Boston.com / News / Nation / Veteran retracts criticism of Kerry
This is interesting….The Vetran who signed the affidivat, accusing Kerry of not deserving his Silver Star, has retracted his statement, saying it was the wrong thing for him to do.
I wonder if Kerry can sue this group for libel?
You know what I HATE? Fox news. I hate they way they distort the news and spread misinformation. And it makes me mad that people watch Fox news (or Faux news, as the bloggers at MR call it) and think they are getting real news. I especially can’t stand O’Rielly. He really puts the misinformation out there. Even when his guests try to tell him otherwise, he still puts his spin on the truth.
Let’s take the 9/11 commission report as an example. If you’ve been following some of the threads on this blog, there was a gentleman who gave me some quotes from the 9/11 comission report that were supposed to prove a point that there was a connection between Bin Laden and Saddam. However, just reading the next paragraph on the same page that he quotes from tells us that there is no real evidence of this connection. I found this very interesting. If he got into the commission report to read it and give me the quotes, did he even take the time to read the next paragraph? That’s when I realized that, perhaps, these were quotes taken from some “talking points” from somebody else. I had a feeling Fox News was the culprit. I went to Fox news and read a few transcripts from the O’reilly Fa
ctor. Sure enough, O’Reilly is thowing out these quotes to make his point.
It is stuff like this that makes liberals believe that conservatives don’t think for themselves. Not that I’m accusing any one of that. But you really have to wonder, don’t you? I accused this person of lying, and I was wrong. It’s actually the media outlet, Fox News that lies to these people. And Mandrake is right, that is much more insidious.
Now, to be fair, I don’t know if this gentleman even watches Fox news. But it is painfully obvious that he didn’t read the 9/11 commission report. If your going to quote something, at least read the actual document being quoted for yourself. Don’t take somebody elses word that the document says what it does.
Incidentally, you can get the report for free here.
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we, they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
-George W. Bush
Little Freudian slip there W? I don’t know, I posted on Daffodil Lane that the “fool me” Bushism is my fave but this one might be a pretty close second.
As I mentioned in another post, I am reading the 9/11 commission report. I have only read the first chapter so far (well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve read little bits and pieces from other sections, too). It tells what actually happened on the flights – the hijacking of them. I wanted to post something about flight 93. Reading the section about what happened on that flight especially moved me. The passengers were, are, true heroes in every sense of the word. What they did was utterly Amazing. America owes them a debt of gratitude. Seriously. I want to post an especially moving section. Please read below, but you might want to grab some tissues first:
(this is on page 13)
“At 9:57, the passenger assault began. Several passengers had terminated phone calls with loved ones in order to join the revolt. One of the callers ended her message as follows ‘Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.’ The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door. Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din. . . In response, Jarrah immediately began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance. At 9:58:57 Jarrah told another hijacker in the cockpit to block the door. Jarrah continued to roll the airplane sharply left and right, but the assault continued. . . The recorder captured the sounds of loud thumps, crashes, shouts, and breaking glasses and plates. . . Jarrah asked ‘is that it? Shall we finish it off?’ A hijaker responded ‘No, Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.’ The sounds of fighting continued outside the cockpit. Again Jarrah pitched the nose of the aircraft up and down. . . a passenger in the background said, ‘In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!’ . . . a passenger yelled ‘Roll it.’ Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers at about 10:01:00 and said, ‘Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!’ he then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, ‘is that it? I mean shall we put it down?’ to which the other replied ‘Yes, put it in, and pull it down.’ The passengers continued thier assault. . . a hijacker said, ‘Pull it down! Pull it down!’. The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds away from overcoming them. . . . With the sounds of the passenger counter-attack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville. . . Jarrah’s objective was to crash his airliner into symbols of the American Republic, the Capitol or the White House. He was defeated by the alterted unarmed passengers of United 93. “
Chilling. The last two sentences just blow me away. I hadn’t known that they were planning on crashing into the Capitol or the White house before I read this.
I had an interesting experience yesterday. It’s almost as if I entered an alternate universe.
I was surfing around the net, I can’t even remember what I was originally looking for, and in my searching I stumbled upon a blog called Daffodil lane. It is published by a married couple and, like me, they post personal kinds of items. They have a baby so they post baby pictures; Dianne, the wife is logging her weight watchers progress, things like that. They are also liberals, and, like me, they post articles that they find interesting as they come across them and then post thier commentary.
I read the latest post on this site (latest as of Sunday night). It was posted by Dianne and about John Kerry‘s speech at the DNC. She mentioned something to the effect of “I can’t wait until Kerry is in office and we get back to a country that is innovative and is not a theocracy.” (not an exact quote. I’m paraphrasing here). I read this thinking, “Amen, sister!” I noticed that there were some comments on this entry so I clicked the link to view the comments. One of them was from someone who asked why she thinks Bush hates science and why she thinks we are living in a Theocracy? Her husband (ManDrake) posted an answer that referred to an article and then there was another comment written by a conservative that was too vague to really comprehend clearly (It had something to do with the actions of past democrats).
