Where are the Conservative voices?

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Most of the “thinktanks” involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service.

Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform.

Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of “media campaigns” aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to “advancing model legislation” and “candidate briefings”, in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• “reforms” to public employee pensions raised by SPN thinktanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania;

• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska and New York;

• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida;

• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada;

• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina and Utah.

SPN’s president, Tracie Sharp, told the Guardian that “as a pro-freedom network of thinktanks, we focus on issues like workplace freedom, education reform, and individual choice in healthcare: backbone issues of a free people and a free society.”

As the middle class shrinks it's members must be wondering"What do Conservatives have against us?"

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/06/revealed-conservative-think-tank-spn-coordinating-right-wing-assault-on-education-healthcare-and-the-environment-in-34-states/

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
The number is baloney.

You're right there, exact records of Iraqi civilians killed were not kept, so the real figure is probably considerably higher.

If the number of civilians killed by any cause whatsoever is 134,000, how can the number of civilians killed by US troops be higher? Cite your source.

izzythepush wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
Please specify exactly what lie we were taken to war based on.

That he had WMDs and they could launch an attack in 45 minutes.

Wrong. Bush never said that. Bush and the UN said that Iraq didn't seem willing to do as promised and allow the UN inspectors to verify that the WMD programs were gone, and Bush indicated his conclusion, a conclusion prevalent all around the world at the time, that this likely meant that Iraq had not dismantled but merely concealed WMD development programs. The 45 minutes applies to the length of time a missile would take, were one to exist. Bush asserted correctly that a person like Saddam Hussein could not be allowed to have weapons so powerful that one use of one could kill hundreds of thousands of people, and that, therefore, the apparent likelihood that he was still developing them coupled with his persistent and longstanding refusal to verify that he wasn't, despite years of warnings, justified invasion to resolve the matter.

izzythepush wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
All you're doing is making me clarify over and over what the meaning of my words was, which is a game people play when their central argument is indefensible.

You're the one whose argument is indefensible. The war in Iraq was illegal, unjustified and all about making profits for Halliburton.

As for illegality, any country has the right to defend itself or the world from an apparent serious danger. As for justification, that is what we are arguing here, and as for profits for Halliburton, you have offered no evidence whatsoever that this was Bush's reason for invading, as opposed to his repeatedly stated reason that it was about protecting the world from WMD wielded in the present or the near future by Iraq.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

The facts speak for themselves, Bush, and Blair for that matter, allowed the 45 minute lie to circulate. Halliburton made billions. Iraqi civilian casualty figures have not been kept. The evidence of WMDs was so weak it was super spun to the nth degree, and even then it was patently bullshit, even before the invasion.

You'd rather believe what you're told. It's a lot easier than thinking.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Apparently the money spent by conservative 'think tanks' just proves that right wing "intelligentsia' isn't.

Rap

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Izzy, you are saying accurate numbers weren't kept, and that may be true.
But unfortunately accurate numbers like that are never kept.
As a case in point, how many civilians died due to the RAF bombing campaigns in Europe.

1 Reply

@raprap,

Quote:

Apparently the money spent by conservative 'think tanks' just proves that right wing "intelligentsia' isn't.

Your repeating of that lie has idiots not much brighter than you believing it.
Left wing think tanks are recycled Communism and Socialist ideas reworded to fool even their own members and way to many voters.

1 Reply

Considering the quality of the posts, here's what is obviously a picture of colddude.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/files/2013/02/get-a-brain-morans.jpg

Nice mullet colddude

Rap

1 Reply

@raprap,

Quote:

Considering the quality of the posts, here's what is obviously a picture of colddude.

You don't make the rules for me or anyone else. The recycled garbage you spout is as old and tired as Obamas lies.

1 Reply

@coldjoint,

Well Colddude, I guess if the old shoe fits--it still fits.

Where are the Conservative voices?

Rap

1 Reply

@raprap,

So you post a rant, The OP,by another asshole who thinks he is smart when he is just emasculated. Two teas in a pod. STFU.

