When Republican Senator Jon Kyl asserted that ninety percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities centered around abortion, rather than the more accurate three percent, his office asserted that his statement was “not intended to be a factual statement.” My question is: How did they say that with a straight face? Did they really think that would justify such outrageous distortions to any but the most devoted, blindered right wing excuse-nik?
If Obama’s people claimed that the President had said something that was “not intended to be a factual statement,” it would define his presidency the way that, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” defined Clinton’s.
Last I checked, something not intended to be a factual statement is typically referred to as a “lie.” This does, however, serve as a convenient excuse for any horndog who’s willing to say whatever it takes to nail a girl. “You said you loved me!” “Yes, but that was not intended to be a factual statement.”
PAD
• 
wait… so your saying that the republicans have double standards? Inconceivable! (in the best Sicilian from Princess Bride voice i can muster).
(jumping in before anyone else says it)
I’m shocked, shocked!
The modern Right has been moving towards jaw-dropping brazenness for some years now, but recently it really seems like they’ve been taking 10-league strides in pursuit of that goal.
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I cannot wait for the “not intended to be factual statements” the GOP will employ in the 2012 elections … especially with the Citizen’s United decision in effect.
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There is no shame on the Right anymore. The Left at least pretends like it cares when caught in a lie, but the Right’s attitude is one of indifference. They know that they can lie their áššëš off and not only will most of their supporters not take them to task for it, but that the lie will be repeated as “truth” long after those repeating it know it to be a lie.
There is no shame on the Right anymore.
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Nor from their supporters.
When 60% of all black pregnancies in New York City end in abortion, I just can’t see the senator’s remarks as a “distortion.”
There are probably more than a dozen ways to deal with such incredibly faulty logic. And I’m 100% certain that none of them are worth the effort.
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Wow Darin… You’ve totally changed the course of the discussion and changed the way people look at the matter. Yeah, the fact that the Republican Senator totally fabricated the figures he was throwing around means nothing whatsoever because you threw out a fact that could only be even tangentially related to the matter actually being discussed.
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But, because New York has a higher than national average abortion rate for blacks and in general, in Darin’s world statistics about a single state means that a documented lie told by a Republican Senator is in fact a “fact” about Planned Parenthood. And in his next post, Darin will show that up is down, left is right, green is red and black is white all because he can point to the fact that water is wet.
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And then maybe he’ll get hit by a bus crossing the street against the light and looking the wrong way for the oncoming traffic.
I’m not sure, but I think you MAY be overreacting to my harmless little post there.
No, I think they’re reacting just the right amount. There was nothing “harmless” about it. It was a cold, calculated maneuver to try and turn a discussion about GOP lies regarding Planned Parenthood into some sort of racial referendum. The only way your statistic is remotely relevant is that it shows that there is MORE need for Planned Parenthood since obviously there is a greater requirement for education in, and use of, birth control. Particularly among those who are poor or uneducated…the very people whom the GOP has no patience for or interest in.
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PAD
See, I’m not so sure Kyl was lying about Planned Parenthood. That was my point. The statistic I provided was meant to explain why I feel the way I feel. I don’t think that’s cold and calculated at all.
Oh. My God.
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Of COURSE he was lying about Planned Parenthood. What part of “not meant to be factual” was unclear?
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What he said was false, top to bottom, so false that even HIS OWN PEOPLE said it WAS NOT FACT. If it’s not fact, it’s fiction. When fiction is presented as fact, that’s called a lie. Citing abortion statistics is completely irrelevant.
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Are you THAT blinded by the right that you’re going to the mat for this? Is there literally nothing that your representatives can say or do that will shake your myopia?
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PAD
There’s nothing harmless about the Right’s incessant desire to destroy the poor and women, either.
According to Google, the overall NY abortion rate is 41%, a little less than double that of the US average (23%).
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The 60% figure applies to blacks in New York.
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So what gets me is: Why did you bring race into this discussion?
I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know if it can be called a “lie” so much as a “gaff” or “mistake.” I DO know that the association between Planned Parenthood and abortion is well known. Everybody knows they facilitate abortions-on-demand. It’s what their known for. It’s why Planned Parenthood is controversial. Yeah, Kyl probably shouldn’t have thrown out a percentage value like that. Politicians have gaffs because people have gaffs. We should expect that. But those who are against abortion (and therefore against Planned Parenthood) aren’t interested in the semantic mistakes of a career politician in the face of such an abomination in our society.
But those who are against abortion (and therefore against Planned Parenthood) aren’t interested in the semantic mistakes of a career politician in the face of such an abomination in our society.
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This, right here, is why the GOP knows that they can get away with saying absolutely anything, no matter how patently false. Doesn’t matter if it’s lies about Obama’s citizenship or admitted lies about Planned Parenthood. It’s because they know they have a base that is so absolutely determined to believe the lies, that they will swallow whatever gruel the GOP feeds them and ask for additional helpings. And unlike Mr. Bumble who expressed outrage over being asked for more, the GOP will keep doling it out into their eager little mouths.
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Keep it coming, GOP. You have a lot of Oliver Twists out there to feed.
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PAD
Actually, yes, it can be called a lie.
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Kyl’s people didn’t say he made a mistake or that he got his facts wrong or that he misspoke. They said his statement was “not intended” to be factual.
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They admitted that Kyl knew what he was saying was false and that he deliberately asserted it as truth anyway.
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In other words, Kyl lied.
I’m thinking his 90% figure could very well have been nothing more than a bad guess he made off the cuff. Kinda like what Obama does when he’s not staring at a teleprompter. But like I said, Pro-Lifers don’t take as much interest in such minutia as their friends across the line. It might have something to do with the way they view the overall issue of abortion as a life-and-death matter.
Darin, I’ve heard that 90% of the people who aren’t aborted commit murder, so abortions actually save lives.
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Actually it may not be 90%, but since murder is a life-or-death issue, I’m not too hung up on that piece of minutia.
I’m thinking his 90% figure could very well have been nothing more than a bad guess he made off the cuff. Kinda like what Obama does when he’s not staring at a teleprompter.
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Fox News tactic number three: When in doubt, no matter how irrelevant, bring up Obama and teleprompters.
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Here’s a wacky thought: Perhaps Obama uses teleprompters because he knows that if he misspoke, you and your ilk–rather than bend over backwards to explain why it wasn’t a lie–would leap all over it as proof that Obama is…well, whatever the right wing talking heads are telling you he is this week.
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Oh, and by the way: Kyl was working off extensive notes that he kept consulting as he spoke. It wasn’t an off the cuff remark. He had the notes in front of him.
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Any other excuses you care to offer?
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PAD
I’m thinking his 90% figure could very well have been nothing more than a bad guess he made off the cuff.
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I’m thinking this is also how you will defend your own lie in saying that the Hyde Amendment was overturned?
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Kinda like what Obama does when he’s not staring at a teleprompter.
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This discussion has nothing to do with Obama, much like it has nothing to do with your attempt to drag race into the discussion.
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Please try and stick to the facts. Oh, wait…
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But like I said, Pro-Lifers don’t take as much interest in such minutia as their friends across the line.
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Translation: facts don’t matter as long as we get our way.
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It might have something to do with the way they view the overall issue of abortion as a life-and-death matter.
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Translation: Life is so important to the Right that they will arm as many people as they can, executed as many people as they want, bomb as many people as they need, deny life-saving health care to all but themselves, and keep women, children and minorities under the boot heel while claiming that its best for them.
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As long as nobody has an abortion.
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I’d suggest you go adopt a few of these children who were not aborted but were left for adoption, but I’d hate to think how you would poison their minds.
“A bad guess”? A bad guess would have been plus-or-minus a few percentage points. The order of incorrectness demonstrated by Kyl would better be described as “a catastrophically, almost comically, poor guess”.
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But it’s irrelevant. Kyl’s information, by his staff’s own admission, was “not intended to be factual”. Whether he saw the actual number and decided to inflate it by 3000% or just pulled a ridiculously high number out of his áršë to bolster his argument, his intent was to bear false witness against Planned Parenthood (i.e., he lied).
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(BTW, if you felt compelled to throw in a gratuitous and non sequitor “Obama’s teleprompter” comment, that’s a sign you’re probably letting your partisanship get the better of you.)
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Clearly not. If “pro-lifers” were remotely interested in minutia and were truly concerned about protecting the helpless in life-and-death matters, they would be excoriating Representative Ryan for his recent budget plan that, if followed as presented, would inexorably lead to the privation and death of the powerless.
“I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know if it can be called a “lie” so much as a “gaff” or “mistake.””
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A gaff, or mistake, would be him saying 5% instead of 3%. Or, maybe 13% instead of 3%. I’d even give him anywhere from 31-39% assuming it matched up with 3.x% if not rounded off to the nearest percentile. But, 90%?A number that has no correlation to the original statistic? Not a mistake. Not a mis-speak. A deliberate and planned lie.
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” I DO know that the association between Planned Parenthood and abortion is well known. Everybody knows they facilitate abortions-on-demand. It’s what their known for.”
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It is? Where? I know it as the place where my ex-wife went for birth control because we didn’t feel ready to have children. I know it as the place where she went for periodic check ups because none of my 4 part time jobs gave us medical insurrance.
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Planned Parenthood has been in operation for 95 years. It has only been the last few months that anyone (so far as I’ve seen, has made the claim that the bulk of their business is made up of abortions.
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I’ll tell you what is well known about Planned Parenthood, though. It is well known that the right has been against it from day 1, saying that the distribution of birth control and sexual education is “against families.”
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In fact, it was around 1996 when Planned Parenthood became an advocate for reproductive care, prevention of unwanted pregnancies, and allowing access to safe abortions for those intent on getting one.
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Theno
What do you call it when something is said in a factual manner that is “not intended to be factually accurate”?
Because in my world, that’s a lie. I mean, it could be a storytelling under certain circumstances. But I don’t think that’s what was happening here. If my kids were to say that 90% of the kids in their class were failing math, and I found out it was actually 3%, but my child was being ‘factually inaccurate’ to make a point, I would say they were lying to me.
60% of all black pregnancies in NYC end in abortion. If this is indeed a true statistic, then that’s something that needs to be addressed. But it has nothing to do with Jon Kyl, Senator from Arizona, giving intentionally factually inaccurate statements.
Okay, if ~60% of all black pregnancies in NYC end in abortion (http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=7883827), how many of them do you think Planned Parenthood administered? It does have something to do with Jon Kyl because he was talking about Planned Parenthood and abortions in his speech.
Darin, I have no idea how many Planned Parenthood was involved in. Neither do you. And in neither case does it affect the fact that Sen. Kyl made a statement which he later acknowledged was a lie.
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For that matter, I’d like to see your source for that “60%” you have been tossing about so blithely. I don’t have any confirmation of that, either.
Ah, I see that you did cite a source. It may be interesting to note that the overall abortion rate in New York is cited as 41% in that study; unless Planned Parenthood has at least as many branch offices in the greater New York area as, say, Chase Bank, it seems unlikely they can be held responsible for this. (For that matter, you make it sound as if they’re sending out flyers: “Want an abortion? Come on down! Get four abortions and your fifth one is free! Get a $10 gift certificate for recommending us to a friend!”)
Then you suck at math and basic reasoning.
“I made this statement on the floor of the Senate, to be entered into the Congressional Record, in front of television cameras, during a debate that might well cause the federal government to shut down for the first time since 1995. I didn’t know anybody would be listening!“
64% of all quoted statistics are actually fabricated on the spot just to support a point.
Personally, I think ZERO percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities should be centered around abortion.
When you become a woman, you can decide what to do then, ok?
Why do I have to be a woman? Approximately half of the abortions performed destroy male fetuses.
Ah NO. When my tax dollars are going to it, I will certainly stand up anytime and anywhere and offer any opinion that I care to on the subject. If Planned Parenthood wants to kill babies using my tax dollars, then it’s my business. Let them stop taking public money if they’re so worried about privacy.
When my tax dollars are going to it
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Well, there’s two answers to that:
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1) You’re just pulling out the old saw about “I don’t want my tax dollars going for this!” that means nothing. The government does not need nor require your endorsement in terms of how it spends tax dollars. You don’t get to go through the budget and do a line-item veto of what you will and won’t support.
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2) The Hyde Amendment has precluded Federal funds from being used to fund abortions since 1976, so your protest is moot.
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PAD
The Hyde Amendment was nullified by Obamacare, so government funded abortions are still on the table for discussion.
And “the old saw about ‘I don’t want my tax dollars going for this!'” means a lot, actually.
When my tax dollars are going to it,
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It’s amazing how many will stand up when they believe their tax dollars are going to fund abortions, but then refuse to stand up any other time in their life.
Funny, because I could have sworn Executive Order 13535 stated the language of the Hyde Amendment would remain in force and was created specifically in order to get Obama care through.
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PAD
What does being a woman have to do with it? I am one, by the way, and I’m also against abortion, but I don’t think my gender gives me a greater right to give my opinions than anyone else.
As for Darin – when you start defending idiotic politicians who pronounce inaccurate statistics as fact – i.e., lie – simply because you’re anti-abortion, you make the rest of us look stupid.
I should add that I’m British and have absolutely no idea what Planned Parenthood is and thus have no opinion on it either way. (I’m also very left-wing if that matters.)
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“Ah NO. When my tax dollars are going to it, I will certainly stand up anytime and anywhere and offer any opinion that I care to on the subject. If Planned Parenthood wants to kill babies using my tax dollars, then it’s my business. Let them stop taking public money if they’re so worried about privacy.”
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Oh, I’m so impressed. You pay taxes.
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So what? Who cares?
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Hey, here’s a clue for you, Tim. I pay taxes too; maybe even more than you do. I’m pretty sure Peter pays more in taxes than you and I combined and I have at least two acquaintances that I flat know pay more in taxes than all three of us combined do on multiple years worth of filings (no, Bill, they don’t want to finance an independent horror movie.) One of those two is a big, bed wetting lib. If we all pay more in taxes than you, do we get more say in the matter than you?
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Seriously, that’s such a tired and asinine comment from the Right. NOT WITH MY TAX DOLLARS!
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There are over 300 million people in this country, Tim. Most of them pay taxes. In that mass of tax paying humanity are people who dislike the idea that their taxes are paying for war, medical services, foreign aid of any kind for any reason, education, regulating food safety standards and even fire and police services amongst many, many other things.) There isn’t a single person in this country who agrees with everything the government does or everything that their tax money is spent on.
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I say the same thing to you that I say to them. Too dámņëd bad if you don’t like it. There are more than enough people who do like the things you dislike that their tax money alone could likely be covering it, so just pretend that they’re paying for the things that you don’t like.
And what do you personally think about a U.S. senator unabashedly lying about Planned Parenthood’s activities? Are you okay with that?
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If you aren’t, then you’re in agreement with everyone else and your views about Planned Parenthood are irrelevant. If you are okay with it, then what’s wrong with you?
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PAD
Like I said, I’m not convinced he was lying.
Oh. I see. So when his own people said his comments were not factual…THEY were lying?
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PAD
The Hyde Amendment wasn’t nullified by Obamacare, it was codified into the act. Planned Parenthood uses no tax dollars to fund abortions. Only three percent of its activity involves abortions. Senator Kyl knew all this and said something that was the opposite.
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That’s a lie, Darin. Plain and simple, a United States Senator lied about commonly available facts that you could look up any time you like, but you are standing behind him because his lies confirm your worldview. There is a word for that, and it’s called “insanity”.
Hey, Darin, maybe you should check out Executive Order 13535.
As for me, I am convinced he was lying.
And like I pointed out above, you can rest assured that he was indeed lying.
And unless you are pregnant and it’s your body, so fûçkìņg what what YOU think.
You republicans say you want a smaller government and less government interference in people’s lives, yet you want to restrict people’s rights to control their own bodies (abortion, sex, gay marriage, assisted suicide, etc etc etc) and lives.
You don’t like abortion? Then don’t fûçkìņg have one. But don’t you DARE try to force your ignorance on others by force of law or gang tactic coercion.
As for you Tim, I don’t want any of my tax dollars wasted on big business bailouts, big business tax cuts, efforts to ban gay marriage, efforts to ban abortion, pointless wars in Iraq and other places, etc. etc. etc.
Your say is limited to the representatives you elect.
Blade,
That’s always been my abortion argument. Unless it’s my wife or (non-existant) daughter, why should I give a crap if someone wants to have an abortion. None of my dámņ business.
America needs more like you Neil
I always liked the line from “West Wing”–“I like you guys who want smaller government; you know, just small enough to fit in our bedrooms.”
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PAD
Well, that makes lying okay, then.
Wow. Well, it’s almost refreshing to have a politician just come out and say, in effect “Yes, I lied to you. I intended to lie to you.”
Back in the Dark Ages (1930s – 40s), Eugene Talmadge, the Georgia equivalent of Huie Long, made a career out of running against “them lyin’ Atlanta newspapers” often more than against his actual opponents.
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While he was Agriculture Secretary (an elective office, he was accused of some, shall we say, less than strictly proper dealings:
Arrrgh. “Huey Long”.
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And i knew it.
Darin:
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1- What you feel about a fact is of no consequence whatsoever. As Phillip K Ðìçk said “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
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2- I don’t know why Executive Order 13535 is in any way a big deal. If it is needed to stop abortion funding then its being an executive order means it is not part of the law and can be overturned at the whim of this or any other president and if it is not needed, well, it’s not needed. As to which is the case I don;t know–some reporters asked Robert Gibb about that very issue and the poor man had no idea what to say.
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3- I expect to see a LOT more attention on social issues, because if the focus is on the finacial ones it will be a disaster for the Democrats. yeah, the republicans did a lousy job when they had the chance but the Democrats could not even get a budget passed and have no real plan for the impending doom. A 100% tax rate on those making more than a million dollars would not raise enough revenue to balance the current budget and the budget just passed, which is bigger and has a greater deficit than the last one is considered a “cut”. We are well and truly screwed.
I’m reminded of something a friend and co-worker, who had once identified himself as a Republican, but now isn’t so sure, said a few weeks ago. He asked if– other than a mutual friend who’d made two unsuccessful tries for state-wide office– there were any good Republicans anymore.
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In theory, there must be. But for some reason, they seem awfully quiet, when compared to the ones who don’t seem to give a dámņ about the truth.
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The sad thing, of course, is that in a week, two at the most, the majority of people (of those who are paying attention in the first place) probably won’t even remember this issue. Something else will have taken hold of their attention.
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Rick
I’m sure they are, but they get drowned out by the crazies tout suite.
