Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

On Sep 7, 5:54 am, Mark Hickey wrote:
Fred the Red Shirt wrote:



On Sep 6, 4:17 am, Mark Hickey wrote:
Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

...

FWIW I heard John Edwards , in his televised debate with Dick
Cheney, attribute the attacks to Saddam Hussein. It was clearly
a slip of the tongue as he said it immediately after accusing
Cheney of deliberately confusing the two.

Kinda makes you believe in karma, doesn't it?

Other persons have noted Rumsfeld and Condoleesa Rice making
similar slips.

It's hard to believe that they did say something that could be snipped
out of context and "prove the point"...

Yet you had NO trouble believing that Edwards did it....

Sure, but why would the mainstream press jump his bones?
That wouldn't be characteristic.

Do you include FOX in the MSM? They might not have for the
same reasons that others didn't jump on Rumsfeld and Rice,
it would backfire on them when it was made clear what actually
happened.

The problem is, some people hearing that slip, don't realize it
was a slip.

It all depends on how it's presented, and in what context. See the
wikipedia example (quoting half the Cheney comments).

See also:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.f...owse_thread/th...

C'mon... that's the very definition of grasping at straws... an
unidentified sound bite on a political entertainer's show? Besides,
no one has "blown up the World Trade Center" since 1993 or so.

One of the follow-ups noted that is Limbaugh's schtick. I remind
you that Newt Gingrich credited Limbaugh for being a major
contributor
to the success of the Republican Party during the "Contract
with America" campaign.

What's your point? If Kerry would have won (shuuuudder), they would
have said the same about Michael Moore (who's been shown to be a lot
more factually challenged than even Rush).

That is my point.

...

Limbaugh is a constant and coordinated influence.

As is Air America... oh, wait...

Indeed. Perhaps we agree that political entertainers
are unduly influential.

Absolutely. It's a little like alcohol - a little here or there is
good for a laugh or two - a steady diet of it will kill you.

Yes, they are entertainers and so idally should have
virtually NO influence but the reality is very different.

The difference is when Ann Coulter writes something, conservatives all
laugh at some very sardonic political satire. When Michael Moore does
the same thing, he gets an Academy Award for "Best Documentary". It
would be funny if about half the US didn't get the joke.

Ann Coulter wrote an editorial about how those
convicted in the notorious Central Park 'wilding'
case should not have had their convictions set
aside after the guilty party (who acted alone)
confessed and was matched to the DNA evidence.
She used the same arguments typically advanced
for limiting appeals from death row.

Was that satire? If so, given that she was writing
about a case in which the fact of innocence was
not in dispute, not even by her, it was indeed a
powerful defense of the appeals system..

I have no idea about the context of that. Could you provide a link?
It sounds like it might be hyperbole (she is known for a bit of that
now and then...). ;-)

Ann is another one who's constantly taken out of context. After the
uproar over her (lame, IMHO) comparison of John Edwards to a "gay
person", she took a lot of heat (which I don't have a problem with).
When she commented that those on the left get a free pass for saying
outrageous things - "Now, that would be mean. But about the same time
-- you know -- [HBO host] Bill Maher was not joking and saying he
wished [Vice President] Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist
attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm going to say anything about
John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a
terrorist assassination plot."

Her point was the horrendous double standard in the media - which then
helped prove it by splashing only the last sentence around like
Coulter really wished Edwards would be killed, rather than the fact
she was actually speaking about the media's bias and penchant for
sensationalism.

It is like name-recognition at the polls. If some bozo
changes his name to John F Kennedy it really shouldn't
give him an edge in the election, but do you suppose it
did?

An idiot's vote counts just as much as a thoughtful person's
and can be had with much less effort.

Or for a nominal payment (examples abound).

Perhaps you can present some as I am not aware of any.

Seriously? I typed "pay for votes" into google and got over 38,000
hits. I had a buddy who was paid to register dead people in Chicago,
for example.

Mark "can you imagine having to do a recount in Cook County" Hickey