Very well put. In a nutshell, to believe in a God who created the universe, you must necessarily believe in a God who existed before and outside the universe.
All divine intervention is thus intervention from outside the closed system of creation, and is necessarily hard to theorize about (the scientist would tell you that nothing in the closed system can tell you about what intervention from outside that system would look like; the theologian would point out that saying that an omnipotent God is limited in the ways in which He could intervene is self-contradictory).
With this in mind, we should acknowledge candidly that there are big holes in our understanding of the universe. The nature of the Big Bang, the origin of such wonderful complexities as found in the DNA-RNA cycle, and the emergence of higher mental processes in humans, resulting in a creature which exists side-by-side with himself with both characteristics we find throughout the animal world and with characteristics we find nowhere else are just a few of these mysteries.
It would be a mistake for anyone, scientist or theologian, to assert that science -- the study of the nature of the closed system we call the universe -- can tell us conclusively whether any of these mysteries must be the work of an external (supernatural) input. Science can only offer explanations within the system for various facts. It is up to us to determine how credible these explanations are, especially in terms of what we ourselves can observe about the world around us.
Sure. And in the vast majority of cases where [insert reverse DNS query tool of choice] tells you that the user is coming from a cable company's dynamic IP pool?
Careful there -- argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy when you attempt to bring in unrelated information about the speaker in order to discredit him. This does not, however, mean that all information about the speaker is necessarily unrelated.
To return to the issue at hand, when you have two people making assertions about a congressman's record, and one of the two is a paid employee of that congressman's PR staff, it is arguing `ad hominem' to point this out, but it is not a fallacy (unless you suggest, fallaciously, that their employ means that they cannot be telling the truth).
Blocking people by IP address has proved utterly unreliable at fighting spam, and is undoubtedly as unreliable in fighting bad edits.
The problem, here as there, is that the people who are willing to go home and do the job from the dynamic IP address of their cable modem rather than from their work IP are exactly the ones who are more interested in seeing edits done.
In other words, as contradictory as it may sound, as long as anonymous or quasi-anonymous edits are allowed, placing hurdles in the way of bad edits only serves to self-select for the most interested parties -- and the most interested parties will always be those with an actual interest in the matter.
But you do know who used it last, and what specifically they changed. It's
extremely easy to compare different versions of the same article. You can
even be shown exactly what text differs between the two, for instance.
Seeing that it was used before you doesn't tell you anything useful about who the person was who did the editing (unless their nick or IP is one you recognize as someone you know outside of Wikipedia).
In real life, when we see a bunch of conflicting claims about something, we look at those speaking, and ask questions such as:
Is the speaker likely to have knowledge of the matter they are discussing?
Is the speaker someone whom we generally trust to be of sound mind?
Does the speaker have a vested interest in our believing one thing or another?
In Wikipedia (as in Slashdot -- but no one is claiming Slashdot's comment section is a valuable source of unbiased reference information) this information is not available. Instead, we get a bunch of conflicting quasi-anonymous edits, and no information to help us decide which are more valid.
Hasn't the risk of Wikipedia always been that stories were most likely to be updated by people who are interested in them -- and people who have an interest in them are likely to be the most interested of all?
In short, this is another example of the old saw: ``Wikipedia is like a public toilet -- when you need it, you're sure glad it's there, but you never know who used it last.''
Isn't the question of whether you like to do a little "brokeback mountin'" when your hands are off the keyboard completely off-topic to WoW? Aren't Blizzard, in fact, very strict about all sorts of
non-game-related content in WoW guild and character names?
If you would like to have the last word in this thread, feel free to respond to this post.
I am quite content at this point that, while perhaps the incredible contortions which you are now going through to claim that Democrats who have admitted taking money from Mr. Abramoff didn't really mean to do so, and that Democrats who have admitted taking gifts from Mr. Abramoff (contrary to your claim, Mr. Reid, for instance, accepted unpaid use of Mr. Abramoff's skybox directly from his firm) really meant to pay him back, but never quite got around to it may make perfect sense to you, anyone else still reading this thread has long since seen through your absurd twists of `logic'.
A good day to you, Mr. `DavidTC'. It's been a pleasure.
Listen, let it go, you're embarassing yourself. Let's look at where you began this thread, and where you are now:
You began by telling us that the scandal was `one sided', and that anyone saying Mr. Abramoff had given money and gifts to Democrats as well as Republicans was `lying':
The Abramoff scandle is one sided. Period. No debate, no argument. He bribed Republicans. He did not bribe Democrats. (He also committed fraud.)
Anyone saying otherwise is lying.
In this post, you told us that the very idea that Abramoff or his clients had given money or gifts to Democrats was not only `absurd', but a `LIE':
She has absolutely no evidence 'he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.'. The idea of Abramoff directing anyone to make contributions to the Democrats is completely absurd.
IT. IS. A. LIE.. Do you understand? That is why people are upset.
In this post, you told us that the very idea that Abramoff would `involve' Democrats in his donations was nothing but `GOP spin' (and `utterly absurd' to boot):
The very idea that Abramoff would involve the Democrats when he is part of the K Street Project, designed to exclude Democrats from the lobbying process is so utterly absurd that no newspaper should have even repeated the GOP spin, much less continued to repeat it as fact.
And here you asserted that no Democrat had ever received a dime from Mr. Abramoff (indeed, the very idea was a `lie'):
That is a lie.
The 'revealed recipients of Mr. Abramoff's largesse' are Republicans. Period, no exceptions. Every single one of them. No Democrat has ever gotten a dime from him.
