree with the statements made by all of those example people I gave you. If so, then why don't you do something about the leadership in your party because, sadly, those people are it right now. Nominate someone more mainstream and not so socialist and you might get somewhere. Although it scares me to see 48% of the people vote for someone I count among that crowd.
I don't agree with specific statements the people made, but I don't agree with 100% of people 100% of the time, either. On the other hand, the Democratic Party and I generally see eye to eye on a fair number of things, socialist or no. That having been said, since I'm not and never have been a member of said party, I can't very well influence them in any way, now can I?
As to the media and Arafat, it's within the interests of a whole host of people, including both the media and the government, to make some attempt at being diplomatic and polite about these things, which calling the man a terrorist most definitely would not be, no matter that I and they might happen to agree with you. It's a decidedly strange sort of issue. Too, it's not particularly the place of a media who attempts to be fair and unbiased to go around calling people names, as it were. Comentators, yes. The news, no.
That having been said, you'll need to be doing some more convincing that Fox News is somehow the One True News Source.
As to Bush and Iraq, first off, the link to HR 4655 in here: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ338.105
If that doesn't work, just Google for HR 4655. It's the first page that shows up.
Now, fancy title of the act aside, one will notice the difference between Clinton's and Bush's handling of things. On the one hand, an air war waged against Iraq while pressure was put on for abandoning the WMD thing. On the other hand, invasion and occupation. Slight difference.
Now, clearly there was a good deal of error on a good deal of parts about Iraqi WMDs. There's also a case to be made, aside from said WMDs, for invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam. On the other hand, I'm not convinced of the Al Quaeda-Iraq ties, and I'm very very displeased about the specific intelligence failures I cited, and very disappointed in the responses to them. Everything I can tell about the whole issue doesn't reflect well on the administration. Combine that with the general asstasticness of Powell's UN presentation pre-war, which failed to convince an already convinced me, combine with several severe failures during the occupation (looting, anyone?), and combine with the lack of an articulate goal or plan, and I'm convinced of not only dishonesty on the President's part, but incompetence.
This after several years of rhetoric on the part of the very people running the administration advocating the invasion. I'm a tad uneasy about that. Given everything else I've just said, I'm also uneasy about the current war there. Which isn't to say that removing Saddam was a bad thing, or that I regret that or supporting that at all, but I've been made uneasy about our chances of pulling off any kind of lasting or effective peace/victory there. I think we had a chance, and I think if we haven't blown it, we're well down that road. But, we're kind of stuck there now, so we shall see. It's going to depend on whether 90% of the people vote for Die...Allawi down the road, and if I start seeing the Iraqi equivilent of burning monks.
As to Cole, well, that'll be coming in a time.
Posted by: Dwip at November 13, 2004 3:32 PM