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.
“guyf: as usual you lost sight of the objective: which was; Ann Coulter’s repeated insistence that all Liberals/Democrats are “traitorsâ€?
you provided this quote: ‘liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots,’
easy, you proved that she didn’t say they are all traitors, that some of them are simply idiots.”
And in her very next phrase, she said they were the same thing.
If A means you’re a traitor, and B is the same as A, then B means you’re a traitor too. (It’s called the transitive property. Look it up.)
Again: why is insulting 250,000 people so horrific, but insulting 70,000,000 people perfectly fine?
Just come out and say: “It’s because Garofalo is insulting people like me, and Coulter is insulting people that aren’t like me.” It’s okay – we all know the answer anyway, and I know you don’t have the balls to admit that you’re a monstrous hypocrite, even if you know it yourself.
GuyF,
what a dumbass.
I used several statements, not just one.
take this one:
Racism, making the race of other people a factor in attitudes or actions concerning them.
Did garofolo say that these people are racist or not? Didn’t she say that the people were racist and doing what they were because a black (actually half black) man got elected president. wasn’t she saying that they were doing it because of race? attributing peoples actions to their race is racism.
geez, what a dumbass.
but don’t take that personal, it’s not your fault.
Jeanene can be easily proven wrong by the simple fact that any of those crowds last Wednesday would have gone crazy with delight had say ….. Clarence Thomas suddenly appeared on stage.
Or any number of other black conservatives in the public eye, few as they may be.
Ann is proven right every time the NY Times releases classified intelligence info/sources/methods, or Obama releases CIA interrogation memos, and liberals everywhere from the big 3 media to the local liberal blog applaud it and jump for joy. — Even though that release jeopardizes our national security:
Redteam, the other important thing to remember is that as far as I know there has never been a right-wing terrorist group engage in any such violent activity in nearly a century. If you look at the groups which have engaged in murder, kidnapping, bombing, various acts of sabotage and vandalism, they are virtually all perpetrated by left-wing groups.
guyf
did you fall asleep on a merry go round?
And in her very next phrase, she said they were the same thing.
you didn’t provide that next phrase and i’m not a mind reader.
but she said some were traitors and some were idiots. she didn’t say traitors were idiots or vice versa, she only said that the difference is irrelevant.
your statement was that she said all dems/libs were traitors. She clearly did not.
If A means you’re a traitor, and B is the same as A, then B means you’re a traitor too. (It’s called the transitive property. Look it up.)
What is it about libs that make them make up things to prove a point? in your example A you’re a traitor B you’re an idiot and the difference is irrelevant does NOT mean that B is a traitor. whether it’s a transitive property or not, it means that B is an idiot.
Let me try to complete your education:
Transitive Property (mathematics), property of a mathematical relation such that if the relation holds between a and b and between b and c, then it also exists between a and c. The equality relation, for example, is transitive because if a = b and b = c, then a = c. Other transitive relations include greater than (>), less than (<), greater than or equal to (≥), and less than or equal to (≤).
in your example, you used an A and a B. in a transitive property case you also have to have a C. you overlooked that little technicality. that would say is A and B are Traitors and B and C are Traitors then A and C are Traitors. in my case A is a Traitor, B is an idiot therefore there is no transitive property there.
come back for lesson 2 tomorrow.
From the original post:
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.
After our lesson in how the report was put together by CJ the spook, I’ve now concluded that the problem is
the “known problem segment” was not a “known problem segment” it was one created by someone that wanted to identify the wrong people as being that ‘known problem segment’
Timothy McVeigh was never the returned war veteran that joined or associated with right wing extremist groups. It was a figment of someone’s imagination. He was a nut case that acted on his own with a little assistance from a lone individual, not an extremist group.
“Timothy McVeigh was never the returned war veteran that joined or associated with right wing extremist groups. It was a figment of someone’s imagination.”
It was more than a figment of someone’s imagination. It was one of the earliest examples of how the narrative was right even though the facts were wrong.
Yeah Right Redteam,
There was no McVeigh, there was no mowing down of 3 policemen in PA last month. It is all about you! There is no threat to Americans. Just like there is no threat from al Qaeda.
Pathetic. Thanks for reminding me how smart a move I made by getting out of the asylum.
