One of the great non sequiturs of the left is that, if the free market doesn't work perfectly, then it doesn't work at all-- and the government should step in.

Thomas Sowell

One of the great non sequiturs of the left is that, if the free market doesn't work perfectly, then it doesn't work at all-- and the government should step in.

Thomas Sowell

In the past year I've been to Switzerland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, UK and Finland.  In all of my travels I've yet to find a single person who associates the common American with our president's politics.  While many of the people I've met don't care for President Bush, few, if any, hold it against the American people in general.  Your experiences may vary.

everyone's dislike of me was not my fault.

I am no longer interested in intertaining on Olyblog. Your "you might actually learn something," "liberal sophmoric thinking" approach is not what makes this place shine.

I'll just thank enpen for his excellent example of intellectual dishonesty and leave it at that.

when the liberals here have difficulty defending their position, they either change the subject or shut down because they don't like a writing style?

Really, it's pretty lame.

Try harder Guglielmo.

Good job Tschida!

I wasn't talking about font size, rather referring to Guglielmo's post.

"I am no longer interested in intertaining on Olyblog. Your "you might actually learn something," "liberal sophmoric thinking" approach is not what makes this place shine."

"I'll just thank enpen for his excellent example of intellectual dishonesty and leave it at that."

If I start a comment with that question, Krull, how is it going to make you read what I'm saying? You will probably go on the attack immediately and any chance for real conversation where we all learn something is gone. That's what Tschida did here. I can't speak for the liberals, but if everything I said or believed in was summed up as "sophomoric", I wouldn't feel very comfortable in that conversation either.

You really need to understand that it's not about substance, it's about style. Please disagree and express it, but it doesn't get us anywhere, and really does hurt the blog when it's always argumentative and confrontational. I'm no saint and I realize that, but I promise to be civil if Tschida and others will as well.

"Our embarrassing President provides a very recent example of a violation of OlyBlog's new social contract regarding intellectual honesty. Bush lies and people die. Why do people around the world hate and distrust our country again?"

This was enpen's original statement.  I post it as a reference point, to avoid someone contesting my post as off topic.

Taking the last sentence/question - I posted my thoughts on the subject from a point of view that I have lived and thus understand quite well.  As a toxic alcoholic, I blamed all of my problems with others on them.  The classic example of this line of thinking is "if you had a wife like mine you'd drink too", all the time fooling oneself that the attitudes of the wife aren't a direct result of the behavior of the alcoholic.  In many ways, I see this administration using the same approach.

There is no question that many people in many countries disagree with the United States and we are not totally innocent in the fray no matter how we try to phrase it.  Yes, some of our citizens have died as a result of actions of others.  Iraq could say exactly the same thing about us.  "Shock and Awe" had plenty of "collateral damage" - i.e. dead innocent people.  I could list other examples, but it gets rather redundant.  Iraq had nothing to do with an attack on our people, thus our attack labeled as some sort of "response" is intellectually dishonest.

Bush's comments about Iran, in reference to weapons, appears to be beyond intellectual dishonesty and into plain old lies.  To ignore or hide information and proceed on like it never happened, isn't just intellectually dishonest.  Intellectual dishonesty would have an element of perception, as opposed to just plain deception.

EDIT:  Did anyone else see Olberman's special message to Bush today?  Rather direct and to the point.

I don't know if the olybloggers that are gay will be happy with you using them as an example of somthing that might inflame. And you assume I dislike individuals that are gay, or that conservatives can't be gay (Larry Craig disproved that, amongst others). I get your point, but I don't think I would have used your analogy.

As far as my question, I have seen it happen here a few times. When the questioning get tough, the focus goes off the issue and the delivery tends to be the focus. Guglielmo isn't the only one to do it, or I would have directed my question to him only.

Intellectual dishonesty?

Lied?

I went to the provided link from the original post and - it seems to me - he kept with the intelligence more or less.

When intelligence is being briefed, nobody is giving an equation saying "Here's the answer and here's what you should be saying." The known and suspected information is presented and left to the individual being briefed - in this case, President Bush - to make an assessment and a decision.

President Bush was told in August that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ‘may be suspended,’ the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.”

I don't think there's contradiction, especially reading further when the piece states President Bush "changed the way he talked about Iran" after being given information that recent information may indicate that previous assessments were off the mark.

Intelligence is an inexact science. You do the best you can with the information available at that given moment. Unfortunately, the information available is probably only 1% of the picture.

n/m

"We Israelis sacrifice ourselves for our continued existence, our enemies sacrifice themselves for our destruction."--Unknown--