has anyone read "lies and the lying liars..."

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friedpie

Senior member
Oct 1, 2002
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Well I can tell you it's a lie just by looking at the title. Bin ladens himself said it's our support for israel and USA in SA which compelled him to "Unleashed Global Terror".

bin Laden's motivation is not the issue. The issue is did Clinton do enough to stop bin Laden. Clinton knew bin Laden wanted to do great harm to the US. His administration passed on bin Laden for a number of reasons, one of which was Clinton's desire to go down in the history books as the one who finally brought peace to the West Bank. He didn't want to piss of the Muslims by arresting bin Laden. After numerous terrorist attacks on embassies and warships and even the WTC, all he could muster was a few cruise missiles into the dirt.



 

Pennstate

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 1999
3,211
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0
went out and got this book tonight. So far (up to Chap 3), the book is exactly doing what the title said. Refuting lies by conservative commentators who told them (i.e. liars). I would love to see a conservative site set up to "debunk" Franken's lies...like how they do it to Coulter's "Slander". And that picture of the front page of NY times the day after Dale Earnhart was killed was enough to reaffirm my intuition that Anne Coulter is a crazy liar.

Back to reading

 

Gaard

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
8,911
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And that picture of the front page of NY times the day after Dale Earnhart was killed was enough to reaffirm my intuition that Anne Coulter is a crazy liar.

What was the picture?
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,862
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Originally posted by: Gaard
And that picture of the front page of NY times the day after Dale Earnhart was killed was enough to reaffirm my intuition that Anne Coulter is a crazy liar.

What was the picture?



its an example of one of her blatant lies. she said something like the liberal elite is out of touch and didn't publish dale earnharts death in the ny times until 2 days after out of spite or whatever. it was like her final point about the evil of liberals or something from what i remember. she rails on and on about it...but its a house built on lies. the ny times posted his death on the front page the day after his death like they did with anyone important on the front page. how could she lie so blatently? from what i remember she end notes that an article on the front page was also published 2 days after. she just ignored the first day to make her point.. thats how it works:p no respect for her readers.


 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,862
84
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more fun with coulter.


by Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times [US]
July 22, 2002

If Ann Coulter were a singer, she'd be Ethel Merman. Even her photos are blunt and loud. In the cover shot of Coulter's book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right , she displays the most chilling stare this side of Honey Bunny in "Pulp Fiction."

But despite the vast, left-wing conspiracy working against her, Coulter has appeared on every show this side of "Meet the Osbournes" to plug the book. Slander is No. 1 on the Publishers Weekly list, No. 1 on the New York Times list, No. 3 on amazon.com and No. 1 in the hearts of liberal-bashing Americans from coast to coast.

Seems like a good time to point out just a few of the hateful proclamations, misleading assertions and incorrect statements in the book.

On p. 4, Coulter establishes her tone--and her propensity for twisting quotes like Twizzler sticks to suit her needs--when she writes: "The infernal flag-waving after 9/11 nearly drove liberals out of their gourds. For the left, 'flag-waving' is an epithet. Liberals variously call the flag a 'joke,' 'very, very dumb,' and--most cutting--'not cosmopolitan.' ''

The "joke" quote is attributed to director Robert Altman, who was primarily criticizing the Bush administration. Also, Altman was talking not about genuine displays of patriotism, but the commercialized omnipresence of the flag. As he later told People magazine, "I don't think [the American flag] should be on brassieres."

Hmmm. Sounds likes an opinion Coulter would applaud.

As for the "very, very dumb" remark, the article Coulter cites is a New York Times piece about a controversy in Honolulu last November when an American flag was raised atop the Iolani Palace, the 19th century seat of the Hawaiian monarchy. Reacting to the suggestion that Hawaiians aren't as patriotic as other Americans, University of Hawaii-West Oahu professor Dan Boylan said, "This is when people start acting very, very dumb in their patriotism and flag-waving. I'll take Dan Inouye's empty sleeve as patriotism long before I'll take a passing bumper sticker on my car that says, 'America Forever.' "

Boylan was referring to former U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, who lost an arm in World War II. And I don't see how you can view his statement as anything but intelligent and pro-American.

Finally there's Coulter's charge that "liberals" call the flag "not cosmopolitan." Once again she lifts a statement out of context and makes a huge generalization about millions of people: those dreaded liberals.

