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White House: No Kerry Supporters at IATC Meeting
An anonymous reader writes "Time Magazine is reporting that the Bush Administration is removing U.S. delegates from the Inter-American Telephone Commission because they gave money to John Kerry in last year's election. A Bush spokesman admits it's true: 'We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,' says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Employees of Qualcomm and Nokia are among those who have been removed from the commission."
The current administration carefully scripts, stages and choreographs virtually every major public event.
So? The former administration wrote the book on this one. Wouldn't you agree it would be foolish not to do this?
The current administration is unwavering in their conviction and utterly unapologetic for their actions.
Yes, and thank God for that! Unwavering conviction is called integrity, and being unapologetic coincides with firm belief in your cause. On behalf of my fellow members of the Vast, Right-wing Conspiracy, I'll take this as a compliment.
sig: sauer
Mod parent up please
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
"There's a new sheriff in town boys... and y'all sent money to the wrong man. I hate to do it, but y'all gotta hang high. Get the rope Rummy ol' boy. Big Dick's gonna do the honors on this one. Get to slapping that horse's ass Brown Sugar... slap it like you slap mine... " -- W
Wikipedia defines fascism as "exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
Conservatism is all about the individual. Conservatives want to protect the individual from oppressive taxation and government regulation.
Also, it's the liberals and the democrats who are obsessed with race. There are hundreds of race-identity groups that are in the main-stream on the left. There are zero main-stream race-identity groups on the right.
So far, this definition fits liberals more than conservatives.
uses violence
Earth liberation front and unions are violent left-wing organizations. On the right, there's
and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship
Except for the campaign-finance reform bill, there's no significant censorship on either side of the political debate. Traditionally, campaign-finance reform has been a Democrat issue, but Bush signed the bill. Tie on this one.
to forcibly suppress political opposition,
No significant forcible oppression on either side. Good.
engages in severe economic and social regimentation,
The left is for severe economic regulation and socialism. The right is for economic freedom. So the left is closer to facism on this count.
engages in corporatism
Score this one against the right if you want. I think it's a tie, but just of the sake of argument, let's say the right is closer to fascism on this one.
implements totalitarianism
Neither side has implemented totalitarianism.
So let's see:Conclusion: Neither the left nor the right in the US is fascist. Hooray! The left is closer than the right, but neither is very close.
Deciding who is allowed to attend a non-political, non-partisan industry event based on their history of campaign contributions is not a power given to anyone by any law of the United States. In fact, the opposite is true: this violates amendment one of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees U.S. citizens the freedom of speech.
Translation: "I have no idea what I am talking about! Lookee meeee!"
There is no sense in which this violates the First Amendment. This is a government organization that the executive branch of the U.S. government controls the U.S. delegates to. They have first and last say. They can base the choices of the delegation membership on anything they see fit.
President Bush can certainly appoint whom he likes to those offices which the law allows him to, but he cannot "punish" people who supported his political opponents by denying them access to events for no other reason.
First, it is not a punishment. That's the wrong way to look at it. They are protecting their own concerns, not trying to harm people who disagree with them.
That said, regardless of how you wish to characterize it, they can do whatever they wish. They could hire only redheaded stepchildren if they wished to.
By saying it violates the First Amendment or that Bush can't do what he is doing just shows you have no idea what you're talking about.
You can criticize the decisions as harming the legitimacy or efficacy of the commission. But to say what happened is illegal or immoral or anything of the like is just ridiculously indefensible.
This call for patirotism is the new McCarthyism
So you're saying that many people on the left today actually ARE out to subvert the U.S. government? Because as bad a rap as McCarthy gets today, he was actually right, if not about his methods, about the threat. There were many Soviet-affiliated spies and agents in our midst.
McCarthy was wrong to do much of what he did, there's no doubt. But if not for McCarthy, the Cold War might not have turned out in our favor, because the Soviets were in our midst. They controlled the Progressive party, which was led by a former U.S vice president. There was a serious threat, a real danger of the U.S. allowing the Soviets to dominate Europe.
