Facts Are Malleable

“<<CLICK>>”

“Ummm Tilt, can you give us a going away song before we click our last click?”

“Ummm... Tilt?

What did you expect from " the environmental and education governor of Texas"?”

“Spin, spin, spin. That's all these jerkies do. But it seems more grave when you're spinning for a war...”

“I think he forgot that he was the "education" president. He wants to educate Sadaam Hussein, doesn't he?”

“Sure, Lyndy! It took me a couple of minutes to hunt it down, but here it is....


Oh, one last click,
Give me one last click,
It never felt like this,
No, never felt like this,
You know I need your love.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Oh, give me one last click!

Oh, one more time,
Oh, baby, one more time,
It really is sublime,
Oh honey, so sublime!
You know I need your love.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Oh, give me one last click,

Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aby-y-y, give me one last click!
Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aby-y-y, give me one last click!

Oh, one last click,
Give me one last click,
It never felt like this,
No, never felt like this,
You know I need your love.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Oh, give me one last click!

One last click, one last click,
Oh, give me one last click!
One last click, one last click,
Oh, give me one last click!


not "Conrad Birdie"
not Jesse Pearson
not Bye Bye Birdie (1963)



Me? Degrade my own thread? Perish the thought.”

“I've got your new trail name right here, Mr. Kissit!”

“I guess it all depends on what your definition of is, is.”

“Alrighty Tilt, I clicked on it, but all it took me to was a Washington Post survey. What are you all talking about, Educator at Univ of Texas?”

“...and facts are sectile too.”

“I think the Washington Post makes you answer a few questions to let you view their site, LyndyS. Try cutting and pasting the link to be sure:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61903-2002Oct21.html”

“Okay, thanks Violin.”

“Click!!!!!!


8\”

“X”

“Thanks for the article, Violin.
How many people think that Bush would say anything to get us into a war with Iraq?”

“me!”

“I wonder who is going to administer the sale of all that oil after we have taken over Iraq? Hmmmmm, now let me think.....”

“Stop your whining. You wanted Bush to go through the UN and he did that. Let's face it, you guys are out of step with the rest of the country as evidenced by the Tuesday elections.”

“But Savage, that's irrelevant. They're liberal and therefore more intelligent than the rest of us lowlife, plebian slobs, so they must be right...right?”

“Click on the link in the first post in the tread.

Read the article... if you dare, LOL

That's all.”

“Which Paragraphs include facts and supporting documentation?”

“Oh yeah. I left out 'mouth-breathing'.
Sorry.”

“i never been plebian before...coooool


TILT'S A LIBERAL!


where is barbara striesand? is she worried about the women that are publicly beheaded for prostitution. does she care when women are beaten and executed in the street, with their children and other women forced to watch ? where is barbara? do you care about them violin? how bout you dan? anybody? is peace worth that? is being nice so important that umspeakable brutality can be overlooked? are you heartless? is france's opinion of you more important than the women being slaughtered? would you trust a man that can do this to his citizens over your president?



wow, i'm impressed. ya'll really ARE inlightened....”

“I know all the liberals are not in bed yet. Can someone please help me out?

Which Paragraphs include facts and supporting documentation?"
bacpac
08:38:18 PM
11/08/02”

“even if it's true bacpac, big deal. anybody can make a mistake. i bet even ole violin's not perfect.”

“Bacpac, you embicile! Can't you see that these omniscient illuminati are privy to facts which are occluded to the rest of us. How dare you question their veracity!
But, I'll help you out...







which way didja come in?”

“gimme a beer fatherGEE!”

“You got it, strat.
Oh, damn, I'm out! How's 'bout a used beer???”

“DOH!”

“OK, I'll go to the store...”

“here's a 10 spot for ya”

“Violin is a purposeful @ss.

The scare tactics of the left are transparent.”

“Thanks, strat...back in a flash.

Not so transparent, bacpac. Lots of folks buy into their bull$hit...and the scaremongering left-wing politicians, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, hawk it.

And take it easy on The Fiddler, he's just a joke...”

