Remember that devastating undercover investigation by a Republican pimp daddy and his teabaggin’ ho that proved Acorn stole the election for Obama or some such nonsense? Well it turns out, to nobody’s surprise I’m sure, that it was much ado about nothing.
ACORN employees caught in those undercover videos advising a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to break the law acted unprofessionally and inappropriately, but did nothing illegal, an independent report has found.
But here’s the best part.
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms. Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
So once again the right whingers manufactured a scandal and peddled it to the gullible media only to have it ultimately torn apart on the rocky shoals of reality. Oh well, on to Climategate.
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms. Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
So once again the right whingers manufactured a scandal and peddled it to the gullible media only to have it ultimately torn apart on the rocky shoals of reality.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but doesn't that also make the originally-released videos fraudulent? One more parallel to Climategate, as the real illegality is on the side of the wingnuts.
Jurist, What is it about people like you that forces you to denigrate your ideological opponents by labeling them with stupid, childish names like "wingnuts"??? How does that advance the conversation…or convince anyone, other than the shrinking choir you're preaching to, of the veracity of your opinions?
He's simply being truthful, Art. They are wingnuts. As far as advancing the conversation goes, why do you believe the foolish notion that these wingnuts listen to a word we say when it's more than clear they don't?
Robert, The reason I disappeared from the comments section of My Blahg and everywhere else online was because I was worn down and exhausted by the vitriol and knee-jerk name-calling uttered by the "Hey! Look At Me! Ain't I Clever?!?" contributors to blahgdom. (from all corners of our divided on-line citizenry - me included)
Don't you think its time to change our methods and at least try to reach the least reactionary of our opponents by removing the insults and put-downs from our conversations? Again…on both sides - because what we're doing isn't getting us any closer to forging a broad-based cooperative understanding capable of rescuing us from what looks to be a future filled with nothing but thug-run darkness?
Stay disappeared. If what brings you back is a self-righteous diatribe against the "the vitriol and knee-jerk name-calling uttered by the "Hey! Look At Me! Ain't I Clever?!?" contributors to blahgdom" motivated by the word "wingnut," you're just too silly and fragile to take seriously.
Why don't you try to converse with Deno about global warming, Art, and get back to me on how that worked out for you.
Ti, I'm sure you'll be happy to hear me admit you're the primary reason I no longer post regularly here or anywhere else. The reasons for my decision can be clearly seen in your post above, filled as it is with irrational fear and poisonous loathing directed at me when neither needed be present.
Being the individual primarily responsible for turning me off the comments sections of political blogs is something not one of the dangerously disturbed, delusional defenders of fascism or racism was able to do to me over a 6 year period of sometimes dangerously threatening and vituperative ad Hominem assaults. But you finally managed to do the trick - you got me to shut up and pack up my keyboard.
I'm sure you'll be preening over that information with your next drawn breath because that's something you do with regularity – preen, I mean. And I'm doubly sure many of those truly damned individuals who have wished me dead or damaged in the past will be lining up to pat you on the back for the good thing you've done, even if only in the privacy of their own thoughts because, like you, they’re incapable of admitting anyone else could be responsible for a better thought or action than they – even if its only “better” in the sense that it is even more depraved than their actions or thoughts have been up until now.
My attitudes have profoundly changed in the 6 or so years I've been mucking about on political blogs online. And I've finally realized I'm no longer interested in dealing with you and anyone else's petty psychodramas as the price I'm forced to pay for elucidation.
You won whatever peculiar war you're still waging with me months ago when I gave up playing by your junk yard dog rules and attempted to be reasonable and civil again in my dealings with my ideological opponents. So Hoorah for TEEGEE! You Won! You WON! You just haven’t lifted your face out of the figuratively stinking muckery that succors your thinking long enough to realize it yet, is all.
I originally approached the internet as an alternative source of information to the regular, long-trusted channels of information that were starting to morally disintegrate disappointing me with their blatant distortions of the public record and only then belatedly discovered the internet was, (at least in the corners I was rooting through), a place made up primarily of the opinions of people locked out of any position of influence by their accidents of birth, genetics or education. (I’m not describing our blog hosts for the most part, btw, but primarily we, their readers and commenters) And it has only been recently that I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that regular commenters, (and that includes years of both you and me online), no matter what our political or philosophical affiliations, are in almost all cases either condescendingly bored or boorish in our relations with others and use our time online as a means of reaffirming our own existence in a world that cares little or nothing for us OR our opinions. In other words, the political blog internet is just another loosely-organized religion with its own rules of engagement and articles of faith that I cannot support and that you, judging by your predisposition to religion, have taken to like a duck to water because it’s a natural extension of your already-delusional and inflexible mindset.
Of course, being the Contrarian I am, I categorically reject all attachments to religion, knowing as I do, the falsifiables religions treat as fact behind the walls their faiths erect around imagination and the natural human's urge to learn unconditionally if critically.
So in the words of the street, Ti –
“Keep beatin’ yer meat.” You and Dino both.
I’m outta here and back to the productive things I’ve been neglecting for too many years. But don’t you worry your pointy little head – I promise to come back and read whatever vile nonsense you choose to respond to me with because I know you need to know I’ve read what you consider your so-smart repartee for you to be provided with your own particular brand of on-line absolution.
