Hugh Hewitt give repugnant lefty Jim Boyd a well-deserved beating. The lefty hack still can not argue in good faith, and continues to do nothing but throw insults. Compare his piece to the folks at Powerlineblog.
The best line, though, is this one from Boyd:
I could do extensive line-by-line analysis, but I will not. It would take space I do not have.
Two columns Boyd has written, calling the folks at the Powerlineblog liars and frauds.
Two columns, and he has not refuted one fact.
HAcktackular- Someone get him a job with the Kerry campaign or Media Matters.
Roofer
I think Neal Boortz has a pretty good explanation for why Hindrocket and Big Trunk are still waiting for Boydot.
Boortz has long maintained that liberal talk radio will never work because most columnists who propound a liberal agenda do so shielded by the security afforded by newsroom walls. They can write whatever they want, but they do not have to interact with anyone with an opposing point of view. They don’t have to take calls from people who disagree with them, they don’t have to read the letters, and they can even cherry-pick which, if any letters, are published as responses.
Put a liberal on a talk-radio program, however, and it won’t be too long before some small business owner will call and ask him why the government should force him to pay people more than their worth, why the government should use its monopoly on the legitimate use of force to take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have not, why discrimination is a good thing if it’s directed against some people but not against others, and a whole host of other questions that can be easily deflected in a 750-word op-ed piece, but that are more difficult to answer satisfactorily in the give-and-take of debate.
In short, a talk-show host must face the consequences of his comments and defend them. A columnist doesn’t have to. That’s one reason talk radio has succeeded, and why so many liberals launch their salvos from within Fortress Newsroom.
So it is with Boydot. As long as he stays in Fortress Newsroom, he’s safe from having to put up with the scrutiny and criticism that he knows his comments cannot withstand.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Yeah, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are examples that conservative talk radio flourishes because the hosts always have the facts lined up.
What rubbish. (Oh, have you checked Al Franken’s ratings lately?)
I would like, and I am asking this neutrally, a link for the right-winng claim that Kerry’s own camp has retracted his claim about Xmas in Cambodia. I haven’t seen it.
Returning to snark mode, I’d point out that George Bush still owes us several months’ National Guard records, and you seem to take a very different view of missing paperwork between Texas and Cambodia, and the consequences for who bears the burden of proof.
Roofer
Andrew, I’m satisfied that Bush fulfilled the requirements of service necessary to receive an honorable discharge. I don’t particularly care whether his service accrued in Texas, Alabama, or Palm Springs.
But before you start trying to light that one up, let me add one thing further: I don’t need to ascertain the veracity of Bush’s claims to have enough information to decide whether to vote for him for president. Whatever Bush may or may not have done on the way to earning an honorable discharge is not relevant to judging his fitness to be president. Why? Most people will point to the fact that Bush seldom, if ever, mentions his TANG service as a qualification for the presidency. I take it one step further: Bush’s TANG service may have been relevant to judging his qualifications to be president in 2000, but it became irrelevant once he assumed office, and it is irrelevant to judging hs fitness for a second term.
Why? Quite simply, Bush’s first term provides me with all the information I need to judge whether to vote to re-elect him. The same cannot be said of Kerry, a man who has asked us to judge him according to the only executive position he’s ever held, a four-month stint 30-odd years ago as officer-in-charge of a six-man patrol craft. By staking his campaign on that, and almost that alone, Kerry himself made relevant the questions that are being asked about what he did and didn’t do way back when.
There is a difference, whether you acknowledge it or not.
Roofer
Andrew:
Here’s one cite for you: Washington Post, Aug. 23, 2004;
Google the words “Kerry’s Cambodia Whopper Washington Post.”
Also worthy of note is the absence of any “was to!” quotes from Kerry or his campaign to the statements that he wasn’t in Cambodia on Christmas. The only time he has been asked directly whether he was in Cambodia, by John Stewart, he simply didn’t answer.
My take is that the either one of two things is the case. Either the Cambodia stories are all fictitious, or, if they are true, by not addressing them head-on, Kerry is demonstrating that he lacks a set of skills that I believe are important in a president: the ability to take command, to stand up to pressure, to articulate a position. If the man won’t defend himself, how can I trust him to defend me?
Birkel
The comments alone are instructive. The column we’re addressing is about a liberal not able to do basic research in a computerized world and two lawyers who are. Then, Roofer is asked by Andrew, an obvious troll, to do basic research that Andrew is either unable or unwilling to do himself. It really is educational to observe the same level of discourse criticized in the column replicated in the comments.