Redteam,
It’s very important to note that analysis is not a science, but more of an art. A lot of is due to analysis being based on multiple sources of information. Think of a prosecutor and how he builds a case that is highly dependent on circumstantial evidence. In many cases, analysis is like that. Intel analysts use multiple sources such as, SIGINT, ELINT, HUMINT, etc. (and not to forget the unofficial “RUMINT†or rumor intelligence) to help build their analysis report. They have not proven that McVeigh ever joined a militia; however, it is rumored (some substantiated) he did attend militia meetings. It has also been reported he learned and formed his militia mentality before he entered service by reading militant type rhetoric. Since none of us were a part of the intelligence team writing this report and none of us are privy to the classified intelligence information their views were formulated by, don’t you think it’s a bit judgmental to base an opinion without knowing all of the facts? I will not argue the fact I feel they could have used better language to avoid misleading or misunderstood logic; however, that said, perhaps you should try and give these folks the benefit of the doubt. Your argument that they got it wrong on Tim McVeigh is not completely correct, as I stated above nor are we privy to the classified information they COULD be basing their estimate on. One must understand, the government does this on ALL kind of groups of people whom they feel MAY have the SLIGHTEST chance of posing a threat to US national security. Lastly, I would agree the estimate should not have been released due to the fact that not all agreed with the report itself. The team writing the report should have ensured concurrence before they released. Since they didn’t do that, a lot of the fault belongs to the team and, ultimately, the Secretary of Homeland Security since the buck does stop with her.
“there was no mowing down of 3 policemen in PA last month.”
Right but as far as I know no “group” was responsible for that. We had an individual out here that killed 4 Oakland cops too, as far as I know he wasn’t political, he was just a criminal.
There are nuts of all political stripe. I don’t see the right as having any monopoly on murder and to say they are any more likely to engage in violence doesn’t seem to reflect the historical record.
To say that because a person watches fox news, for example, that Fox somehow makes them more likely to kill someone is just plain nuts, and we have heard people recently try to say that is the fact. When Fox has higher ratings that CNN and MSNBC combined, a person who watches cable news at all is most likely to watch Fox.
If a murderer doesn’t seem to be politically to the right you never hear about their politics. If they are, that is *all* you seem to hear about them. As if simply having one’s politics to the right makes them more likely to kill when history shows it isn’t so.
Cp,
I am sorry but your argument is stupid. There was a lone wolf (also described as a threat in the DHS report). They wanted an update on ALL threats from whacked out conservatives and they got one, which has not ever been made public (this is the UC version).
I assume you radical conservatives simply don’t want DHS making sure there are not threats now? Unless of course they come from the political opposition. Is that it? Only threats from certain political stripes are to be assessed, others ignored?
Dude – you have lost your mind.
Yeah Right Redteam,
There was no McVeigh,
I didn’t say there was no McVeigh, I only said the DHS report on him was based on erroneous info (proven fact)
there was no mowing down of 3 policemen in PA last month.
Yes and there were many murders in the US, and the price of apples is?
It is all about you!
and that means what? Didn’t you read what I said? I based it on the fact that the DHS report was based on clearly erroneous information.. You and I know that if you take incorrect info, it is impossible to extrapolate that into a valid theory.
It’s like the deal about the ‘theory of evolution’, you can’t take unknown information about the creation of the human race and create a valid ‘theory of evolution’. the natural order of things, take your lawn for example, leave it alone, never mow or weed it. It won’t develop into paradise, it will develop into an unstructured weed bed.
There is no threat to Americans.
There are many more threats to Americans from the actions of the current US president that there are from returning war vets.
Just like there is no threat from al Qaeda.
you must be basing that statement on your highly prized secret briefing from DHS.
Pathetic.
Amen
Thanks for reminding me how smart a move I made by getting out of the asylum.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
They wanted an update on ALL threats from whacked out conservatives and they got one,
wanted an update on ALL threats from whacked out conservatives and of course that update included an erroneous report on McVeigh, never joined a group,
and we know he was a conservative how?
We know he was a conservative because libs were the ones assigning the names and they didn’t want to identify him as one of them so he must have been the opposite. no proof.
and why the concentration on ‘whacked out conservatives’? since I didn’t receive this highly classified secret briefing, I don’t know if they were even slightly concerned about ‘whacked out liberals’ or not. There certainly has been no public emphasis on it, if they did so. Actually the unclassified public report identified conservatives as ‘terrorists’, a term they will not apply to that allied organization, al qaeda. they are only a ‘distraction’.
CJ the spook
It’s very important to note that analysis is not a science, but more of an art.
oh, now I get it. art is what allows them to take an invalid erroneous theory and turn it into a fact.
So following the discussion from above: step 1
If a person does not even generate the correct hypothesis for consideration, obviously he or she will not get the correct answer.
is it at this point that they go to Step 1: mod 1 which reads: it is at this point that you modify your procedure from a science to an art and apply rectal reasoning. (and we all know that ‘rectal reasoning’ is that you pull it out of your *ss.)
This art application allows you to come out with the original conclusion, which you had made prior to establishing your original hypothesis, and not have to ‘prove’ any of it.
Well, it is my conclusion, a well documented fact,(see above) that the entire DHS report was a product of rectal reasoning.
There certainly is nothing in it to the contrary.
