I for one, hope this isn’t true. There is room for criticism in the marketplace of ideas. Criticism is working together. Hearing only good news just means that the “Bad” things are not being fixed. When you are an athlete your coach tells you how to get better by telling you what things need to be improved (the bad things). As long as it is done in a supportive way it is a positive thing.

Attacking ideas because they don’t match up with the party line is far more destructive than anything else. You want to sabotage and weaken a project? Tell everyone involved that everything is going well and everything is perfect. Set all of the gauges in a car or airplane to always read “positive” or good values and see what happens.

The real reason America is so much weaker now is that it is impossible to have a dialog about REAL problems our country faces without the Media or people in power distorting and misdirecting the problems. Instead we spent a lot of time and energy on hyped and imagined problems and ignore the actual problems (Iraq instead of Afghanistan + Pakistan for example).

Anyone know the leading killer in the US? (it’s not terrorism, nor sexual predators, nor drugs)

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YOU WRITE: “Victoria, you’re already flogging this dead horse in one thread. Please don’t try to derail this one.”

You brought it up yourself in post 49 – I hadn’t even posted on this thread ——– “You’re kidding, right? Now the right wing noise machine will ramp up to deafening levels. It’s already going on … witness Victoria’s obsession with Obama’s birthplace and her credulous belief that Obama could have just lied about his citizenship and somehow not been caught and disqualified long before the election.”

Steveg, you do a good job of “derail” all by YOURSELF – you bring something up, add my name to it, and then cry over my posting the proof. LOL

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Xion, I await your responses to #48 and the several other times I asked the same question.

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Is this the article you are referring to steveg?

Kenya: ‘I don’t know’ if Obama born in U.S.
Ambassador suggests question be put to American government

November 26, 2008

By Chelsea Schilling

Kenyan Ambassador Peter N.R.O. Ogego is saying he’s “infuriated” by a radio program’s efforts to “misquote” him on the subject of President-elect Barack Obama’s birthplace – but he refused to confirm whether Obama was born in the United States.
In an exclusive interview with WND today, Ogego was specifically asked whether Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen.

“I don’t know,” he said with a tone of irritation. “You should ask your government. I know his father is Kenyan.”

He continued with a rhetorical question: “Obama is an American, isn’t he?”

    Clark: “We want to congratulate you on Barack Obama, our new president, and you must be very proud.”

    Ogego: “We are. We are. We are also proud of the U.S. for having made history as well.”

    Fellhauer: “One more quick question, President-elect Obama’s birthplace over in Kenya, is that going to be a national spot to go visit, where he was born?”

    Ogego: “It’s already an attraction. His paternal grandmother is still alive.”

    Fellhauer: “His birthplace, they’ll put up a marker there?”

    Ogego: “It would depend on the government. It’s already well known.”

Now Ogego is saying the hosts misquoted and edited the audio recording of his comments.

READ THE REST

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You’re kidding, right? Now the right wing noise machine will ramp up to deafening levels. It’s already going on … witness Victoria’s obsession with Obama’s birthplace and her credulous belief that Obama could have just lied about his citizenship and somehow not been caught and disqualified long before the election.

The negativity won’t fade one bit, it will just shift directions.

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Three members of Congress visited Iraq shortly before the war, and while there, expressed their doubts that Iraq really had the weapons stockpiles the Bush administration was alleging as one of the justifications for war (and their doubts were well-founded, it turned out), and only later did it come to light that Saddam had paid for the trip, operating secretly through a front organization.

And present it as:

Saddam paid three lawmakers to come to Iraq and speak against US policy.

As I said, I agree with criticism of them for being dumb enough to get duped and for opposing US policy while in Iraq. But you insist on portraying them as willing sell-outs.

I still see that as dishonest. How do you justify it?

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If we wind this conversation all the way back to #30, I obviously don’t think Ted Kennedy and Obama should be on the watch list. I was being facetious. I just thought it was ironic that Kennedy was on the list seeing how far the ‘Hate Bush’ rhetoric took him and numerous other Democrats. And Obama’s campaign’s schmoozing with representatives of Hezbollah and Hamas, not to mention Ayers. But should the president be on a watch list? Of course not. It was tongue in cheek.

The good news is that liberals only rail against the evils of American policies (like our enemies do) when they aren’t in power. Now that they are in power, we can all work together for the good of America. I love hearing all the positive news now. Their duality is legion, but I’ll enjoy this four year respite from the incessant negativity.

When Al Qaeda recently criticized Obama, I heard liberal commentators strongly denounce it. That’s good. When they did the same to Bush, liberals reported it but then went into a spiel about how America was at fault for causing the world to hate us. When Chavez called Bush Satan himself, leaving burning sulpher wherever he stood, liberals laughed in agreement.

Well, now Americans can finally stand together again, seeing that no one has to hate the president anymore. We can call evil evil and good good. Of course, the ACLU will never get that message.

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Absolutely.

As a matter of fact, I don’t defend the trip to Iraq we’ve been talking about. I don’t think they should have gone, and I don’t think they should have spoken against Bush’s policies there … their opposition was principled and honorable, but there are times and places to express such things and that was the wrong time and place.

BUT … what I do defend is their patriotism and loyalty to their country. I do not accept, and cannot respect, the efforts to imply that they knowingly took anything from the Hussein regime, let alone “being paid by” Saddam, in your words, as if they took bribes or payments in exchange for their support.

You can oppose what they did without making it appear to have been orders of magnitude more nefarious than it really was. And it would be far more honorable of you to do so.

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You make it sound like the lawmakers took money from Saddam in exchange for their support of him, acting as paid spokesperson in opposition to their own country.

This is the version you want to believe, and want other people to believe. If that had been what happened, they might well have been guilty of treason, or something very close to it.

But it’s not what happened. They had sharp disagreement with Bush’s policy and deep skepticism about the Bush administration’s case for war — and they were completely right in their skepticism, don’t forget. They did not knowingly take anything from Saddam, and were already opposed to the war drums.

One other point to keep in mind: Sheila Jackson-Lee was the only member of Congress of any party to oppose our military action in Afghanistan. Almost no one objected to our retaliating against the regime from which the 9/11 attacks were planned and controlled. Iraq was always much less a consensus.

Put it this way: When people concerned about civil liberties express opposition to things such as warrantless wiretaps, on the grounds that they provide too little oversight or transparency to guard against them being used against innocent Americans, are you one of those who somehow translates that into “Liberals don’t want us to listen in on terrorists?”

Because if you are, that is a mindset I cannot respect. It is fundamentally dishonest and inherently divisive.

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