Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread III

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Your failed attempt at snark aside, ...

What do you mean, "failed"?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Yeah, but we're not talking about the 'ticking bomb' exception - we're talking about any exception deemed to be 'foreign intelligence,' right?

I don't know what "we" are talking about. But the first thing Bush is talking about is the "exigent circumstances" -- that's the ticking letter, not foreign intelligence. The second thing Bush is talking about is foreign intelligence, but he doesn't see that as an exigent circumstance.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

And who decides whether it is foreign intelligence or not - especially since the contents of the mail would surely be classified afterwards?

Whoever the laws governing foreign intelligence currently specify. Bush is claiming no powers beyond these laws. So, if you're unhappy with the safegards specified in those laws, don't take it up with Bush. Take it up with Congress.

Ticomaya wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Your failed attempt at snark aside, ...

What do you mean, "failed"?

Generally this means 'your attempt did not succeed.'

Though I'm sure you disagree, you have proven to be a very poor judge of humor so I'm not really concerned with your assessment.

I would much rather see an answer as to who provides oversight as to which documents actaully are national security-related foreign intelligence - in Domestic mail, mind you - and which are not; or an admission that this is basically a blank check for the exec. branch to spy on American citizens mail.

Cycloptichorn

But wait - doesn't the law specify that FISA judges decide this?

If that's the case, how can Bush be said to be doing anything but attempting to bypass the law by claiming he doesn't need a warrant to do this?

Strange goings on here. [..] Nimh congratulates himeslf for his numerous and scathing (but, sadly, unremembered) criticisms of Michael Moore. And more....

Saying Michael Moore stands for the Democratic Party is as silly as saying Rush Limbaugh stands for the Republican Party. They make a lot of noise, they're much more media-visible than any governor or senator, they keep the fire stoked and build some populist pressure from the Believers. They shape the rhetorics those Believers speak in. But they're outside the party, and in the end are no contenders compared to the actual party policymakers and eventual front men, some of whom we've probably hardly even heard of yet.


Then again, I wouldnt mind if mainstream Republicans here and elsewhere spoke up about Limbaugh's or Coulter's hateful bile a little more often. Just like I wouldnt mind a little more critical reflection on Michael Moore's agitprop on the left side either. (Not that I equate them - Moore is just as biased as Coulter, but he's much more sophisticated in his craft. Dont know if thats a good or a bad thing tho, in the end.)

Hell, I'd sign up with different usernames just to guarantee that Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and Michael Moore get their deserved votes too.

Then again, I wouldnt mind if mainstream Republicans here and elsewhere spoke up about Limbaugh's or Coulter's hateful bile a little more often. Just like I wouldnt mind a little more critical reflection on Michael Moore's agitprop on the left side either. (Not that I equate them - Moore is just as biased as Coulter, but he's much more sophisticated in his craft. Dont know if thats a good or a bad thing tho, in the end.)

Ehm, I think the point wasnt that he had no right living in a nice NYC apartment - but that if he does, he shouldnt still list his home town as Flint, like Moore apparently did last year writing a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times. Thats brought up as an example of dishonesty.

As I said: "re Michael Moore. I thought it was masterfully made propaganda - and as such, at least as despicable as any of the far more lazy ****-slinging that Coulter does."

Yep, sounds like a pretty good summary of Fahrenheit 9/11. And its true of course - if thats the best the Left can come up with, we are indeed in trouble

Thats the risk of bending the truth too much for your propaganda - you can end up discrediting your own case. The writers here put it as almost a tragic case: by going overboard in riddling his movie with innuendo, Moore himself spoils what otherwise would be a great movie.

I have only seen Fahrenheit 9/11, so thats what I'm going on re Michael Moore. I thought it was masterfully made propaganda - and as such, at least as despicable as any of the far more lazy ****-slinging that Coulter does.

In short - you write:

Quote:
She foments hatred and divisiveness. Accuracy in data or in analogy are without importance. .. Logical fallacies fill her work and her speech.


Right. Thats where the equivalency with Moore is, because the exact same things - especially re the latter two points - hold for his F 9/11 too.

A communist, however, Okie, he is not - not by a long shot. To call people like Moore communists is to trivialise the ideological behemoth that Soviet communism foisted on the 20th century. "Communist" should not just be used as synonym for "something I really dont like".

Michael Moore is the equivalent of Coulter. I dont like him, much as I should hope you dont like her, but judging the Democratic Party on Moore is like judging the Republican Party on Coulter. Outside entertainment.

Except by one reference, he doesn't apply terms like "****-slinging" that he applies to Coulter

I was against the Iraq war myself. But the way Moore made his case right there was morally bankrupt. As in most of the movie.

Bottom line, IMNSHO: F9/11 was a grating exercise in obfuscating the utter flakiness of its underlying arguments by provoking every reaction it could, jerking your tears, triggering your outrage, perplexing you with scenes of hilarious insult or perplexed disbelief. It was agitprop straight from the mid-twentieth century tradition and scary enough if only because of that - except that there was no there, there. Just a lotta noise.

I thought Fahrenheit, however emotionally effective as sheer propaganda art, was intellectually a disgrace of dishonesty. And I thought the scenes with the soldiers in Iraq ("burn! burn! let the motherfuccers burn!") were especially disgraceful. My (American) then-gf burst out in tears and ran off, upset into incoherence, and it's not that war is not ugly, or that I dont want to know about it, but this was a set-up, Moore had tendentiously staged and montaged his images into maximum demonstrative ugliness. It was all about political effect, none about trying to get the facts straight, or the reality with its many contradictions out. Moore is all about shouting.