Obama once said things like he traveled “all 57 states” and that he could see ghosts during the ’08 campaign. Was he lying or were those gaffs? He also asserted that mandatory medical insurance was no different than mandatory auto insurance when he was trying to sell Obamacare to the people last year. Was he lying or was that a gaff? See, I look at information regarding Kyl’s statement about Planned Parenthood being 90% about abortion and the statement from his staff that his statement was not meant to be taken literally and I can’t tell if he was lying or not… I only know that he made a (supposedly) inaccurate statement. Lying has to do with intentions in addition to facts. Whether he was actually trying to mislead folks or was just plain wrong, I can’t tell by what I’ve seen thus far. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Neither outcome compels me to change how I feel about abortion.
Darin, if you will consult the video here (http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp), you will see that the famed “57 states” thing is a deliberate misinterpretation of a pause. Obama, exhausted from weeks on the campaign trail, was trying to say that he had been to 47 of the 48 contiguous states, but slipped up and started to say “fifty”, then paused and went on with the statement he had been originally planning. (Ironically enough, had he been using a teleprompter, he would have avoided this gaffe, but would have been critiqued by you and your fellows for using it.)
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Now, unless you can come up with some way to make “90%” sound like it was supposed to come out to “three percent”, the two statements are completely unrelated, and Sen. Kyl’s statement is still a bald-faced lie.
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Maybe you’re comfortable with your legislators lying directly in your face to make a point. I’m not so much.
Reaching, I see.
I think you can do better.
For Darin, that is.
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Darin, reading all of your posts in this thread and thinking back on some of your posts in other recent threads, I honestly can’t tell at this point if you’re simply –
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A – A troll
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B – Someone who is so lacking in intelligence and the ability to form an informed opinion that discussing things with you would be slightly less productive than having a discussion with my dog
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C – A single digit IQ moron Lefty who likes to post the dimmest possible things pretending to be a Righty to try and make the Right look bad
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– – – OR – – –
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D – Both A & B
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– – –
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My money is on D FTW.
E-He’s really Sen. Kyl. The grasp of reality and maturity level seems to match.
Jeez…. what part of “not intended to be factual” are you not getting. THEY ADMITTED IT WAS A LIE. Sheesh…
Never underestimate the ability of the arrogant and the stupid to engage in cognitive dissonance. Truth is truth only because they agree with it, and false is false because they do not. Their own opinions are the only gauge for reality. They sincerely believe what they say is true, and facts are crazy little numbers dreamed up by the evil to bedevil the righteous.
I have always been leery of people with bone-deep, I-know-I’m-right-and-to-hëll-with-anyone-else convictions, and the above is largely the reason why.
Let’s talk a bit about that 60% statistic, and what it means. The right would have us believe that it, and other statistics like it, means that abortion providers are somehow targeting black women in a sinister attempt at eugenics. That they would use such fear-mongering tactics is of course no shock, although their sudden professed concern for the well-being of the black community is.
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But I digress, and that’s Peter’s schtick. The right’s implication is in any case disproven by Planned Parenthood and other agencies’ modus operandi, so helpfully provided by Darin above: They provide abortion “on demand.” That is, you have to go in and ask for one. They don’t have salesmen going door-to-door offering abortions, they don’t put coupons in the weekly ad circular, and they don’t offer a free one with every five you pay for. They don’t market, and you have to go to them.
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Which means, if a disproportionate number of black women are having abortions, then a disproportionate number of women are finding themselves with unwanted pregnancies. So if we want to solve this problem (and it is a problem), that’s what we need to focus on: Why do these women have so many unwanted pregnancies, and what can we do to reverse the trend?
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Abortion ain’t the disease; it’s the symptom.
I can’t help but notice how, whenever someone prominent starts talking about the sanctity of life and the essence of innocence, pundits and representatives of Planned Parenthood seem to get nervous, even when the comments are not directed specifically at the topic of abortion. See, I think most people know that if Planned Parenthood didn’t provide abortions on demand, their services would be redundant, meaning the remainder of their services would already be provided by other entities. Therefore, Planned Parenthood’s most distinguishing characteristic is abortion. It’s all in their name. They are all about planned (as opposed to unplanned) parenthood. It’s a classic sort of euphemism. It’s like we see an “S” on Superman’s chest while they see two yellow fish swimming past each other.
This is a statement coming from vast ignorance of what Planned Parenthood does.
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For many people I knew, they were primary health care.
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For many people I knew, they were the only source of reproductive services.
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For many people I knew, they were the only place they could get woman-oriented health care such as Pap smears.
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You are not doing better in your thinking. Try. Harder.
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“For many people I knew, they were the only place they could get woman-oriented health care such as Pap smears.”
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But… but… but… Roger, don’t you watch Fox News? You can get pap smears at Walgreens. That wasn’t true when they said it either, but I’m sure Darin will provide a lengthy post as to why it actually is true despite Walgreens actually releasing a statement saying that Fox News was full of it and that they didn’t do medical procedures like pap smears.
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“You are not doing better in your thinking. Try. Harder.”
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Thinking? Why start now?
Yeah, I know… “How dare you say anything negative about Planned Parenthood!?! Don’t you know Planned Parenthood is a paragon of virtue? You sub-human troll/troglodyte/hobbit! You should get down on your knees to what Planned Parenthood is, what it represents!” Yeah, I know. I know that’s how many of the people here feel about me and about Planned Parenthood. I don’t like Planned Parenthood and therefore I must be some kind of uneducated or ignorant degenerate. But I tell you that Planned Parenthood is not virtuous… and not worth your praise, pity or support. I think most people know this, somewhere deep down inside themselves.
I don’t like Planned Parenthood and therefore I must be some kind of uneducated or ignorant degenerate.
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Well, you’re certainly showing your ignorance quite well.
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You could remedy that, but it’s evident you don’t care to.
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I think, deep down, you know that sort of willful ignorance is what makes you deserving of all the contempt you’re receiving.
“Willful ignorance,” in my view, is carrying on as though an abortion isn’t the hideous, immoral act it is.
Darrin, it’s not that you dislike Planned Parenthood. It’s that you seem to be hellbent on willfully misunderstanding what it is that they do. Understand that most of the folks on this thread believe that Planned Parenthood is 97% sex education and contraception and only 3% abortion. From your posts, you seem feel that they exist to eat the unborn as part of an unholy ritual to maintain their eternal youth and the rest is just something they fabricated as a cover.
And besides, the initial point is that Kyl either lied, goofed, or was the victim of massively bad research and, when called on it, did not simply own up to it, but had his people parse a reply in Orwellian Newspeak to try to cover it.
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“I don’t like Planned Parenthood and therefore I must be some kind of uneducated or ignorant degenerate”
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Noooooooooooo. You come of as somewhat uneducated and ignorant because of your ability to look a lie that you like square in the face and insist that, since basically you like it, it’s not actually a lie.
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Jon Kyl told a lie. He had the lie written down. He was consulting notes. His people confirmed that it wasn’t a misstatement, but rather that it was something said that –
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“His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does.”
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He lied. He chose to deliberately tell a lie.
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Planned Parenthood calculates the numbers by services provided, rather than dollars spent. In a fact sheet last updated in March 2011, the group lists the following breakdown of its services:
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Contraception (including reversible contraception, emergency contraception, vasectomies and tubal sterilizations): 4,009,549 services
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Sexually transmitted infections testing and treatment: 3,955,916 services
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Cancer screening and prevention: 1,830,811 services
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Other women’s health services (including pregnancy tests and prenatal care): 1,178,369 services
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Abortions: 332,278 procedures
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Miscellaneous (including primary care and adoption referrals): 76,977
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Total services: 11,383,900
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He lied.
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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/08/jon-kyl/jon-kyl-says-abortion-services-are-well-over-90-pe/
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He lied. Accept reality for a change instead of embracing lies because you like them better than the truth and you might not keep get treated like one of the uneducated and ignorant.
Well, if you are pro-life, then you believe that one abortion is more serious and more costly than an infinite number of pap smears. I can be convinced that his 90% comment is inaccurate and I can be convinced that he was misinformed by his staff, but I cannot yet be convinced that he willfully tried to mislead people (i.e. lied). Go ahead and call him stupid. Most career politicians in fact are. From my perspective, however, abortion is a serious topic and I can’t laugh about anything that touches upon it.
Oh, and I can’t help but notice that those figures about Planned Parenthood come from Planned Parenthood… who can’t be considered an unbiased source in all this. Just throwing that out there.
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“Oh, and I can’t help but notice that those figures about Planned Parenthood come from Planned Parenthood…”
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Really? I would never have guessed that that’s where the figures came from. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that from this line in the post I made.
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“Planned Parenthood calculates the numbers by services provided, rather than dollars spent. In a fact sheet last updated in March 2011, the group lists the following breakdown of its services:”
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Do you work at being this dense?
So, if Sally says Dan pulled her pig tail and Dan says he didn’t then Sally is lying?
I can’t help but notice how, when backed into a corner, you can’t help but attempt sleight of hand and other tricks in an attempt to distract us from your previous failures at logic.
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Hmm. Maybe you have the makings of a politician yet.
Oh I’m sorry. Was I not supposed to be expecting all the passive-aggressive snarkiness here? Was I supposed to be affected by it in some way? He hee…
Ah.
Well pounded, sir!
Oh I think you’ll find with a quick look upward that the table pounding didn’t start with me here. 🙂
Oh I think you’ll find with a quick look upward that the table pounding didn’t start with me here
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You don’t even spin bûllšhìŧ very well.
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I do believe the first post I recall seeing your name attached to was your ‘completely accurate’ prediction that the mission in Libya would fail because you hate anything that Obama and the Democrats do, and blindly support any statement (particularly lies) made by Republicans.
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And you’ve been digging your own grave ever since.
That’s because, nearly without exception, such talk by “someone prominent” (almost invariably a conservative of some stripe) inevitably hints at or turns to the subject of abortion — and thus to attacking Planned Parenthood.
You seem to be confusing “what most people know” with “what I think I know, I assume other people also believe”. Considering that (as recent events should have made clear to you) nearly all of Planned Parenthood’s provided services are not abortions, it’s pretty clear that these other services aren’t being provided by other organizations to those who need them.
The most distinguishing characteristic for someone who doesn’t know better, doesn’t care to find out, and runs his information through a dogmatic “pro-life” filter perhaps. Planned Parenthood has been a reviled bête noir of anti-abortion activists for years. I’m not surprised that, in spite of the plain facts, many people are simply unable to process and accept the fact that Planned Parenthood is not an abortion mill.
Caution: You’re beginning to enter Glen Beck-type thought patterns. Never a good place to go.
About that last comment from Sasha: There is no other reaction that a blog like this one could possibly have when confronted with my thoughts. I am, pleasingly so to me, always going to be “the conservative freak” on blogs like this. Your little caution/warning there isn’t a caution/warning at all.
There’s a difference between being a “conservative freak” and “seeing conspiracies and truths hidden in plain sight that no one else can”.
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Just be careful not to find yourself seriously speculating on Obama’s grand plan to assist Al Qaeda to usher in the new Global Caliphate, OK?
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“I am, pleasingly so to me, always going to be “the conservative freak” on blogs like this.”
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No, you are always going to be “the blog idiot” on blogs like this. Here’s why in a nutshell.
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– Jon Kyl made a statement where he cited specific numbers and presented them as facts.
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– Jon Kyl was referencing notes that he had made for the speech when he cited that specific figure.
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– Several people in the news media thought that the number was slightly (to be kind) off and contacted Jon Kyl’s office.
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– Jon Kyl’s people responded by making an official statement where they said that Jon knew that the figure he cited was false, but that it didn’t matter because he was saying what he said to make a point. They point blank said that Jon Kyl knew that what he was presenting as a fact was not a fact and therefore was not a factual statement or intended to be a factual statement despite how he presented it at the time.
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– Numerous people have pointed out the fact that Jon Kyl therefore lied.
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– You show up in the thread and, despite the fact that Jon Kyl and Jon Kyl’s people admitted that Jon Kyl deliberately presented a lie as a fact when speaking, claim that you don’t think that Jon Kyl told a lie.
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You see where the slight disconnect you have with reality is in all of this yet?
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It wasn’t a gaffe. It wasn’t a mistake or a misstatement. It wasn’t an off the cuff guess. Jon Kyl deliberately and knowingly presented the “90%” figure as a fact in his speech knowing, by his own offices admission, that the figure was not factual.
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He told a lie.
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There is no arguing this. This is an indisputable fact. The fact of this matter does not change because you mention Obama, teleprompters, abortion rates amongst the black population of New York or your own personal distaste for abortions.
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Jon Kyl told a lie. End of story.
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There is no other side to this discussion. This isn’t a topic where one person says that “A” is the better option than “B” while yet another person comes along and says that “B” is a much better option than “A” is every time. There are these fun things called reality, facts and truth and the reality of the situation is that Jon Kyl knowingly ignored the facts and said something that was not the truth and that his office has confirmed this.
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But you come along and say that you don’t think he actually told a lie and throw out various bits of garbage that are irrelevant to the basic facts of the matter.
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You are not “the conservative freak” on blogs like this. Bill Mulligan is the conservative freak here. Hëll, on some issues I’m qualified to be the conservative freak here. But you declaring that facts are what you like them to be rather than what they actually are and that a blatant lie is not a lie? You’re not the “conservative freak” in discussions like this. You’re the idiot of the moment in conversations like this.
I can’t help but notice how, whenever someone prominent starts talking about the sanctity of life and the essence of innocence, pundits and representatives of Planned Parenthood seem to get nervous,
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Uh…no. I’m not nervous. I am, however, impressed that the GOP can so correctly count on its base to accept every lie it spews.
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PAD
I’m sorry, I…I…just don’t GET IT.
Where is it written in stone that “not intended to be a factual statement,” is just a political buzzword for “He lied.” It could be he exaggerated or was stating an opinion that he was so married to, he gave it a prenup and wrote it down. In other words, did he and his staffers know it was indeed a lie? And before you start calling me an apologist or a blind GOP-worshipper, I suggest you look somewhere else, because all I’m asking for is absolute concrete evidence that he knew HE WAS TELLING A LIE. That he with full intent with malice aforethought knew that the number he had written down on those notes was wrong and he had disregarded the truth when it was presented with it before he gave that number out loud.
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Charles F Waldo: “Where is it written in stone that “not intended to be a factual statement,” is just a political buzzword for “He lied.” It could be he exaggerated or was stating an opinion that he was so married to, he gave it a prenup and wrote it down. In other words, did he and his staffers know it was indeed a lie?”
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You know what, Charles? If you’re going to make a statement about percentages, facts and/or figures and you have a staff at your disposal to research them, then you better dámņ well have them research them. If you choose to express as a fact a number that you’ve just heard floating around or are unsure of and have not bothered to research, you may not be telling a lie, but what follows when you get called on it goes a long way towards telling everyone what your intent was and what you wanted to do with the false figures and “facts” that you were throwing around.
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Kyl has a staff and more than a few resources to look up the facts and to figure out the difference between 3% and 90% with. He either didn’t research it, didn’t have his staff research it or simply didn’t care.
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He got called on it. Did he admit to a mistake? No. Did he say he misspoke? No. Did he say that his description of Planned Parenthood and what they do was grossely distorted to the level of being pure propaganda? No. He had his office put out this statement.
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“His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does provide abortions.”
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Saying that Planned Parenthood provides abortions will “illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does provide abortions.” Saying that Planned Parenthood provides too many abortions for Kyl’s tastes will “illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does provide abortions.” Saying that you are going to declare that an organization that provides as approximately 3% of its overall services abortions is in fact dedicating 90% of its overall services to abortions and then stating after the fact that, yeah, it was a total lie that was told, but it was never intended to be taken as a fact anyway is not simply a way to illustrate that Planned Parenthood provides abortions.
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Saying after the fact that it was just a way to illustrate what Planned Parenthood does when it’s a number that’s so far off the mark that it’s not even close not only lends serious credibility to the idea that you intended to lie, but it’s doubling down on the lie and counting on the mindless masses who like that lie to defend it and embrace it facts be dámņëd.
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Can you say something about facts and figures, be wrong and still come out of the situation without being a liar? Yeah, some of us did it here.
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http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2009/03/02/when-im-wrong-i-say-im-wrong/
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That’s what Kyl should have done if he wanted to keep any sort of moral high ground or not be seen as the liar that he is. We were discussing the facts and figures of the comic market and distribution figures and we had the recent trend in those numbers wrong. When the real figures came to light, we all said that we were wrong. We did not say that, yeah, what we said was wrong, but, even though we were arguing a point using those incorrect figures, we were still right and we never meant for the figures we were discussing to be taken as facts anyhow.
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Kyl said something that was not only false, but it was almost 180 degrees from the truth. His response was not to admit that he was wrong and apologize or state that what he said was wrong, but rather to declare that his specifically cited figure was never meant to be taken as a fact no matter how it was presented and that, despite being about 180 degrees from the facts, it was just showing what Planned Parenthood was all about.
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He lied. He doubled down on the lie after the fact. He is a liar and he has no honor.
“Not intended to be a factual statement” is pretty self-explanatory. He said something that was not intended to be true.
An “exaggeration” that grossly distorts the truth IS a lie. An “opinion” is when you say Planned Parenthood should stay open or close down. Making up a statistic based on your own gut feeling, declaring it, and then arguing that you didn’t know it was NOT true is disingenuous if we’re being ridiculously charitable. In the best case scenario here, you’re arguing that he just makes things up and doesn’t bother to check if they’re true or not. The difference between that and knowingly lying is mostly semantic and ethically nonexistent. Every bit of criticism still applies.
Jerry,
Thank you for the clarification with the “illustrate” remark, because and I’m sorry to say this Peter , but I just could not say that “not intended to be a factual statement” itself, alone and at face value, did not include the possibility, no matter how remote, that it was an uninformed opinion, even in spite of the notes.
This to Charles Waldo, in this reply thread:
Politicians should not, in my opinion anyway, be suffered to have uninformed opinions about matters that touch on their jobs. They have too much power and too much responsibilty to the public to walk around not understanding the realities over which they have the power to effect. I don’t say they need to lose their jobs over their displayed ignorance, but they sure as hëll need to be called to account for each and every fact that touches the lives of their constituents that they are either mistaken about or blissfully unaware of.
An interesting sidelight to this debate:
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Former FOX Izvestia host Glenn Beck has apparently (i say “apparently” because i haven’t listened to the audio clip from his radio program attached to the article) said – or at least implied strongly – that only høøkërš need Planned Parenthood…
Well, if you read the article, it doesn’t say he said “only” høøkërš need planned parenthood. He merely said that høøkërš need planned parenthood.
He’s apparently unaware that prostitutes almost universally require their clients to use protection.
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That, or he’s trying to smear all women with unplanned pregnancies as moral degenerates.
Apparently someone is under the impression that “protection” is 100% effective. Anyway, if someone said plants depend on water, would you automatically assume that said person meant “only” plants depend on water? I don’t think so. What Beck said could very well be factually accurate. I don’t know, I don’t have the data. But we all know that if Beck had said “only” høøkërš need Planned Parenthood, then we could all probably agree that this is not correct. As it stands, however, if Planned Parenthood were to be defunded, it is probably true that this would affect a lot of høøkërš.