1 Reply

@raprap,

Quote:

female backward Dominionist from Wisconsin.

Who would that be dumbass?

1 Reply

@coldjoint,

Scuze me 'Minnesota.' Wisconsin is the state where the governor survived a midterm recall election.

Rap

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

The facts speak for themselves, Bush, and Blair for that matter, allowed the 45 minute lie to circulate.

Among the thousands of facts about the war, this one detail, which originated with MI-6, turned out to be false. You can probably find something like this about every war anyone has ever been in. The fact is that invasion was absolutely the right decision based on the facts known at the time, and even if you could somehow show that Bush had some bad motive or did some bad thing, at most it would mean that he had made the right decision for the wrong reason. The UN and America had been trying to get Saddam Hussein to allow unfettered inspections for a dozen years and it had become clear that he was incorrigible. Had he been working on perfecting WMD, the ongoing failure to allow free inspections might have given him enough time to finish the weapons. It would be unthinkable for someone like him to have weapons like these. He was told over and over for years that if he just allowed the UN inspectors free access, the whole thing would be over, but after a dozen years, he still wouldn't do it. Many, many people and world leaders interpreted these events to mean that instead of destroying his WMD research programs, he had merely taken them underground. The chance of disaster was simply too high and invasion was the right choice to prevent the chance of weapons of this power falling into the hands of an evil monster.

izzythepush wrote:

Halliburton made billions.

Even assuming, just for the sake of argument, that Bush was in bed with Halliburton, the police need more than motive to prove guilt and so do you. You're trying to read Bush's mind. Fear of Saddam Hussein getting WMD was more than sufficient motive for any sane person.

izzythepush wrote:

Iraqi civilian casualty figures have not been kept.

Come back when you get some facts. I suspect that your numbers are wildly exaggerated.

izzythepush wrote:

The evidence of WMDs was so weak it was super spun to the nth degree, and even then it was patently bullshit, even before the invasion.

Then it's funny that so many people believed that Saddam Hussein likely hadn't destroyed his WMD programs.

izzythepush wrote:

You'd rather believe what you're told. It's a lot easier than thinking.

Attributing negative behaviors to your debating opponent is not an argument.

2 Replies

@coldjoint,

Then you admit to being a joke, so why do you complain?

Colddude, take this advice to heart--it is your destiny.

Rap

2 Replies

@raprap,

Quote:

Then you admit to being a joke, so why do you complain?

**** off sycophant. You and others like you are a dime a dozen.

1 Reply

@raprap,

Scuze me, meant to call you a suck puppy. OK? Laughing

0 Replies

@coldjoint,

Profanity is a sign of a less than adequate vocabulary. I guess you just proved the point.

You really are too easy colddude.

Rap

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Then it's funny that so many people believed that Saddam Hussein likely hadn't destroyed his WMD programs.

Hardly, considering a compliant press was telling them that.

1 Reply

@mysteryman,

It was very difficult for us to gather numbers from the other side of the channel during WW2. There was no such difficulty in Iraq, just a lack of will.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Come back when you get some facts.

Fact 1 Saddam Hussein had no WMDs.
Fact 2 Halliburton made billions from the illegal war with Iraq.
Fact 3 Western Media lied/exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Quote:

Criticisms of pro-invasion bias

A study found that in the lead up to the Iraq War, most sources were overwhelmingly in favor of the invasion.
A University of Maryland study on American public opinion found that:
Fifty-seven percent of mainstream media viewers believed that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaeda, or was directly involved in the September 11 attacks (48% after invasion).
Sixty-nine percent believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.
Twenty-two percent believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. (Twenty-one percent believed that chem/bio weapons had actually been used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq during 2003)
In the composite analysis of the PIPA study, 80% of Fox News watchers had one or more of these misperceptions, in contrast to 71% for CBS and 27% who tuned to NPR/PBS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War

1 Reply

Where are the Conservative voices?

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