What made him look truly weaselly were his crocodile tears in other parts of the movie, where he was all indignant about the fate of the poor common folk snared into the army when the Senators' kids got off (an argument for which he apparently had to tweak the numbers a bit in the first place). How he interviewed this mother of a soldier with full sympathising "yes, of course's" - when he was damn well only gonna montage images of people just like her son to make 'em seem maxiumum evil/ugly if that served to make his point there.

Well, I am very glad to learn that you are alive and well Nimh, and also not at all sensitive to allegations that the chief impressions you have left on your many admirers here do not include your visceral opposition to Michael Moore.

And yet people still quote him. Curious .... Are these people rutting monkeys?

If you can show me a bunch of conservatives on A2K and outside who have grappled with Coulter in the same way, I might regain some respect for today's US conservatism.

6/6/2006
ANN COULTER: CONSERVATIVE LOUT
CATEGORY: Politics, Ethics

I have pretty much ignored Ann Coulter for the last year or so. As her celebrity has grown - actually since she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine - she has had to make ever more outrageous and off the wall statements in order to maintain her position as a "controversial" commentator. This has often placed her at odds with many of us who, while generally in agreement with much of her critique of American liberalism, nevertheless recoil in horror and disgust at her rhetoric.

She has descended into a black hole of necessity from which there is no escape; where she is forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives usually by going beyond the bounds of decency and proper public discourse in order to make a point that could have been made without resorting to the kind of hurtful, hateful, personal attacks that have become a hallmark of her war with liberals.

Make no mistake. Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout what any conservative with an ounce of integrity and intellectual honesty should be able to see as unacceptable. To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse. And for such a gifted wordsmith, Coulter does not have the excuse of ignorance.

I have been told not to take what she says so seriously, that this is her "shtick." I, like the Queen of England, am not amused. Neither I think, are the 9/11 widows who are using their position as victims of that tragedy to try and influence the public debate over what to do about the War on Terror and domestic security. We may violently disagree with their politics. We may scorn their portrayal by liberals as unbiased observers with some kind of moral authority that immunizes them from criticism. But as Coulter proved on the Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer, this kind of rhetoric is uncalled for and wildly inaccurate to boot:

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:

COULTER: "These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process."

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much."

There's more but I won't pollute my site by republishing it. Crooks and Liars has the video.

There are ways to criticize the widows without saying something so wrong, so hurtful. And what do you think their children would think if they heard Coulter's remarks? Are they to be in the line of Coulter's wildly off target fire as well?

This rhetoric is not designed to advance debate or even make any kind of a salient point about the political activism of grief stricken parents like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-Bush September 11 widows. The remarks were designed to hurt other people's feelings in a deeply personal and entirely inappropriate way. Can you imagine some liberal commentator making similar remarks about Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon and who is fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left? We would be all over that worthy and deservedly so.

The anti-Bush 9/11 widows are not immune from criticism for their political positions nor even for the tactics they use to advance those positions. But to say that they are "enjoying" their status as widows is so far beyond the pale that anyone who makes such a statement deserves the most severe censure possible. And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of "Spokesman" for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn't speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.

Coulter owes those women an apology. Failure to give it only reveals her to be a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction.

UPDATE

Confederate Yankee takes Coulter's message - that grief does not bestow absolute moral authority - without mentioning her brutalization of the widows.

His point is well taken but he seems to be able to make an even stronger case than Coulter without resorting to the degradation of grief stricken widows.

UPDATE 6/7

It appears that one lefty blog in particular (although I've seen similar sentiments expressed elsewhere on the left) believes that I and other conservatives are trying to "distance ourselves" from Coulter's idiocies.

An interesting concept, that. The fact that most responsible conservatives who see fit to dignify Coulter's outrageousness in the past year or so by commenting on her over-the-top remarks end up strongly criticizing her, I wonder how much more "distance" the left wants us to maintain.

But my commenter SSheil put it nicely:

I think this post (and several others relating to the same topic) is illustrative of what I see is generally the largest difference between blogs on the right and left. As with Rick's blog, most blogs on the right are not shy of taking our leaders, writers and speakers who represent the Right to task when they individually or collectively "step on their d*cks."

When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy's incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?

I think I hear crickets chirping…

georgeob1 wrote:

Well, I am very glad to learn that you are alive and well Nimh, and also not at all sensitive to allegations that the chief impressions you have left on your many admirers here do not include your visceral opposition to Michael Moore.

Touche...

He probably has more pressing things to do like listen to your phone calls...

If you can show me a bunch of conservatives on A2K and outside who have grappled with Coulter in the same way, I might regain some respect for today's US conservatism.

Nimh writes

I did not see the additional posts and I honestly did think I had looked at them all. But okay, if it will make you happy, I'll give you the other 5%.

.

However, I do not agree (with Thomas) that her opposite number on the left is Noam Chomsky. Michael Moore, I'll accept, but not Chomsky. He is a malevolent figure, not at all comic or even redeemably vulgar as are the others.

Okay, she shouldn't have called Gore a "total fag." There.