So, a Republican presented a massive distortion of fact as fact, then instead of acknowledging their mistake tried to claim they weren’t speaking factually? What time will Jon Kyl’s program on Fox News be airing?
In general, this is a case where a simple correction and/or apology would have avoided so many problems. If Kyl had simply admitted the 90% he cited was wrong, he might have taken a little heat from the right, and that would be it. Instead, his attempted justification of a completely erroneous fact has made him a headline — and a symbol that Republicans will make up their own facts to suit their agendas. Sadly, this will reflect poorly on those Republicans who *do* use facts and *do* argue on the merits of an issue.
Unfortunately, this seems like a symptom of a Republican tactic used a lot lately: Anything that supports their narrative, no matter how ill-founded, is good. Obama is somehow alien to America, so every birther theory, no matter how idiotic or baseless, has them nodding their heads and saying, “Yes, that raises some questions.” Planned Parenthood is 90% abortion — but if they’re not (the actual numbers I’ve heard range from 3% to 10%), and if no federal money goes to abortion services, they don’t correct themselves — which would acknowledge that Planned Parenthood isn’t 100% evil and should lose 100% of its funding. (Or did Republicans want to take away 3% of the funding? It’s such a fine line, between 3% and 100% — though not as fine a line as between 3% and 90%.)
I support Planned Parenthood. And while I’m pro-choice, I think information about pregnancy and access to contraception will reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. And I hope they cut the funds from abstinence-only education, which effectively takes the “tell teens not to have sex, and they won’t” approach.
“Last I checked, something not intended to be a factual statement is typically referred to as a “lie.””
Or as an ‘opinion’? Yes, I know, not the case in this instance. But it is an alternative to a factual statement without necessarily being a lie.
Numbers are not opinions. Sen. Kyle referenced a number. He didn’t even qualify it with weasel words like, “To the best of my knowledge,” or, “My constituents tell me…” No, he stated it as a matter of fact. One might expect a United States Senator to have sufficient staff to fact-check little things like that.
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He didn’t opine. He lied.
Check my comment. “I know it’s not the case in this instance.” This does not invalidate the rest of my statement that, just because something isn’t factual doesn’t automatically make it a lie. There are such things as ‘opinions’, too.
If he were a Democrat and said that 90% of what the Boy Scouts do is teach hate, he could have gotten away with it by calling it a “kinetic non-fact,” I figure. -.-
The Democrats have nothing do with this. And, once again, neither does Obama or race.
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Yet, you keep finding new things to throw in.
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You can keep waving your hands around, but you’re no magician. However, at this point I’m more than happy to hand you a shroud.
“If he were a Democrat and said that 90% of what the Boy Scouts do is teach hate, he could have gotten away with it by calling it a “kinetic non-fact,” I figure. -.-“
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I think a better analogy would be that if a Democrat were to say that 5% of all handguns sold in the US were used to commit crimes, and the actual statistic was closer to 4.4%, then the GOP would destroy that person in the media and use him as an example of why left wingers can’t be trusted.
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Theno
Well, as long as “you figure” it must be true. Iron clad reasoning. there….
This whole topic is just idiotic. How anyone can defend or even begin to agree with some politician like him is beyond me.
But I just want to say, I believe everyone needs Planned Parenthood. They don’t JUST focus on abortions. Without a Planned Parenthood I would have lost my life. They helped me find a doctor and hospital to care for me and my health issues at a time no one else would just for the fact I was 17 and had no insurance.
Planned Parenthood isn’t just for African Americans or “høøkërš” it’s for everyone that needs a helping hand.
Unfortunately, Holly, with right-wing idealogy being what it is, you were apparently just supposed to just suck it up and die. That’s pro-life for you.
Craig J. Ries said:
Try this story:
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Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill
(I do find this interesting, as proof that not all anti-abortion types are as coocoo as some we could mention):
But, then, he was a Democrat, so he was probably lying about being anti-abortion…
Darin I’m going to try this once.
John Kyl made a statement, his people then said “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does provide abortions.”
Whether or not you believe you the statement to be true, is irrelevant, John Kyl did not believe it to be true, nor according to the statement made by his people did Kyl make a mistake, he choice a number that was inaccurate because he wanted to illustrate a point.
So by statements coming from his own office Kyl lied and did so deliberately. If there is something within the facts that I have said wrong, feel free to challenge me on that. No statements about Obama or Teleprompters that’s all irrelevant.. Challenge me on just those facts.
Now if what I say is right and the facts say I am. Then based on your posts you believe it is alright for a politician to lie to his constituents. I would like to know why you feel that is okay.
So far, his intent can’t really be ascertained. We know he said something quantitative and we know his staff released a statement saying that he didn’t mean for it to be taken as a factual statement, but rather to convey a tangential point. That’s it. I think he gaffed. I think he meant to say that they do a lot of abortions and he had a brain fart. I realize that those supporting Planned Parenthood aren’t going to accept that. Until he comes out and says he deliberately tried to convince people of the 90% figure, I can’t say I think he lied. It really is that simple.
His intent was stated in the release, he stated it was NOT INTENDED to be factual.
By definition that means it was not a gaffe.
If it was a gaffe why didn’t he say he misspoke?
So even if he did misspeak, his follow up statement says he didn’t and therefor Kyl believes it’s better to have deliberately made a false statement, than to have stated something in error.
It’s almost amusing. You can’t seem to believe a politician even when they swear they are lying.
Kyl used a highly inflated and inaccurate percentage that suggested that Planned Parenthood is nothing but an abortion mill, bearing false witness against it. He stated that percentage as truthful despite knowing that it had no basis. He was reading off prepared notes and his staff, rather than simply state that the Senator misspoke and that “90 percent” was utterly wrong, admitted that the figure that he read off the notes was “not intended” to be factual. He did not correct himself during the speech or afterwards. All signs point to a deliberate lie on Kyl’s part.
So the only way you can believe that anyone is lying is for him or her to flat-out admit it? You are a defense attorney’s dream juror … or a grifter’s bread-and-butter.
Intent is a very hard thing to establish if the person in question does not reveal it him or herself in some way.
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“Intent is a very hard thing to establish if the person in question does not reveal it him or herself in some way.”
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And that’s been done, so you’re either a moron or a useful idiot for the Right.
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Same thing really.
I didn’t say it was impossible… merely that it was very hard. So far, Kyl’s intent is only the stuff of liberal imagination and deliberate obtusiveness.
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And this, Darin, is way so many here have decided you’re a troll, a moron or a little bit of both.
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“I didn’t say it was impossible… merely that it was very hard. So far, Kyl’s intent is only the stuff of liberal imagination and deliberate obtusiveness.”
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Nope, it’s expressed fact per official statement from his office. His office has been responding to questions about this by numerous media sources with the statement that he meant to say what he said, but it wasn’t meant to be taken factually (despite the fact that he presented it in such a manner) since April 8, 2011. It is today April 12, 2011. Now, this statement is not coming from some random statement office set up by staffers with no actual bosses. This is Jon Kyl’s office.
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In the last four days, Jon Kyl has continued to allow this statement to be his official statement on the matter. Now, unless Kyl is a puppet controlled by his staff, Kyl is the boss. One would think that Kyl would address this statement or correct it if this was not his approved statement on the matter.
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Kyl had a figure he wanted to use for effect that he knew was not factual. He used it and presented it as a factual statement on the matter. When he and his people were questioned about the matter, he had his people issue an official statement saying that he intended to use the figure as an example, but that it was not meant to be taken factually.
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That’s called telling a lie, Darin.
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Since you’re obviously too fanatically wed to your ideology to understand this simple fact in this matter… Let’s try this.
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You want a bite to eat for dinner. You go into a nice looking diner. You look at the special of the day and decide it looks like your kind of thing. The problem is that, being a special dish that changes daily, the price is not listed on the menu. You ask the guy behind the counter (who also owns the place) how much the thing costs. He tells you that the thing costs $17.95. You order it, devour it, pay with you card and head on home.
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A few days later you see the statement on you card and it’s a whopping $75.00.
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The diner owner tells the police that he never lied to you or stole money from you. Yeah, he told you that the dish cost $17.95 when he knew he was charging $75.00 even for it, but when he was talking to you he never intended that price to be taken factually by you. See, he didn’t lie, he just deliberately misstated the price by a huge margin to make a point about the affordability of the dish.
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You think the police are going to decide that he wasn’t telling a lie and didn’t actually steal money from you with that credit card charge? Are you stupid enough that you’ll just shrug and say that, hey, he really wasn’t telling a lie after all?
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Uhm… If you are that stupid, post your credit card info. I promise, I’ll only spend 0.00005% of the available balance on the card. (Note – That promise was not intended to be factual.)
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Kyl did the same thing. He told a lie. His office has been putting out an official statement for days saying that he told a lie. End of story unless you’re a complete idiot. So, of course, you’ll be continuing to insist that it wasn’t a lie…
What I find impressive about this entire thing is how thoroughly the GOP knows its base.
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Kyl knew he could lie with impunity. He knew he could say whatever he wanted. It was never about being accurate. It was never about being honest It was about trying to get rid of Planned Parenthood, which largely serves minorities and the poor, both groups which tend to skew Democratic. It was about trying to throw some red meat to the tea party and the base by saying, “We must get rid of this organization that spends all its time providing abortions,” even though that’s patently false.
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The ninety percent statistic? It doesn’t matter that it’s wrong. The base will nod like so many bobbleheads and repeat the ninety percent thing to each other and Fox News will reiterate it along with other helpful concepts like suggesting that women go to Walgreens for pap smears and breast exams. Truth, accuracy: these are of no consequence to the base.
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The right wing bobble heads here absolutely don’t care that Kyl lied. They deny that he lied or pretend that it was a casual slip of the tongue (while at the same time attacking Obama if he works off a teleprompter to avoid slips of the tongue) even though he clearly read it off notes in front of him. They try to turn it into a referendum on abortion, which is what Kyl wanted and was willing to lie to accomplish it. He played to the base like a conductor and they just followed his lead and responded with the same old song.
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And they don’t care that they’re that easily manipulated. They just don’t care, and in allowing themselves to be had in that manner, they just guarantee more of the same from their elected officials, because they know they can get away with it.
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PAD
Shame on us for thinking that the extermination of hundreds of thousands babies-in-the-womb is a bigger worry than the repeated gaffs of some carrier politician.
Congratulations, Darin. I had to take a whole bunch of words to describe a mindset that you were then able to display in just a few words. Well done.
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PAD
They ain’t babies till they’re born.
Or to use Republican speak: “They ain’t human till they vote republican”
See, I didn’t lie, I just made a statement that wasn’t intended to be factual
(Not that the democrats are any better, but you gotta marvel at the willful ignorance the “wrong” (I would never call them “right”, they even admit to lying, the democrats really fumbled that one when they allowed the repubs to go with a left/right dynamic ansd to snatch the word “right” with it other meaning)
Thanks, Peter! Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.
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“Shame on us for thinking that the extermination of hundreds of thousands babies-in-the-womb is a bigger worry than the repeated gaffs of some carrier politician.”
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– – – Translator On- – –
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………. ___________________________ ……….
“Truth? Why should I give a rats ášš about the truth or facts when I have an ideology to support? So long as it sound good to me and makes me happy to hear it, it’ll be all the “truth“ I need.”
………. ___________________________ ……….
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– – – Translator Off- – –
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There are words for people like you, Darin. Moron is one; fanatic and extremist also come to mind.
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“the democrats really fumbled that one when they allowed the repubs to go with a left/right dynamic ansd to snatch the word “right” with it other meaning)”
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I would agree with you, but the terms didn’t start with the two parties. We can (I believe if memory serves) blame the French for that one.
They ain’t babies till they could live outside the womb.
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Until then they’re basically parasitic growths; tumours.
Brevity is the soul of wit, after all
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And the rationalization of the half-wit.
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PAD
Jerry…your memory serves you correctly. It comes from how the French liberals tended to sit on the left side of the chamber in government and the conservatives sat on the right hand side.
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PAD
PAD We’re at war with Eurasia, we’re always at war with Eurasia?
Yes, but at least they raised the chocolate ration to 20 kg this year!
War with Eurasia? I thought we were at war with Eastasia?
Unfortunately, I think a lot of this comes from Fox News, which will let its “experts” and paid politicians say anything they want, without fear of anyone verifying it or — Gawd forbid — pointing out when they make a mistake. At least they ditched the “fair and balanced” line.
Or as Keith Olbermann calls ’em, Fake News?
Impressive, but not surprising. The GOP has been “creating their own reality” for at least ten years.
Not gonna wade into the politics, but have you seen the twitter feed… #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement ? Fun stuff.
I think one of the problems here is that I know what a “lie” is. I seem to be at a disadvantage as a result. I mean, most of you seem to be proceeding on the premise that anything stated that ends up being (or in this case seemingly being) untrue is therefore a “lie.” When I was in grade school, I had text books that clearly stated that our solar system has 9 planets in it. Today, it’s an accepted fact that we have 8 instead. Were those text books from my grade school “lying?” Of course they weren’t. But that’s what most of you would be saying if we applied your definition of “lying” from this thread to that text book question. I think I’ve been reasonable here, even given all the vitriol, snarkiness, passive aggression and pseudo-intellectual pap that’s been hurled in my general direction. I’m feeling pretty satisfied right now.
Fools are always satisfied in their own ignorance. Enjoy it.
The rest of us live here in the real world.
I mean, most of you seem to be proceeding on the premise that anything stated that ends up being (or in this case seemingly being) untrue is therefore a “lie.”
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Noooo, I don’t think that’s the premise at all. The premise is that we’re listening to what Kyl said, and what his staff subsequently said, while you’re listening to the voices in your head (and possibly the talking heads of Fox News).
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If Kyl or his crew had said, “We screwed up. Sorry,” then it’s a non-issue. Now: Something being a non-issue doesn’t stop some people from MAKING something an issue (ex: Birthers). But instead Kyl looked down at his notes and put forward out false information about Planned Parenthood. And when called on it, his office stated that it was “never meant to be factual.” Well, then the question is, what WAS it meant to be?
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It wasn’t an opinion. You can interpret what statistics mean and put forward an opinion based on them. So if it was not meant to be factual, what does that leave? Falsehood. They clearly said that Kyl put forward misinformation.
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Kyl has done nothing to apologize to the people at Planned Parenthood for completely distorting their work. He has done nothing to act like someone who misspoke.
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Which means he said exactly what he wanted to say, because he was counting on credulous suckers to provide excuses and repeat his lies enough to make it “truth” in the (and I use the term loosely) brains of his constituents.
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There is no other reasonable interpretation.
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PAD
If we assume that the 90% figure was in his notes, then we should also ask the question “Who prepared his notes?” It’s a known fact that senators and representatives rely heavily on their staff for things like that. So he may well have believed the figure when he uttered it. Again, we don’t know. What we know is he threw out that 90% figure and then in a very poorly crafted retraction, most likely constructed by his staff, said that it was not meant to be taken factually. Given the context of his speech, he most likely meant to say that they do a lot of abortions and that is what they are known for. Intent cannot be gleaned from what we know thus far. And I don’t think this gaff invalidates his entire speech. You may continue calling me things like “half-wit” and professing your belief that I am psychotic now.
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“It’s a known fact that senators and representatives rely heavily on their staff for things like that. So he may well have believed the figure when he uttered it.”
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Then you come out and say that the figure was an error and that it was incorrect and that the correct figure is no where near what was represented by the false figure. You take responsibility for the statement or, if you’re the sniveling type, you have a staffer come out and fall on their sword for you. You do not have your office issue a press statement that says that you knew the figure was false, but that it was not intended to be a factual statement (despite the way it was presented) and that the false statement was merely there to underscore a point about what Planned Parenthood is actually all about.
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By the way, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot in any future discussions (like you haven’t already) about Obama or any other Democrat; ever. Obama didn’t lie about one single thing in Obamacare. His speeches were written by others (as was the bill) after all. He simply stated things that he believed to be true. No lies whatsoever in there. As a matter of fact, Obama has never lied about anything by your standards. Since he’s usually reading speeches written by others, it’s not him telling any lies. And when he’s speaking off the cuff and tells a lie it’s not really a lie. He’s just guessing wrong or making a gaffe.
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Why, by your standards of “truth” as you’ve explained here, Obama and the Democrats must be some of the most honest individuals walking on God’s green Earth. So you are now disqualified from ever saying anything about a Democrat ever again insofar as their telling lies to the American people about anything. They’re not telling lies. You’ve just spent the whole day saying so.
So he may well have believed the figure when he uttered it. Again, we don’t know.
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Then he says, “I was misinformed.” Then his staff says, “We screwed up.”
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Instead they said it was never meant to be factual. There is only one possible interpretation of that statement: We meant to give a false impression.
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In other words: Lie.
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And they did so with impunity, knowing that people like you wouldn’t care or would provide excuses.
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Which is what you’re doing.
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PAD
Now, see, I look at what you’re saying and I think you’re making excuses for the Daily Show… like I said, there’s lots of ways this could have gone down, when taking into account all the data we have (and things that you refuse so far to acknowledge). Therefore, I can’t with with 100% certainty that he intended to deceive. I think it was a gaff that wasn’t followed up well and should have been retracted. Stupid, yeah. I can accept that, but I think the folks here are all too eager to assign malicious intent to the situation. Sometimes, I wish Republicans would act this passionately when one of the Democrats “misspeaks.”
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“Now, see, I look at what you’re saying and I think you’re making excuses for the Daily Show”
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Riiiiight… The Daily Show…
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Do you even have the first clue what a f’n moron you look like?
Darin said:
“I think it was a gaff that wasn’t followed up well and should have been retracted.”
Darin, that is what makes it a lie. You are reinforcing the point most of the rest of the people in the blog are making. By not retracting what was said the senator is being a liar.
The only *possible* way I could conceive that Kyl wasn’t outright lying was if were to say that he was engaging in gross hyperbole. Or trying to satirize the common “myth-conception” (If I can be doubly punny) regarding PP and abortion.
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But I don’t beleive he was.
“I think one of the problems here is that I know what a “lie” is.”
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Rilly? And yet you’re still supporting Kyl’s statement? Which he admitted was false?
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Look. In grade school I knew there were nine planets.But things change over time, and Pluto was downgraded due to what, size and orbital eccentricity? That happens. Facts change conditions.
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But when a politician spouts bûllšhìŧ, and his own office says he lied or, scuse me, made a nonfactual statement, that’s an absolute. He lied, gøddámņìŧ. His fûçkìņg lips moved.