“ha ha”

“Hmmmm...was that your sarcastic font?

Here ya go, strat. Have a Harp Lager!”

“GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG

BELLLLLLLLLLLLCH!




AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“Whew!!! Damn, son, what did you have for supper???”

“BBQ!”

“BBQ'd what? Buzzard???
Have some breath mints, fer chrissakes...”

“(what a couple of thread degenerators we are...)”

“Why don't you guys go out and kill something? You'll feel better.”

“You go ahead, maybe it'll make YOU feel better...I feel pretty good already...”

“tilt, i just squished a spider on my front porch....happy?”

“...'nightall...”

“me too, lata fatherG”

“And the original article remains unread?



Let's just pretend it isn't there! None of this ever happened! Plausible deniability reigns supreme.

But Look! Here it is again! Check it out.

What the heck. I'll just paste it.



For Bush, Facts Are Malleable
Presidential Tradition Of Embroidering Key Assertions Continues

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 22, 2002; Page A01


President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States."

Last month, asked if there were new and conclusive evidence of Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Iraqis were "six months away from developing a weapon." And last week, the president said objections by a labor union to having customs officials wear radiation detectors has the potential to delay the policy "for a long period of time."

All three assertions were powerful arguments for the actions Bush sought. And all three statements were dubious, if not wrong. Further information revealed that the aircraft lack the range to reach the United States; there was no such report by the IAEA; and the customs dispute over the detectors was resolved long ago.

As Bush leads the nation toward a confrontation with Iraq and his party into battle in midterm elections, his rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy in recent weeks. Statements on subjects ranging from the economy to Iraq suggest that a president who won election underscoring Al Gore's knack for distortions and exaggerations has been guilty of a few himself.

Presidential embroidery is, of course, a hoary tradition. Ronald Reagan was known for his apocryphal story about liberating a concentration camp. Bill Clinton fibbed famously and under oath about his personal indiscretions to keep a step ahead of Whitewater prosecutors. Richard M. Nixon had his Watergate denials, and Lyndon B. Johnson was often accused of stretching the truth to put the best face on the Vietnam War. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, too, played with the truth during the Gary Powers and Bay of Pigs episodes.

"Everybody makes mistakes when they open their mouths and we forgive them," Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess said. Some of Bush's overstatements appear to be off-the-cuff mistakes. But, Hess said, "what worries me about some of these is they appear to be with foresight. This is about public policy in its grandest sense, about potential wars and who is our enemy, and a president has a special obligation to getting it right."

The White House, while acknowledging that on one occasion the president was "imprecise," said it stands by his words. "The president's statements are well documented and supported by the facts," Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "We reject any allegation to the contrary."

In stop after stop across the country, Bush has cited an impressive statistic in his bid to get Congress to approve terrorism insurance legislation. "There's over $15 billion of construction projects which are on hold, which aren't going forward -- which means there's over 300,000 jobs that would be in place, or soon to be in place, that aren't in place," is how he put it last week in Michigan.

But these are not government estimates. The $15 billion figure comes from the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group that is leading the fight for the legislation and whose members have much to gain. After pleas earlier this year from the White House for "hard evidence" to make its case for terrorism insurance, the roundtable got the information from an unscientific survey of members, who were asked to provide figures with no documentation.

The 300,000 jobs number, the White House said, was supplied by the carpenters' union. But a union official said the White House apparently "extrapolated" the number from a Transportation Department study of federal highway aid -- not private real estate -- that the union had previously cited.

The president has also taken some liberties as he argues for his version of homeland security legislation. He often suggests in stump speeches that the union covering customs workers is blocking the wearing of radiation detectors. "The leadership of that particular group of people said, 'No way; we need to have a collective bargaining session over whether or not our people should be made to wear these devices,' " he said in Michigan last week. "And that could take a long period of time."

The National Treasury Employees Union did indeed argue in January that the radiation devices should be voluntary, and it called for negotiations. But five days later, the Customs Service said it saw no need to negotiate and would begin to implement the policy, which it did. After a subsequent exchange between the union president and Customs Service commissioner, the union wrote in April that it "does not object" to mandatory wearing of the devices.

