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For a detailed rebuttal of David Kopel's detailed rebuttal of Fahrenheit 9/11, please check out Deception; Desperate Right Wing Attacks on Fahrenheit 9/11 or Debunking '59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11'

The most balanced objective take on the file I've seen so far is the point by point list of deceits.

I don't think that it is possible to call something balanced objective when it was written by a columnist of National Review online, an Associate Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute, particularly when the subject matter is Fahrenheit 9/11. It's like asking Greenpeace to provide a balanced objective take on logging old growth, or the NRA to provied a balanced objective take on anti-gun legislation. Just the fact that you refer to it as a "list of deceipts" displays your own bias.

For a rebuttal of David Kopel's list, please check out Deception; Desperate Right Wing Attacks on Fahrenheit 9/11 or Debunking '59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11'

Daily Kos hatesite

Oh, the irony.

What's ironic about it? Zuniga said (paraphrasing a bit) of the four contractors burned, dismembered, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah that they got what they deserved. (Go here and search the page for the phrase "screw them".) Next to that, the statements you attribute to LGF WRT known terrorist sympathizers like Rachel Corrie are peanuts.

Not to mention the telegraph is openly and proudly conservative. Just ask its owner Conrad Black.

I didn't say that it wasn't. Why do you think I compared its one article linked by Google News to the four articles in the Guardian (which is, as others have already noted, one of Britain's left-wing rags)? I lived there for a couple of years in the mid-'80s, and the Telegraph was as close to even-handed as the British press got.

> Daily Kos hatesite

Oh, the irony. As you link to LGF who mocks dead protestors like Rachel Corrie by awarding them their "idiotarian award of the year." And they got the entire country of France on there. Umm, who are the haters exactly? I'll let the reader decide:

DailyKos

LGF

Even 30 seconds browsing both sites is enough to figure out who the "hatesite" is.

Not to mention the telegraph is openly and proudly conservative. Just ask its owner Conrad Black.

The daily mail is the brit liberal paper, btw.

• http://www.dailykos.com/
• and
• http://www.opednews.com/

On the contrary, real median household income in 2003-adjusted dollars has declined $1,535 under the convicted drunk drivers, while it rose $5,489 under Clinton, and declined $1,314 under the convicted drunk driver's daddy.

I don't quite agree with you here. Sure, Bush is well-known for mis-speaking and mis-pronouncing things on a regular basis. However, the masses, for whatever reason seem to have given him a pass on this [non]issue.

Kerry on the other hand is a seasoned Senate orator... one would think that he should trounce the word-fumbling president much like Gore in 2000(who also was a senator) ... but whoops! That didn't happen, the debates ended up hurting Gore. From Daily Kos (I can't believe I am citing daily Kos but what the hell,... here's to trying to be impartial):

The first presidential debate was held on October 3 and despite the fact that Gore was widely considered the winner (by an average of 9%), his behavior at the debate coupled with media coverage that labeled him an exaggerator, denied Gore a bounce. The race was a statistical dead heat leading up to the second debate on October 11. This time, Bush was the clear winner (by an average of 9%) and did receive a bounce. Bush was leading by an average of 4% leading up to the third debate on October 17, of which there was no clear winner (people favored Gore slightly).

he could raise undecided voters' passion quite a bit.

I think more interestingly will be the tone of the debates. This election is different than most. I don't believe that anyone is really 'undecided' given the polarization of the electorate. As opposed to past debates where the focus was on woo-ing undecideds (which has to be done somewhat gently and positively), I think that this series will be more about shoring up the base voters and trying to scare the decided but not stolid supporters on the other side. In other words... I think it will be quite ugly as debates go.

>Kos suffered from a case of "Baghdad-Bobia

Kos is a community site, there is no consensus or "master leader" unlike the other blogs you listed in your other post like Instapundit. Hell, instapundit doesnt even allow comments, yet thedailykos gives weblog space to all its users and the really good entries get promoted to the front page.Kos, Atrios, etc don't just parrot the corporate media, but question it. I dont see the point of reading Instapundit if he's just playing the role of an MSNBC or Fox News anchor.