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Darin, grow up. Look, I don’t like the idea of abortion, but people have the right to go to hëll in their own way. If a woman is carrying a baby she doesn’t want and can’t care for, would you rather she had an abortion someplace safe and clean, or went to a backalley butcher with a coathanger? No, you want the girl to have the child, be cast out by her family and forced to raise that child by any means necessary, working crap jobs that slowly kill her. Her child, by the way, because he can’t find work in the conservative utopia you want us all to live in, winds up a criminal because of you and your minimalist government, and will be found facedown in an alley before he’s twenty, killed by a bigger predator. And how do I know this? Because, there but for the grace of God and the Federal Government you so despise go I.
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My mother got pregnant on New Year’s Eve 1956, and three months later her boyfriend, from and upstanding good Christian family in Memphis society, ABANDONED HER. My relatives told her to get an abortion, or give me up for adoption. Wanna know what she said?
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“Fûçk the bunch of you. He’s my baby, I’ll raise him.”
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And she did. My mother worked her ášš off to provide for me. She got on food stamps and begged or borrowed the rest. And if she’d listened to people like you I wouldn’t be here to gnaw you a freshly bleeding áššhølë after Peter, Jerry, Mike and everybody else had gotten done.
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No, I don’t like abortion. But it’s the choice of the woman who has to carry a bášŧárd child fathered by a good conservative Christian like you. And you can take your martyr’s satisfaction and ram it straight up your bleeding áššhølë along with your fat head.
Peter David: Last I checked, something not intended to be a factual statement is typically referred to as a “lie.”
Luigi Novi: Either that, or his office attempting to imply that the percentage of PP’s activities that are centered on abortion does not lie within matters of fact–which of course, it complete bûllšhìŧ, and no better than admitting that they lied, since that notion does indeed lie within matters of fact. Either way, this statement is willfully mendacious. They would’ve been better off just saying that he made a mistake in saying that. Instead, they ended up explaining one glaring falsehood, one which may or may not have been willfully deceitful, with one that certainly was.
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Jerry Chandler: There is no shame on the Right anymore.
Luigi Novi: What, you mean there used to be some?
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Darin: I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know if it can be called a “lie” so much as a “gaff” or “mistake.”
Luigi Novi: And if Kyl or his office had cited that explanation, then I don’t think it would’ve been as questionable.
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But they didn’t.
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They said it was “not intended to be factual”, which does not mean “it was a mistake”. Why use such a souped-up euphemism if they really just wanted to say, “It was a mistake”?
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The fact that it was not a “mistake”, semantic or otherwise, and this is not mitigated by how pro-lifers feel about abortion, or what they’re “interested in”. How you feel about abortion–or any issue, really–does not justify employing lies or other dishonest tactics in the debate over it. You don’t get to argue that, “Oh our passion over this debate makes our tactics in debating it justifiable,” a sentiment that I doubt Kyl or other pro-lifers would afford to those on the other side. Like it or not, the manner in which you articulate your position and/or explain why you disagree with your opponent’s is precisely the metric by which that position should be judged, as well as the credibility of the person advocating it.
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Darin: I’m thinking his 90% figure could very well have been nothing more than a bad guess he made off the cuff. Kinda like what Obama does when he’s not staring at a teleprompter. But like I said, Pro-Lifers don’t take as much interest in such minutia as their friends across the line.
Luigi Novi: Asserting that Planned Parenthood devotes 90% of its activities to abortion instead of 3% is not “minutia”, nor is it a “bad guess”. If it minutia, why would he have made a point of it in the first place? What he said was a serious assertion, and he should not have made it without making sure he had his facts correct.
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As for Obama, if you want to assert that he has made similar statements, then please document it. If you were to show that he was as reckless in making such false statements, my reaction would be the same. In any event, Obama is irrelevant to this discussion, but if you want to start separate discussion on him, establish that he uses teleprompters to a degree more than his predecessors that is in any way questionable, and then we’ll talk.
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Darin: It might have something to do with the way they view the overall issue of abortion as a life-and-death matter.
Luigi Novi: Again, this is a non-sequitur. The gravity of the overall issue does not mean that making such grave falsehoods is minimized. If anything, the opposite is true, since the gravity of the issue makes the arguments made in relation to it the opposite of “minutia”.
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But if you insist on this canard, then consider the converse: If pro-choicers asserted that 90% of pro-lifers bombed abortion clinics, shot doctors who performed abortions or were in favor of these things, and you showed how this was false, would you accept, as an explanation, “Oh well, we don’t take as much interest in such minutia as you people across the line do, since the bombing of clinics and shooting of doctors is such a life-and-death matter”?
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Darin: Like I said, I’m not convinced he was lying.
Luigi Novi: Okay. Then what did his office mean when it said that it wasn’t intended to be factual?
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Darin: Obama once said things like he traveled “all 57 states” and that he could see ghosts during the ’08 campaign. Was he lying or were those gaffs?
Luigi Novi: Neither. The former was a case in which he paused and then corrected himself, as Jonathan pointed out. As for the latter, I could find no reference to this with Snopes or Google. The fact that you think nothing of producing such statements without doing a few minutes of research first to make sure they’re credible says volumes about you your ends-justifies-the-means mentality when it comes to discussing politics.
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Darin: Yeah, I know… “How dare you say anything negative about Planned Parenthood!?!
Luigi Novi: Employing and rationalizing lies, intellectually dishonest statements and poor fact-checking skills is not the same thing as “saying anything negative”.
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Darin: But I tell you that Planned Parenthood is not virtuous… and not worth your praise, pity or support.
Luigi Novi: This doesn’t justify Kyl’s behavior, or your own inability to be honest about it.
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And while I’ve certainly never had a strong opinion one way or the other on Planned Parenthood, I’m certainly not going to afford my “praise or support” to the people who stood outside a building my college shared with a branch of Planned Parenthood holding large pictures of aborted fetuses, or the people whose bomb threats necessitated the evacuation of the building on one or two occasions.
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My pity, maybe though.
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Darin: “Willful ignorance,” in my view, is carrying on as though an abortion isn’t the hideous, immoral act it is.
Luigi Novi: “Willfull ignorance” implies a notion that is empirical rather than one purely of opinion or aesthetics. Your view of abortion is the latter, not the former.
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Darin: There is no other reaction that a blog like this one could possibly have when confronted with my thoughts. I am, pleasingly so to me, always going to be “the conservative freak” on blogs like this.
Luigi Novi: The reaction in question was to your intellectually dishonest statements, and not to conservatism. There are plenty of people who either identify as conservatives, or who hold viewpoints on certain issues that may be perceived as “conservative”, like myself, who do not engage in the willfully deceitful statements you make, and you do a disservice to conservatism when you attempt to equate the two.
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One can be a conservative and pro-lifer without being dishonest or irrational. Try it, Darin.
It’s been my experience that being conservative and pro-life automatically precludes you being honest and rational in the minds of the left. I’ve been actually applying the definition of “lie” to the Kyl situation in a rational way here and it just doesn’t match up yet. We’ll see.
Let me put it this way. You are “…actually applying the definition of ‘lie’ to the Kyl situation”?
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Since English apparently isn’t, may i ask what is your first language, and what shade of paisley is the sky there?
It’s been my experience that being conservative and pro-life automatically precludes you being honest and rational in the minds of the left.
Well, if their experience is with YOU, then no wonder they came to that conclusion.
Why? Because I DEIGN to actually apply the definition of “lie” to the Kyl situation and show that there’s a disconnect? Because I have the NERVE to speak for the fetus when it comes to the subject of abortion? Because I caught someone on this very thread saying Beck said something when he DIDN’T? I don’t think I’ve been very bad at all in this thread, personally.
“Lie”–Verb: To create a false or misleading impression. Merriam Webster dictionary.
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“Not intended to be a factual statement.”
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Yeah, I think anyone with a brain and a dictionary is using the correct definition of “lie.”
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PAD
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
–noun
1.
a false statement made with DELIBERATE INTENT TO DECEIVE; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
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“Why? Because I DEIGN to actually apply the definition of “lie” to the Kyl situation and show that there’s a disconnect?”
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See, this is the other reason that you’re being seen as and treated as a moron. In that entire paragraph, this is the only sentence that is remotely related to the topic at hand. The rest of it, especially the remark about talking for the unborn, is just more of the meaningless garbage you’ve been throwing out to dance around the fact that Kyl told a lie.
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And even that one sentence has a giant, neon sign over it with an arrow pointing at it and the words “Darin is a Moron or a Troll” writ large on its surface. You haven’t done anything like trying to “actually apply the definition of “lie” to the Kyl situation “ at all. What you’ve been doing is looking reality square in the eyes and denying it for all your worth.
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Kyl did not express an opinion based on facts. Kyl did not make an off the cuff guess at the actual percentage and guess wrong. Kyl did not come back later and say that he misspoke or that he was wrong with the figures that he presented as fact. Kyl was born with a name that’s a pain in the ášš to type because I keep adding an “e” to the end of it and having to go back and delete it.
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Kyl stated a figure in a speech that he had notes for. Kyl presented the figure as a fact while knowing that it was no where near that. Kyl then had his office put out an official response to the questions about his statement where the explanation given was that, yeah, it was a bogus figure and they knew it, but it was never meant to be taken as a fact and only there as an example of what Planned Parenthood was all about.
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And even in that rational, Kyl and his office come off amazingly bad.
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Kyl told a lie. He knew he was telling a lie. He has, via official press statement, admitted to this. You seem to be one of the few simpletons who can’t quite grasp this fact and none of the other garbage you’re throwing out as a smokescreen around your stupidity will change this.
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“Darin says:
April 12, 2011 at 8:58 pm
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
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–noun
1.
a false statement made with DELIBERATE INTENT TO DECEIVE; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”
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You mean like reading a false figure from your notes during a speech to smear a group and then actually admitting that the figure was wrong but not intended to be a factual statement even though it was presented as one in the speech given?
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Yup. He dámņ sure told a lie by the definition you supplied.
Yeah, I think you’ve proven my point.
No, you’re just a factually challenged moron who no matter what anyone says goes with your talking point. What color is the sky in your world?
Darin, when you posted this link, did you take the time to read the several definitions proposed?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
lie1 /laɪ/ Show Spelled
[lahy]
noun, verb, lied, ly·ing.
–noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement.
“http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
–noun
1.
a false statement made with DELIBERATE INTENT TO DECEIVE; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”
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It was an intentional untruth, as admitted to. It was a falsehood, as proven by other figures including a nice pie chart. But, you bolded part of the definition, so I guess that is the part you are focusing on.
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What did Kyl’s office say, again?
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“In a statement to CNN, Kyl’s office said his assertion “was not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions.”
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So, discussing intent, right Darin?
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“Was not intended … but rather” means that the information after the word “rather” is what was intended. In this case, “to illustrate that Planned Parenthood … does subsidize abortions.”
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So, his intent was to demonstrate that the federal aid given to Planned Parenthood did, against all available facts and figures, subsidize abortions. He made his statement with the intent to convince people of his own stance on the matter. His intent was to show that Planned Parenthood’s federal aid must go to abortions, because it is the primary reason for the organization’s existance.
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His intent, therefore, by his own admission, was to decieve. Which, as you pointed out, is the definition of a lie.
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Theno
Oh my a politician lied when questioned he didn’t even say he got tongue tied, so the opposite side is up in arms while his supporters can’t fathom what it harms, when will everyone realize when those in office open their mouth whether serious or in wit its most always bûllšhìŧ.
The right wing bobble heads here absolutely don’t care that Kyl lied.
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So far it seems to be mostly Darin vs reality. I don’t see many of the real conservatives here jumping to Kyl’s defense.
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Boy, has any single person ever hijacked a thread this completely since whatshisname left those many moons ago?
I don’t know that I’ve been jumping to Kyl’s defense per se. I’ve been fair to him here in expressing that he may not have lied based on what is known at this time. I do recall saying “Go ahead and call him stupid” a while back… not exactly a ringing endorsement there.
Nah. He’s not stupid. He knew exactly what he was doing.
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The stupid people are the ones who can’t understand what “lie” means – even after quoting the dictionary definition themself – and refuse to believe it applies here.
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Oh, hi, Darin…
Boy, has any single person ever hijacked a thread this completely since whatshisname left those many moons ago?
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I think it’s guilt free unloading on a target that, oh, so helpfully, paints “I am an idiot” on its head.
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“Boy, has any single person ever hijacked a thread this completely since whatshisname left those many moons ago?”
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I think we’ve all been spoiled by the absence of The Mad One and from the regular visits of idiots like X-Ray who met the highest definition of the word for a good long while now. It’s almost surprising to come to a thread and see something this delusional in print again after all that time.
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Hmmm… Delusional…. X-Ray…
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You know, this guy could easily pass as X-Ray-lite. Delusional nutjob postings and a view of himself as needed around here to police the board.
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“Darin
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March 30, 2011 at 3:10 pm
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Oh, that cinches it. You guys NEED me here. You need my guidance. How can I turn my back on you now?”
http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2011/03/28/finally/comment-page-1/#comment-331091
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I’ve got the first week of July in the pool for when we finally reach the “Disemvowelling, a.k.a. X-Ry Spcs” stage.
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:):):):):)
Oh, is Darin just hanging around to rack up persecution points?
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Disappointing.
Darin: It’s been my experience that being conservative and pro-life automatically precludes you being honest and rational in the minds of the left.
Luigi Novi: What you describe isn’t experience, but merely prejudice. The truth is that there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who are capable of disagreeing in good faith, without the intellectually dishonest or irrational behavior exhibited by Kyl or yourself, even if you lack the ability to perceive the distinction. It is only your myopic collectiveness that causes you to insist that all conservatives or all pro-lifers or all liberals speak with one voice and exhibit the same level of decency. It certainly isn’t a reflection of reality.
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Darin: I’ve been actually applying the definition of “lie” to the Kyl situation in a rational way here and it just doesn’t match up yet.
Luigi Novi: Hence my question to you of what his office mean when it said that it wasn’t intended to be factual, which I notice you didn’t answer.
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I know you said that you thought his remark was intended to be “off-the-cuff”, but is that what you mean by this? For one thing, that phrase does not mean “non-factual”, and for another, others here have pointed out that his words were prepared, and not “off-the-cuff” at all. So I ask again, in what way was it not a lie? Can you answer this question?
Darin,
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There are several ways you could have played this, any of which would have been better than what you did.
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A- You could have hit back with examples of democrats doing the same. The budget debate offered lots of example of Democrats claiming that republicans would kill millions and that, in fact, they WANT to kill the poor, and possibly their puppies. Chris Matthews opined that republicans wanted to kill half his viewers (presumably they’d let the other guy live).
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It’s a pretty shoddy argument since two wrongs don’t make a right but the benefit is you can probably count on at least one person claiming that the Democrats did not lie because republicans really do want to kill everyone, and shazam! you’re instantly not the craziest person in the room.
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B- You could have claimed that the whole imbroglio was just liberals grasping at whatever they could to get over seeing the president let the opposition call the shots yet again. In which case though, why would you not want to encourage them wasting energy on something of no consequence?
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C- You could shrug it off as being from a guy who isn’t even running again. Not that this makes it any better.
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D- You could cheerfully grant that Kyl lied and that he deserves his lumps. That way, when a Democrat does the same you will be in a much much much better position to point it out.
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Is Kyl being picked on more than a Democrat would be? Well, boo hoo hoo, I guess that just means republicans need to be more careful than the opposition does not to do or say stupid things. That may be inconvenient but it makes for a better party. Politicians will rise only to the level of voter’s expectation; set the bar really low and they will almost certainly reach it. And not an inch higher. The fact that Charles Rangle would not have lasted long had he been in the GOP only means the GOP doesn’t have to worry about having Charlie Rangle. Let Kyl walk away unscathed and you will get more of the same and deserve no better.
When Senator Jon Kyl lies so blazenly and yet somehow is telling the truth, and Newt Gingrich flip-flops so cinically between opposite positions in a matter of weeks, while still remaining a guardian of truth, I can’t help but saying:
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WERE AT WAR WITH EURASIA, WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA
Darin: I recently heard somewhere that 90% of broccoli causes immediate spontaneous combustion! That’s gotta be true, because I don’t like broccoli. Good thing, huh?
Wait… =I= like broccoli!
(BOOM)
Wait, that wasn’t combustion. That was gas. Pardon me.
Darin, dude…Get off my side
Dear Darin,
We have been following your audition piece closely, and are suitably impressed.
Please drop by my office at Fox News, and we’ll talk about your internship. I think you show a lot of promise, and we need someone crazy enough to fill Glenn Becks clown shoes.
He hee… well, if I’m going to be on a news channel, I might as well be on one with an audience.
For Darin, some FACTS: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/08/jon-kyl/jon-kyl-says-abortion-services-are-well-over-90-pe/
Just remember, facts are your friends.
Yeah, that was featured in this thread already. And, like the first time, I can’t help but notice that the source for the stats featured in that article all come from Planned Parenthood. But thanks anyway, Kevin.
Let me get this straight.
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Your assertation is that it is more reasonable that Planned Parenthood’s accounting practices are so crooked as to put Enron to shame than to believe that Kyl lied to make a point — even though his own office released a statement that he was lying to make a point?
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Just wanted to be sure.
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Theno
Well, it’s not like that data actually came from an impartial, outside source. It came from Planned Parenthood. If some Democrat said that 90% of the NRA is made up of persons with criminal records and the NRA provided their own statistics showing that that number was actually around 3%, would you automatically call that information “fact?”
If some Democrat said 90% of the NRA is made up of persons; with criminal records and then, when called on it, said it was never intended to be a factual statement, I would say he was a lying douche bag.
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PAD
Two different arguments there, Peter… and I’ve already said I don’t approve of Kyl’s performance in all this. Now, are these figures from Planned Parenthood automatically be assumed to be facts and, if so, would that assumption automatically apply to the specific scenario I described above with the NRA? I know you wanted this thread to be a simple “Kyl’s a lying liar lie-face!” festival, but I feel this is a substantive tangent.
I’m glad that you do not approve of Kyl’s prevarication against Planned Parenthood.
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The NRA provides its own data on any number of things. That data is treated as fact unless an outside source can dispute that data with reasons beyond saying, “I don’t like the NRA.”
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Planned Parenthood has had its numbers looked at by various critics. The most they’ve been able to do is loop a few practices together and bundle them with actual abortions to try to bump the figure from around 3 to 5% to 10 or 11%. That’s still, in case your math skills are as fantastic as your logic skills, quite a bit of a statistical distance from 90%.
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“Now, are these figures from Planned Parenthood automatically be assumed to be facts and, if so, would that assumption automatically apply to the specific scenario I described above with the NRA? I know you wanted this thread to be a simple “Kyl’s a lying liar lie-face!” festival, but I feel this is a substantive tangent.”