The Customs Service said the delay had less to do with the dispute than the fact that customs lacks enough devices (about 4,000 are on order). The White House and Customs Service said the dispute was settled in part because Bush had the authority to waive collective bargaining, although he did not exercise it.

On Sept. 7, meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David, Bush told reporters: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

The IAEA did issue a report in 1998, around the time weapons inspectors were denied access to Iraq for the final time, but the report made no such assertion. It declared: "Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material." The report said Iraq had been six to 24 months away from nuclear capability before the 1991 Gulf War.

The White House said that Bush "was imprecise on this" and that the source was U.S. intelligence, not the IAEA.

In the president's Oct. 7 speech to the nation from Cincinnati, he introduced several rationales for taking action against Iraq. Describing contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, Bush cited "one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." He asserted that "we have discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet" of unmanned aircraft and expressed worry about them "targeting the United States."

Bush also stated that in 1998, "information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue." He added, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," an alliance that "could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."

In each of these charges, Bush omitted qualifiers that make the accusations seem less convincing. In the case of the al Qaeda leader receiving medical treatment, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that the terrorist, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was no longer in Iraq and that there was no hard evidence Hussein's government knew he was there or had contact with him. On the matter of the aircraft, a CIA report this month suggested that the fleet was more of an "experiment" and "attempt" and labeled it a "serious threat to Iraq's neighbors and to international military forces in the region" -- but said nothing about it having sufficient range to threaten the United States.

Bush's statement about the Iraqi nuclear defector, implying such information was current in 1998, was a reference to Khidhir Hamza. But Hamza, though he spoke publicly about his information in 1998, retired from Iraq's nuclear program in 1991, fled to the Iraqi north in 1994 and left the country in 1995. Finally, Bush's statement that Iraq could attack "on any given day" with terrorist groups was at odds with congressional testimony by the CIA. The testimony, declassified after Bush's speech, rated the possibility as "low" that Hussein would initiate a chemical or biological weapons attack against the United States but might take the "extreme step" of assisting terrorists if provoked by a U.S. attack.

White House spokesmen said in response that it was "unrealistic" to assume Iraqi authorities did not know of Zarqawi's presence and that Iraq's unmanned aircraft could be launched from ships or trucks outside Iraq.

Some of the disputed Bush assertions are matters of perspective.

Bush often says, as he did Friday in Missouri, that "because of a quirk in the rules in the United States Senate, after a 10-year period, the tax-relief plan we passed goes away." There is a Senate rule that required a 60-vote majority for the tax cut, but the decision to let the cuts expire was based on pragmatic considerations. Proponents of the cut from the House and Senate -- both under GOP control at the time -- decided to have the tax cut expire after nine years to keep its price tag within the $1.35 trillion over 10 years that had been agreed between lawmakers and Bush.

Other times, the president's assertions simply outpace the facts. In New Hampshire earlier this month, he said his education legislation made "the biggest increase in education spending in a long, long time."

In fact, the 15.8 percent increase in Department of Education discretionary spending for fiscal year 2002 (the figures the White House supplied when asked about Bush's statement) was below the 18.5 percent increase under Clinton the previous year -- and Bush had wanted a much smaller increase than Congress approved. Earlier this month, Republican moderates complained to Bush's budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., that the administration was not spending the full amount for education that Congress approved. Daniels said it was "nothing uncommon" and decried the "explosively larger education bill."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company”

“Tilt, I can't really believe this, but I gotta go with Bacpac on this one. That story sound really incredible, quite possibly slanted. But I have no way of knowing if it's true, full of innuendo, yellow journalism, McCarthisms or what. I see NO documentation from those opposing Bush's side of view, while the article is repleat with references from Bush, relying on reports and studies. It is heresay being quoted by Dana Milbank, quoting an unnamed union official who talked down what the pres has said, WITHOUT GIVING ANY BACKUP. Facts, figures, reports; they all are lacking on the opposing review.