Now, you've backed down to arguing about whether the copious
donations or gifts which Mr. Abramoff made to Democratic lawmakers were really as bad as the gifts he gave to Republicans. In other words, you've admitted that all those things which you said were `utterly absurd', `completely absurd', and `lies' were, in point of fact, the truth, and now you're just haggling over details.
Do you understand why it is unlikely that anyone still reading this thread takes anything you say from here in seriously?
I don't doubt you can come up with all sorts of lovely-sounding explanations for why Democrats were behaving ethically when they did exactly the same things you've been declaring it unethical for Republicans to do. It may even be that you really, really believe your own explanations, and thus that you really, really believe that the same action can be perfectly ethical and acceptable when performed by some sweet and kindly puppy-loving Democrat, but unethical and illegal when performed by one of those mean, nasty, creepy Republicans whom you hate so much.
The fact remains that you have now admitted that your original claim that Mr. Abramoff gave money and gifts only to Republicans and not to Democrats was completely, utterly, and wholly untrue, both on its face and in detail.
I'm content with that, really. If you want to continue the thread, that's fine with me, but I don't see how anyone still reading at this point could possibly take anything you say from here in seriously, now that you've admitted that your central and repeated claim through the whole discussion to this point was flat out wrong.
Did you actually follow the links, or are you just bitching about the URL? Because, you know, they didn't write either of those. One is from the Washington Post, and one is from the Arizona Republic.
You posted four links, documenting gifts (skybox seats, plane tickets, and hotel fares) which you claimed Abramoff gave to Republicans, but not Democrats.
I responded and provided a number of links
1,
2,
3,
4)
showing that every single item you mentioned had been given to Republicans and Democrats alike -- sometimes moreso to the latter than the former (you expressed outrage, for instance, that Tom DeLay got to sit in Abramoff's skybox, yet Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) got the skybox all to himself to hold a fundraiser in, and has yet to reimburse anyone for this gift).
That is the pattern. Democrats got campaign contributes from random groups trying to make their case like they always did. As did Republicans. Some of these groups were serious about influencing people, so they hired various lobbists. Sometimes the lobbist they picked was Abramoff.
Republicans also got free unreported trips, free unreported flights, free unreported skyboxes, and reported money directly from Abramoff. Democrats did not. It is those things that, for example, Ney is indeed under investigation for.
Actually, I'd like to go into more depth on this one, since even on your own terms your claim here is false on its face. Let's look at some of the gifts Democrats got directly from Jack Abramoff, shall we:
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) -- Beneficiary of a
fund-raising dinner held in his honor at Abramoff's request by Abramoff employee Edward Ayoob
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) -- received the same
free skybox seats that you claim it was a crime for Republicans to receive.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) -- not only received the same skybox seats, he held two fundraisers in Abramoff's skybox, for which he never reimbursed anyone.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) -- received free plane tickets and hotel fares, the same thing you have just told us it was a crime for Tom DeLay to receive.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) -- received the same (see same link)
In other words, even if we took your own absurd definitions at face value, Democrats are guilty of everything you accuse Republicans of.
Leaving aside for a moment your choice of sources (CREW, a spin-off of several Democratic lobbying groups is so partisan that even CNN identifies them as `left-leaning'), what do the articles you cite say? That Abramoff used his company credit card to make some (reported, contrary to your claim -- as I pointed out in my last post, this is why we know about them) of his clients' donations, while giving others by check, and that you somehow feel that the method of payment changes the legality of the matter -- particularly as you yourself admit that no money changed hands.
Is this really all your grand original claims that there were no Democratic recipients of Mr. Abramoff's largesse has come down to? That only donations which were made with a corporate credit card can possibly be illegal? And by extension that the $11,000 Dick Durbin has admitted taking from Abramoff, or the nearly $18,000 which Maria Cantwell has admitted taking from him are squeaky clean, while the plane ticket which DeLay accepted is a federal offense? Do you realize how laughable these distinctions without a difference sound to anyone who is not as childishly partisan as yourself?
As has been repeatedly mentioned by both sides in this thread, the entire debate here is over how Mr. Abramoff directed his clients money, and whether he was able to buy votes with that money. Pretending that whose card a donation came from (when it was the clients' money in either case) is the issue here is absurd.
Anyhow, you then move on to the real meat of your claim (and the subject on which we began this thread):
Because the media, at the prompting of the GOP, has made the legal campaign contributions the issue instead of the illegal bribes. Because if they try to spin it as legal contributions, well, everyone gets those.
Lets leave aside for a moment the ignorance manifest in your definition of `bribe' (hint: a donation is not a `bribe' because someone you don't like gets it. It's a `bribe' if a vote is given in return. I've given you a long list of Democrats who took donations from Mr. Abramoff, and you've listed some Republicans who did as well. Any of these donations may have been bribes, and I don't doubt that a fair number were. Time will tell which a grand jury consider indictable, but the idea that party is what will decide which were shady is laughable).
I'd like instead to point out the meat of your claim (let's repeat it for emphasis):
the media, at the prompting of the GOP,
It is sufficient for my purposes that if you really believe that the mainstream media are, on the whole, controlled by (or even particularly sympathetic to) the Republican party, you are way, way outside the mainstream. I am confident enough in this statement, that I think it's fair to wrap up this thread as follows:
If you, the readers of this thread, believe that the Washington Post, the AP, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and all the other organizations which have reported on the bipartisan nature of Mr. Abramoff's donations are taking orders from a secret Republican headquarters in Washington, by all means agree with him. Otherwise, please consider the likeliness that all of DavidTC's claims in this thread are as absurd as that one.