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No, this is just more of your ever growing list of distractions and yet another of your attempts to avoid the facts of the matter and insert hypotheticals that range from barely related to the subject to not being related in the least.
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Kyl stated a staggeringly inaccurate figure as a fact. Kyl got called on it. Kyl and his office sent out an official statement where they said that they knew the figure was wrong, but it was not intended to be a factual statement anyhow. It was just meant to point out what Planned Parenthood does.
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But you, master of embracing the lie that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, can’t seem to deal with facts. You look at a simple list of documented facts and then say, “but what if it wasn’t “A” and was in fact “B” instead? What if it was maybe “C” instead? And, hey, have you looked at these other things over here that have nothing to do with the facts at hand but that I’ll throw into the discussion anyhow?”
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Kyl said something that was not true. He did so knowingly. His official statement on the matter says that he knew and didn’t care. He told a lie by every definition you’ve thrown up in a post and by just about any other you’ve yet to trot out.
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But in Darin’s world, a a lie is only apparently a “lie” when it’s said by someone he really politically dislikes or when it’s something negative said about something he really politically supports. Darin hates abortion. Darin speaks for the unborn. Darin hates Planned Parenthood. Kyl could have stood on the floor and said that it was a point blank fact that he personally has seen the heads of Planned Parenthood feasting on aborted fetuses under the full moon while raping underage girls to create more abortions down the road and Darin would probably be discussing how it wasn’t really a lie since abortions in this or that state have been on the rise, abortion rates for blacks are higher than for whites in some areas and we just can’t know Kyl’s intent for saying what he said even if he releases an official statement making clear what his intent with the statement was.
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A) Moron
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B) Fanatic
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C) Extremist
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D) Useful Idiot
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You tell us which one fits you best, Darin. I’m still leaning towards “A” and “D” myself, but you can easily convince me that it might actually be “B” with a little more effort.
“Well, it’s not like that data actually came from an impartial, outside source. It came from Planned Parenthood. If some Democrat said that 90% of the NRA is made up of persons with criminal records and the NRA provided their own statistics showing that that number was actually around 3%, would you automatically call that information “fact?””
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You have a point.
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Except for one thing. The figures that came from Planned Parenthood are, if I’m not mistaken, financial statements. Statements which, by law, must be correct when filed.
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So, the comparison isn’t quite the same. A similar comparison would be if a liberal outlet accused GE (for example) of paying 0% in taxes, and a financial release from the company showed that they paid significantly less than that, I would believe GE.
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Theno
That somebody, anybody, considers whether Kyl lied as being a matter of debate just shows how far this country has fallen.
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Oh look, some Republicans apparently consider Donald Trump a serious presidential contender for their party. And we’re still somehow falling and waiting to slam into the ground? Sigh.
Donald Trump wouldn’t be my first choice, but I do have to admit that I wouldn’t mind seeing a debate on economics between Donald Trump and President Obama.
So would I. Trump wouldn’t be able to turm off the smarmy look and attitude to make a solid point.
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I will only consider Trump a semi-viable candidate once he drops the idiotic “Birther” crap. Until then, he’s a sideshow.
I’m not so sure. In a debate on economics, you’d basically have a guy who has lived it versus one who hasn’t even ran a lemonade stand. Mr. Real World Business versus Mr. Faculty Lounge. I honestly would be interested in seeing that debate.
Yeah. I can hear it now:
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“I’m not so sure. In a debate on economics, you’d basically have a guy who has lived it versus one who hasn’t even ran a lemonade stand. Mr. Real World Business versus Mr. Faculty Lounge. I honestly would be interested in seeing that debate.”
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Yeah, you have a guy in Trump who has bankrupted his casinos multiple times, declared bankruptcy to avoid losing his shirt and to avoid paying back every red cent he owed and who is currently set to default on some major loans because of his great business sense.
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Let’s see… Republican candidate who has a background as a businessman, but who has bankrupted multiple businesses and has in part only kept himself afloat for so long because of loans and support from family and family friends… We just had that one for eight long years and the country will be crawling out of the financial crater he created for decades to come. I think we should pass on having another one of those in the White House.
Now now, Jerry. Corporations are people, too. People who often don’t pay their fair share of taxes, but hey, that’s right up the GOP alley.
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So which of them wouldn’t put somebody (else) in charge who’s track record is of driving companies straight into the ground, and then getting chance after chance to repeat history?
Donald Trump is NOT a great businessman. His contributions – and overall wealth – to our society pale next to those of Bill gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg.
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Hëll, Bill gates could literally splash his name on a literal neighborhood of “Trump towers” and call them “Gates Towers”. he simply doesbn’t have a fraction of the ego or self-promotion Trump does.
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Trump is a media whørë. Nothing more. this “run” for president is an example. I can’t see him giving up his lifestyle for a year and a half to go to coffee shops, farms in South Carolina, little town halls in iowa, etc.
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This will be forgotten very soon.
I think in an economics debate, even a failed businessman can TRUMP (pun intended) someone who has no experience whatsoever.
Trump only understands economics as it pertains to himself and his own interests. The man has never uttered a word or had a thought that wasn’t solely designed to benefit himself, and this is a man who wants to be president? I imagine all he really wants to do is arrange trade policy so that he doesn’t have to pay China as much for steel and glass. If elected, he’d step down immediately after he rewrote all our trade policies to benefit himself.
You’re right in that Obama has no experience as a business, but he has plenty in public service, and the Predient is not intended to be a CEO, he or she is intended to be a public servant. Trump thinks what’s good for Bullmoose is good for the USA (points to anyone who gets that reference).
“Trump only understands economics as it pertains to himself and his own interests. The man has never uttered a word or had a thought that wasn’t solely designed to benefit himself, and this is a man who wants to be president?”
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If he was a successful businessman, I really wouldn’t care. I simply don’t think he is – at least not as most of the media and masses view him.
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“I imagine all he really wants to do is arrange trade policy so that he doesn’t have to pay China as much for steel and glass. If elected, he’d step down immediately after he rewrote all our trade policies to benefit himself.”
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This is simplistic and silly. If Trump WERE willing to put him through the arduous process of running for President, sacrifice his time and lifestyle to attend farms, coffee klatches, flip pancakes and the like, I don’t see him doing unless he were really serious about many issues. I don’t think he is being serious. When he announces and actually does these things is when I’ll believe it. And definitely I don’t see him winning unless he addresses larger issues than himself.
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“You’re right in that Obama has no experience as a business, but he has plenty in public service,”
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Well, zippity doo dah
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” and the President is not intended to be a CEO, he or she is intended to be a public servant. Trump thinks what’s good for Bullmoose is good for the USA (points to anyone who gets that reference).”
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Um, can’t he/she be both. With the financial mess the country is in, a competent CEO as President could look awfully appealing – which is the only shot Mitt Romney has of overcoming his many political defeciencies.
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The biggest problem I have with the entire Trump thing is that I doubt he’s even remotely serious. This is his regular game of “I may run this year” that gets him tons of free TV, net and newspaper coverage and has everybody talking about him and whatever else he might be doing right now.
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He’s not running. He has played this game before and declared that he wasn’t running once the publicity factor was milked for all it was worth. He’s going to string this along for a little while longer and probably use his “big announcement” to boost the ratings on his show or promote something else he wants to promote and them have a private laugh at all of the suckers in the press and in the public who once again treated his bûllšhìŧ game like it was even remotely close to being a serious run.
The Kyl controversy is the least dramatic evidence of America’s sorry situation.
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I’m still waiting for a prominent member of the GOP to state unequivocally “Obama is an American citizen.” Everything I’ve heard from them is couched in qualifiers like “I think … ” or “I believe …” (that is, when they’re not saying ridiculous things like “Obama was born in the US, but there are legitimate questions.”)
This is not the first time in this thread that someone has mentioned the whole “birther” thing. I’m not sure why, other than an attempt to further drift the thread (which many accused me scornfully of doing earlier when I broadened the topic a bit to include the actual issue of abortion and of Planned Parenthood’s numbers). The birther thing doesn’t interest me. I’m satisfied with the short form that was released and verified in Hawaii. Most prominent, nationally known conservatives haven’t taken an active interest in this matter. The most prominent places where this conspiracy theory is talked about still are in the leftwing blogosphere… which may have something to do with the fact that it was Hilary’s 08 campaign that first brought into question Obama’s birthplace. My opinion is that at this point, it doesn’t matter what his long form says. If it says he was born in Kenya, the liberals will say “so what?” If it says his religion is Islam, the liberals will say “so what?” It’s a moot point even if everything the birthers suspect is true. Trump’s not what I would call a conservative anyway.
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“The most prominent places where this conspiracy theory is talked about still are in the leftwing blogosphere… “
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Fox News is a leftwing blog? Okay, if you say so…
You haven’t heard birther propaganda from Fox News. Heck, even Glenn Beck makes fun of the birthers on his radio show.
I mean, dámņ son… Chris Matthews over on MSNBC has been more vocal about Obama releasing his long form than anyone on Fox News…
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See, Darin, what you did just now is either lie or display your staggering ignorance of facts that are easily obtainable before speaking/writing.
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I could actually post dozens of links to videos where Fox news personalities discuss the Birther issue as a legitimate news story or treat it as something other than the insane ramblings of idiots. However, posts with multiple links tend to get caught in the spam filter. Google “Fox News” and “Birther” and the hits will be legion. So, yes, Fox News has spent a lot of time discussing the birther nonsense and, no, not all of their hosts or guests dismissed it as nonsense.
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So, are you a liar or just staggeringly ignorant (or both?)
See, I think you shot your mouth off without actually looking at who perpetuates the birther story. It’s not Fox News, it’s the liberal media. The liberal media LOVES the birther story because they see it as a way to discredit any criticism of Obama. And you quite simply do not know what you’re talking about if you believe otherwise.
I brought it up in this sub-thread as a commiseration to Craig’s aside about the sorry state of political discourse in this country. I wasn’t attempting to change the subject.
If you’re not a birther, cool. I’m glad that you aren’t a nutjob.
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I should imagine most prominent conservatives wouldn’t have an active interest — if they did they’d be signaling that they’re loons who have a tenuous grasp on reality. However, as I noted, those selfsame prominent conservatives tend to dance around the issue and hedge rather than state unequivocally that Obama is American.
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Then I guess you missed the recent poll indicating that a majority of Republican primary voters are birthers (and I rather doubt they patronize leftwing blogs).
If Obama was born in Kenya, he wouldn’t have a Hawaiian long form — let alone one that listed his birthplace was Kenya or his religion as Islam (which, BTW, wouldn’t be an entry on a US birth certificate). You’re being all kinds of silly here.
I’d call him a boorish jáçkášš. That hasn’t stopped him from recently becoming the darling of GOP voters.
“Then I guess you missed the recent poll indicating that a majority of Republican primary voters are birthers (and I rather doubt they patronize leftwing blogs).”
Who conducted the poll?
This is not the first time in this thread that someone has mentioned the whole “birther” thing. I’m not sure why, other than an attempt to further drift the thread (which many accused me scornfully of doing earlier when I broadened the topic a bit to include the actual issue of abortion and of Planned Parenthood’s numbers).
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You didn’t broaden the topic. You changed the topic. Kyl lied, admitted that he lied, boasted that he lied, and you–displaying the exact sort of mindset that he’s counting on–(a) refused to believe he lied while simultaneously (b) acting as if it didn’t matter because Planned Parenthood performs abortions. When faced with questions from the actual topic, you dodge them.
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Bringing up birthers, on the other hand, is indeed pertinent to the topic, because it goes to the point of a lie being repeated so frequently that, in the minds of the credulous, it becomes truth. Kyl’s mission was to get people like you to repeat his misinformation so much that it you will eventually accept it as reality. Which you are apparently in the process of doing.
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PAD
See, I think you shot your mouth off without actually looking at who perpetuates the birther story. It’s not Fox News, it’s the liberal media.
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So you’re saying that when Donald Trump–the guy you want to see going toe-to-toe with Obama in debates–goes off on extended birther rants, the people doing the interviews should turn off their cameras?
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You’re saying that the birthers shouldn’t be held accountable for their calumnies, their distortions, and their staggering ignorance (“Hawaii isn’t part of the United States.” “Obama isn’t a citizen just because his mother is”) and instead blame should be placed on the media?
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No wonder you’re perfectly okay with Kyl proudly declaring that his words weren’t meant to be factual; you have no grasp of personal responsibility.
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PAD
See, I think you shot your mouth off without actually looking at who perpetuates the birther story. It’s not Fox News,
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Well, that’s certainly an indisputable claim. I mean, hëll, Fox News hasn’t had a story about birthers or run a poll about birthers for…jeez, how long has it been now?
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Ah. Here it is. A week.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/07/fox-news-poll-24-percent-believe-obama-born/#
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Yeah, it’s not Fox at all.
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PAD
Public Policy Polling.
(http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_US_0215.pdf)
How about that? Peter found ONE example. One example of Fox News conducting a poll since this whole topic came into prominence in ’08… compared to the ad nauseum coverage in the rest of the liberally dominated media. Well done, I say.
Chris Matthews on MSNBC has been the most vocal cable news personality who has called for Obama’s long form to be released. Not Sean Hannity, not Glenn Beck, not even the prìçk Bill O’Reilly. The poll Peter found also happened around the same time as the liberal public policy polling poll… which leads me to surmise that they conducted and used it because the rest of the media were already on the subject. People see that CNN is reporting on it and so they tune in to Fox News to see how they are dealing with it. But you NOT seeing Fox News perpetuating the birther story. Some of their guests might mention it here and there, but it’s the leftwing blogs that keep it alive… because they like it.
So, I dirtied myself and went to the Faux News website and searched for birther:
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“Showing results 1 – 10 of 166 for birther”
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Looks like Faux has a lot more interest in the story than one poll, compared to what one fruit loop who doesn’t know a lie when he sees it would claim.
How about that? Peter found ONE example.
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Yes. I found one example because I looked for ten seconds. I imagine if I look for a minute I’ll find six examples, and you’ll be so determined to parrot the “evil liberal media” line that you’ll say, “Six examples prove nothing.”
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So yeah, I think I’ve done enough research.
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PAD
So, all you did was go to FNC.com and do a search on the term “birther?” That’s it? You didn’t dig any deeper to determine how the term was used and who used it in each case? See, that’s not enough, Craig. Chris Matthews is on the air calling for Obama to release it. Are any of FNC’s big guns doing that on their network? I mean, if the crazy and deranged Glenn Beck ain’t doin’ it, even on his much less filtered radio show, then it probably ain’t happening anywhere on that network.
See Peter, what you’re doing right now is being deliberately obtuse. I think you KNOW that finding one example of a Fox birther poll from around the same time that the rest of the cable media was reporting on a similar poll does not somehow contradict the fact that the birther story was started, nurtured and is maintained primarily by the liberal media. I think you KNOW that the Left loves the story because it’s a smokescreen that enables them to respond to solid criticism of Obama and that they want the story to continue. I think the more you bother to research, the more you will find that for every mention of the birther controversy by Fox News, you will find far more mentions of it in the leftwing blogs and in the leftwing media.
And I think, Darin, that you don’t get to call anyone else obtuse.
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Give a straight, on-topic answer for once: if Obama said something that was demonstrably false and his staff then said that what he said was “not intended to be a factual statement,” would you excoriate him for that or not?
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PAD
I watch very little cable news, but if Chris Matthews has recently called for the long form, he’s an idiot. If he hasn’t for a while, I’d like to imagine he realized that he was being an idiot and stopped.
The “liberal public policy poll”? WTF are you talking about?
A poll from a credible and well-regarded polling organization shows that most GOP primary voters, the people who will determine who the GOP candidate is, believe that Obama wasn’t born in the States — that’s news. Trump storms up the GOP rankings soon after going full-metal birther — that’s news too. It’s not CNN’s fault that it reports on something newsworthy.
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Has Fox News actually bothered to refute birtherism as utter nonsense?
In response Peter’s question:
“If Obama said something that was demonstrably false and his staff then said that what he said was “not intended to be a factual statement,” would you excoriate him for that or not?”
I would, and have, been critical of him when he says things that are demonstrably false. I would reserve my criticism of his staff for his staff, however.
In response to Sasha’s question: “Has Fox News actually bothered to refute birtherism as utter nonsense?”
Some guests have. The “venomous” and “toxic” Ann Coulter, for example…
http://www.popmodal.com/video/7331
Ah. Now I see where you got all your talking points on the subject(it’s only a few cranks, Hillary started it, it’s part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to deflect any criticism of Obama, etc). Shame she never gets around to discussing why so many GOP primary voters subscribe to some shade of birtherism, why Trump’s numbers went up among GOP voters soon after he went vocally birther, or why GOP candidates seem incapable of refuting birtherism in absolute terms.
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It would also be nice to actually have Fox reporters and Fox pundits refute birtherism, rather than having guests do it for them. Still, it’s a good start.
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April 11, 2011
Michele Bachmann Addresses 2012 Chances, Budget Deal, Obama’s Birth Certificate | Hannity
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HANNITY: All right. So, you are considering a run. You said you are going to make your decision sometime around June if I remembered correctly. Donald Trump has gotten a lot of news. And we’ll be talking to him later this week on this program. What do you think of the issue that he has brought up involving whether or not the president, and his birth certificate?
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BACHMANN: Well, I’ve said that I take the president at his word. The president has offered his certificate of birth and I take him at his word.
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HANNITY: OK. Do you think it is a question that is worth asking? In other words, show the birth certificate or do you think that is out of bounds?
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BACHMANN: As far as I’m concerned, I think if I decide to hold, throw my hat in the ring, anybody can look at my birth certificate, I could care less. This is the easiest problem to solve. The president just has to give the proof and verification, and there it goes. Either it is real or it’s not. Everybody should put their birth certificate on the table and not worry about it. It doesn’t have to be a toxic issue, put your birth certificate in, end of story. We have a lot bigger fish to fry than this.
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HANNITY: All right. Congresswoman, I appreciate your time. Thanks for being with us.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/transcript/michele-bachmann-addresses-2012-chances-budget-deal-obamas-birth-certificate
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/03/sean-hannity-finally-goes-full-birther.html
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March 26, 2011
http://www.politicususa.com/en/sean-hannity-birth-certificate
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Donald the Birther?
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4612620/donald-the-birther/
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Palin Backs Trump’s Birth Certificate Search
http://nation.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/10/palin-backs-trumps-birth-certificate-search
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And I could go on and on with this.
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So, Darin, are you just a liar or are you staggeringly ignorant?
“Now now, Jerry. Corporations are people, too. People who often don’t pay their fair share of taxes, but hey, that’s right up the GOP alley.”
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Or the alley of our current Treasury head, “Tax Cheat” Tim Geithner. Or former presidential nominee John Kerry, who tried dodging paying hundreds of thousands of his “fair share” in taxes by parking his boat somewhere else.
