OPERATION BAD MEDICINE
DOCTOR DEATH INC
- THE DNC PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION NETWORK -
Posted on 12/10/2003 3:19:56 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON (AP) — It could be embarrassing to have millions of TV viewers think you don't shower. But Lisa and Randy Denuccio say they do in fact wash up, clearing up one of several misstatements by the Democratic presidential candidates in their latest debate.Facts got most blurred Tuesday night when the Democrats took on President Bush's record, such as when Sen. John Kerry criticized the administration's environmental policies by telling the story of the Salem, N.H., couple.
As he told it, the Denuccios can't drink their water or shower because they live next to a lake contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE.
But in a post-debate telephone interview, Lisa Denuccio said the couple now showers with the water from their town rather than the old polluted well. "We can't do without that," she said of the showers. However, she says, they still drink bottled water.
Debate viewers got a gloomy picture of the economy and, perhaps predictably, heard about none of the improvements that have come since Bush took office. For example, Sen. Joe Lieberman declared it would take a Democratic president to "get this economy going," but the economy has been gaining momentum over the last several months since Bush's third round of tax cuts took effect.
Weekly claims for unemployment insurance have fallen since April, and economic growth and productivity in the third quarter reached 20-year highs.
Several of the nine candidates criticized the tax cuts Bush pushed through Congress. But none mentioned that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, has cited those cuts as a reason for the recent economic growth.
Using a favored attack line against Bush, Lieberman said "3.5 million people have lost their jobs" and Howard Dean commented twice on the 3 million jobs lost under Bush.
While it is true that about 3 million jobs were lost during the early months of the Bush presidency, that trend has been reversing for several months as the jobless rate has dropped from a peak of 6.4 percent in June to 5.9 percent last month.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies political rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania, said the debate was filled with hyperbole and exaggeration typical of candidates trying to unseat an incumbent president.
"If you were trying to get facts from this debate, you are going to get confused," she said. "You have the party out of power exaggerating the negative impact of the administration and ignoring the positive impact."
Some of the context also got omitted on foreign policy, as in Wesley Clark's and Dean's arguments that Bush is "not fighting terrorism."
Although al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden remains at large, the administration's war, including the arrest of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has substantially thinned the ranks of the terror network. The administration also has thwarted attacks through increased cooperation with allies.
On the Iraq front, Dean declared, "I think we need to bring in foreign troops," although 24,000 soldiers from NATO countries are already fighting with the 130,000 U.S. troops. While some big Western allies, like Germany and France, have refused to send troops to Iraq, the campaign has received support from the likes of Britain, Poland, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Denmark and Ukraine.
The candidates also left out some of the facts when talking about their own campaigns.
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards boasted that he does not take money from Washington lobbyists because they have too much influence on politics. He did not mention that his campaign manager, Nick Baldick, has lobbied for clients like Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Burger King and Northwest Airlines.
Clark, meanwhile, said going to war with Iraq was a "strategic blunder." He also has said he would have voted for the congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein.
It is shocking, but maybe they decided they needed a token conservative to look fair and balanced.
But household incomes are tracked and they are rising too.
She's actually rather pretty:
No- were you born rude, or did you have to study?
The use of MTBE was introduced in the '70s.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies political rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania, said the debate was filled with hyperbole and exaggeration typical of candidates trying to unseat an incumbent president.Which founding father said of a provision in the Constitution that"If you were trying to get facts from this debate, you are going to get confused," she said. "You have the party out of power exaggerating the negative impact of the administration and ignoring the positive impact."
This may be a reflection on human nature. But what is government if not the greatest of all reflections on human nature?Conservatives as well as liberals are seduced into paying attention when a headline asks, "Is Your Drinking Water Unsafe?" People who self-select to be journalists are good at, and enthusiastic about, accentuating the negative about American society and any leadership of it which does not "reflect on human nature." Because, unfortunately, that is what produces commercial success in journalism.
The "Great Debate" format is designed by journalists specifically to produce "gotchas"--molehills out of which they will later produce mountains. That is an essentially anticonservative project--and only the anticonservative molehills are turned into mountains by journalism.
The basic conservative project during any election campaign must be to delegitimate claims of objectivity coming from the (marginally loyal) opposition--especially journalists. TV debates are bad because they put undue stress on the personality--not to say, the appearance--of the person who will in future be the head of state and of govenment in America. And the "moderation" of the "debates" by anticonservative partisans affecting to be neutral is particularly egregious.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
Well, that must be because the gap between the rich and the poor is getting greater...
Cue the violins!
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