The page says, and I quote, 'dozens of lawmakers said they will donate any
Abramoff-related contributions'. 'Related', as is being spun by the
Republicans, means 'given by someone who paid Abramoff money'. not
'contributions from Abramoff'
Again, despite your repeated attempts at proof by vigorous assertion, no politicians of either party stand accused of taking money illegally from Mr. Abramoff himself. The entire scandal here is over whether politicians agreed to vote in Mr. Abramoff's clients' interests in return for big donations from those clients.
So if you really want to argue that taking donations from his clients brokered by Mr. Abramoff is not a crime, well, not only are you the only one on either side in this thread making such a claim, but you are, in fact, left with no scandal at all. You are instead left with two painfully obvious questions:
If there is not even the hint of a crime in taking money from Mr. Abramoff's clients and then voting in the way he asked you to, why are politicians of both parties falling over each other to give back the money?
A number of clients paid Mr. Abramoff a whole lot of money to tell them which politicians (of both parties, as I've demonstrated) to give money to in order to get votes. What were they paying for if, in fact, they had (as you claim) no expectation of getting votes in return for the outlandishly large donations Mr. Abramoff directed them to give?
Now, as far as I understand your position (and to be honest, your tendency to hyperventilate, confuse the names of the two parties, and simply shout that anyone who disagrees with you, whether it be me, the AP, or the Washington Post is `lying' isn't helping you here), it is that although Mr. Abramoff instructed his clents to give heavily to members of both parties (and they did so), only the Republicans he gave money to were breaking the law. Since no one has ever claimed that Mr. Abramoff was giving away his own money (and you certainly haven't provided a single shred of evidence to that effect), this leaves you making an even more laughably partisan claim than even DemocraticUnderground or Howard Dean are making.
And there are plenty of people who thnk this is, indeed, stupid and a few
who got accused when the people making the donatation hasn't even hired
Abramoff yet. But I guess the second anyone gave Abramoff a single dime,
all those contributions they normally did magically became tainted somehow.
(Like I said, the various donors have a hell of a libel case if they want
to follow it up.)
Uh, yes, Mr. `TC'. This whole scandal is about whether taking money from Mr. Abramoff's clients and then giving them votes in return for their donations is `tainted'. That's all any politician stands `accused' of.
You then provide two links stating nothing more than that Rep. Patty Murray (D-Wash) claims that the money she received from Abramoff's clients had nothing to do with him, and she's not giving it back. I am (and the AP, in the article I cite is) willing to take this at face value, and you will note that her name does not appear on the list I posted, so your mention of her is nothing but spin.
Since you seem not to have read it, let me repeat. The following Democratic legislators have admitted receiving money from Mr. Abramoff and his clients as reported by the Associated Press:
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill) ($11,000)
While I admire your acrobatics here, your points are becoming a bit laughable, and proof-by-vigorous-assertion is failing you here. In order:
The tribes were giving money to Democrats before Abramoff got involved.
He told them to give to Republicans and they stopped giving to
Democrats. Abramoff (and K street) are about as Republican as they
come. The "the remarkably bipartisan nature of the beneficiaries of Mr.
Abramoff's largesses" is flat out a lie, and I suspect you know it.
It seems that the fact that the tribes gave more money to Democrats when the Democrats controlled both houses of congress, and switched to giving more money to Republicans when Republicans took control of both houses of congress seems dark and sinister to you, but to anyone with less of an axe to grind, does it really seem even passing strange? The question, after all, is not of who took money from the Indians; it is of who Mr. Abramoff was able to buy off by brokering specific contributions for specific votes. It should come as no surprise to anyone who is not laughably partisan that Mr. Abramoff found eager takers of his clients' money on both sides of the aisle.
In any case, the issue isn't who they gave money to, it's who brokered
the sale of votes.
Um, no. By now, the fact that Abramoff was brokering votes is old news, sealed with an indictment. The question now is not who was buying votes (Mr. Abramoff), but who were selling them (a remarkably bipartisan crowd).
I have no intention of going off onto whatever "legalist" side ally
you're talking about.
Then I suggest you drop, once and for all, the talking point that `no Democrat has been indicted for taking money from Mr. Abramoff', as this is true only in the (narrow, legalistic) sense that no member of either party has been so indicted.
On the WMD issue, you are entitled to your own opinions, of course, but you are not entitled to your own facts. In UN Security Council resolution 1441, the entire Security Council voted unanimously that Saddam Hussein had not complied with 12 years of UNSC resolutions demanding he disarm. That's right, unanimously -- not a single `no' vote: not France, not Russia, not China. This is hardly surprising, of course, since the intelligence services of France, Germany, and Russia had
all concluded that Saddam had WMD, and an active program to produce more.
Our allies abroad were not alone in this, of course. Bill Clinton had reached the same conclusion, authorizing air strikes based on this in 1998. At that time, both parties united in support of that conclusion, and both parties united again around UNSC resolution 1441.
Prior to going to war, Mr. Bush presented a 23 count indictment of Iraq to the US congress, and asked for authorization to use force. One of these 23 counts was Iraq's WMD program (absurdly, the anti-war crowd seems to have no argument with the other 22), a charge which was backed with public evidence presented to the Senate and House, and private evidence presented to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Not a single Senator or Congressman asserted that they had been given insufficient evidence to decide if Saddam had WMDs. Not a single Senator or Congressman asserted that the President was withholding evidence. The resolution authorizing force passed both houses overwhelmingly.
