Apr 17 2009
Conservatives Fail To Engage Brain Before Emoting On DHS Report
Well, as an ex-conservative I can see I jumped the sinking ship just in time. A key issue with the DHS report (my initial posts here and here) is that it was clearly aimed at potentially violent groups. At the time the DHS report broke and the right went mad, I noted mainstream conservatism is not a potentially violent group. While some complained the report was vague, there were some names included, including the traitorous murderer Timothy McVeigh.
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After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
Anyone from the mainstream who had their brain engaged should be able to tell the difference between themselves and the focus of the DHS report – people like McVeigh or could potentially be like McVeigh. There was no reason for the drama queens to claim they could be or were being confused with a known problem segment of our population. All the wailing aside from the right, we as a nation need to face up and deal with this cancer. There are established labels for these groups, like rightwing extremists. It is also a fact far left liberals attempt to smear mainstream conservatives with these labels (of course, the far right does the same thing against democrats, like calling them fascists, and centrists, like calling them traitors).
How can anyone seriously think the GOP is a supporter, ally or enabler of the kinds of horror Timothy McVeigh inflicted on this nation?
But to show how truly insane they are, many far right conservatives have been out claiming brotherhood with the rightwing extremists, claiming publicly they are of the same cast, accepting the label and all its conations.Â
What has me floored is the inane hypocrisy of all this, as many conservatives rightly questioned Obama’s links to another American terrorist Bill Ayers. The only difference between Ayers and McVeigh was the decade in which they attacked this country and the fact McVeigh has a massively larger body count to his name.
Because conservatives hypocritically accepted the blurring of what were clear lines of distinction between real American traitors and mainstream conservative political movements and groups I had to end any association with this ever shrinking, shrill and marginal group. Instead of simply stating with confidence and pride conservatism is not a violent and extreme ideology, these knuckleheads have embraced the dangerous cancer by stating their acceptance with this cast of ghouls.
Not only is this political suicide, it gave credibility to the lunatic fringe when they claim  the conservative movement is nothing more than an out of control and potentially violent hate group:
Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance.
“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Countdown” with Keith Olbermann Thursday evening. “This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.”
“No way around that”. Especially when Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and others have stated publicly they are righwing extremists – in clear reference to a DHS report, which was focused on the likes of McVeigh. No longer can conservatives complain about liberal ties to Ayers now that they have stated they are fine with being tied to McVeigh and others like him. Now they have stated allegiance to the extreme rightwing, they have donned their mantle.
This is why people need to engage their brains before emoting in full drama queen mode. The conservatives, especially the far right, are angry they have lost the support of the people. All their current woes are the fault of oppressive democrats and traitorous centrists. I can say with confidence two things: Obama is not nearly as bad as the far right fringe claim (i.e., a fascist modern day nazi), and the far right is not as pure and morally great as they like to pretend.
What this country needs to do is stay out of the fringes. We don’t need the leftwing or rightwing extremists, violent or otherwise. We need the cool head of the center. Obama and the Democrats are making huge mistakes, but the conservative movement, now distilled down to its unruly core, is not offering any sane options. This provides the nation an opportunity to start a ground swell of support in the center, rejecting anyone from either fringe.
For example, Governor Rick Perry has been hinting that the answer to conservative frustration with being tossed from power, rejected and marginalized is for his state of Texas to secede from the nation (that’s a really twisted way to show patriotic support for this country, its democratic process and its elected leaders). Â By nearly 3-1 this idea is being rejected, just as the conservative movement is being rejected (75% of Texans oppose this radical idea). The conservatives are all for carving out a little fantasy island from reality, but the voters are not.
When the disaster of the recovery plans regarding unemployment hit over the next few months, there will a desire to find a centrist alternative to the liberals and conservatives. Now is the time to start thinking about what this could mean to getting this nation off the pendulum and on a forward, rational path.
Janeane Garofalo’s statement is a clear example of my belief that sadly, we will always have racial problems in this country. People like her that judge a person based on their skin color and not by their character. When it is PC to call a person an “Asian-American” rather than an American, and children are taught to look at a person’s skin color when they first meet them, in the name of diversity. And when many people in November either voted for, or against Obama because of his skin color- that works both ways. And this insane claim that any criticism of Obama is racially motivated.
Many on the left, such as poor Janeane, do not understand what Martin Luther King meant in his “I have a Dream” speech. Sadly, they never will. They take what they want out of it.
By the way Janeane, for a bunch of rednecks that don’t know anything about history, there were a lot of flags at these rallies from the revolutionary period.
Right Wing Extremist are terrorist. Now, the right wing extremism the DHS is speaking of are those groups such as, the KKK, Skinheads, NeoNazis, etc not the right wing conservative element of the GOP. Perhaps analyst should had been more specific in their terminolgoy; however, the analytical report was not intended on public viewing.