Even moderation is more interesting at kos as you can see who moderated what. No hidding behind your mod points. The kos community has also dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars into helping win elections. Its a community in every sense of the word, not just "one guy's opinion." That really sums up the whole conservative vs liberal fight in the US. The cons tend to be top-down and the libs tend to be grassroots/bottom up. No comments on Sully, Insta, Dick Cheney makes you sign a loyalty oath, etc.

As far as suffering through syndromes go, these conservative bloggers ignored all the good questions regarding WMD only to back-up the president while the liberal blogs were presenting evidence and good arguments on why Iraq would be WMD-less and a quagmire. Guess who was right?

Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, and the other token conservatives/neocons don't even allow comments. That speaks VOLUMES on how they run their ship and what kind of information they are peddling.

>Chomsky suffers from being Chomsky

That's an easy attack, but if you want to understand media there's few better books than Manufacturing Consent. Or Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

This being politics.slashdot.org I fully expect many people with agendas to hide behind their mod points and rate me a troll or "over-rated" like they've done with my previous posts.

Debunking that Kopel bunk.

Nonsense. Kos himself hardly said anything at all about those memos; several of the more dedicated readers and participants of the site, such as Hunter, put in a tremendous amount of effort in looking at the documents and, mostly, at the arguments against the documents.
Hunter has never declared the documents to be genuine; all that he has done is collect and analyze, at great length, the "evidence" that was being presented for the documents being forgeries; and, not surprisingly, he was able to show what anyone who spent a lot of time typing in the 70s already knew: The arguments were full of crap.
Note, however, the considerable distance between "The evidence you presented to make the case that these documents are forgeries is false" and "The documents are not forgeries." It's the difference between "not proven" and "innocent."
And while there certainly were -- and still are -- many individual posters at Daily Kos who do insist that the memos are genuine, they aren't the ones posting the pages of carefully collected research, like Hunter or maha -- they're mainly content to sit around and accuse Kevin Drum of being a closet Republican for ever having dared to doubt the documents' authenticity.
But they're not Kos, any more than clueless "First post!"ers and SCO apologists are Cowboy Neal.

Nonsense. Kos himself hardly said anything at all about those memos; several of the more dedicated readers and participants of the site, such as Hunter, put in a tremendous amount of effort in looking at the documents and, mostly, at the arguments against the documents.
Hunter has never declared the documents to be genuine; all that he has done is collect and analyze, at great length, the "evidence" that was being presented for the documents being forgeries; and, not surprisingly, he was able to show what anyone who spent a lot of time typing in the 70s already knew: The arguments were full of crap.
Note, however, the considerable distance between "The evidence you presented to make the case that these documents are forgeries is false" and "The documents are not forgeries." It's the difference between "not proven" and "innocent."
And while there certainly were -- and still are -- many individual posters at Daily Kos who do insist that the memos are genuine, they aren't the ones posting the pages of carefully collected research, like Hunter or maha -- they're mainly content to sit around and accuse Kevin Drum of being a closet Republican for ever having dared to doubt the documents' authenticity.
But they're not Kos, any more than clueless "First post!"ers and SCO apologists are Cowboy Neal.

Nonsense. Kos himself hardly said anything at all about those memos; several of the more dedicated readers and participants of the site, such as Hunter, put in a tremendous amount of effort in looking at the documents and, mostly, at the arguments against the documents.
Hunter has never declared the documents to be genuine; all that he has done is collect and analyze, at great length, the "evidence" that was being presented for the documents being forgeries; and, not surprisingly, he was able to show what anyone who spent a lot of time typing in the 70s already knew: The arguments were full of crap.
Note, however, the considerable distance between "The evidence you presented to make the case that these documents are forgeries is false" and "The documents are not forgeries." It's the difference between "not proven" and "innocent."
And while there certainly were -- and still are -- many individual posters at Daily Kos who do insist that the memos are genuine, they aren't the ones posting the pages of carefully collected research, like Hunter or maha -- they're mainly content to sit around and accuse Kevin Drum of being a closet Republican for ever having dared to doubt the documents' authenticity.
But they're not Kos, any more than clueless "First post!"ers and SCO apologists are Cowboy Neal.