For you (or John Kerry, who has since admitted that he failed to show up for fourteen of sixteen Senate Intelligence committee briefings on Iraq) to now claim that Senate Democrats didn't know what they were voting on or didn't bother to examine the evidence they were presented hardly reflects poorl
And, again. HE DIDN'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO REPUBLICANS.
Umm, okay, that's an interesting claim. At this point in the thread, you're barely clinging to coherency, and seem to be having trouble keeping your argument (or even the names of the parties) straight. Why don't you have a cup of coffee, wipe the spittle off of your screen, and try to put together a coherent statement of your position -- and above all, use that `preview' button. It's all that stands between you and looking like a total idiot.
Now, I've just posted a link to the
full list of legislators from both parties who received money from Mr. Abramoff. If you want to claim that this money was not from Mr. Abramoff, then you'll need to come back with some evidence -- and also with an explanation for why the recipients (Democrats included) have explictly acknowledged that it was from him and are now returning it. While you're at it, you can explain why we should consider the Republicans on that list guilty, but not the Democrats (unless you're claiming that there's no scandal at all here).
Simply asserting without evidence that all of the Republicans on that list knew what they were doing when Mr. Abramoff brokered donations to them (the type of bribery of which he is accused), but that the many Democrats on the list had no idea that they were accepting his money only succeeds in making you look like a cheap partisan hack.
Um, no. It is not `well known', it is `vigorously asserted' by fringe historians such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
This claim may have been believable in 1970. It became clear that it was laughably naive in 1978 when the US ULTRA and MAGIC cryptographic archives were declassified, showing that Japan was not only not ready to surrender, it was actively preparing for a protracted defense of Hokkaido and Honshu -- and that, through decryption of intercepted Japanese radio traffic, we were fully aware of this when we decided to drop the bomb.
I suppose you still believe the pre-1978 cover story that it was a `lucky guess' which put us in position to intercept Japanese forces at Midway, too, right?
Again, take some time, wipe the spittle off of your screen, and actually look at what Mr. Abramoff has and hasn't admitted to. You will quickly find that in fact, all gifts which he gave anyone were presented ``on behalf of his clients''. It is you who need to explain why we should believe that those contributions which he gave to Democrats all actually were legitimate gifts from his clients, while those he gave to Democrats were secretly out of his own pocket.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill) ($11,000)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash) ($17,865)
Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S. D.) ($8,250)
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) ($5,000)
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) ($500)
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore) ($1,500)
Rep. Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) ($1,000)
Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill) ($2,000)
Rep. Tim Holden (D-Pa) ($1,000)
Now, no recipient of these donations from either party has yet been indicted, but do you really want to stake your talking point on the claim that all of these Democrats didn't know what they were doing -- and that when indictments do come down, a grand jury will have agreed with you? Really?
The Republicans are trying to pretend people his clients donated to are in
trouble also. You know, his clients, the Indians, who paid him money and
thus couldn't possible been funnelling his money anywhere?
Oh, poor fellow. Do you really believe that most bribes in Washington are in the form of cash handed out in unmarked brown bags by lobbyists? Do you really believe that when an Indian casino investor hires a lobbyist to tell them which wheels to grease, and then goes out and greases those wheels -- with well-placed, and well-rewarded in votes donations brokered by their lobbyist -- this is not bribery?
If so, there's no scandal here -- after all, Mr. Abramoff is not charged with giving his own money to members of either party. As for myself, however, I believe that such wheeling and dealing is unethical, and often illegal, and I think there is a very nasty scandal here, in which some members of both parties have dirty hands.
If you hire an unethical lobbist who bribes people, it doesn't magically
make every campaign contribution you make some sort of criminal act, and it
certainly doesn't make the Democrats accepting them criminals when they
don't know anything about this other guy you hired who bribes Republicans.
I don't doubt that you really, really believe that every Democrat who took money from Mr. Abramoff and his clients (remember that the vast majority of the money which changed hands unethically was in the form of payments Mr. Abramoff directed his clients, particularly Indian casino-related investors to give to various figures) didn't know where the money was coming from, while every Republican who a client of Mr. Abramoff gave money to did.
I doubt anyone who is even a little less laughably partisan than you believes this, however, and I certainly doubt that a grand jury will believe this.
Thank you for illustrating my point. You do indeed seem to believe that this political scandal is one sided, despite the remarkably bipartisan nature of the beneficiaries of Mr. Abramoff's largesse (please don't respond with the talking point that no Democrats have yet been indicted for taking money from Mr. Abramoff. This is true only in the narrow legalistic sense that no members of either party have yet been indicted for taking money from Mr. Abramoff.)
You likewise seem to believe that Mr. Bush `lied us into war', despite the fact that:
Mr. Bush, in concluding that Saddam had WMD's, reached a conclusion which was shared by the intelligence services of nations supporting (the UK) and opposing (France, Germany, Russia) the war alike, and had been ruled to be the case by the unanimous decision of the UN Security Council
Congress, who had access to all the same intelligence the President relied upon, voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force, in a bill which listed twenty-three charges against Saddam Hussein, of which WMD was only one.
The Washington Post certainly is not as far out in left field as you are -- you are quite right on this point. To equate this with them having a `pro-Republican bias' only shows that you do not realize how far out on the fringe (how `out of the mainstream' to borrow a Democratic party talking point on judges) you yourself are.