Don't get me wrong, the opposing view may well be right, but using unnamed union officials, without reports, facts and figures.....
Well there just is no credibility...”

“But Uphill, It's in the Washington Post, most assuredly the most objective fishwrap in the nation. Surely (I know, don't call you Shirley) the report is objective and unbiased. We all know that reporters don't put their personal slant on the news. Why, that would be unethical. And then you have the temerity to say that this fine piece of journalism lack credibility? You have a lot of nerve!”

“So, Uncle Tiltie, you like cut-and-past journalism? Well, here's one for ya;

November 8, 2002 9:00 a.m.
The End of An Era
The bankruptcy of the anti-Americanists.

We are witnessing a fascinating period in American history — not the resurgence, as proclaimed, but the decline of an entire culture of dissident leftists. The last year has revealed all their old shibboleths for what they were: lies and half-truths. Examine, for example, some of the positions voiced at recent demonstrations — and decide whether there was any morality or consistency to them other than anti-Americanism?

"No blood for oil" implies that the United States is attacking Iraq to ensure a low price for petroleum — a plot purportedly to allow SUV-driving soccer moms to buzz around at the world's expense. But such a platitude is full of logistical inconsistencies rarely discussed. The argument instead can be made that a fascistic Iraq currently pumps far less than its natural capacity or its national interests would otherwise demand — perhaps as much as a million-barrel shortfall. And such an artificially created dearth helps the price-gouging Russians and the Gulf States by reducing world supplies at the expense of billions well outside the borders of the United States.













A consensual government in Iraq would not distort the market, but would restore its output to be in line with what the people of Iraq would desire. If anything, other oil producers prefer the present contrived and induced shortages. And liberation would allow oil revenue to be shared by the people, not diverted to the palaces, anthrax labs, or Swiss bank accounts of a tribal elite. So a more apt protest slogan should be "No fascism for rigged oil prices" or "Oil for the people who really own it."

The dream of 1960s radicals was supposedly that someday the United States might use its vast cultural influence and military power to be on the "right side of history." That meant — instead of Pavlovian opposition to idealistic socialists and occasional Communists in preference for odious figures like Pinochet, Somoza, or Franco — we would try to topple just those regimes and implant democracies in their place. Few then lectured that the Nicaraguans should be left to handle their own dictators or that we had no right to tell the Spanish what to do with Franco. Instead, support for revolutionary movements was voiced and action demanded.

Well, with the end of the Cold War, those days of hope have at last arrived. Noriega, Milosevic, and Mullah Omar not only were fascistic and bloodthirsty, but they are also all gone thanks to the United States military. Rather than seeing protestors chanting to ignore Saddam Hussein, I would have expected that the refrain would be "Solidarity with the brave Iraqi people in their brave struggles against a fascist mass murderer."

The mantras of the 1960s and 1970s were "coalition governments" and "free elections." The United States was supposed to predicate its support on representation of all spectra of views under democratic auspices, i.e., anything other that what had emerged for a time in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Greece, or Argentina. Such right-wing autocracies were corrupt, authoritarian, and murderous. In other words, like the present Palestinian Authority, they brooked no opposition, lynched or shot dissidents with or without show trials, and embezzled foreign aid. Yet today a democratic Israel — with a vociferous press, an antiwar movement, a plentitude of parties, regular elections, and a civilian-controlled military — is as demonized as Mr. Arafat is praised by Western intellectuals. Do we see protest signs that say "Support the democratic peoples of Israel in their struggle against sexist, homophobic, and fundamentalist reactionaries"?

If I could summarize the antiwar movement's traditional view of the military, it ran something like this: Anyone who came of age during the draft and combat abroad had a constitutional duty not to serve the imperialist war aims of the United States, especially in Vietnam. The military were slandered as innately fascistic and its officers not to be trusted — veterans who were said to have the blood of innocent civilians on their hands. Only the brake of civilians — intellectual and principled — could save us from a dangerous militarism. Or so it went on the campuses.