This is "informed and intelligent"?

Atrios/Eschaton
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
Billmon's Whiskey Bar
Matthew Yglesias
Eric Alterman
Kevin Drum
Brad DeLong
Daily Kos
Digby
Mark Kleiman
Hesiod's Counterspin
Bob Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler

and the inimitable Bartcop
(and Fafblog)

I like a gentle mix of Daily Kos, AmericaBlog.org and some BuzzFlash (yes, I know BussFlash isn't a blog, quite).

Polling: Daily Kos Wonderful poll analysis, great community, lots of smart commenters

Economics: Brad DeLong He's a PhD economist and a former economic advisor to the Clinton administration

Social Policy: Body and Soul She blogs the uncomfortable places where others won't go.

Politics: Atrios The man reads everything. This site is especially good for U.S. politics.

Snark: Sisyphus Shrugged This woman has it. Her recent posts on Nader are vicious and painfully accurate.

Satire: Fafblog!!! The world's only source of Fafblog. Do not drink while reading. Your keyboard will thank you.

To keep abreast of liberty, I read the following:

Mises Blog
Lew Rockwell's Blog

To find out what the enemies of liberty are up to, I also read:

Daily Kos
Atrios
InstaPundit
Andrew Sullivan

• Daily Kos
• Eschaton (Atrios)
• Political Animal
• Pandagon
• Hulaballoo (Digby)
• First Draft
• Joe Conason (kinda a blog, it's hosted by Salon.com)

I go all over for my political blogging...

For crazy news from the Left, I like DailyKos; it's most blog-o-riffic.

For crazy news from the Right, even though it isn't really a blog, Drudge Report.

In dealing with legal / technical slants on political issues, it's hard to top Larry Lessig's blog.

I like To Be Determined, becuase it's my blog ;) But there's always witty political content there, both locally and globally, that interests me!

And finally, for a news for nerds and stuff that matters , it's hard to top Slashdot!

Washington Monthly (by Kevin Drum)

Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall)

Atrios

Matthew Yglesias

Digby's Blog

The Daily Kos (Scoop software)

The Washington Monthly (Movable Type)

Chomsky's Turning the Tide (pay to play: ironic? no, he's just to busy to respond to anonymous comments)

The Washington Note (MT; by a good friend of Josh Marshall)

Ed Fitzgerald's Unfutz (MT maybe; has the best poll aggregations)

Politics:
http://dailykos.com/
http://atrios.blogspot.com/

For science (not quite a blog)
http://www.aps.org/WN/

...and if you're a liberal...which you are, RIGHT?
Check out...

DailyKos

• Baseball Crank (baseball + conservative politics)
• Wonkette (more People mag, less politics)
• The Daily Kos (liberal, had a quick but unfortunately wrong analysis of the now-thoroughly-discredited Rather memos)
• Priorities and Frivolities (minimal baseball, principally politics from a centrist and semi-libertarian viewpoint)

• Baseball Crank (baseball + conservative politics)
• Wonkette (more People mag, less politics)
• The Daily Kos (liberal, had a quick but unfortunately wrong analysis of the now-thoroughly-discredited Rather memos)
• Priorities and Frivolities (minimal baseball, principally politics from a centrist and semi-libertarian viewpoint)

I like DailyKos.

politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning into one of my least favorites because I've noticed that the moderation system is running amuck! Never before have I seen such a split in moderations where a single comment can be rated "informative" and "troll" numerous times in the same story. And many moderators with a chip on their shoulder start using "offtopic" and "overrated" to try to protect their own karma during metamoderation. Here's an example of where it happened to me recently. And it's not just the political posts (though I suspect it happens there most often), but in a Star Wars story. I still can't believe this post got called a "troll"! I'm sure many others can come up with their own examples.