You might think it's fair, but you're wrong. See, pointing out that this
scandal involves no Democrats--only Republicans, is simple fact. Omitting
the plain difference between Abramoff and his Republican cohorts engaging
in illegal acts and the above-the-table campaign contributions some
Democrats have been getting from Abramoff clients since before those
clients hired him is simple dishonesty. No Democrat is under suspicion or
is even mentioned in any indictment associated with this case.
(emphasis added) I wanted to highlight this bit of verbal acrobatics on your part, because it's central to your spin here (and highly amusing to boot). It is, of course, true, as you suggest, that no Democrat has been indicted in this case -- in the narrow sense that no one of either party who received money from Mr. Abramoff has yet been indicted. It is early in the day, however, and the list of those who have been beneficiaries of Mr. Abramoff's largesse is very long, and very, very bipartisan, so even if we pretend (for the sake of argument) that this is the only political scandal which Washington has ever seen, I'd recommend against staking your credibility on a grand jury finding that all the Democrats who received `above-the-table campaign contributions' brokered by Mr. Abramoff, and then rewarded him with votes were quite so lilly-clean as you suggest.
It would be far more realistic to admit that with the large amounts of money the congress bandies about every day, such scandals are hardly a new thing (I suspect you are too young to remember the early nineties, but you might find it informative to google the names `Jim Wright' or `Dan Rostenkowski'), and are hardly restricted to either political party.
The administration has admitted the intelligence was bogus, and there's
documentation pre-dating its presentation to Congress, the UN, and to the
US public that the adminsitration had but ignored.
Ah, yes, the ever famous `documentation' -- ever mentioned, but never linked.
The fact is that this administration presented congress -- who had access to every shred of evidence the administration had -- with a 23 point bill of particulars against Saddam Hussein, of which WMD were one point. Congress, again, working from the same intelligence as the White House, voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force.
If your talking point is that your party's legislators didn't read what they were voting on, and didn't pay attention to the evidence, well, small wonder they're having so much trouble forming a coherent position on this war, eh?
It was kind of you to identify your talking point as such before launching into it -- of course, after that point, you began spinning like mad.
It is, of course, strictly true that no democratic elected official has been indicted for taking money from Abramoff, but it is true only in the narrow sense that no elected official of either party has yet been indicted in this scandal. The day is young, however, and the revealed recipients of Mr. Abramoff's largesse are quite a bipartisan bunch, so if I were you, I wouldn't stake your talking points too heavily on this remaining the case -- just a word of friendly advice, mind you.
As for the larger question, whether, as you seem to believe, corruption in Washington is a `single party issue', I suppose you are too young to remember the House post office and House checking account scandals of the late eighties and early nineties, both of which occurred when the House was as heavily Democratic party controlled as it is now Republican controlled, or the scandal-plagued career and early resignation of Democratic speaker of the house Jim Wright. (The name `Dan Rostenkowski' will also ring a bell with your elders and betters. I suggest you google it.)
With the huge amounts of money which congress has given itself the power to specifically `earmark' in the federal budget, such scandals are an ever-present risk in Washington. If you try to pretend that only one party's hands are dirty, you only show yourself up as a cheap partisan hack.
I think it would be fair to summarize your post as saying that anyone who doesn't believe that:
political corruption in Washington is a one-party issue
Bush `lied us into war' (not, note that the war was a bad idea or badly handled -- both of these are ideas which I disagree with but which can certainly be argued for rationally. To the true devotee of the paranoid style, the war (or 9/11, or the election) must not just be bad, but must be the product of a vast conspiracy)
has a `pro-Republican bias'. This is a very good example of exactly the type of DU extremism and fringe paranoia I described in my original post.
Note, however, that the Washington Post has no obligation to continue to maintain a forum which is burning hours of their time in filtering, just for the sake of the non-offensive posts therein.
Those who posted calmly to this forum should indeed be angry at those who did not over the fact that their posts are now gone. Getting angry at the Washington Post over this fact, however, is no more useful than getting mad at the Lifeguard because somebody peed in the pool...
Slashdot Mirror
When we're done using barges to fight global warming, maybe we can use canoes to fight leprechauns!
All divine intervention is thus intervention from outside the closed system of creation, and is necessarily hard to theorize about (the scientist would tell you that nothing in the closed system can tell you about what intervention from outside that system would look like; the theologian would point out that saying that an omnipotent God is limited in the ways in which He could intervene is self-contradictory).
With this in mind, we should acknowledge candidly that there are big holes in our understanding of the universe. The nature of the Big Bang, the origin of such wonderful complexities as found in the DNA-RNA cycle, and the emergence of higher mental processes in humans, resulting in a creature which exists side-by-side with himself with both characteristics we find throughout the animal world and with characteristics we find nowhere else are just a few of these mysteries.
It would be a mistake for anyone, scientist or theologian, to assert that science -- the study of the nature of the closed system we call the universe -- can tell us conclusively whether any of these mysteries must be the work of an external (supernatural) input. Science can only offer explanations within the system for various facts. It is up to us to determine how credible these explanations are, especially in terms of what we ourselves can observe about the world around us.
Sure. And in the vast majority of cases where [insert reverse DNS query tool of choice] tells you that the user is coming from a cable company's dynamic IP pool?
Careful there -- argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy when you attempt to bring in unrelated information about the speaker in order to discredit him. This does not, however, mean that all information about the speaker is necessarily unrelated.
To return to the issue at hand, when you have two people making assertions about a congressman's record, and one of the two is a paid employee of that congressman's PR staff, it is arguing `ad hominem' to point this out, but it is not a fallacy (unless you suggest, fallaciously, that their employ means that they cannot be telling the truth).