Here’s what the DHS report defined “right wing extremist” as:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
Notice the bold and underlined portions. I don’t really have a problem with calling the first group extremists; however, I do support the basic concept of federalism (that is what the bold portion discusses), and I am a member of a pro-life organization (the underlined portion). The DHS definition pretty much subsumes the conservative and libertarian-minded sections of the body politic.
In short, by the definition posited in the report (which is not the definition you used), I am a potential terrorist.
Also, here’s the critical sentence in the report:
The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.
The first bolded section refers to actual, no-kidding terrorists; but just one clause later (not even a separate sentence), the focus of the report shifts to concerns regarding people with a political alignment perceived to be “wrong.”
Also, note the underlined words.
DHS admits in the first sentence that they have exactly zero evidence to support this report’s hyperventilating over hypotheticals . . . and then spend eight pages doing so.
I’ve been around the government long enough to recognize an effort to “construct a narrative” in order to get people to do things you want them to do while making them think it was their idea in the first place. Hell, I’ve constructed several such narratives myself. This document is one of the more ham-handed efforts I’ve seen.
WWS;
IMHO, over the last 20 yrs, the % of Texans that would have supported secession would have been proximate to this poll.
Would you care to refute this with another poll? Personally, I think: Not.
Look folks,
Cobalt and the conservative drama queens want the report to be about them! They are going to be the next McVeigh. Let them have their little fantasies – while wandering in the political desert.
Cobalt and the conservative drama queens want the report to be about them! They are going to be the next McVeigh.
Have it your way.
BT
NNNN
CJ the spook, you said:
I can tell you the process in which the DHS intelligence team used is a nonpartism and timely analysis.
and I quoted from the report:
After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
So now I’m going to say, according to what you said, there is a “process” and if that is true, they took a ‘fact’ such as that one I quoted and that is 100% false and applied the ‘process’ to a false fact and came up with a 100% accurate assessment.
If that is the case, and you said it is, then I am going to hypothesize that their ‘process’ is 100% flawed and is therefore total BS. But when someone questions the accuracy of the BS, they become right wing drama queens. Care to defend their ‘process’ further?
Reteam,
The ACH process is 8 Steps. If you care to learn about these steps you can find them at this website https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art1.html
Futhermore, I think this argument is silly, why not focus your outrage on Obama’s release of interrogation techniques to the enemy?
The report in question was flagged as having “problems” by the DHS’s own internal review process. The “process” was overruled by someone and the report released anyway.
There aren’t too many people with the authority to do that.
CJ the spook.
Oh, that’s certainly a concern, but why didn’t you address my question?
As I said they took a lie as a fact and then applied 8 steps to it. At which step did the lie become the truth?
In case you missed the lie, reread my above comment with the quote in it.. McVeigh never joined or associated himself with any right wing extremist groups. How did processing that through 8 steps or any number of steps turn it into the truth?
Until you can answer that question logically, you can’t defend the process, and if you can’t defend the process, you can’t defend the processors. no matter how much you want to.
Out of curiousity:
Why is Garofalo’s statement that the Tea-Partiers were “racists” any different than Ann Coulter’s repeated insistence that all Liberals/Democrats are “traitors”? Not that I agree with her – but at least Garofalo kept her insults to a couple hundred thousand people, instead of half the country.
even better CJ
why don’t you take their ‘fact’ and run it through the 8 steps for us, as a demonstration, then we can see for ourselves how and when it became the truth.
guyf
Why is Garofalo’s statement that the Tea-Partiers were “racists†any different than Ann Coulter’s repeated insistence that all Liberals/Democrats are “traitors�
You’re not serious, you’re putting us on, right?
First, usually racists are the people that use the term most.
Clearly in Janeane’s case she see’s ‘racists’ everywhere which means she’s only looking for racism and who ‘looks’ for racism? racists.
provide us a link that shows that Ann coulter insists that ALL libs/dems are traitors. True many of them are, but that’s beside the point.
“McVeigh never joined or associated himself with any right wing extremist groups. ”
And that is why he was never caught before he acted. Groups are MUCH easier to deal with by orders of magnitude than “lone wolf” predators. A group can be infiltrated. And the more people that know about something the better the chances that someone will have a problem with a heinous act and do something to prevent it.
In fact, we might STILL be looking for him if that license plate didn’t fall off his getaway car.
Redteam:
“Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.” — Ann Coulter, P. 16, “Treason”
That was easy. Now, as to your statement:
“First, usually racists are the people that use the term most.”
I provided my quote. Find me one piece of evidence for the statement you just made, or admit that you just made it up.
And again – why is insulting 250,000 people so horrible; but insulting 70 million is perfectly fine?
guyf: as usual you lost sight of the objective: which was; Ann Coulter’s repeated insistence that all Liberals/Democrats are “traitors�
you provided this quote:”liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots,”
easy, you proved that she didn’tsay they are all traitors, that some of them are simply idiots.
back to square 1.