It seems that there may be too many people moderating these days, and little accountability, a single person doesn't have to have an agenda; you can have a group of likeminded people who want to squelch dissenting opinions pummel a relatively decent post down into the noise of hot grits posts.

DailyKos has a better system where moderations aren't anonymous, so you can see how people are moderating. Then again, if DailyKos had the same traffic as Slashdot, maybe its moderation system would get corrupted too.

Maybe the ultimate problem is that people don't respect others' views, or they prize too highly the views of people that they may agree with but use bad logic or specious reasoning. It's probably indicative of the growing polarization in our country. As people start migrating to sandboxes where only likeminded people congregate (which blogs, especially political ones, can lead to), they become less tolerant of opinions that challenge their own.

The most thorough, informative, liberal blog around... DailyKos

...everyone *doesn't* read dkos?

Not every issue is black and white!

Here is my problem with John F. Kerry. He has had 20 something years in the Senate to author any legislation he thinks is good for America. Exactly what is his record on producing such legislation. Name 10. Name 9. Name 2. He has been sitting on his ASS for 20 years. 20 years of Senate, and still we don't know where he stands.

Maybe if you got off YOUR ASS and actually did some research, you would find out what his record is. Or do you expect the US media to spoonfeed this to you?

Try this:
"In his almost 20 year career, he has sponsored (667) and co-sponsored (4117) a total of 4784 bills and amendments. By comparison, during the same years, John McCain only was associated with a total of 4247."

Or try his voting history

Prolife and prochoice.
He is prolife in his own life, but he doesn't want to force his opinion on everybody else who is prochoice. How is that a bad thing?

Pro Gun, anti gun.
He is for the assault weapons ban. That doesn't mean he is anti-gun. He still supports the right to bear arms, but there are limits on what arms we should be able to bear, don't you agree?

How about a 1960's IBM Composer typewriter? An IBM Selectric Composer is the most likely candidate. It has the Times New Roman font with proportional spacing and superscript th's. Read this for more info.

Daily Kos: TANG Typewriter Follies; Wingnuts Wrong

Abstract: Somebody did some actual research into the typewriters available in 1973 and found that the document isn't a hoax.

Turns out Football Guy did a bit of resizing/shrinking/nudging to get things to line up...regardless, of course the Times New Roman font looks the same as a 1973 typewriter font - where do you think MS/Apple/Adobe/whoever got their font designs from?!

Of course, as the linked article points out, the various characters in the document look similar to MS Word Times New Roman, but many are distinctly _different_.

One by one, each of the "hoax" claims are being refuted on their face. In 1973, proportinal fonts existed, superscript th existed, etc. etc. etc.

As always it's "villify what you can't deny." Unfortunately, once again the "liberal" media is getting bamboozled by some rightwing bloggers - anyone remember Kerry's "Intern Scandal?" (Drudge: "Developing...")

Meanwhile, the Right Wing Press (NY Post, Washington Times), which dismissed the relevancy of blogs when they were driving Dean's candidacy, is now lauding the "wonderful blogonaughts."

What a joke.

You need to start from the beginning.. The model is the Selectric Composer. All Selectric Composers and Selectric Executives can use the font (actually a variant called 'Aldine Roman' (or "Bembo"). It has denser serifs than Times New Roman (something that the Word version looks rather light on)). All selectric models (composer or not) can use a th "ball" (font); it'd add about 30 seconds to a typing job of this size, so its use wasn't consistant. A Selectric cost a couple hundred dollars in the late 60s; by the early 70s, the models we're talking about would be ~6 years old.

It's amazing how many people spout off about this stuff after reading little more than freeper-produced garbage, considering themselves lexography experts.

Except for the fact that the records of Bush that he released himself contain it as well.