You need to find real love. But you probably know that and that’s why you’re so unnecessarily cruel, isn’t it? Because you know you’re never going to find it here…or anywhere else if you don’t smarten up soon.
See ya, kid.
And Robert – it is as you say – why would I engage Dino? I can’t change his opinion. If the mountain of facts available that contradict his confusing and contradictory positions on climate change haven’t been able to sway him a hair’s breadth, how will I, stuck as I am at the other end of a computer connection? Especially if I insult him for thinking those thoughts.
Besides, it wasn’t the Dino’s I was referring to in my earlier post. The Dino’s, like the Ti’s, are unreachable. But that doesn’t naturally lead me to think the great majority of people who don’t share my opinions are as intransigent and intractable as those two are. Nor should it.
Most people want to get along and are willing to make adjustments to their thinking if it means peace and progress will be the result of their cooperation.
And so it was to those people – the vast majority of our citizens who are not extreme to whom I was referring in my earlier post. Because they can be convinced, (if you don’t get their backs up unnecessarily by calling them silly, unhelpful names because they’ve been convinced by someone they’ve been trained to respect to think thoughts different than yours), that just maybe, you may have a point.
I’m only sayin’, “Let’s play nice with the other kids”. Unless, of course, you’re not really interested in getting things done and you’d rather prance and preen than create the kind of groundswell of support we need to get the things we need to get done to change our world.
Ultimately, that’s the choice we have to make, isn’t it? We can either agree to work together, despite our disagreements, or engage each other in a perpetual war that only benefits those who want our energies wasted on petty, personal squabbles rather than focused on cooperating on the serious issues that affect our children’s children’s future.
That’s the choice we all get to make.
I’ve made mine.
tee gee and Robert, I waited until this comments thread had passed into blog oblivion before adding this last passage in the hope your egos are large enough and your self confidence low enough to draw you back for another more private look at what will be, as always, publicly considered by the both of you as unworthy of honest rebuttal.
(Those of you who are irreparably damaged in the reading comprehension department but who unfortunately clicked on these comments despite their linguistic and intellectual frailties may want to ignore the preceding paragraph.)
My following comments aren’t designed for publication as much as they represent a personal catharsis – a desire to stand up and be counted - a desire to see if either of you is willing to stand up for what you believe in beyond more than your usual bluster and Twitter-sized snippets of hastily and carelessly assembled thoughts you appear up until now to consider adequate to dispel any assault on your integrity.
Why do I bother? Well… I'm forced to spell it out because of my own ingrained desire/need for clarity and because you have refused to engage me in any substantive and legitimate exchange of ideas on this thread up until now. "Ignore him - let's hope he goes away" seems to be the order of the day for the two of you when presented with arguments you can’t legitimately rebut.
…Or is the explanation for your inability to engage me simply that you’re just too lazy…?
Why would that be, I wonder? My earlier comments were obviously the well reasoned observations of an intelligent, informed person who at times disagrees with you, sometimes passionately. In this thread my comments challenged some of both your basic philosophical tenets at the same time they gently derided some of your delusions…I would have thought you would have been eager to clarify your positions if for no other reason than to paint yourselves in a better light than the light I left you running away from…
…I wonder…
Is it easier or more exciting to engage in a brouhaha with a person as unreceptive and inflexible as Dino than it is to engage in a conversation with someone as capable of nimbly expressing themselves clearly and imaginatively as I am?
Or…
…do you get more whoopee!!!/gotcha!!! points per keystroke bouncing your disdain off the hard outer shells of the Dino's of the world rather than the flexible, more reasonable attitudes I represent?
You specifically, teegee, remind me of the latest versions of the Americans' and Israelis' political and warmongering intelligentsia, or rather, of their legions of willing and eager indentured servants engaged in the putrescent political manipulations required to protect their criminal bosses’ flanks everywhere throughout our corrupted and malignly murderous western world.
Like them you appear only go to battle against only those who are incapable of defending themselves.
In a manner of speaking you only slap around those prisoners whose hands are already cuffed behind their backs. You only kick pregnant women in the stomach while pointing guns at the heads of their terrified children. You only roust sleeping students in the middle of the night to shoot them dead. You bomb innocent people from miles up in the air without a whisper of warning…
I’ve concluded your affinity for the methods of the dissembling harbingers of inglorious violence has to be partly because you appear to share many of the same philosophical/moral/immoral underpinnings with them, these authors of the horrific, recorded-as-history events I’ve listed above.
"We were arrogant once, loud and silly and funny and crazy as hell, and we were Americans. Now we're timid and pissy and pissed off, and I don't recognize, much less like, what we've become."
From a passage from a deeply flawed commentary by Ted Rall, on Information Clearing House, where the comments on his original article are certainly more brutally informative than his original:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2...
"The Fear Decade - Since 9/11, We've Embraced Our Inner Coward" By Ted Rall
So skulk away, boyz, as usual…or engage me. Fairly and equitably.
Show us all the mettle you’re made of,
…Speaking for myself, I'm rapt…and waiting.