Now the question that must be answered is whether liberals are actually unable to present logical, coherent arguments when challenged. Roofer seems to think they are not. I’m not sure. After all, I know I can’t prove a negative and that the absence of evidence is not NECESSARILY evidence of absence.
Stinkin’ logic always getting in the way.
Ivor the Engine Driver
The disconnect between reality and the radical right is an interesting subject. Should we blame our educational system for the loonie right’s inability to perform simple reasoning excercizes? Or is this something genetic, something they were born with, a handicap that from birth has left them illogical? Whatever the cause, they simply cannot put tab A into slot B without using a chainsaw to modify the problem to something easier for their limited intellects to comprehend.
Slartibartfast
Perhaps we should instead advance a personal bias as a given, then ask some rhetorical questions, and finish up with the usual I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong horseshit.
But that would be boring.
David R. Block
Al Franken??
Yeah, I can’t get him here, so his ratings should be about zero.
Rick
Birkel,
A.J. Lazarus is no computer neophyte. He’s been here before, giving all the links to kook sites peddling the Bush-was-AWOL myth dear to his heart.
It must be a handicap from birth that has left him illogical.
Cordially…
JPS
Ivor:
“Should we blame our educational system for the loonie right’s inability to perform simple reasoning excercizes?”
I don’t know. Should we also blame it for your inability to spell?
Ivor the Engine Driver
You boys a little testy today? Someone steal your copy of the Musolinni Society newsletter?
Slartibartfast
Do you have anything intelligent to say, Ivor? Stop hiding your light under a chamber pot.
Ivor the Engine Driver
Not really. It wouldn’t be in keeping with the blog’s theme. I just like to hang out for the entertainment value. You offer the best satire of the conservative mindset on the web. You are so good that at times even I think that you believe the drool that splashes from your keyboard onto my computer screen. Keep it up, boys. You are doing great work for the liberal cause.
Rick
Bob Dole is on our side, so *of course* we’re keeping it up.
But a good point was scored off you: intellectual pretensions through spelling errors. Latterly, the “Mussolinni” howler.
Since YOU ARE SO SMART, S-M-R-T! Here’s a little historical fact4u:
we mindsetter don’t dig il Duce because he was the pre-WWI editor of Milan’s socialist newspaper. And governed like it after WWI.
Cordially…
RW
***”You are doing great work for the liberal cause.”****
Apparently, the voters haven’t gotten the message, yet.
Then again, the Dem candidate runs from “liberal”, so there’s no wonder that the “liberal cause” fails at the ballot box.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Well, birkel, the troll visited the Op-Ed piece from the Washington Post (not a news story), and I find that Kerry still states he was in Cambodia on (at least?) one occasion. That strikes me as disagreement with the comments you reference above. I will admit that so far he hasn’t provided much proof of that, although it’s probably as much as George Bush has provided about several still-missing months of TANG service. That is, no proof other than his own say-so. I can understand your skepticism, as I am sure you understand mine.
Slartibartfast
“I just like to hang out for the entertainment value.”
Rest assured, then, that you’re giving at least as well as you’re getting in that arena.
RW
AJL,
Bush has the gov’t documentation showing an honorable discharge. Kerry has gov’t documentation showing various medals.
There is no gov’t documentation showing Kerry in Cambodia.
And I don’t think you want the fallback position of accepting the word of Vietnam vets with decorated careers in the military……just….because. Do you? If so, there are 64 folks awaiting your endorsement.
Time to face facts — Kerry lied.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Well, I’m glad we’ve settled the medals issue. It’s indeed true that in every case, contemporaneous records as well as witnesses (even witnesses who oppose Kerry politically, like Lambert) agree with Kerry. Liars, anyone?
That isn’t true about Cambodia. Now, I’m still inclined to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt, partly because his accusers have been dishonest on the other issues. I wouldn’t expect documentation, at least not with names attached, for a clandestine rendezvous, but I do think Kerry owes us a better explanation of dates and who accompanied him on the incursion.
By the way, if you click back to the Boyd piece, John Cole has done a little fishy editing of his own. Reading here, you’d think Boyd used the “not enough space” excuse to avoid giving any examples. In the actual piece, Boyd follows immediately with two examples. In context, he just wants to make clear that absence of further criticism does not imply that he accepts the rest of the column he is condemning.
John Cole
Except, Andrew, he did not provide examples. He claims to have, but merely attempts to shift the burden in the former, and levels an ad hominem (I don’tknow whoChandler is) in the second.
Examples of nothing. Which of course, is what his argument is.