Yes. They've conclusively proven that Times New Roman is close to Times New Roman, when you manipulate it. Give them a cookie.

at this link :

DailyKOS

Please read it closely.

I quote :

We're going to make this simple.

First, of course, in order to do this, he first had to reduce the document so that the margins were the same, since the original PDF distributed by CBS is quite a bit larger. Then he superimposed the two documents, such that the margins on all sides lined up.

What he then discovered is that Times New Roman typeface is, when viewed on a computer monitor, really, really similar to Times New Roman typeface. Or rather, really really similar to a typeface that is similar to Times New Roman typeface.

Um, OK then.

Dave Kopel Debunked

Dave Kopel, research director at The Independence Institute, has a very different take. No surprise since the institute is a "market-oriented" organization funded in part by the rightwing Castle Rock Foundation, a creation of the Coors brewing dynasty based in Golden, Colorado.

After five years of making thoughtful and informed posts, I have some karma to burn. I'll regret having posted this when I see that "-5 Troll" beside it later today -- but I figure, a guy's got a right to let off some steam.

I'll let you in on a little secret of mine. Liberal as I am, I enjoy tuning into Fox. I like reading the RNC's website. I have fun watching the masters of hypocrisy and intolerance. They say some mighty funny, outrageous things! I wouldn't want these crackpots in charge of my country, my legal system or even the corporations in which I own stock -- but that doesn't stop me from laughing at 'em. For every three logical things they say, they just have to throw in a zinger -- a racist slur, a completely inappropriate personal attack, a tremendous fallacy, a made-up statistic, or what have you. And I find that funny as all hell!

To all of the Bill O'Reillys of the world, for the Rush Limbaughs, the Ed Gillespies and the Zell Millers, I would like to say: nyeah nyeah nyeah, we have our own pundits now!

(I apologize that all of those links are to biased sources; I tried to find more impartial sources for my quotes, but "unbiased" news sources tend to shy away from reporting on the more outrageous things our politicians and public figures say, because they would quickly gain a reputation for being biased for having done so.)

Yes, now we progressives have our own crackpot figures who make completely unfounded statements with fallacies you could drive a truck through. They twist words, edit footage and tinker until the truth looks juuuuuuust right. Like their regressive counterparts, they're darned good at it. I honestly enjoy them as entertainment, I do.

Aside from giving me great insight into Bush's and Cheney's motivations (money) and Bush's personality (insecure, attention-seeking jock who aims to please his parent figures), Fahrenheit 9/11 was funny, tragic, moving, a reminder of all we lost that day and all we've lost since: collective innocence, blissful ignorance of the effects of our actions abroad, good men in uniform, personal freedoms. Looking through the bull puckey about Saudi air travel privileges, tuning out the anti-war propaganda, I sat in the theater and saw a decent movie.

But this movie did not sway my political position any more than watching The O'Reilly Factor would. This is because Michael Moore, like all the rest of the pundits, makes entertainment. He tries to deliver a political message, but the message is almost always choked by his own hyperbole and willingness to sacrifice the truth in order to inspire outrage in his viewers.

If the intent of releasing Fahrenheit 9/11 ahead of time is to sway the minds of voters, I am afraid the stunt will backfire horribly. Most of the nation is already set in stone as to who they will vote for. The only votes left up for grabs are the precious, the few, the "swing votes." By definition, these people are independent, and like to think about their decisions before making them. They like to check their facts, and they are not easily swayed by appeals to sentimentality. If these people are forced to approach Fahrenheit 9/11 as a run-on political advertisement, they will rebel. They will scoff at the inaccuracies and ignore the redeeming social and political message of the movie. And that just might sway them enough to vote for the other side . . .

Just a thought.

I'll explain.

He comes out with Fahrenheit 9/11. It's full of things. It's a very effective piece of propoganda. And there's almost nothing in it which is false or a lie.