Now, however, those in their mid and late 50s in government who did not go to Vietnam are slurred as "chicken hawks" in the manner that those same accusers once tarred veterans as "baby killers." That the top brass is wary of going into Iraq is suddenly proof that such military experts, not their civilian overseers, should be heeded as wise and reasonable. Are there petitions, then, that suggest that serving in the ground war in Vietnam between 1965 and 1972 was an act of patriotism, coupled with proclamations that military minds are in general more responsible to gauge the morality of war? If so, the protesters in D.C. should have placards proclaiming, "Listen to our brave generals and rally behind our Vietnam vets." And since dissidents also apparently think that in this war it is safer to be in the fleet than in the path of terrorist bombers, their placards should read: "Chicken-hawks: Leave your sanctuary in the Pentagon and safe high-rises of New York and get into harm's way on a submarine."

After the murderous aftermath of 1975 in Southeast Asia — boat people, summary executions, the piled skulls of the killing fields, reeducation camps, over a million refugees in the United States — the antiwar Left claimed that its efforts were aimed only at stopping the United States from fighting in Asia and that it had been led astray by the phony rhetoric of the Viet Cong. Thus the myth arose that radical dissidents were more pacifist than anti-American. Suspicions that many favored the eventual Communist victory as part of a general hatred of things America were discounted as absurd, if not libelous. But their stance against the present war with fascists has finally caught up to them, and revealed a large number for what they really are: deductive anti-Americanists. There are various conventional explanations for this week's election results; but unmentioned has been the Democrats' failure to condemn loudly and publicly the ravings of the lunatic Left.

The post-9/11 animus from a Norman Mailer (the Twin Towers were like ugly buck teeth), Noam Chomsky (America planned to kill "millions" in Afghanistan), or Michael Moore (there were few Bush voters at the World Trade Center) — followed by gleeful predictions by others of U.S. failure against the Taliban — is now come to logical fruition over the toppling of the odious Saddam Hussein. And what one has to conclude from the present venom is that anti-Americanism is neither logical nor empirical. Indeed, it is a fundamentalist secular religion, not a reasoned stance, one entirely inconsistent and unpredictable in its choice of friends and foes — except for one constant: Whatever America does, it hates.

We are learning that resistance never really entailed opposition to fascism at all, much less the need for intervention to support democracy, but was simply a strange desire to vent displeasure with our own culture. That so many of these ideological teenagers mad at their opulent and indulgent parents are affluent suburbanites suggests the deleterious effects of leisure and wealth; that so many enjoy the appurtenances of nice cars, houses, and travel denotes abject hypocrisy; that so many mindlessly repeat cant and fad reflects the power of belonging to a clique that promises status by being more "sophisticated" and "subtle" than ordinary Americans; that so many demand utopian perfection reminds us that their god Reason is an unforgiving totem; that so many are shrill and angry suggests that they seek global causes to assuage personal unhappiness and anger at a system that has not met their own high demands upon it.

So we have at last arrived at Cloudcuckooland: A hierarchal United States military is more tolerant of liberals in its ranks than liberal universities are of their critics on campus. Republicans support dangerous interventions abroad to remove dictators and free oppressed peoples, as leftist dissidents agitate for hands-off mass murderers and medieval theocrats. A democratic Israel is slandered as imperialistic and fascistic while an authoritarian Palestinian regime is given a pass for theft, murder, and torture. And liberals, women, and homosexuals are saved in Afghanistan thanks to the work of Air Force pilots and special forces, as reactionary fundamentalists and thugs seek to hold onto their autocracy in part by finding solace with anti-American leftists. Who would have ever thought that democratic Iraqis would seek our military's help, while agents of Saddam Hussein would line up to find solidarity with those now marching?

Face it: Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein — not the ghosts of the thousands of their innocent dead — all prefer Ramsey Clark to George Bush. We are seeing nothing less than quite literally the end of an era — witnessed by the intellectual suicide of an entire generation, who in their last gasps are proving they have been not very moral people all along.

Victor Davis Hanson
The National Review”