AJ
I assume you radical conservatives simply don’t want DHS making sure there are not threats now? Unless of course they come from the political opposition. Is that it? Only threats from certain political stripes are to be assessed, others ignored?
First, I’m about as radical as you, which is not at all.
actually what us moderate conservatives want is for ALL threats to be identified, NOT JUST FROM ‘WHACKED OUT CONSERVATIVES’, so if DHS is only identifying threats from right wing terrorists then they are only identifying about 2 % of the threats to the USA.
I’d guess more than 90% of the threat is from overseas terrorists and the other 8% come from *all* others, even including *shutter* whacked out liberals. (but we’ll never know because apparently they didn’t attempt to identify any whacked out liberals)
Aj, first of all, I don’t consider myself “conservative”, I consider myself more “libertarian”.
And I am having trouble understanding what you are saying. My point was that there have been far more “left wing” organized group violence over the years than there has been “right wing”. And McVeigh wasn’t recruited by any “group”. Crazy idiots can be of any political stripe and people who AREN’T right wing kill more people every year than those who ARE.
So you have some guy in Pittsburgh who shoots three cops and everyone is all up in arms about “right wing” extremists because he watched Fox news or something. But you have a guy who shoots four cops in Oakland a couple of weeks earlier and no mention is made of his politics.
McVeigh was also Catholic. Does that make all Catholics prone to blow up federal buildings?
What I have tried (and evidently failed) to communicate is that the (real) threat of right wing extremists is being exaggerated while the threat from left wing extremists is being played down, minimized, or suppressed.
A lot more incidents of violence in this country have been perpetrated by left-wing individuals and groups than have been by right-wing.
From 2004:
Now imagine if an Obama campaign office were shot at … or broken into.
Wonderful comments from the left, eh?
But only the “right wing” is a danger?
Here’s the kind of stuff the government used to produce about left-wing extremism before downgrading the threat to simply hackers.
CP, thanks for the link, I read the whole thing and here are a few choice excerpts with some comments I have.
The comment would have posted much better had I been able to preview it or edit it. The part quoted from the Report should have been indented and italicized and my comments not so. but it didn’t work out that way. I’ll try harder next time. What ever happened to the editing function anyhow?
AJ, I am sorry to say this because I am usually right there with you in most issues, but you are way off on this one and so is pretty much everyone else. What we are seeing is the principles of “The Raod to Serfdom” in action, right before our eyes. Things don’t just happen in a vacuum, they happen for a reason and events that may as they occur seem to have no commonality, are actually all tied together.
DHS Report get’s “leaked” and includes information that basically a fundamental principle held common among conservatives has become an extremist ideology and a dangerous belief. It doesn’t matter that the belief is based on our Constitution because this isn’t about spreading truthful information, it is about influencing the masses to their ideology.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Next we have CNN and a reporter who is obviously looking to make the crowd turn on her. So she finds a guy with a kid in his arms and cuts him off midstream to report that the scene is a big Obama bashing party of a bunch of cooks. CNN labels the people at the tea parties as anti Federal Government extremists and that could only mean Fox news was behind the whole thing.
All of this was done to diminish the turnout that was expected for the “Tea Parties”. You see, if you label those at the Tea Party as whacko right wing extremists and use a classified report “leaked right on que” to back it up your claims, it will have a “chilling” effect on the growing movement so that when the 4th of July does come along, the media will be ready to exploit their claims because the real whacko left wing will be there to start fights and riots police will be shown all over CNN telling the world and the country, see we told you these right wing nuts were extremists.
Mark my words and read the “Road to Serfdom” so you can know ahead of time what is going to happen next.
Why the Worst Get on Top
There are three main reasons why such a numerous group, with fairly similar views, is not likely to be formed by the best but rather by the worst elements of any society. First, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their tastes and views are differentiated. If we wish to find a high degree of uniformity in outlook, we have to descend to the regions of your moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive instincts prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards; it merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards.
Second, since this group is not large enough to give sufficient weight to the leader’s endeavors, he will have to increase their numbers by converting more to the same simple creed. He must gain the support of the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are ready to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party.
Third, to weld together a closely coherent body of supporters, the leader must appeal to a common human weakness. It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative program — on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they” is consequently always employed by those who seek the allegiance of huge masses. The enemy may be internal, like the “Jew” in Germany or the “kulak” in Russia, or he may be external. In any case, this technique has the great advantage of leaving the leader greater freedom of action than would almost any positive program.
A further point should be made here: Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.
How soon we forget how our President got elected by the MSM. He has even been appointing members of the media to the highest ranks of our Government. So instead of arguing and breaking ranks, we should be spreading the word right now that CNN and their cronies are going to have to do much better than this because we will not fall into their trap.
SBD