I read these posts and thought it was strange that these two conservatives were, in a way, jumping down her throat. I mean, this site is, in a nutshell, someone’s homepage. They are liberals and are very passionate about what they believe in so they post liberal articles. I can relate to that. I found it extremely odd that these conservatives were, in my view, kind of harrassing her. I shut my computer off and went and watched the movie that my hubby had put on. However, I couldn’t pay attention to the movie because I was brewing on this. I started to get more and more angry. I began to come to the conclusion that these conservatives were bullies and were ganging up on this poor woman. I mean It started to make me mad so I got up, turned my computer back on, and Googled the site. I don’t know howI remembered the name of it, but it came right to me, and I was there in a flash.
I logged back on the site and posted a reply to the original argument about “why we are living in a theocracy.” I think I gave a solid answer. I defined the word from my dictionary and presented some examples in which I think backed up my argument (note: my print dictionary defines a theocracy as a head of government who claims to lead by direction of God) : 1. Bush admits he was called by God to invade Iraq, 2. Bush makes decisions based on his Christian idealogy, rather than what is good for all people of America. I.e.: cutting funding for embryonic stem cell research, pushing a constitutional amendment that bans gay marraige, passing a law that makes late term abortion illegal.
I came back later on in the day and, boy did I ever jump into a fishtank of killers. That site was swarming with neo-cons. I was kind of apalled! Why were all of these neo-conservatives trolling around on this couple’s site? The original conservative offered up a red herring. He focused on stem cell research and tried to bring in the whole “right to life” issue. I answered him back, telling him to stick to the point. However, the damage had already been done. That red herring attracted the barracudas. When I went back later on in the day they were swarming around that tasty stem cell research morsel. One person had the audacity to say “so by your logic, the killing of innocent lives is best for all Americans?” Huh?!? Where did that come from? Now we are talking about the killing of innocent lives? Again, I tried to get back to the point, (but not before pointing out the utter fallacy of bringing in the “killing of innocent lives” issue). Unfortunately, though, I nipped at the bait. I quoted a National Institute of Health faq that mentioned embryonic stem cells are preferable to Adult stem cells. That would make them see the light, right? I mean the government themselves even admit they would rather use embryonic stem cells for research. They should at least see that all kinds of stem cells should be studied. Surely they must understand that scientists should be free to conduct research without being hindered by the government?!?
Boy was that a huge mistake. When I went back things began to get worse. There were more of ’em swarming around that damn stem cell morsel. We had completely entered the world of ideology, where nothing can be argued. One of those pesky barracudas tried to get me by dismissing my NIH quote and giving me, instead, an article from a website in which I could find “lots of good articles about how there are limitations to using embroynic stem cells”. I checked out this site and, being a good librarian, tried to figure out who the publishers of the site were. “Was this good information?” I asked myself. I couldn’t find out. I couldn’t even find an “about us” link anywhere on the page. I concluded (by the url) that this was a “right to life” website putting out material that supports thier agenda. Nope, not good information. It was clear that these people were in desperate need of basic crtical thinking skills (i.e. how to formulate an argument), AND information literacy skills (How to determine what is good and bad information on the web).
This brings me to my observations: I think it is almost next to impossible to have a civil, real argument with one of these neo conservatives. They are so completely blinded by thier idealogy. They hold thier beliefs to be fact, like that “killing innocent lives” guy. He actually believes that innocent lives are being killed when one studies embryonic stem cells. Any person who is not steeped in this mentality knows this to be false. I mean, I’m so used to being around people who think this is false that I was kind of taken aback by the statement. The fact is that innocent lives are not killed by studying embryonic stem cells. It has never been proven scientifically that embryonic stem cells are “innocent life”. Like believing Jesus rose from the dead; it can never be proven because it is a belief.
Secondly, it is fruitless to argue with these people because thier intentions are not pure. In other words, it appeared to me that sole purpose of these people, like barracudas, was to kill. They don’t care what you have to say. The don’t even bother listening to what you have to say. They take a statement you make, twist it so far out of context and change the subject. They are devious. One guy even lied to make a point, which I find abhorrent. They have been directed (unconciously?) to go out into the world and get on liberals’ nerves. Wear a t-shirt that bugs a liberal. Go call in liberal talk-radio shows and raise some hell. Seek out liberal blogs and start a fight. And don’t stop until you have beaten them down with fallacious arguments, lies, and false analagies. I hate to say this but Maybe Ann Coulter is right: “Political discourse in this country has become insufferable.” Pretty ironic that the queen purveyor of insufferable political discourse is the one who made this statement isn’t it? (but that’s a whole other blog post)
I’m not sure what to make of this experience. And I am still bothered by all of these barracudas hovering around this liberal couple’s site. It was weird. I wonder if other liberal bloggers are experiencing the same thing?