Yes, Democrats have their fair share of tax-troubled individuals.
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But they’re not the party actively seeking even more tax breaks for the rich and corporations, as the GOP is doing within their “budget cutting”.
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But a good prank against such corporations is always welcomed, particularly when it points out their greed:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110413/ts_yblog_thelookout/hoax-press-release-targets-ge-tax-controversy
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Equally funny (and sad as a commentary on the state of our “news” organizations these days) was this line.
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“The fake release included the G.E. logo and a link to a slick website that looked very much like the company’s official one. The Associated Press fell for it, as did USA Today (the paper promptly removed its story, and then ran a piece pointing out how the AP had fallen for the prank).“
I’d worry that if electected, Trump would leave us for some younger, hotter, country.
lol. Just when I thought this thread had exhausted any hope of finding a worthwhile nugget.
Heh. Good one.
“Has Fox News actually bothered to refute birtherism as utter nonsense?”
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Can’t comment on everyone or every show, but Bill O’Reilly definitely has and continues to refute it strongly.
Does he actually speak unequivocally, or does he use qualifiers like “I believe Obama was born here”?
“I believe” or “I think” yadda yadda” is good enough for me. Anyone who says they KNOW is actually just saying they believe it or think it. Only people who were there KNOW. I think Palin is Trig’s mom, despite the minor controversy some have attempted to gin up on that subject but I don’t KNOW it. If it turned out to be some incredible conspiracy to fool us all I would be very surprised but it would not rock my world and make me doubt the evidence of my own eyes…because my opinion is not based on the evidence of my own eyes. Ditto the 9/11 truther kooks and the JFK fringe theorists and the Roswell crowd.
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Not trying to be pedantic but that’s how it’s done in science and it’s good enough for me. The Obama birther foolishness falls apart under simple logic so there is little reason to pursue it. Those who complain that he has not issued the “long form”, whatever that it, miss the obvious explanation–if there IS an additional document he could release (and I’m not at all convinced there is), why would he? Let your enemies waste time on trivialities that you know will come to nothing. hëll, encourage it!
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Sasha, have ANY of the major TV news people said they KNOW that Obama was born here? Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer , Katie Couric? Let’s not hold one network to a higher standard than the others.
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“Sasha, have ANY of the major TV news people said they KNOW that Obama was born here?”
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Most of the MSNBC hosts and several CNN hosts that I’ve seen and heard, yeah.
I don’t consider CNN or MSNBC hosts to be anything much more than talkshow people. Ditto Fox & Friends, hannity, etc. Sheppard Smith, ok, but none of those others seems to me to be on the level of Couric, Sawyer, etc. If Bill Orielly wants to spend 10 minutes talking about getting a pizza, fine, knock yourself out Bill. I’d be appalled if Brian Williams did the same on whatever channel it is Brian Williams is on. Glenn beck is an entertainment show with politics. The CBS nightly news is–or ought to be–something else. Ditto the Sheppard Smith boradcast, if he wants to be taken seriously. So, have any of those guys stated, on the record, no equivocations, that they KNOW the truth about Obama’s birth or Palin’s pregnancy or the 9/11 theories? Or have they said something more like what I would hope a journalist would say, that the evidence points toward X and there is no compelling reason to believe Y?
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This may seem nitpicking but given the sorry state of how science is being reported to the masses we are in real danger of sanctifying ignorant certainty. Skeptical but not stupid, that should be our motto.
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I think (think) that Couric has done so somewhere along the line, but it wasn’t on a news broadcast. As for the real news programs and hosts and not the cable zoo channels… No, don’t think that they have.
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However, they also don’t bring it up every other guest or segment and ask whether it’s a “legitimate” discussion to have while letting some birther idiot babble on for five minutes at a time either.
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I’m not asking that these folk declare “I know Obama is American.” I just want them to stop acting as though the topic were still in question and up for legitimate debate by qualifying their statements with comments like “I think” or “I believe”. People don’t express accepted truths by saying things like “I think the earth revolves around the sun,” or “I believe the earth is round”. They use simple declaratives: “The earth revolves around the sun”, “The earth is round”.
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I’ve yet to hear a GOPer of prominence simply say something like “Obama is an American citizen” or “Obama was born in the United States” and leave it at that. They always (always>/i>) add something that undercuts the statement.
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Dunno, about they saying they “know”, but I can’t think of any offhand who have suggested that the question was as yet unresolved by qualifying their comments.
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“I’ve yet to hear a GOPer of prominence simply say something like “Obama is an American citizen” or “Obama was born in the United States” and leave it at that. They always (always>/i>) add something that undercuts the statement.”
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Mitt Romney: “I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the President was born in the United States and there are real reasons to get this guy out of office.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mitt-romney-on-obama-i-think-the-citizenship-test-has-been-passed/
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Close enough?
Close enough?
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No, because, as Sasha said, he uses the “I think/believe” qualifier. Hëll, Romney uses both in that quote you gave.
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It’s the same as saying ‘I believe Darin is an idiot’ compared to just outright saying ‘Darin is an idiot’. The former is given as an opinion, the latter is stated as fact.
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Now, if, say, Senator Kyl had said “I believe 90% of what PP does is related to abortions”, he wouldn’t be taking this much flak. He’d still be wrong, but, being presented as an opinion, he wouldn’t be such an out and out liar as what he actually said: presenting the 90% figure as fact.
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Uhm…. Yeah…
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That was one of my last posts before bed and I seem to have left a bit off of it. There was supposed to be an extra line where I pointed out my sarcasm and pointed out that at this point a Republican running for POTUS can’t afford to say it as a point blank fact. Too much of their vitally needed base believes it and would turn on them if they declared it untrue.
David,
I posted this joke on my Facebook (credited to reading it on the PAD board). Of course one of my right-wing nut friends responded: ‘No because he is an American first and he has the papers to prove it.” Everything comes back to birthers.
Sasha,
No. O’Reilly basically has said said many times that it was is an open-and-shut case, that there is positive proof and that the birthers are loons.
Yeah, say what you will about O’Reilly, but he’s been pretty firm in saying the Birthers are a non-starter issue. On the other hand, he uses the Birthers as a means of attacking the so-called liberal media by stating the only reason the Birthers are a story is because the leftist liberal media are making them a story. In fact, Darin’s wording was pretty much identical to O’Reilly’s. But I’m sure that’s just staggering coincidence.
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PAD
Oh it’s not a staggering coincidence. It shouldn’t be surprising that if two people subscribe to the same philosophy on a given set of subjects, that they are going to say very similar if not identical things about said subject. That just makes sense. Liberals, professional and non-professional, tend to sound alike to me too, but I don’t automatically take that as an indicator that they’ve had their brains scooped out and replaced with a modem connected directly to The Daily Kos. I mean, I could sit here and I could say that Peter sounds an awful lot like Prominent Media Liberal X and then facetiously comment that such a similarity is “probably a staggering coincidence” but frankly that kind of thing seems far too easy to me.
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“I mean, I could sit here and I could say that Peter sounds an awful lot like Prominent Media Liberal X and then facetiously comment that such a similarity is “probably a staggering coincidence” but frankly that kind of thing seems far too easy to me.”
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Yeah, but, Darin, when the line being parroted is a line as patently false as declaring that the “most prominent places where this conspiracy theory is talked about still are in the leftwing blogosphere” is… Well, let’s just say that the modem hookup is a little more obvious than it otherwise might be if two different people are both saying something factual and sounding somewhat alike.
And I could say the same for many of you as well.
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“And I could say the same for many of you as well.”/B>
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Oh, I’m sure you can, Darin. I certainly have. See, I’m not a lib. I have a long history here of criticizing the Right, but I’ve also pointed out when things said about people like Palin, Bush, McCain, Joe the Plumber and others were fact-free talking points. God help me, but I even (more or less) defended O’Reilly and one of his comments for a huge chunk of a thread. At the same time, I’ve criticized Obama, Moore, Clinton, The Democrats as a whole and various other popular lefties of the moment.
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Of course there are a number of regulars here who are hardcore Lefties with a weakness for left wing talking points (and there have been many, many more who have passed through this blog.) Of course there are people here who regurgitate the silly Bush/Hitler talking points and the rationalizations of why the Left doing something bad isn’t really bad even if they criticized the Right for doing the exact same thing. Hey, they have some of ’em everywhere.
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But, here’s the thing.
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If there’s a giant, fresh, steaming pile of bull manure on the ground. it’s going to stink. Pointing out that the giant, fresh, steaming pile of horse manure on the ground a few feet over stinks just as badly or maybe worse doesn’t actually change the fact that the bull manure stinks to high heaven.
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Point to all of the horse manure you want to, Darin, and it doesn’t change the fact that every shovelful of bull manure you’ve been posting stinks to high heaven and is actually little more than bullsh*t.
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Aaaaaannnd I obviously had a little oopsy with the tagging.
Don’t sweat the tagging. I don’t dwell on such minutia.
I do like coming over here once in a blue moon if for no other reason than the shock places like this give to my system.
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“I do like coming over here once in a blue moon if for no other reason than the shock places like this give to my system.”
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Yeah, your shtick is generic enough, but there’s also something kind of familiar about it. Been wondering for the past day if you’re simply a generic twit or if this is our annual visit from Ben Bradley/(not the original) Dan Taylor/David Peter/Whatever name works this week.
Well, I think you better keep wondering. 😉
I do like coming over here once in a blue moon if for no other reason than the shock places like this give to my system.
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Right, because God forbid you should swing by because you’re a fan of my work.
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I mean, you get that this is who this blog is supposed to be for, right? Yes, occasionally I bring up stuff that discusses matters in the public eye, but this site is actually designed to be a gathering place for people who enjoy my work. It isn’t intended to be a magnet for extreme right wingers who find entertainment in showing up to parrot the latest Fox News talking heads commentary and convince themselves that they are the lone voices of sanity. Yet interestingly enough, it is.
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If you want to be of some actual value, don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re some sort of voice of reason rather than simply the latest member of the village idiot brigade. Instead contribute to the countless other threads about comics, entertainment or even (gasp) my work.
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PAD
“Right, because God forbid you should swing by because you’re a fan of my work.”
Maybe if more of your threads here pertained to your work, I’d be talking more about that. I’m not going to start talking about the Hulk and Star Trek right in the middle of a discussion about Kyl, Planned Parenthood and abortion.
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“Maybe if more of your threads here pertained to your work, I’d be talking more about that. I’m not going to start talking about the Hulk and Star Trek right in the middle of a discussion about Kyl, Planned Parenthood and abortion.”
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You really are an idiot.
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The number of threads Peter makes devoted to what’s going on in his life, what non-political things are interesting him at the moment and his various works have always outnumbered his political threads by a huge margin. And in threads about his life, interests and works he has always allowed the discussions to drift to his work. Or even to stuff that he has no interest in whatsoever. There’s five of us that he would likely ban for life if he ever adds up how much bandwidth we’ve wasted talking about horror, zombies and the undead.
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You might know that, but despite your statement about how you might talk about the Hulk, Star Trek or Peter’s work in general given the chance, I rarely see you post in anything but political threads. And to try and imply that there’s somehow fewer threads about Peter’s career and work or less threads where politics are the prime discussion rather than nonpolitical things…
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This year so far-
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******* Politics *******
Is Sarah Palin Responsible for the Arizona Shooting?
Dear Ms. Palin:
A Picture Worth Six Words
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 1
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 2
State of the Union Live Blog
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 3
Curse Those Activist Judges!
So Let’s See if I’ve Got This Straight
It’s About Time
Now I Know Why Wisconsin Has the Whole Thing for Dairy Product
So How Does This End?
* I Think K’Daffy has been Replaced by an Imposter
Finally
Change of Venue
Not Intended to be a Factual Statement?
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******* Peter’s work/life/Not Politics ******
Happy New Year
The Things We Do in the Interest of Karmic Payback
Marvel vs. Distributors
The Future Social Event of the Nerd Season
Stash Wednesday
Movie review: The Shadow
Huckleberry Hounded
Stranger than Fiction
Hope You Guys Set Your DVRs
If You Missed “The Daily Show” tonight…
Image Concerns
March 15th? Really?
The Green Hornet
An Additional Green Hornet In-Joke
Movie review: The Mask
A Somewhat Melancholy MLK Day
So…what do ya wanna know?
GLAAD Award
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 1
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 2
“But Wizard Says So”
A Warning to All Disney Oswald Fans
Fine, God. You Win.
* Seduction of the Innocent, Part 3
Where were you when you heard?
If you happen to be at home right now, or can set your DVR from work
A Cowboy Pete WTF Moment
Words and pictures
A Cowboy Pete Tip of the Stetson to Some Inspired Programming
Rating Movie Ratings
Keeping With Our Annual Tradition
Super Bowl live blog
Mystery Sandman Theater 3000, Part 2
Can’t Sleep…
Xerox Hour
Interesting Bowling Moment
My Daughter’s Reaction to the Situation in Egypt
Caroline’s Writing Instincts
Christmas in February
Am I the Only One Getting Annoyed by the Jeopardy Challenge?
Movie review: Timecop
Lousy reviews for “Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.” Show is doomed.
Comic review: Our Cancer Year
DAMMIT
Assorted follow-ups
Movie review: Ed Wood
Back from Florida
Sold a Novelet to F&SF
In LA for B5, Part 1
In LA for B5, Part 2
Hey, Chuck Lorre…
Spidey Opening Delayed again…thank God
In LA for B5, Part 3
If You Want to Help Relief Efforts in Japan
PBS is Practically Unwatchable
Talking Points
Attention “Fallen Angel” Fans
Here’s Where You Can Discuss…
Movie review: Star Trek Generations
Apparently X-Factor won a GLAAD award
TOS vs. TNG
* I Think K’Daffy has been Replaced by an Imposter
Too Much of a Good Thing
If you’ve got some free time this weekend…
The Most Awards 1995
The Return of Bay Watch
I bet someone here knows this
Vote for Coheed and Cambria!
Spider-Man: Edge of Time
Random Thoughts
Well, THAT worked
“I Just Can’t Wait to be King”
FYI: A press release from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers
This Just In
Comic Wars, Part 1
In Good “Company”
Comic Wars, Part 2
Comic Wars, Part 3
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Four of them I posted in both lists since they could be argued to be either thing. But other than those, pretty much every thread was clearly one lit or the other. Now, I look at that list and see a lot more opportunities to discuss Peter’s work, things related to Peter’s work and some goofy fun stuff. You probably see a set of list showing at least 90% of Peter’s threads are about politics and not about/related to his work and interests.
“You really are an idiot.”
And you’re not even trying.
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““You really are an idiot.”
And you’re not even trying.”
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What, not trying too hard to show that you’re making idiotic statements? Yeah, you’re right. You make it so easy that no one has to try hard. And certainly a list of 16 threads this year about politics VS 78 threads this year about Peter’s work, Peter’s interests or thing that caught Peter’s fancy at the moment certainly was an easy way of showing what an idiotic statement you made above yet again.
Good Lord! Trump is now the clear front runner among Republican primary voters.
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(http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_US_0414925.pdf)
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I wonder which vocal position of Trump’s could have possibly endeared him to the GOP base …
Rove, a Fox News contributor, said Friday that Trump was an “interesting candidate who had a business background and could have contributed to the dialogue.”
“But his full embrace of the birther issue means that he’s off there in the nutty right and is now an inconsequential candidate,” he told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “I’m shocked. The guy’s smarter than this. And the idea that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, making that the centerpiece of his campaign, means that he’s just a joke candidate.”
And here is that rabid Lefty Karl Rove calling Trump a “joke” for embracing the Birthers:
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“Rove added that if Trump decides to run, “The American people aren’t going to be hiring him, and certainly, the Republicans are not going to be hiring him in the Republican primary.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/16/trumps-strength-early-presidential-polls-defies-conventional-wisdom/#ixzz1JnyqGTmE
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““But his full embrace of the birther issue means that he’s off there in the nutty right and is now an inconsequential candidate,” he told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “I’m shocked. The guy’s smarter than this. And the idea that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, making that the centerpiece of his campaign, means that he’s just a joke candidate.”
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And here is that rabid Lefty Karl Rove calling Trump a “joke” for embracing the Birthers:”
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Of course he’s going to say that. He wants his side to win.
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Rove is an absolute partisan and sometimes a extremely dishonest one, but he’s not brick stupid. Just like with prospective candidates like Christine “I Am Not A Witch” O’Donnell, he knows that the things that play great with the hardcore base don’t play well with the mainstream and that any candidate that wants to win needs to not alienate the mainstream and the independents.
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The smart Republican front runners for the 2012 bid are doing exactly what Rove would likely have told them to do if he was running their campaign (and may actually have told them in an unofficial capacity.) You don’t embrace the crazy, you just don’t strongly denounce it either.
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Someone asks you if Obama is a secret stealth Muslim or an illegal immigrant who is not a legal U.S. resident? Hey, just point out that Obama says he’s not a Muslim and that he was born in the U.S. and say that you take his word for it (wink, wink – for now.)
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But do not embrace the STUPID. Let others who aren’t running do it. Let the members of the Tea Party that believe it and want to bring their signs declaring Obama an “Undocumented Worker” embrace the stupid. Let people who have already crashed and burned their political career and made a public fool of themselves by embracing the stupid (like, say, Alan Keyes.) Let the blogs and the talk radio fools embrace the stupid and stir the pot.
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But you, the candidate? You don’t embrace the stupid.
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Now, again, you don’t fully denounce it and you maybe even carefully hint at it and joke about it to play it up to the part of the base that believes the stupid, but you stay in a position where you can “deny” the stupid without actually doing so. You stay in a position of being able to have it both ways.
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Rove knows, even in this day and age, that some things are still beneath the candidate insofar as what they’ll claim as their beliefs and what they’ll say. That’s why he doesn’t let the candidates he advises say or do certain things themselves, but rather has third party groups sling the mud and stir the stupid.
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Besides, again, Rove isn’t stupid. I seriously doubt that he thinks Trump is even considering a run at the office. Trump is doing what Trump does every few presidential election cycles. He’s out there saying whatever he needs to get the most free press and get invited on to show after show to maximize his exposure and get get the “Trump” brand back in the news. He’ll try and use this to score some free PR and maybe some TV ratings for his show and then *** poof *** he’ll declare that he can’t commit to running this time and slink off the stage while privately laughing at all of the fools in the media and the public that he made dance like puppets on his string yet again.
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Rove knows that this is what Trump will do yet again. Hëll, anyone who has any knowledge about Trumps finances (and not just what he wants his PR people to talk about) knows that he’ll duck doing it just because of the financial disclosures and what they’ll do to his image.
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Why not throw out a few quotes now about how embracing the Birther stupidity is bad for a candidate if you’re Karl Rove? When Trump backs out of running, rove can then declare that the Birther stupidity is one of the major reasons his potential run self destructed and use that as further smoke and mirrors for playing the Birther game on Obama with the “serious” GOP candidates.
