DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Lanya on December 01, 2007, 06:20:38 PM
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The Suddenly Incurious Citizen Journalists
By: John Cole December 1, 2007 at 10:12 am
If ever you were under the illusion that Greater Wingnuttia was anything other than a bunch of partisan goobers wholly uninterested in the truth and wedded only to the needs of the Republican party, surely the last week has shed you of that illusion. As I write this, only one fringe nutter has even mentioned the emerging Rudy Giuliani financial scandal. None of them has mentioned the fabulist at NRO. How can this be? Where are our brave truth detectors?
Let?s compare:
? When a 12 year old kid had the nerve to state that he benefited from a government program and thinks other kids should too, a massive orgy of ?Truth detecting? took place. Counters were examined. Houses were visited. Property records were scrutinized. Statements were parsed.
? When a private in the army wrote some tales with a few anecdotes about what he had experienced in the war in Iraq, and a few disagreed, no grain of sand was left unturned. Scale models of armored vehicles were built. Experts were called, emailed, and interrogated. Myspace accounts were looked up. Entire fields of Cray Supercomputers had to be brought online just to handle all the ?debunking? and commentary from the wingnuts.
But now, a Republican front-runner FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT has clearly played fast and loose with the public?s money to hide/finance his extramarital dalliances, and the truth detectors on the right are silent. When an NRO columnist admits straight-up to making shit up to radically overstate a military threat to a key ally, perhaps to agitate for American military involvement, our fact-checkers snooze. The sum total of the response can be summed up as a giant yawn.
Crickets. Not even a ?heh, indeed? can be found on these topics from our brave and intrepid citizen journalists. Hell, they are lagging FAR behind all the traditional media, who are cranking out tons of stories about Giuliani. Greater Wingnuttia should change their motto from ?We?ll fact check your ass? to ?We?ll fact check your ass, if you aren?t a Republican.? At least that would be honest.
*** Update ***
The Captain weighs in, only to downplay and all but dismiss the charges and then brushes off the brewing scandal as ?marital woes?:
While I believe this to be a minor issue for Giuliani in terms of ethics?it tells us nothing new about his relationship with Judith Nathan before their marriage that didn?t already make contemporaneous headlines?the Giuliani team has not handled it very well. They should acknowledge that they made mistakes in handling the billings in 2000 and 2001 and apologize for the errors. The longer they issue threadbare rationalizations, the longer this will stick to the campaign.
Allegedly misusing public funds to drive around your girlfriend and engage in all sort of accounting shell games to hide your behavior is, according to the Good Captain, no big deal. Can anyone imagine the stories if this was, say, Hillary Clinton instead of Giuliani? By now, they would be investigating all state and local laws to see if they could indict her for adultery. All together now- IOKIYAR.
After reading Captain Ed it is pretty obvious how the right wing blogosphere will handle the Giuliani business, as it will be Plame redux. The same group of folks who were able to scour fonts in the Dan Rather case, make the most intricate arguments about bullet casings in Baghdad with Beauchamp, examine every aspect of health insurance policies in Maryland for the Frost family, will all of a sudden become ?confused? by all the accounting numbers. The virtual certainty about all things divined from anonymous Free Republic investigators will be replaced with assertions of ?confusion? and ?trickiness? and complaints about ?complicated accounting.? It will be ?difficult? to come to a conclusion whether he has done anything wrong, and it will not be ?clear? if he violated any laws. Just take the phrase ?Was she really covert? and replace it with ?Did he really do anything wrong? and you have your blogospheric talking points from Greater Wingnuttia for the next two weeks.
The same folks who got degrees and a Nobel Peace Prize in neurosurgery during the Schiavo affair will, by the end of the week, be forced to pretend they can?t balance a checkbook. It should be pretty funny to watch. That is if they don?t just manage to ignore it altogether.
Filed under: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=9219
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I am not convinced that the far right has accepted Guliani.
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<<I am not convinced that the far right has accepted Guliani.>>
You think Pat Robertson had his fingers crossed behind his back when he endorsed?
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>>But now, a Republican front-runner FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT has clearly played fast and loose with the public?s money to hide/finance his extramarital dalliances<<
Not that I care all that much about Rudy, but this statement is an absolute liie. But then you expect this sort of thing from the BDS left.