The source Coulter cites, yet again, is a New York Times article. (Coulter hates the New York Times, but she uses it as a research tool more often than an undergrad with a double major.) Noting that the American flag didn't have a huge presence in New York prior to 9/11, historian David Nasaw said, "New York has just been too much of a cosmopolitan town for flag-waving. It is the home of the UN, and a place filled with tourists, with immigrants, with people doing trade."

How Coulter decided that Nasaw is a "liberal" is beyond me. In any case, she either fails to understand or chooses to ignore the fact that Nasaw was using the primary definition of cosmopolitan, i.e., "belonging to all the world." He wasn't saying it was uncool to display the flag, as Coulter charges. And he was talking about New York before 9/11.

So to varying degrees, all three quotes are misrepresented by Coulter as emblematic of the vitriolic rantings of anti-American "liberals."

How utterly bogus.

*****

Coulter peppers her prose with terribly faulty analogies, e.g., "Hiring [George] Stephanopoulos [to do television] would be the equivalent of a major network hiring Chuck Colson immediately after Watergate."

Well, no. Chuck Colson was convicted of obstruction of justice, a felony, and served seven months in prison. Stephanopoulos' biggest crime was writing a self-aggrandizing tell-all book.

Coulter also has a habit of chastising liberals for their methodology and then using the same techniques to make her own points. She argues that it's wrong for liberals to compare Rush Limbaugh to the major news organizations because Limbaugh is "a noted polemicist" engaging in "satirical commentary," yet when Coulter needs examples to back up her claims that news organizations target conservatives, she routinely quotes columnists. Um, aren't they supposed to have opinions?

A careful analysis--hell, a casual read--of Coulter's book reveals that she often shines the spotlight on her own mistakes. On p. 51 she writes, "[F]or the media to . . . call you an 'airhead' [Katie Couric on Ronald Reagan]--well, that makes strong men tremble and weak men liberals."

Except Couric never actually called Reagan an airhead. On p. 133 of her own book, Coulter writes that what Couric said was: "The Gipper was an airhead. That's one of the new conclusions of a new biography of Ronald Reagan that's drawing a tremendous amount of interest and fire today." (The book's author, Edmund Morris, had said his first impression was that Reagan was "an apparent airhead.")

So for Coulter to write that Couric was the one labeling Reagan an airhead, would be, let's see, what's the word? Oh yeah. A lie.

More fun with Ann tomorrow.





Part 2: Coulter's 'Slander' a lazy mix of errors, invective
Posted on Sunday, July 28 @ 16:29:32 EDT by JohnBrown
Submitted by sv3n


by Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times [US]
July 23rd, 2002

Part 2 of a 2 part series

In her book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right , the hyperventilating conservative pundit Ann Coulter states that one of the "unbending rules of the universe" is that "It is horrendous to attack a woman for her looks."

Yet in the very next paragraph, Coulter writes, "A blind man in America would think the ugliest women ever . . . are Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, and Katherine Harris. This from the party of Bella Abzug."

Now that's impressive. With a two-paragraph spread, Coulter just might have set the record for hypocritical invective.

And Coulter must think Rush Limbaugh is "horrendous," seeing as how Limbaugh has mocked the looks of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Sally Jessy Raphael, among others.

Speaking of Limbaugh, Coulter tells her readers, "Locating some minor accuracy by Rush Limbaugh ... turned out to be more difficult than I imagined ..." and goes on to speculate about the "off chance that anyone ever ... locate some minor inaccuracy ..." in Limbaugh's work.

Minor inaccuracy? Limbaugh's committed dozens of MAJOR gaffes over the years, e.g., "It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive."

Yippee! Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

*****

An ongoing theme of Slander is that liberals never want to talk issues--that it's all about name-calling and making emotional arguments.

Ahem. From Coulter's own book:

P. 26: "The [Ku Klux] Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals!"

P. 157: "The good part of being a Democrat is that you can commit crimes, sell out your base, bomb foreigners, and rape women, and the Democratic faithful still think you're the greatest."

p. 123: "Everyone knows it's an insult to be called a liberal, widely understood to connote a dastardly individual."

p. 181: Katie Couric is "the affable Eva Braun of morning TV."

Good thing Coulter isn't like those liberals who resort to cheap generalizations and insanely inaccurate accusations.