The problem, here as there, is that the people who are willing to go home and do the job from the dynamic IP address of their cable modem rather than from their work IP are exactly the ones who are more interested in seeing edits done.
In other words, as contradictory as it may sound, as long as anonymous or quasi-anonymous edits are allowed, placing hurdles in the way of bad edits only serves to self-select for the most interested parties -- and the most interested parties will always be those with an actual interest in the matter.
Seeing that it was used before you doesn't tell you anything useful about who the person was who did the editing (unless their nick or IP is one you recognize as someone you know outside of Wikipedia).
In real life, when we see a bunch of conflicting claims about something, we look at those speaking, and ask questions such as:
In Wikipedia (as in Slashdot -- but no one is claiming Slashdot's comment section is a valuable source of unbiased reference information) this information is not available. Instead, we get a bunch of conflicting quasi-anonymous edits, and no information to help us decide which are more valid.
In short, this is another example of the old saw: ``Wikipedia is like a public toilet -- when you need it, you're sure glad it's there, but you never know who used it last.''
No story here, guys. Move along.
I am quite content at this point that, while perhaps the incredible contortions which you are now going through to claim that Democrats who have admitted taking money from Mr. Abramoff didn't really mean to do so, and that Democrats who have admitted taking gifts from Mr. Abramoff (contrary to your claim, Mr. Reid, for instance, accepted unpaid use of Mr. Abramoff's skybox directly from his firm) really meant to pay him back, but never quite got around to it may make perfect sense to you, anyone else still reading this thread has long since seen through your absurd twists of `logic'.
A good day to you, Mr. `DavidTC'. It's been a pleasure.
- You began by telling us that the scandal was `one sided', and that anyone saying Mr. Abramoff had given money and gifts to Democrats as well as Republicans was `lying':
- In this post, you told us that the very idea that Abramoff or his clients had given money or gifts to Democrats was not only `absurd', but a `LIE':
- In this post, you told us that the very idea that Abramoff would `involve' Democrats in his donations was nothing but `GOP spin' (and `utterly absurd' to boot):
- And here you asserted that no Democrat had ever received a dime from Mr. Abramoff (indeed, the very idea was a `lie'):
Now, you've backed down to arguing about whether the copious donations or gifts which Mr. Abramoff made to Democratic lawmakers were really as bad as the gifts he gave to Republicans. In other words, you've admitted that all those things which you said were `utterly absurd', `completely absurd', and `lies' were, in point of fact, the truth, and now you're just haggling over details.Do you understand why it is unlikely that anyone still reading this thread takes anything you say from here in seriously?
I don't doubt you can come up with all sorts of lovely-sounding explanations for why Democrats were behaving ethically when they did exactly the same things you've been declaring it unethical for Republicans to do. It may even be that you really, really believe your own explanations, and thus that you really, really believe that the same action can be perfectly ethical and acceptable when performed by some sweet and kindly puppy-loving Democrat, but unethical and illegal when performed by one of those mean, nasty, creepy Republicans whom you hate so much.
The fact remains that you have now admitted that your original claim that Mr. Abramoff gave money and gifts only to Republicans and not to Democrats was completely, utterly, and wholly untrue, both on its face and in detail.
I'm content with that, really. If you want to continue the thread, that's fine with me, but I don't see how anyone still reading at this point could possibly take anything you say from here in seriously, now that you've admitted that your central and repeated claim through the whole discussion to this point was flat out wrong.
You posted four links, documenting gifts (skybox seats, plane tickets, and hotel fares) which you claimed Abramoff gave to Republicans, but not Democrats.
I responded and provided a number of links 1, 2, 3, 4) showing that every single item you mentioned had been given to Republicans and Democrats alike -- sometimes moreso to the latter than the former (you expressed outrage, for instance, that Tom DeLay got to sit in Abramoff's skybox, yet Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) got the skybox all to himself to hold a fundraiser in, and has yet to reimburse anyone for this gift).
Game over, man.
Actually, I'd like to go into more depth on this one, since even on your own terms your claim here is false on its face. Let's look at some of the gifts Democrats got directly from Jack Abramoff, shall we:
In other words, even if we took your own absurd definitions at face value, Democrats are guilty of everything you accuse Republicans of.
Is this really all your grand original claims that there were no Democratic recipients of Mr. Abramoff's largesse has come down to? That only donations which were made with a corporate credit card can possibly be illegal? And by extension that the $11,000 Dick Durbin has admitted taking from Abramoff, or the nearly $18,000 which Maria Cantwell has admitted taking from him are squeaky clean, while the plane ticket which DeLay accepted is a federal offense? Do you realize how laughable these distinctions without a difference sound to anyone who is not as childishly partisan as yourself?
As has been repeatedly mentioned by both sides in this thread, the entire debate here is over how Mr. Abramoff directed his clients money, and whether he was able to buy votes with that money. Pretending that whose card a donation came from (when it was the clients' money in either case) is the issue here is absurd.
Anyhow, you then move on to the real meat of your claim (and the subject on which we began this thread):
Lets leave aside for a moment the ignorance manifest in your definition of `bribe' (hint: a donation is not a `bribe' because someone you don't like gets it. It's a `bribe' if a vote is given in return. I've given you a long list of Democrats who took donations from Mr. Abramoff, and you've listed some Republicans who did as well. Any of these donations may have been bribes, and I don't doubt that a fair number were. Time will tell which a grand jury consider indictable, but the idea that party is what will decide which were shady is laughable).