I’ll get back to you on the other point, meanwhile, you need to be looking for different info to support your claim, the first one didn’t do it.
CJ the spook: I’m checking out the 8 step process and here is:
Step 1
Identify the possible hypotheses to be considered. Use a group of analysts with different perspectives to brainstorm the possibilities.
Psychological research into how people go about generating hypotheses shows that people are actually rather poor at thinking of all the possibilities.85 If a person does not even generate the correct hypothesis for consideration, obviously he or she will not get the correct answer.
Now I can’t be sure, but this appears to be the beginning hypothesis in this case:
After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
Since we know this hypothesis is incorrect, and since rule one clearly states: If a person does not even generate the correct hypothesis for consideration, obviously he or she will not get the correct answer. then we know that they did not reach the correct conclusion. How many incorrect hypotheses were used in this report? All? Most? some? few? or does it matter? I’d say the whole report is flawed. wonder if AJ would use such flawed data to launch a manned rocket?
Now we have what we know indisputably is a flawed report that conservatives are the gravest threat existing to America, even greater than al qaeda, and since some conservatives are speaking out against the known flawed report, and THEY are the drama queens. Shouldn’t we give a little of the credit for drama to the people that used a flawed hypothesis to draw invalid conclusions?
care to defend the report further?
CP
I agree with what you said, but I think you are overlooking the point I was making. That the conclusion that returning war veterans are likely to join right wing extremists groups is because McVeigh joined or associated with right wing extremist groups. He didn’t, so their conclusion is invalid. That was my point.
GuyF, here are some definitions of a racist. which one does not apply to garofolo
The belief that race accounts for differences in human character
Racism, by its simplest definition, is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Racism, making the race of other people a factor in attitudes or actions concerning them.
Racism implies a belief in the superiority of ones own race. … Racism, making the race of other people a factor in attitudes or actions concerning them. Racism implies a belief in the superiority of one’s own race.
Can you say she’s not accusing people of being racist? Can you say she’s not saying that those people’s race is not a factor in what she’s saying?
Clearly not. Ergo, she’s clearly a racist.
“How can anyone seriously think the GOP is a supporter, ally or enabler of the kinds of horror Timothy McVeigh inflicted on this nation?”
Bill Clinton did. And others as well.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n10_v47/ai_16936563/
I think that the current conservative reaction to the DHS report is driven by the memory of how the conservative movement was unfairly linked to McVeigh back then and the belief that the same thing is about to happen again. And that conclusion isn’t such a stretch.
It is disingenuous to suggest that mainstream conservatives are simply being melodramatic by reading more into the DHS report than what this blog writer wants to believe is really there when the only example the report sites to support its conclusions is the very same guy the last Democrat administration used to demonize the conservative movement.
“Can you say she’s not accusing people of being racist? Can you say she’s not saying that those people’s race is not a factor in what she’s saying?
Clearly not. Ergo, she’s clearly a racist.”
That is the single stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a human being write. Recognizing racism in other people makes one a racist?
If I notice that (for example) you are a racist, because make a statement that makes it obvious that you judge people by the color of their skin, and I state: “You are a racist.”
By your “logic” – that now makes me a racist? Even though, in this example, you know NOTHING about my beliefs on race?
Wow. I’ve met dumb people before who thought they were smart – but you are the KING of that village.
(And before you get your panties in a twist – no, I’m not saying I think you are a racist. This is a hypothetical example.)
CJ the spook: I found this statement at the site you linked me to:
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
You said you’re a student of intelligence studies, etc. what do you make of that statement? Do parachutes really only function when they are open?
but to continue to flog a horse, you said:
2. For intelligence analyst to summize that there could possibly be a problem with a rise in extremist Vets is not coming from the desire to slander American soldiers. For them to surmize as such, there would be evidence gathered to base that statement on. Analyst do not make up information.
Then how do you account for them using the hypothesis that McVeigh joined an extremist group? He clearly did not, so if they did not ‘make it up’ where did it come from. If it was not ‘made up’ then it had to be presented to them as fact. Who would present something to an analyst as fact when it is really fiction? Perhaps someone that wanted to shape the outcome?
I’d like to hear your theory on that. Here’s mine. SOMEONE wanted the report to reach the conclusion that returning military, which are mostly conservatives, and are generally well liked by conservatives are not always the good guys, that some of them, for example Timothy McVeigh, are terrorists. Whoops. They accidently used the wrong ‘for example’ since McVeigh actually DIDN’T do what they claimed.
Now my followup question. If that part of the report was deliberately shaped, was any other part of the report deliberately shaped? by whom? was all of it shaped? should we be concerned that the DHS is putting out a report with known lies? who’s responsible?
Should we just overlook this report because some think it is all above board?
no matter how much anyone likes, or wants this report to be true, it’s not. There….I’ve let the air out of some balloons. Quit defending known lies.