*****

Coulter demonstrates sloppy bias when she writes, "When ABC was considering scrapping Ted Koppel's 'Nightline' in early 2002 because of its low ratings, the most common reaction was, 'Is that still on?' "

Of course, the primary reason ABC considered dropping "Nightline" wasn't ratings--it was the chance to hire David Letterman. As for "the most common" reaction, Coulter's jibe makes her seem silly and uninformed. Yes, dear, "Nightline" is still on. Tell all your friends.

Coulter is equally disingenuous--or is it lazy?--when she reports what she perceives to be a typical example of liberal bias in the media:

"[Jesse] Jackson's son also got his own television show--while actually serving in Congress. A CBS-owned Chicago television station, WBBM-Channel 2, gave the Democratic congressman his own talk show, 'Chicago Focus With Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.' ''

Wrong again. True, it was once announced that Jackson would be getting a weekly show on Channel 2, but the program never came close to getting on the air. It's been two years since the idea died.

And it's just plain funny when Coulter charges that "the entire information industry works overtime to suppress conservative books . . .publishers don't like conservative books, the major media ignore them, and bookstores refuse to stock them." On the very next page, Coulter cites a long list of best-selling books by conservative authors. So the "entire information industry" is suppressing books by conservative writers, yet many of these books have been top sellers. It's a miracle.

*****

In an effort to illustrate media slant, Coulter writes: "In the New York Times archives, 'moderate Republican' has been used 168 times. [But] there have been only 11 sightings of a 'liberal Republican.' "

But the American Prospect Weblog Tapped did a search of the New York Times archives and found 524 mentions of "liberal Republicans."

I guess some conservatives just aren't that good with a computer.

*****

Coulter repeatedly drags up two tired urban legends about Al Gore --the "invented the Internet" and "Love Story" tales--and passes them off as fact, even though both have been thoroughly debunked.

And she makes the claim that unlike Gore, George W. Bush was no fortunate son: "When Bush was admitted to Yale, his father was a little-known congressman ... His father was a Yale alumnus, but so were a lot of other boys' parents. It was Gore, not Bush, who had a famous father likely to impress college admissions committees."

Right. Dubya was a Phillips Academy preppie whose Yalie father was a congressman and whose Yalie grandfather was a two-term U.S. Senator. I'm sure the whole Bush clan was lighting candles every night while waiting to hear if Georgie boy was going to be admitted.

Coulter reminds me of the little girl in "Hey Arnold!" who shouts in Arnold's face that she hates him--though she secretly loves him.

Maybe that's how Ann feels about liberals. Maybe deep down, she's got a crush on us. It's kinda cute.

 

beyoku

Golden Member
Aug 20, 2003
1,568
1
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well i think bin laden said he had nothing to do with it.
and after the plane hit bush went on reading the book for another 15 to 20 minutes.
 

csf

Banned
Aug 5, 2001
319
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Originally posted by: Zebo
yet another prime example of how conservatives are intellectually dishonest,

You have to have intellect to be intellectually dishonest. Not thier fault, kudos for setting the record straight, hopefully you used simple enough words.

Oh, cut it out. "Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" is just the kind of non-constructive crap that has no use here. Besides, if you're going to try to be a patronizing ass and call people stupid, you should be able to spell a "simple enough word" like "their" correctly.
 

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
7,512
2
81
Left-wing comedian Al Franken readily admits he lied in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft and others. And that's not all. Mr. Franken also admits to deception by misappropriating the letterhead from Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy
The irony: Mr. Franken's new book is called "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."
Oh puhleeze. I heard Fraken on the radio when he talked about that. His lie was this: he posed as a conservative youth organazation promoting the benenefits of not having sex until marriage. He then asked for Ashcroft et al to share their personal stories of triumph against sex.