Where Joe Isuzu when you need him?
In Congress with all the other Republicans.
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But he changed his name to Kyl.
You can use false statistics to prove almost anything…. 73% of all people know that.
Two things:
It wasn’t too long ago that a republican shouted out in “Liar” when the president was speaking about helath care. ASpparently only Democrats can be liars.
By defintion:
lie1 /laɪ/ Show Spelled
[lahy] Show IPA
noun, verb, lied, ly·ing.
–noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement.
4. the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.
–verb (used without object)
5. to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.
6. to express what is false; convey a false impression.
–verb (used with object)
7. to bring about or affect by lying (often used reflexively): to lie oneself out of a difficulty; accustomed to lying his way out of difficulties.
Although what Kyl did doesn’t meet every defintion listed it certainly meets some of them. What he did can be called a lie.
Just saying.
“See, I think you shot your mouth off without actually looking at who perpetuates the birther story. It’s not Fox News, it’s the liberal media. The liberal media LOVES the birther story because they see it as a way to discredit any criticism of Obama. And you quite simply do not know what you’re talking about if you believe otherwise.”
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Oh, Lord, and if my grandmother had wheels . . .
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Darin, I think I can state with some assurance that most of the liberals here have seen segments from Fox, either on the network or clips on the web, that readily validate the network’s obsession with the Birther garbage. Here’s a good link for you:
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http://mediamatters.org/research/201103280037
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And yes, it’s from the Evil Media Matters, but if you dispute it, I’m sure I or others here can find you the actual videos without too much trouble. The “liberal media” love affair with the issue that you spout , from what I’ve seen, is directly in response to the wacko far right’s refusal to let it go. If no one on the right was talking about it, you honestly believe that MSNBC and other “left wing media” would be discussing it none stop? Count me in with the others here who’re questioning your sanity.
Yeah, try to convince me of something by providing a link to a Hilary Clinton/George Soros front group. What the heck were YOU thinking? lol
I’m thinking, and which you’ve just vaildated, that you’re a far right demogogue who wouldn’t know the truth if it was a 100 lb weight that dropped squarely on his foot. Have fun on Planet Psycho.
Dismissing media matter just because they are media matters makes you no different than those who dismiss an observable verifiable fact just because it comes from The New York Post or fox news or any other place. It’s obvious one does not like the message and is only pretending to hate the messenger. It’s lame.
“Has Fox News actually bothered to refute birtherism as utter nonsense?”
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Can’t comment on everyone or every show, but Bill O’Reilly definitely has and continues to refute it strongly.
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The truth is still that Fox readily provides forums, most frequently on “Hannity” and “Fox & Freaks”, to birther supporters as though their claims are completely valid. Any of those kooks appearing on MSNBC, including on Chris Matthews show, are at least challenged with the facts.
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“The truth is still that Fox readily provides forums, most frequently on “Hannity” and “Fox & Freaks”, to birther supporters as though their claims are completely valid. Any of those kooks appearing on MSNBC, including on Chris Matthews show, are at least challenged with the facts.”
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Yeah, that’s the other part of the game. Whether it’s the Birther issue or the “Stealth Muslim” bûllšhìŧ, most of the Fox News hosts and contributors who “refute” these things rarely actual do. They let people explain these idiocies in great detail and then blow it off by saying they’re not convinced, it’s a waste of time, it’s making the opposition look foolish or that they “take him at his word.”
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I love that one.
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Person A – Do you believe that Obama is not a secret stealth Muslim?
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Person B -Well, Obama says that he’s a Christian and not a Muslim, so I’ll take him at his word.
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Person A – Do you believe that Obama was born an American citizen?
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Person B -Well, Obama says that he was born in Hawaii and that he’s a citizen, so I’ll take him at his word.
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Gee, that’s convincing. But, hey, these guys were giving the same halfhearted defense of Bush guys on the air against claims that really were true just a few years ago. Oh, wait, no they weren’t. When they wanted to say something was untrue, even when it was, the loudly declared that it was a lie and untrue.
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But for claims of Birtherism and Stealth Muslim natures…. Hey, they’ll take his word for it (for now.)
This is amazing. I haven’t seen anyone this out of their depth on an online forum in, like, forEVER.
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Darin, I applaud your perseverance. It’s pretty much the ONLY thing I can applaud you for, but at least it’s something.
He may just be a masochist …
He’d have to be, what with managing to move the goalposts around so much while still keeping them firmly lodged in his rectum.
Not just a masochist, Bob, but also a cortortionist.
At this point I’m convinced he’s simply a plant for some fringe nutty website that gets it’s jollies by doing this kind of thing.
You should see the stuff that’s getting hung up in the spam filter. Comments from people I’ve never heard of whose posts are nothing but a string of profane insults aimed at liberals. Literally, that’s all they are. No point to be made, no new views. Just foul-mouthed slams. They must cruise blogs known for liberal attitudes and, when they find one, they just attack.
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I’ve got a more generous open policy than most personal blogs, but this is stuff that I’m shrugging and saying, “It adds nothing” and I’m just leaving it in the filter.
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PAD
I’m not surprised that this is the case. In the end, it doesn’t even matter that he’s here for politics, because it could be any subject that somebody feels like trolling over. Politics, religion, sports.
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But they’re all the same in the end: his only goal is to wait for the right discussion, and then attack. Since he’s not obscene in his language, it doesn’t get caught up in a filter.
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Yet, he’ll disappear in short order. Eventually somebody else new(?) will take his place, and we’ll repeat the process some time down the road.
Darin –
I do like coming over here once in a blue moon if for no other reason than the shock places like this give to my system.
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Huh, I was right. He IS getting his jollies by coming here and only getting involved in the political stuff.
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Now I’m curious: He says he only visits ‘once in a blue moon’, yet bìŧçhëš about their not being enough discussion of PAD’s work? Jerry already proved above that the latter is, ahh, not intended to be a factual statement.
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Now Darin has become a liar who can’t keep his story straight.
Every time I do visit, which is more often than when I actually contribute, the top thread is one of a political nature. I can only calls them as I sees them, folks.
Well, I think we can safely conclude that either (a) you’re lying or (b) you have a google search that alerts you when politics are being discussed.
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And if neither of those are the case, then I should point out that whatever the top discussion is, there are always plenty below it that aren’t politically related.
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To which you never contribute.
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PAD
Every time I do visit, which is more often than when I actually contribute, the top thread is one of a political nature. I can only calls them as I sees them, folks.
Get glasses. Jerry helpfully provided the eye chart.
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And try HARDER. Stop insulting our intelligence.
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“Every time I do visit, which is more often than when I actually contribute, the top thread is one of a political nature. I can only calls them as I sees them, folks.”
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Every time you visit? Every time?!?
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Really? Well, you’ve been visiting this morning and this morning the top thread is Comic Wars, Part 3.
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And you’ve ignored that thread.
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Factual statements just aren’t your strong point, Darin. You can’t seem to determine when they are or are not made by politicians when the lie is a lie you like and apparently you have more than a little problem making them on a regular basis yourself.
As Dirty Duck once said after Weevil did something amazingly stupid, even for him: “The Good Lord doesn’t smile on idiots – he laughs out loud!”
I’m gonna switch gears here and talk about how dumb this Kyl situation was more in-depth. I think that when you are a United States senator, with career staff and interns (most of whom have college degrees) buzzing about you, getting you coffee, writing your speeches and booking your appearances, this kind of thing is appalling and should not happen. Maybe the 90% figure was in his notes, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he said it because he felt he needed a number in there somewhere and pulled it out of the air on the fly. Maybe a member of his staff put it in there for dramatic effect without looking it up first. We don’t know. But it’s an embarrassment. The “retraction” that was released served to compound the error. I’m thinking a member of his staff thought he/she was being really clever by wording it the way it was worded… saying it wasn’t meant to be taken “factually” like that. Kyl is retiring here soon anyway, so maybe that’s why his office is handling this so nonchalantly. But this really did deserve to be ridiculed, on the Daily Show, on SNL, on the internet… because it was dumb. Some of you want to take it a little further and assign willful deception to it, but I don’t. I don’t think it’s a good idea to throw numbers around like that. Numbers are not qualitative. They mean things in a most factual way. Whomever decided to give that half-assed non-retraction, were he/she working for me, should be reprimanded at the very least and canned at the very most… even if that person ends up being Kyl himself.
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See, I knew this would happen.
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I posted a few links to Fox News and their Birtherisms and got jammed up in the filter.
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Can an admin kick it a good one and free it please?
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Thanks.
Already done.
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PAD
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Thanks.
I wonder if anybody on Kyl’s staff watches NCIS:LA. If so, they could try out the line “It wasn’t a lie, it was truth re-imagined for a higher purpose” and see how well it sticks…
Comment posted in response to a Nation column on the budget debate:
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🙂
Did I ever tell you about the time John Kyl went hunting? Kyl decides he’s going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machette. They all begged for their lives…except Fleagle.
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So that’s what happened. I knew there was a reason that they looked so different all of a sudden a few years ago. They must have gotten fake Banana Splits from the same place the WWF got the fake Ultimate Warrior when he secretly died back in the 90s.
But he came back! He needs not earthquake insurance, he needs not health insurance…he will NEVER need life insurance! he accended to the heavens above and in his final meeting with the gods, as they spoke to him and hit him with the power of the Ultimate Warrior, they told him ‘Exit stage left! Exit stage right! There is no place to run; all the fuses in the exit signs have been burned out! For in the time he went to now where the warriors were running through the veins of the warrior and the skeletons were in the mud of the veins of the closet of the planet inside the WARIORRRRRRRRRRRR!!! Snort!
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Yeah, and now, no joke here, he’s announced that he’s writing a book. No word yet on if it will be in crayon or include S&M pictures of Santa Claus.
No, Jerry, those were the Plantain Splits. ALMOST the same, but slightly different….
Cartoon: http://www.gocomics.com/laloalcaraz/2011/04/13/
My problem with right wing people are the lengths they seem to go to make any argument and or situation unfair.
Criticize the president during a time of war? Treason! Unamerican! Unless he’s a democrat and the war is a left over from the previous tenant. In that case, is Hawaii a state? For reals?
Bring your kids up on stage when you are nominated for VP. Sweet and completely fair. Complain that your kids should not be in the media spotlight when they are caught calling people gay and fággøŧ.
Say that you are prof life and every single life counts. Unless they are dying of aids, from Mexico or committed certain class of crimes. Then, not so countable.
Bring up a comparable disortion told by a Democrat and see if the Left Wing defended the inaccuracies delivered.
Which is why their elected officials know they can lie with impunity. Because excuses will be made in the short term, and in the long term, the context will be forgotten and only the lie will remain, embraced in truth. A year, two years from now, there will be plenty of people on the right who will be repeating the ninety percent lie without having the slightest recollection whence it originated. Just like, for instance, they “remember” Al Gore saying “I invented the Internet” even though he never said it. (Although to be fair plenty of people “remember” Sarah Palin saying, “I can see Russia from my house!” even though Tiny Fey said it. But at least in that case it was simply a joke on SNL rather than done with malicious intent.)
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PAD
Thanks for bringing up the Gore/Internet deal. Someone just compared Rob Granito to Al Gore on another board, and I just didn’t have the energy to correct that gaff AGAIN.
PAD,
“Just like, for instance, they “remember” Al Gore saying “I invented the Internet” even though he never said it.”
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Agreed. Although, in this case, I don’t think anyone can just blame Fox News. This is yet another case in which the mainstream media took a quote and allowed it to be twisted. because a lot of them are just as uneducated and lazy and ill-informed as the citizens they are supposed to be informing. And Gore made a mistake by not clarifying what he said during a debate or something. Because technically, he was correct. But a lie told over and over again becomes the truth.
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” (Although to be fair plenty of people “remember” Sarah Palin saying, “I can see Russia from my house!” even though Tiny Fey said it. But at least in that case it was simply a joke on SNL rather than done with malicious intent.)”
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But again, it was an easily refuted lie that the MSM, because they can’t bother to do the work re
PAD,
Oops…Something happened with my last post. here we go again
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” (Although to be fair plenty of people “remember” Sarah Palin saying, “I can see Russia from my house!” even though Tiny Fey said it. But at least in that case it was simply a joke on SNL rather than done with malicious intent.)”
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But again, it was an easily refuted lie that the MSM, because they can’t bother to do the work required to tell the public the truth and have pre-conceived notions.
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Barbara Walters, for God’s sake, when asked why she didn’t think Palin was qualified to be President said, “She’s ill-informed. She thinks she can see Russia from her house.” By saying this, she revealed to those who know better that the ill-informed one is Barbara Walters.
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“Agreed. Although, in this case, I don’t think anyone can just blame Fox News.”
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Yeah, and I would agree with that whole heartedly. I was seeing and hearing that joke in the MSM and on things like SNL and PHC on NPR long before there was a Fox News. I have an editorial cartoon in a book showcasing works from the years 1999 and 2000 and, as a Y2K joke, a usually zing-the-Righties cartoonist had an exasperated Clinton handing a computer to Gore and telling him that since he invented the internet so he should fix it.
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Hëll, even the over exaggeration for comedic effect and jokes about Gore’s sighs in the Bush/Gore debates was a regular staple on supposedly liberal comedy programs.
Barbara Walters, for God’s sake, when asked why she didn’t think Palin was qualified to be President said, “She’s ill-informed. She thinks she can see Russia from her house.” By saying this, she revealed to those who know better that the ill-informed one is Barbara Walters.
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Not that Palin’s actual assertion, that she had credible foreign policy experience because Russia is in geographic proximity to Alaska, was much better. It’s like my saying that because whales occasionally wander within distance of Long Island Sound, I’m an oceanographer.
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PAD
I have to wonder if the senator in question, looking at his notes, thought, “Crap! It’s not here! If I don’t have an answer I’ll look like a yutz! Just make something up!!” Granted, not the bestest idea, but in a news environment like these people find themselves in, is it possible?
Any mistake or situation is possible. But nothing prevented him from walking it back the next day and saying, “I misspoke.” “I had bad information.” “I had a senior moment.” Anything. All he has to do is say, “I got it wrong” and this is a non-story.
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Instead, like Pee Wee Herman taking a header off his bicycle, he and his people declare, “I meant to do that.” That’s where the assumption of malicious intent comes from. Why not apologize or clarify it? Because if he apologizes, that diminishes the falsehood. Instead he doubles down on the lie and leaves it to the credulous to manufacture excuses, which they willingly do (“Maybe Planned Parenthood is the one that’s lying!”)
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As I said: He was tossing red meat to the base, and they’ll be chowing down on it for years.
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PAD
As many of the regulars here know, I’m a huge fan of old-time radio. Yesterday, I was listening to an X-Minus One episode called “The Native Problem”, from the story by Robert Sheckley.
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What does that have to do with this thread? Well, to quote Bill Cosby, I told you that story to tell you this one. In “The Native Problem”, a man named Danton leaves Earth to settle by himself on a distant, uninhabited planet. Eventually, a ship from an earlier generation, one that had a significantly slower drive, lands. The people on board the ship assume Danton is a native of the planet, and don’t believe he’s from Earth. They aren’t swayed by the fact that he speaks colloquial English, or by anything else he says or does. Their minds are closed to anything but their preconceived notions.
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Listening to that episode made me think of this thread.
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Rick
Okay, so we have the entire mainstram media angrily denouncing Kyl — based on Planned Parenthood’s claim that abortion constitutes less than 3 percent of the services it provides.
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Apparently, that depends on the meaning of “services it provides.” If taking 30 seconds to write a prescription for birth control pills is considered the equivalent of a two-hour, multiple-visit $450 abortion, then perhaps abortion does constitute only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work.
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But according to Planned Parenthood itself, when it comes to services for pregnant women, abortion constituted 97.6 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provided in 2009. Only 2.4 percent of the organization’s services for pregnant women involved prenatal care or adoption referrals.
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Again, according to its own reports, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions in 2009 — or more than a quarter of all abortions in the entire country. It receives about 37 percent of its total revenue from performing abortions.
Of course Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the country. Someone has to be.
The issue isn’t “Planned Parenthood doesn’t do abortions!” but “Planned Parenthood does quite a bit more than just abortions, and glossing over the rest of their contributions to society, which are plentiful, is wrong.”
And none of that 37% of revenue is provided by tax payers.
So why do you care that they provide a LEGAL service paid for by private funding?
Okay, so we have the entire mainstram media angrily denouncing Kyl — based on Planned Parenthood’s claim that abortion constitutes less than 3 percent of the services it provides.
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Nooo, you’ve got the mainstream media “denouncing” him over the fact that he said his comments were not meant to be factual, i.e., they were designed to be lies.
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As near as I can tell, Jerome, you’re now asserting that his comments were rooted in fact. So are you contending that when Kyl’s office asserted that his comments were not meant to be factual, their denial was actually not intended to be factual? A sort of double-bluff lie?
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PAD
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“If taking 30 seconds to write a prescription for birth control pills is considered the equivalent of a two-hour, multiple-visit $450 abortion, then perhaps abortion does constitute only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work.”
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Jerome, your comic work with the political bio books is picking up. Let’s say, as a hypothetical, that by next year you’re turning out one per month every month plus quarterly specials related to the general topic. You’re therefore doing 16 books a year.
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This gets you noticed by someone who wants you to do a book (not a comic, but a book) for younger readers that covers the political biographies of the four candidates (both of the Ps and both of the VPs) for the 2012 election. You agree to do it and it takes you about six months to do.
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The book comes out. Now, do you think that most people are going to say that the vast majority of what you did that year was bio comics or bio books? Do you think that anybody who looks up the fact that you put out 16 comics and 1 book is not going to look at you like you just grew a third nostril if you insisted that half of your work for that year was that book?
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You personally may have taken longer to work on that book than it takes to work on the comics that came out in that same time period, but the fact is that the book does not constitute 50% of what you did that year in the way that pretty much everybody counts that kind of thing.
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If you look at the statistics for my job, and I mean specifically me, I wrote very few DUI tickets the first quarter of last year. Based on percentages, it was one of the things that counted for the least amount of “work” that I actually did in the first quarter of 2010. However, a DUI stop on a busy holiday weekend where every other agency in the area is also out in force can tie me up (and has) for hours.
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Just a few short weeks ago, my department loaned the crowd control team I’m a part of out to VCU for the final four fun and the long night of stupidity that was the Saturday when VCU lost. I actually only worked two nights, so my stats say that I only had two call outs for crowd control in the first quarter of the year. My stats for Q1 2011 say that my crowd control call outs were an insignificant % of what I did.
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Those two nights totaled close to 22 hours though; the majority of which I spent on my feet and in full gear. There are things on my Q1 stats that, by percentage, I did by way more than crowd control that I spent much less time on. But we don’t count what was actually done by hours. We count what was actually done by counting what was actually done.