I'd like instead to point out the meat of your claim (let's repeat it for emphasis):
It is sufficient for my purposes that if you really believe that the mainstream media are, on the whole, controlled by (or even particularly sympathetic to) the Republican party, you are way, way outside the mainstream. I am confident enough in this statement, that I think it's fair to wrap up this thread as follows:
If you, the readers of this thread, believe that the Washington Post, the AP, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and all the other organizations which have reported on the bipartisan nature of Mr. Abramoff's donations are taking orders from a secret Republican headquarters in Washington, by all means agree with him. Otherwise, please consider the likeliness that all of DavidTC's claims in this thread are as absurd as that one.
Again, despite your repeated attempts at proof by vigorous assertion, no politicians of either party stand accused of taking money illegally from Mr. Abramoff himself. The entire scandal here is over whether politicians agreed to vote in Mr. Abramoff's clients' interests in return for big donations from those clients.
So if you really want to argue that taking donations from his clients brokered by Mr. Abramoff is not a crime, well, not only are you the only one on either side in this thread making such a claim, but you are, in fact, left with no scandal at all. You are instead left with two painfully obvious questions:
Now, as far as I understand your position (and to be honest, your tendency to hyperventilate, confuse the names of the two parties, and simply shout that anyone who disagrees with you, whether it be me, the AP, or the Washington Post is `lying' isn't helping you here), it is that although Mr. Abramoff instructed his clents to give heavily to members of both parties (and they did so), only the Republicans he gave money to were breaking the law. Since no one has ever claimed that Mr. Abramoff was giving away his own money (and you certainly haven't provided a single shred of evidence to that effect), this leaves you making an even more laughably partisan claim than even DemocraticUnderground or Howard Dean are making.
Uh, yes, Mr. `TC'. This whole scandal is about whether taking money from Mr. Abramoff's clients and then giving them votes in return for their donations is `tainted'. That's all any politician stands `accused' of.
You then provide two links stating nothing more than that Rep. Patty Murray (D-Wash) claims that the money she received from Abramoff's clients had nothing to do with him, and she's not giving it back. I am (and the AP, in the article I cite is) willing to take this at face value, and you will note that her name does not appear on the list I posted, so your mention of her is nothing but spin.
Since you seem not to have read it, let me repeat. The following Democratic legislators have admitted receiving money from Mr. Abramoff and his clients as reported by the Associated Press:
It seems that the fact that the tribes gave more money to Democrats when the Democrats controlled both houses of congress, and switched to giving more money to Republicans when Republicans took control of both houses of congress seems dark and sinister to you, but to anyone with less of an axe to grind, does it really seem even passing strange? The question, after all, is not of who took money from the Indians; it is of who Mr. Abramoff was able to buy off by brokering specific contributions for specific votes. It should come as no surprise to anyone who is not laughably partisan that Mr. Abramoff found eager takers of his clients' money on both sides of the aisle.
Um, no. By now, the fact that Abramoff was brokering votes is old news, sealed with an indictment. The question now is not who was buying votes (Mr. Abramoff), but who were selling them (a remarkably bipartisan crowd).
Then I suggest you drop, once and for all, the talking point that `no Democrat has been indicted for taking money from Mr. Abramoff', as this is true only in the (narrow, legalistic) sense that no member of either party has been so indicted.
On the WMD issue, you are entitled to your own opinions, of course, but you are not entitled to your own facts. In UN Security Council resolution 1441, the entire Security Council voted unanimously that Saddam Hussein had not complied with 12 years of UNSC resolutions demanding he disarm. That's right, unanimously -- not a single `no' vote: not France, not Russia, not China. This is hardly surprising, of course, since the intelligence services of France, Germany, and Russia had all concluded that Saddam had WMD, and an active program to produce more.
Our allies abroad were not alone in this, of course. Bill Clinton had reached the same conclusion, authorizing air strikes based on this in 1998. At that time, both parties united in support of that conclusion, and both parties united again around UNSC resolution 1441.
Prior to going to war, Mr. Bush presented a 23 count indictment of Iraq to the US congress, and asked for authorization to use force. One of these 23 counts was Iraq's WMD program (absurdly, the anti-war crowd seems to have no argument with the other 22), a charge which was backed with public evidence presented to the Senate and House, and private evidence presented to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Not a single Senator or Congressman asserted that they had been given insufficient evidence to decide if Saddam had WMDs. Not a single Senator or Congressman asserted that the President was withholding evidence. The resolution authorizing force passed both houses overwhelmingly.
For you (or John Kerry, who has since admitted that he failed to show up for fourteen of sixteen Senate Intelligence committee briefings on Iraq) to now claim that Senate Democrats didn't know what they were voting on or didn't bother to examine the evidence they were presented hardly reflects poorl
Umm, okay, that's an interesting claim. At this point in the thread, you're barely clinging to coherency, and seem to be having trouble keeping your argument (or even the names of the parties) straight. Why don't you have a cup of coffee, wipe the spittle off of your screen, and try to put together a coherent statement of your position -- and above all, use that `preview' button. It's all that stands between you and looking like a total idiot.
Now, I've just posted a link to the full list of legislators from both parties who received money from Mr. Abramoff. If you want to claim that this money was not from Mr. Abramoff, then you'll need to come back with some evidence -- and also with an explanation for why the recipients (Democrats included) have explictly acknowledged that it was from him and are now returning it. While you're at it, you can explain why we should consider the Republicans on that list guilty, but not the Democrats (unless you're claiming that there's no scandal at all here).