The fact that McCarthy was right, and he was wrong, is a dilemma that is not easily solved, and comparing our current situation to that one shows that either you don't understand the real complexities we faced at that time, or it is a tacit admission that the challenges we face today are far too complex for you to dismiss as easily as you're attempting to.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was banned from slashdot for over a month because of my open republican support here. It was all I talked about during the election trying to counter all the false accusations against Bush...yet I lost my ability to post on here. There was no flaming on my part, only links to facts. So um....it isn't like this is a Republican only thing. This is a "news" site that also kicks out members of the other party.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
In order to qualm the opposition, there shall BE NO opposition. After taking control of every governmental department, they will move on to corporations, schools and communities. Pretty soon there will be XXXXXXX-only restaurants, movie theaters and workplaces and if you disagree, you will be blacklisted too. This is a dangerous trend and if it continues, goodbye to 'freedom,' the ubiquitous word that doesn't have meaning any more. If for some reason, you change your mind about your party's actions, you too become the enemy. There is no room for free-thinking individuals when there is profit to be made.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Why would I RTFA, as it's written by Time Magazine who is known to be heavily biased! (of course, I read it...) All media is biased. Whenever I read the New York Times, I need to counter it with other media coverage. Fortunately, I spend the time reviewing alternate view points to find the truth somewhere in between. Unfortunately, the truth is far from the middle. Most of the left's views can be shredded in the arena of ideas rather quickly. The left's views do not hold up to scrutiny. The more the right-wing pushes the left-wings buttons the more bizarre the left becomes. Just look at the so called 'constitution' or 'nuclear option' (take your pick) and as soon as the Republicans threaten to change the Senate rules (happens all the time, btw) to specifically prohibit Fillibusters on approving judges; the Democrats threaten to shutdown the government for the rest of the year. Then when the Republicans claim to have enough votes confirmed to pass the rule change; the Democrats are back peddling and trying to present a compromise! I sincerely hoped the Republicans pass the rule change. If the Democrats do try to shutdown the government, it will be they who pay a political price. It is already against the Senate rules to fillibuster on the approval of judges. There are only a few instances in the Constitution where one can use a fillibuster and the approval of judges is not one of them! Also, the Democrats are not even performing an actual fillibuster in the first place, a true fillibuster is when you keep talking on the Senate floor without stopping to prevent a vote from occuring. As long as you have the floor, you can keep it if you keep talking. It doesn't even matter what you say, as long as you keep doing it. The Democrats declare a fillibuster and then refuse to vote and go home. That's not a fillibuster it's a refusal to do their jobs and it's against the rules!
Those who do not read alternative viewpoints are merely sheep on either the right or left. You can't just come home from work and read only your local newspaper and watch your network news anymore. You are not getting the whole story that way! The media is getting their butt kicked in falling newspaper subscriptions and the networks nightly news ratings are dropping like a rock!
The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source. I haven't bought a newspaper in years. Why should I? I can get much more information and see all viewpoints simply by searching Google.
I read a whole lot of books. I've read Karl Marx, but I've also read the founding father's writings as well. I make informed decisions.
I voted for Bush, because when it came right down to it; Kerry was not a viable choice! Kerry's a compulsive liar. He will tell whatever group he's speaking to exactly what they want to hear. (yeah, I know definition of a politician). He changed his position so many times, my head was spinning! I am now glad I didn't vote for Al Gore either, he's become quite the nut case lately and to think he could have been president gives me indigestion! Dean is also a big nut... I would have voted for Lieberman had he been a choice. Having to choose between Lieberman and Bush would have been rather difficult.
Bush stood his ground and did not waver in his message. At least Bush had a message, Kerry had none. Bush is a great leader. What he says, he does and at the same time it makes a lot of sense. I don't agree with everything Bush does, but I agree with most of it.
I have no problem with the administration stripping known supporters of Kerry from a federally funded Telecom foundation. In fact, I would support a change of staff in the CIA and the State Department as well. There are a ton of lifer's in those two organizations who would stop at nothing to stab the administration in the back. The CIA is especially screwed up and I hope that it's restructuring over the next few years fixes the decades old damage.
I tried to point out that it could have significantly more negative impact for those individuals actually kicked out of the meeting.
How? Only if they are participating in public service for selfish reasons in the first place, which tells me they shouldn't be on the commission in the first place.
This is obviously a punishment
You're missing a "not" in there.
Maybe when we Democrats gain control again, we should fire everyone in the military that donated money to conservative causes, since they are de facto representatives of the executive branch,
Good luck with that.
However, the most significant difference between the military and this commission points out what I've been thinking is probably at the root of this. If you are in the military, your political activities are restricted by the UCMJ. I've been kinda thinking that this may have started because a delegate of the IATC, or a similar commission, was using the opportunity to bash the Bush administration, or because there was some real fear that they either would do so, or that their existence on the commission as an opponent of Bush would be bad PR.
Further, the IATC delegation IS a political appointment, despite protestations to the contrary. What else can you call it? It's an unpaid public service controlled entirely by the President.
And this is nowhere near as bad as Clinton stacking the deck on the Bioethics commission, which was far more pronounced than anything Bush supposedly did to "attack" science. If you recall, Clinton was advised unanimously by his commission that there was nothing at all wrong with research cloning, something that is hotly debated by bioethicists. Bush's panel, while it leans right, has quite a bit of dissent on it, and Clinton's had relatively none.
The only reason that this is ok with you is because it's your guys that made the fuckup.
Too bad you haven't actually shown there is anything wrong with what happened.
I know this is a historic piece and this was a sign of the times, but I just love this dogma, used of course by the rich and wealthy even today.
Men of greater opportunity, tend to have more roperty. Money = oportunity.
Why else do you think an illiterate red neck can become pres??