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Same with you and your work, same with my work and same with pretty much anyone’s work.
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It may take a Planned Parenthood clinic hours and multiple visits to help one woman who comes to them for an abortion, but in that same time period they may help dozens of other women with a myriad of other services that are not abortion related.
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And let’s look at this with a different but equally political example that just popped into my head. A huge number of Conservatives like to call the Democratic Congress from Obama’s first two years the “Do Nothing Congress” or the “Do Nothing Democrats” because they supposedly did so little and got so few things actually passed.
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Now, if we use the example of how to look at things that you used above; they can’t call them that any more. They weren’t sitting around doodling in their notebooks and hanging out at the bars in D.C. for those two years. They were working pretty much the entire time (and arguing endlessly with the minority party) and even went into late sessions.
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Now either they didn’t get a lot done because you’re counting the results or they were some hard working S.O.B.s because they were working so hard but taking so long to get done what they did get done. But either way, you have to count their results the same way you count Planned Parenthood’s results or anyone else’s results. Conservatives (or anyone else) can’t play math games (well, they can, but they really shouldn’t) and count results one way to support a position they have here, but then count results an entirely different way to support a position that they have over here.
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Granted, that’s what politicians do all the time, but we all know what most of us here have said about those various politicians and their games and it ain’t pretty.
I’ve always thought it’s the left who has the biggest problem reconciling their views between abortion and the death penalty.
You thought wrong.
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And Kyl still lied and boasted about lying.
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PAD
Thank you, Jerry. You always give me a different perspective to mull over and add reason and intelligence to the debate.
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“Thank you, Jerry. You always give me a different perspective to mull over and add reason and intelligence to the debate.”
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The first half might be true, but the second half is definitely a lie.
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Fanatic.
Why quibble with percentages and monetary values? I truly don’t understand.
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If you think abortion is a horrible atrocity and one of the biggest sins, then one abortion is one abortion too many.
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If you think a woman is the full owner of her body and everything it contains, then it shouldn’t matter how many people are getting abortions with their own money.
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Deep down, there is no dialogue possible between the positions.
Quite right, Rene. You are either for legal abortions in our society (paid for by our confiscated wealth or not) or you are not for legal abortions in our society. One side sees it as a rights issue while the other sees it as a life/death issue. There’s no real compromising between the two sides when it comes right down to it.
What is your take when the issue overlaps? (For instance, if a women’s life is in peril unless the fetus is aborted. It’s a life/death issue for the woman in question.)
Oh yeah. One side really cares about life/death. Amazingly, that same side is typically all for capital punishment. Oh, and guns. Mustn’t do anything to stop people from arming themselves. We have to fight to make sure that a woman in a poor neighborhood has no access to Planned Parenthood so that she can have her baby boy, who then manages to live to the age of five or so before a stray bullet punches through the child’s window and kills him and the police arrest a guy who had nothing to do with it and put him on death row.
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A life and death issue. Please. It’s an anti-woman issue, and always has been.
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None of which has anything to do with the fact that Kyl lied about his statements in congress.
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PAD
I’ve always thought it’s the left who has the biggest problem reconciling their views between abortion and the death penalty.
“What is your take when the issue overlaps? (For instance, if a women’s life is in peril unless the fetus is aborted. It’s a life/death issue for the woman in question.)”
I don’t think you’d like what I have to say on this. Then again, you might find it hilarious.
You still thought wrong.
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And Kyl still lied and boasted about lying because he counted on people like you not to care.
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PAD
I honestly don’t think I am wrong on that, Peter. I think the left has a much harder time reconciling their views on abortion with their views on the death penalty. A fetus about to be aborted is the essence of innocence. David Berkowitz, on the other hand, is not. The left wants to allow the fetus to be killed for convenience’s sake and they want men like Berkowitz spared. How does the left reconcile this?
This has been debated excessively and asked and answered on many other threads that you couldn’t be bothered to show up for.
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The topic here is how it was okay for a senator to boast about lying in order to keep his base happy.
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PAD
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“A fetus about to be aborted is the essence of innocence. David Berkowitz, on the other hand, is not. The left wants to allow the fetus to be killed for convenience’s sake and they want men like Berkowitz spared. How does the left reconcile this?”
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Simple.
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A fetus earlier than a certain point is not a sentient human being; it is not an independent life. While it has the potential to be a human being (and amazing thing to behold at that) it is not a human being and it certainly doesn’t hold veto power over the mother’s needs or wishes.
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A person on death row is a mad dog killer. They gleefully killed someone and hold no remorse about it.
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Or not.
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We’ve been seeing a lot of guys freed from death row and death sentences in the last decade-plus because the new technology we have at our disposal now showed that they didn’t do it. And have you noticed (and I hate how close this dances to the race card, but facts are facts) that every dámņ time we see one of those stories that it’s about some innocent guy who got railroaded who just happened to be poor and a minority?
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I’ve been pro-death penalty for decades. I’ve questioned that stance a few times in the last decade but decided (Rationalized?) that the technology that’s starting to be used to exonerate guys that were about to be put to death should keep the same mistakes from happening again. However, I also read stories, especially from backwards ášš places like Texas, where the courts have refused to take such evidence into account in the first case or to allow it on appeal.
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That bothers me. I’ll still ultimately be for the death penalty, but I want to see it mandatory that every death row case (especially older ones and ones from problem areas) be examined and reexamined with the latest tech before execution is allowed.
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Right now, that’s not happening and because of that, despite the Right’s most mindless talking points, there is no doubt that we have executed innocent men on death row in the past and there is no doubt that we have at least a few more innocent men still sitting on death row.
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So, on the one hand we have a collection of skin and cells that at various points are only arguably a “life” rather than a potential life VS people who had a life and got railroaded by a piss poor justice system at worst or mistaken identity at best who are going to be put to death by the state and inarguably using tax dollars.
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I don’t fully always agree with the anti-death penalty crowd or the pro-abortion crowd, but I don’t see the problem with the Left being able to reconcile this matter at all.
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“The topic here is how it was okay for a senator to boast about lying in order to keep his base happy.”
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Okay…
(So I take a long time to type.)
See, the only way the left can come close to reconciling their dilemma is to deny the fetus the recognition of being human. They have to ignore certain truths about the fetus. So the whole premise that abortion is not murder is based upon a small collection of lies and lies of omission.
No, it also has to do with quality of life upon birth, of not intruding upon a brutal decision that is the business of the mother, and many other aspects that the anti-choice crowd doesn’t care about.
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None of which changes the fact that the Senator lied and boasted about lying.
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PAD
“No, it also has to do with quality of life upon birth, of not intruding upon a brutal decision that is the business of the mother, and many other aspects that the anti-choice crowd doesn’t care about.”
See, what the left does is they call it merely a “choice.” They leave out the fact that a human life ends and they leave out the reasons why such a life ends. It’s diversion, of sorts. They want you to look at the mother and not the fetus. Pro-lifers feel someone needs to speak for the fetus. Most pro-lifers don’t feel that the mother has the moral right to murder her unborn baby… and they want the law to match that.
That’s because when their own daughters need abortions, they’ll find ways to go somewhere where it’s clean and legal and safe, while the poor (with Planned Parenthood closed down) will seek out the services of back alley abortionists. And if they die, well, so what? It’s not like they voted Republican.
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None of which changes the fact that the Senator lied and his supporters keep trying to distract from that.
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PAD
I think PAD might be trying to say that the real issue is that Kyl lied.
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But that could just be me.
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TAC
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PAD: “No, it also has to do with quality of life upon birth, of not intruding upon a brutal decision that is the business of the mother, and many other aspects that the anti-choice crowd doesn’t care about.”
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Darin: “See, what the left does is they call it merely a “choice.” They leave out the fact that a human life ends and they leave out the reasons why such a life ends. It’s diversion, of sorts. “
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No, they discuss facts. You discuss theology and, much like the fanatics who don’t share the Right’s theology so the Right calls them evil, you want your theology imposed on everyone else. But let’s talk facts.
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The facts are that in early development there isn’t enough there to call a fetus a life of its own. The facts are that there are times when the baby will be born and die and this is known long before the delivery date. It happens quite a lot with in vitro fertilization actually. There are times when the life of the mother is put at risk as well. But you don’t care about any of those facts.
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And the one issue I have with the one waver that gets put into some abortion bills is that Republicans may bend a little on “the life of the mother,” but the don’t give a flying F about the health of the mother. Just in the last few months I met a woman who wanted to have a baby more than you could possibly understand. She and her husband (both young) almost got to have that baby a little over a year ago. They were, up until that time, pro-life, Christian Conservatives who believed in no abortion under any circumstances.
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And then, a few months into the pregnancy, she had a problem. She’s diabetic and her diabetes created a complication where carrying the pregnancy to term would create massive issues with the blood circulation to one of her legs. If she carried to term, the issue would have gotten so great that they would have had to cut her leg off (and she might have been unable to have children again down the road.)
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So, this young woman and her husband had two choices. They could have a child this time and she would lose a leg and maybe become sterile or they could abort this fetus and try again later under the more monitored and controlled process that being labeled a high risk pregnancy would give her from day one of the pregnancy and both she and the baby would have better chances of surviving and being healthy. Guess what they did? Here’s a hint- She still has two flesh and blood legs to walk on.
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Here’s another fact. Babies get created by rape and rape/incest. They really do. Me, I think that the poor woman (and some times the poor child) raped shouldn’t have to spend the better part of a year with that additional pain and the psychological issues if she doesn’t want to. But you obviously feel that a fetus trumps the health, physical, emotional and psychological, of a woman who has been raped.
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What a great guy some of you conservatives are.
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I know the great conservative myth is that abortions are all being given to these modern lib women who want to have casual sex and then go get abortions on demand as a form of after the fact birth control, but that’s bûllšhìŧ. And I’m sure, since bûllšhìŧ is your specialty, that you’ll haul out the old conservative/anti-abortion line (lie) about personally knowing a girl who had abortions every other weekend just because she could, but we all know that it’s bûllšhìŧ. And even if it wasn’t, one girl who may be like that against all the ones who really have a legitimate need for an abortion ultimately means squat.
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You and your kind, embracing your ideology and wanting to shove that ideology down everyone else’s throats, don’t care about any facts other than you think you speak for the unborn and are therefor righteous. You don’t care about what happens to the woman afterwards, you don’t care about what happens to the child after birth and you really don’t care if they both die a year after the mother gives birth.
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You just care that you can give a collection of cells the ability to trump the rights and health of a woman.
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And, as you’ve proven in spades here, you will embrace and defend even transparently obvious lies so long as those lies target things you don’t like and can hurt those things you don’t like.
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I’ve called you an idiot several times now. I might be wrong about that (but probably not.) The more you type, the more you look like someone who shares more in common with the fanatic than an idiot.
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It could still easily be both though.
There’s a reason why the signs that pro-lifers hold up horrify. Looking at footage of aborted fetuses is different than looking at a picture of a tumor that’s been removed or of a lung that belonged to a life-long smoker. It’s because it’s plain to see that this is a human being. That’s why you wince when you see them. Sometimes, some college students will drive by and yell something like “Yeah!Wooooo! Kill them babies!” But they know. People like that usually regret saying and feeling that later on. Women who have abortions also tend to suffer depression for years afterward, often requiring more medical attention. They’re left wondering in the back of their minds and their hearts what their baby might have been like. What would the baby have grown up to be? Every time they hear a success story where someone growing up in the projects or the slums managed to make something good out of their life, that mother will wonder if her baby would have done that. And the fact that they’ll never know torments them, often for the rest of their lives.
“Every time they hear a success story where someone growing up in the projects or the slums managed to make something good out of their life, that mother will wonder if her baby would have done that. And the fact that they’ll never know torments them, often for the rest of their lives”
Funny, you don’t mention anything about the flip side of that coin, do you? About the multitude of children you and your ilk would force to be born into extreme poverty, neglect, and abuse because they were never wanted in the first place. “Pro-lifers” never seem to want to address those realities; you wanna talk about the kids you casually pass by walking down the street, poorly dressed, with runny noses, and sad-faced with parents who can hardly afford to feed them? Well, maybe they don’t exist in your pristine world, but I can assure you they definitely do in my neighborhood. People like you seem to think that outlawing all abortions will create this flowery Utopia full of thankful children who’ll each grow up to cure cancer, while willfully blinding yourselves to the stark realities of what life is truly all about. You can spout all you want about the sanctity of life and protecting the unborn, but until all of you so-called pro-lifers really get a life and acknowledge what really happens after the womb, there’s a very warm place described in the Christian Bible that I’ll be more than happy to provide you directions to.
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“There’s a reason why the signs that pro-lifers hold up horrify. Looking at footage of aborted fetuses is different than looking at a picture of a tumor that’s been removed or of a lung that belonged to a life-long smoker. It’s because it’s plain to see that this is a human being. That’s why you wince when you see them.”
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See, again, you’re full of it. Most people wince when they suddenly have someone whip out an image of a blood covered anything that was surgically removed from the human body. Of course people wince when they see aborted fetuses. Those same people wince when you show them pictures from open heart surgery.
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I know actual facts confuse you greatly and you want to take them and make them what you want to be, but the facts are that reality is what it is and what it ain’t is the “facts” of Darin-World.
They’re left wondering in the back of their minds and their hearts what their baby might have been like. What would the baby have grown up to be?
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That’s their personal uncertainty they have to live with. The last thing they need is judgmental áššhølëš piling on.
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None of which has anything to do with the fact that a GOP senator issued a bald-faced lie and backed it up by saying that it was never meant to be taken as truth.
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PAD
I’m a big boy. Go ahead and say it.
Nope. You can’t handle it.
Nope. You can’t handle it.
Translation: Haven’t given a single thought about it.
I believe that EVERYONE is pro-choice. It’s just that pro-lifers have already made that choice and will not consider circumstances to influence that choice.
So how do you explain the people who want to take that choice away from everyone else?
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“So how do you explain the people who want to take that choice away from everyone else?”
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Because they believe that they should have the choice to say what you can and cannot do on various issues and what rights you do and don’t deserve.
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See, they’re pro-choice. They’re just pro-their-choice and screw your choices.
The faithful have never been about choice, they’re about God’s will.
Not everyone who opposes abortion does so on religious grounds. It is possible for those who do not believe in a God to still believe that abortion is an abhorrent abomination that diminishes us as a society and as a nation.
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This is a way for many who feel superior to say that educated, smart, enlightened people are pro-abortion, while only mindless, uneducated backward sheep who want the 1950s back and keep women in “their place” oppose it. All the while thumping their big ole Bible.
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Which is bûllšhìŧ. It’s like people who say atheists cannot be moral because they don’t believe in god, which is patently absurd.
Darin,
Anyone who knows me from this board will tell you I’m probably to the Right of Ann Coulter. However, I feel you do not lend credence to your arguments when you say condescending things that don’t add to the debate, like “I don’t think you’d like what I have to say on this.” and “Nope. You can’t handle it.”
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Unless you are a 14 year-old Eminem wannabe, this is not how adults debate things. if you have something to say, say it. if not, then don’t. that simple.
Really? Be honest, Jerome. If we did a poll among those who oppose abortion, would you be surprised if it turns out a huge majority of them is religious? Particularly those that are strongly opposed?
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And I never used the word uneducated. Many religious people are very intelligent and erudite.
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“This is a way for many who feel superior to say that educated, smart, enlightened people are pro-abortion, while only mindless, uneducated backward sheep who want the 1950s back and keep women in “their place” oppose it. All the while thumping their big ole Bible”
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Yeah, but that’s not what everyone here is saying for that reason. Yeah, we have that poster here, but we have that poster everywhere. And the simple truth is that the most militant of the anti-abortion crowd in the conservative’s voter base are the holy rollers and the bible thumpers. Yeah, you can have people who are neither of those being obnoxious about it, but, come on, it’s going to be a much rarer case to have a militantly anti-abortion crusader explaining to you that abortion offends their belief in the laws of atheism and the beliefs that atheists hold dear. They are out there. I know two of them myself. But the fact is that far more of the most vocal anti-abortion crowd bring up God, bring up Hëll, bring up their Bibles and frame their argument in in moral, religious terms.
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And that full stereotype, including the whole 1950s thing, unfortunately has a basis in reality for many. I grew up in Virginia and have several friends my age who grew up in more Southern and Mid-West located states than Virginia. One thing we all have in common with our political memories from growing up is seeing the local political and the national political discussions on abortion and ?morality” dominated by representatives from groups like the Religious Right and the Moral Majority. “Evangelical Conservative Christian Republican” was a much more common and accurate description of many Republican politicians than it is today. And one thing that a lot of us remember is that many of those people arguing against abortion while holding their bible tight in hand where the same ones talking about how it all started going wrong in the 60s and things would get so much better if only we would return to the values and American lifestyle that they (claimed) they grew up with.
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I’m a Southerner. You wouldn’t know it to meet me, but I grew up a Southern boy and grew up within spitting distance of the base of power for guys like Robertson and Falwell. For me and for many others, what you call simply “a way for many who feel superior to say that educated, smart, enlightened people are pro-abortion” is what they grew up seeing all around us. Hëll, I have a few aunts who still prattle on about just that.
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Now, I’ll agree with you that a lot of people say that just to be áššëš about it and I’ll join any argument on your side saying that it’s not as common to see now and doesn’t make up anywhere near the bulk of the newer, younger conservatives that it did 20-plus years ago. But, yeah, anyone who grew up where I grew up (or a little more Southern or Mid-Western) and is in my age range might not be saying it just to be an ášš. They likely grew up hearing and seeing just that and, if they’re really unlucky, the still have insane aunts filling their inbox with this stuff every freaking day for days on end and fifty or sixty emails a day that… Uhm… Forget that part.
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There are áššëš out there. There are people saying that as well because it’s their life experience. It’s going to be a hard stereotype of the Right to die, but it’s already doing just that. As the old Religious Right die off and the people who remember them turn their focus more and more to the new; it will die out.
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Now, unfortunately for the Right, the other sad truth is that still now the loudest and most visible voices for things like the the anti-abortion movement are the ones who want to make it out to be a religious thing. Darin strikes me as one of those. I might be wrong. But just as I’m seeing newer, younger voices on the Left who are almost ideological crusaders for their cause above and before what’s right, I’m seeing a lot of new, you voices in the Conservative movement who are almost ideological crusaders for their cause above and before what’s right. And, unfortunately for you and your side, they’re at least pretending to be coming from “traditional” and “Christian” values. And the complete and utter FUBAR of that is that the louder they get and the more militant they get, so gets their equal and opposite numbers on the left and the result is that nothing gets really done of changes.
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History marches on, and it’s a rerun.
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Or, as I say (kind of along those lines) on my current email signature –
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“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
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Douglas Adams