It's been my experience that it's by and large intelligent people who go see his films. Think about it - it's the intelligent people who will give his work the time of day. It's been my experience that the people who say "he's a damn dirty liar and I won't support that" haven't done their research and are on the whole the ones who would rather not hear anything he has to say.

Consequently it's these same intelligent people who walk out of the theater saying "wow, that was pretty bad for Bush & Co. - but I bet it's only one side of the story". And it is.

Moore tells you about the VA Hospitals Bush closed down, but not about the ones he opened up.

Moore tells about the opinon piece that says Gore won, but he doesn't tell you about the dozen stories that say he lost.

Moore tells you about the judges Bush couldn't get appointed, but not about the ones he did.

People have made it their goal to point out the one-sided arguments in the film while others have pointed out the fallacies in those arguments against the film.

56% of Americans have either seen the film or plan to see the film. There's no way in hell that 56% of Americans are informed about politics. So they learn a lot from Fahrenheit 9/11. Then they learn a lot more from the people against F911. Then they learn even more from the people who are against the people who are against F911. And they decide for themselves who they want to believe more. Or more importantly they decide for themselves which information is important to them.

And then they're informed. In ways they never would have been before. I wouldn't know most of this stuff if I hadn't seen the film and then read all the debates. And I wouldn't have read the debates if it weren't for the Internet. Hell, Michael Moore used footage he got from the Internet to make the movie.

And that's why Michael Moore is a genius. Thanks to him there's a ton more informed voters out there, if for no other reason than people need to see the movie and get their ducks in order in order to hate Moore and his arguments. In many ways he's leveled the playing field.

• Daily Kos
• Democratic Underground
• Talking Points Memo

• Instapundit
• Eject! Eject! Eject!
• Little Green Footballs

The Washington Monthly

The Daily Kos

The Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk

The Center for American Progress

Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall

Tom Toles political cartoons

Ben Sargent cartoons

Pat Oliphant cartoons

Jamie Zawinski's freinds

Ed Fitzgerald's blog

more to follow-up...

> Their review of SP2 however, lacked a reasonable level of objectivity.

Agreed, I think OSS purists and other elitists are simply threatened by SP2. MS didn't drop the ball on this. Sadly, they did not get rid of activeX (probably because of monopolistic reasons). So the register goes into full Zell Miller mode. Disable DHCP and the DNS client? Shame really. Some of us work with MS machines all day, all our friends and family have them and they bug us for support all the time.

SP2 is a strong step in making Windows usable, and frankly MS's ass was on the line with this. If they failed to stop the virus/trojan/spyware triple-threat there would be a lot more Mac owners in the near future.

Why is this the first image that popped into my head?

"Thurlow was struggling to get PCF-3's wounded gunner out of his hole and onto the deck when the damaged Swift ran aground hard on a shoal on the right side of the river, sending Thurlow somersaulting into the water. At the same moment, the five Swifts came under fire from the right side again, and Kerry remembered thinking that was it -- they were going to get completely cut off and annihilated in a crossfire."

Kerry and the other wounded men received medical attention aboard a Coast Guard cutter, which was the closest ship capable of treating them. Along with a third Purple Heart for the injury to his right arm, Kerry was also awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery, as was Larry Thurlow.

Oops, I meant Thurlow, the guy who was accusing Kerry of being dishonest. Thurlow , busted.

Also, more interesting information about the swiftboat veterans.

Not to mention that Rassman has been caught in his own lies about the whole incident.

Your sig is wrong.

Your sig is wrong.

Sorry, but your sig is wrong. Debunking 59 deceits...

stalinism

$50,000 doesn't buy you a single full page newspaper add in the major media markets: Advertising>Business>Cause & Appeal/Political.

You need about $800,000 a week to blanket a state like Illinois with TV adds: Media Costs.

The Bush campaign committees raised $193 million for the 2000 campaign: 2000 Presidential Race: Total Raised and Spent.

By your estimates, Microsoft's contribution would be 1/4 of 1% of the total.

So let's get real. shall we?