Simply asserting without evidence that all of the Republicans on that list knew what they were doing when Mr. Abramoff brokered donations to them (the type of bribery of which he is accused), but that the many Democrats on the list had no idea that they were accepting his money only succeeds in making you look like a cheap partisan hack.
This claim may have been believable in 1970. It became clear that it was laughably naive in 1978 when the US ULTRA and MAGIC cryptographic archives were declassified, showing that Japan was not only not ready to surrender, it was actively preparing for a protracted defense of Hokkaido and Honshu -- and that, through decryption of intercepted Japanese radio traffic, we were fully aware of this when we decided to drop the bomb.
I suppose you still believe the pre-1978 cover story that it was a `lucky guess' which put us in position to intercept Japanese forces at Midway, too, right?
Given that no member of either party has yet been shown to have accepted money illegally, it is instructive to look at the list of all legislators who took money directly from Mr. Abramoff on behalf of various clients. Sure the list includes Republicans such as Thad Cochrane or Jim DeMint. It also includes:
Now, no recipient of these donations from either party has yet been indicted, but do you really want to stake your talking point on the claim that all of these Democrats didn't know what they were doing -- and that when indictments do come down, a grand jury will have agreed with you? Really?
If so, there's no scandal here -- after all, Mr. Abramoff is not charged with giving his own money to members of either party. As for myself, however, I believe that such wheeling and dealing is unethical, and often illegal, and I think there is a very nasty scandal here, in which some members of both parties have dirty hands.
I don't doubt that you really, really believe that every Democrat who took money from Mr. Abramoff and his clients (remember that the vast majority of the money which changed hands unethically was in the form of payments Mr. Abramoff directed his clients, particularly Indian casino-related investors to give to various figures) didn't know where the money was coming from, while every Republican who a client of Mr. Abramoff gave money to did.
I doubt anyone who is even a little less laughably partisan than you believes this, however, and I certainly doubt that a grand jury will believe this.
You likewise seem to believe that Mr. Bush `lied us into war', despite the fact that:
The Washington Post certainly is not as far out in left field as you are -- you are quite right on this point. To equate this with them having a `pro-Republican bias' only shows that you do not realize how far out on the fringe (how `out of the mainstream' to borrow a Democratic party talking point on judges) you yourself are.
(emphasis added) I wanted to highlight this bit of verbal acrobatics on your part, because it's central to your spin here (and highly amusing to boot). It is, of course, true, as you suggest, that no Democrat has been indicted in this case -- in the narrow sense that no one of either party who received money from Mr. Abramoff has yet been indicted. It is early in the day, however, and the list of those who have been beneficiaries of Mr. Abramoff's largesse is very long, and very, very bipartisan, so even if we pretend (for the sake of argument) that this is the only political scandal which Washington has ever seen, I'd recommend against staking your credibility on a grand jury finding that all the Democrats who received `above-the-table campaign contributions' brokered by Mr. Abramoff, and then rewarded him with votes were quite so lilly-clean as you suggest.
It would be far more realistic to admit that with the large amounts of money the congress bandies about every day, such scandals are hardly a new thing (I suspect you are too young to remember the early nineties, but you might find it informative to google the names `Jim Wright' or `Dan Rostenkowski'), and are hardly restricted to either political party.
Ah, yes, the ever famous `documentation' -- ever mentioned, but never linked.
The fact is that this administration presented congress -- who had access to every shred of evidence the administration had -- with a 23 point bill of particulars against Saddam Hussein, of which WMD were one point. Congress, again, working from the same intelligence as the White House, voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force.
If your talking point is that your party's legislators didn't read what they were voting on, and didn't pay attention to the evidence, well, small wonder they're having so much trouble forming a coherent position on this war, eh?
It is, of course, strictly true that no democratic elected official has been indicted for taking money from Abramoff, but it is true only in the narrow sense that no elected official of either party has yet been indicted in this scandal. The day is young, however, and the revealed recipients of Mr. Abramoff's largesse are quite a bipartisan bunch, so if I were you, I wouldn't stake your talking points too heavily on this remaining the case -- just a word of friendly advice, mind you.
As for the larger question, whether, as you seem to believe, corruption in Washington is a `single party issue', I suppose you are too young to remember the House post office and House checking account scandals of the late eighties and early nineties, both of which occurred when the House was as heavily Democratic party controlled as it is now Republican controlled, or the scandal-plagued career and early resignation of Democratic speaker of the house Jim Wright. (The name `Dan Rostenkowski' will also ring a bell with your elders and betters. I suggest you google it.)
With the huge amounts of money which congress has given itself the power to specifically `earmark' in the federal budget, such scandals are an ever-present risk in Washington. If you try to pretend that only one party's hands are dirty, you only show yourself up as a cheap partisan hack.
- political corruption in Washington is a one-party issue
- Bush `lied us into war' (not, note that the war was a bad idea or badly handled -- both of these are ideas which I disagree with but which can certainly be argued for rationally. To the true devotee of the paranoid style, the war (or 9/11, or the election) must not just be bad, but must be the product of a vast conspiracy)
has a `pro-Republican bias'. This is a very good example of exactly the type of DU extremism and fringe paranoia I described in my original post.Those who posted calmly to this forum should indeed be angry at those who did not over the fact that their posts are now gone. Getting angry at the Washington Post over this fact, however, is no more useful than getting mad at the Lifeguard because somebody peed in the pool...