And the letterhead thing? Fraken was a fellow at the Shorenstein center so he wasn't misappropriating it. What happened was that he too late realized that he had given himself away on his con job by using paper with the Shorenstein letterhead thus revealing that he was a journalist or journalist student from Harvard and not a conservative youth leader.
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,862
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perhaps, but when people caught red handed in lies aren't fired or punished in any way, and continue to furiously lie about the lie and lie in general, its hard not to call them stupid:) remember how jason blair got caught making up stories and got fired and his newspaper got lambasted by most everyone?

seems conservative media isn't held to such standards.. for good reason. it couldn't exist at all if it were:p
 

BDawg

Lifer
Oct 31, 2000
11,631
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Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
perhaps, but when people caught red handed in lies aren't fired or punished in any way, and continue to furiously lie about the lie and lie in general, its hard not to call them stupid:) remember how jason blair got caught making up stories and got fired and his newspaper got lambasted by most everyone?

seems conservative media isn't held to such standards.. for good reason. it couldn't exist at all if it were:p

I enjoyed when he caught the Washington Times in a lie. He hoped that telling other newspapers at a convention (can't remember the name) could get their press credentials revoked. He says when he told people, they just shrugged and said, Yeah, that's the Washington Times. :D
 

Pennstate

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 1999
3,211
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SOme may say this book wasn't writen in a "nice way". But I think it serves as a good rallying point for democrats and moderates alike. The Right-wing media and government has been lying and intimidating us with threats and labels (communists, traitors, etc). They lie 100x more often than democrats. It's time for us call their BS now and do it in an assertive way.

The Wellstone quote at the end of the Wellstone chapter was really moving.


"Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people?s lives.?

I wish we can tatoo this onto the forehead of every politician.
 

rockyct

Diamond Member
Jun 23, 2001
6,656
32
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Originally posted by: Spamela
i'll read it as soon as mrs. spamela can find it at costco.

Actually, I just bought it at Costco for $15, so you might want to look.

Anyway, I couldn't believe how O'Reily could lie so much so I decided to watch his show for an hour just to see for myself. Well, three times he mentioned a liberal media agenda was keeping stories down and said that all the signers of the Constitution were Christians, which is not true. He also practically challenged the intelligence of a person because she said the Constitution was heavily influenced by the Magna Carta instead of the 10 Commandments.
 

Pennstate

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 1999
3,211
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O'Reilly appeals to dumb people. People that makes decision base only on emotions. People who are closed minded and only wants others to confirm their believes. Not that they are BAD people. They are just dumb.
 

PatboyX

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2001
7,024
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Originally posted by: Pennstate
O'Reilly appeals to dumb people. People that makes decision base only on emotions. People who are closed minded and only wants others to confirm their believes. Not that they are BAD people. They are just dumb.

i agree with you as far as being emotionally-driven. watching him always makes me a little uncomfortable becuase he just cant saty calm. a lot of times his guests freak out first...but...if i knew i was going on his show, i would probably be on the hard defensive too.
 

Spamela

Diamond Member
Oct 30, 2000
3,859
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Originally posted by: Spamela
i'll read it as soon as mrs. spamela can find it at costco.

update:
i got it yesterday from our public library, since mrs. spamela couldn't
find it at costco last week.

from the bits & pieces that i've read so far, it's funny & persuasive.
 

phillyTIM

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,942
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This is probably the best $20 (give or take $5) you spend during the Bush Regime's time in office.

Here's a great thing to purchase and help the economy with. *EG*
 

phillyTIM

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,942
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I just stopped by my local Borders and got it for 30%...I'm excited about being armed to a whole new level in order to slice and dice through that neoconservatistic, republican rhetoric propoganda machine!

rock and roll, baby! with this information, a new breed of true, american patriots may emerge!!!
 

phillyTIM

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,942
10
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My God, this book is GREAT!

If you thought I was tough on the Bush Regime before, then fasten your seatbelts--you haven't seen anything yet!
 

sMiLeYz

Platinum Member
Feb 3, 2003
2,696
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Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Everything I say is a lie; am I lying?

Ironically you are telling the truth for once ;).

I thought it was a great book, love the introduction. Very witty, I loved how he basically picked Ann Coulter apart.
Dammit, if it wasn't for FoxNews's lawsuit no one would have known about it. THANKS FOXNEWS! ;)
 

DealMonkey

Lifer
Nov 25, 2001
13,136
1
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Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Everything I say is a lie; am I lying?

<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.voyager.cz/tos/epizody/42imuddtrans.htm">What?
He lied.
Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Listen to this carefully, Norman.
I am lying.
You say you are lying,
but if everything you say is a lie,
then you are telling the truth, but ...
you cannot tell the truth
because everything you say is a lie.
You lie -- You tell the truth --
But you cannot --
Illogical!
Illogical!</a>

:D
 

PatboyX

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2001
7,024
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al franken was on the radio talking about it last week. very funny stuff.
id love to read it...but i have no money and my library is terrible.