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<I am not convinced that the far right has accepted Guliani.>>
You think Pat Robertson had his fingers crossed behind his back when he endorsed?
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Although Pat Robertson is a far right winger, his endorsement does not mean that every other far right winger agrees with him, and as a result, will turn out on election day like mindless 'droids to vote for Giulani.'
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<<I am not convinced that the far right has accepted Guliani.>>
You think Pat Robertson had his fingers crossed behind his back when he endorsed?
Robertsons endorsement helps .
But no one decides his vote solely on such an endorsement.
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If anyone personifies the right-wing nutter, it's Robertson. It's hard to reconcile the claim that the far right may not have accepted Giuliani with Robertson's endorsement, although it's true that Robertson doesn't (and can't) speak for ALL the wing-nuts out there.
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If anyone personifies the right-wing nutter, it's Robertson. It's hard to reconcile the claim that the far right may not have accepted Giuliani with Robertson's endorsement, although it's true that Robertson doesn't (and can't) speak for ALL the wing-nuts out there.
Right , such an endorsement needs to come with an explanation so that there is a reson for the endorsement tha isn't hard to understand.
If Robertson is baseing his endorsement solely on "electability" I shall be dissapointed more in Robertson than in Giuliani.
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I find the idea that somebody could be "disappointed" in Robertson to be hilarious.
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I find the idea that somebody could be "disappointed" in Robertson to be hilarious.
I do too.
See this article about his dealings with Charles Taylor's Liberia, with Zaire (blood diamonds) and so on.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A42413-2001Nov30
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I do too.
See this article about his dealings with Charles Taylor's Liberia, with Zaire (blood diamonds) and so on.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A42413-2001Nov30
Seems to me that would be planty of reason to be disappointed in him.
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But that article is from 2001, BT. It's old news.
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And i'm sure it disappointed people back then. Even Republicans.
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WASTELAND OF THE FREE (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1996 Songs of Iris ASCAP
Living in the wasteland of the free...
We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
but they don't look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free
We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got high-school kids running 'round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on mTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free
While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
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I find the idea that somebody could be "disappointed" in Robertson to be hilarious.
Oh?
Did you think it impossible?
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the song
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<<Oh?
<<Did you think it[being disappointed with Pat Robertson] impossible?>>
Not really - - Robertson is so obviously devious, idiotic and clueless that it's hard to conceive of anyone having an initially good opinion of him in the first place. Which, of course, is a precondition of disappointment.
If anyone remembers the original RAW magazine, its slogan - - "The magazine that lost its faith in nihilism" - - is the closest thing in spirit to being disappointed in Pat Robertson.
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<<Oh?
<<Did you think it[being disappointed with Pat Robertson] impossible?>>
Not really - - Robertson is so obviously devious, idiotic and clueless that it's hard to conceive of anyone having an initially good opinion of him in the first place. Which, of course, is a precondition of disappointment.
If anyone remembers the original RAW magazine, its slogan - - "The magazine that lost its faith in nihilism" - - is the closest thing in spirit to being disappointed in Pat Robertson.
Then don't act amazed that his endorsement doesn't sway many nor is it long remembered or bragged of.
I like to hear Pat Robertson , but I don't feel obliged to agree with him or defend him .
I agree with him when I do.
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<<Then don't act amazed that his [Robertson's] endorsement doesn't sway many nor is it long remembered or bragged of.>>
Sorry, but I WOULD be amazed if Robertson's endorsement had no significant effect. Robertson would not be the household word that he is if there were not tens of millions of Amerikkkans as dumb, vicious and ignorant as he is himself. Or else dumb, vicious and ignorant enough to be taken in by his bullshit.
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<<Then don't act amazed that his [Robertson's] endorsement doesn't sway many nor is it long remembered or bragged of.>>
Sorry, but I WOULD be amazed if Robertson's endorsement had no significant effect. Robertson would not be the household word that he is if there were not tens of millions of Amerikkkans as dumb, vicious and ignorant as he is himself. Or else dumb, vicious and ignorant enough to be taken in by his bullshit.
Well that explains Juan Cole then.