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DEC 15 - 31, 2004 |
VOL. 2 ISSUE 24 |
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DECEMBER 15, 2004 – As the Joe Scarborough vs. The Moderate Independent skirmish continued into day two, Joe launched into desperation and whining.
But, unfortunately for Joe, he has run into the wrong match. We at The Moderate Independent are true moderates and independents who care only about the actual truth and what is best for America. Joe – and many of his right-wing liar buddies – is playing a game of pretending to be an independent while spinning the same dishonest, one-side promoting propaganda these right-wing liars have been pushing all along.
After an entire day of back and forth with the MSNBC-TV host (see: www.moderateindependent.com/v2i23scarborough2.htm ,) we were ready to move on. Scarborough was not.
The next morning as I opened my e-mail, there was not one but two more e-mails from Joe. And at this point, Joe had gone over the edge into threatening desperation.
Sounds good, huh? I left that last part without correcting the lies and misinformation. I wanted you all to see clearly the real danger of what these lying right-wing propagandists are up to. What Joe says sounds really wonderful, and it would be, if all of it weren’t just one string of lie after lie after lie.
A second e-mail sat waiting even before I read
that first one. This one was more whiny and included the threat, “The
tone and the lies open you up to a libel lawsuit. Several of his statements
are clearly false and his diatribe calling me a liar, rat, pussy, etc.,
clearly shows malice.”
Joe asked us to read his book. I suppose he thought either we would be too lazy to do it or too stupid to see through the propagandist game he plays.
Scarborough’s book is a study in one-side supporting propaganda, lying, and grade school-level name calling – yes, exactly what he tries to accuse us of.
It is nice for him to claim something, but it is useful to back it up with facts. That is what us true Moderate Independents do.
Scarborough, on the other hand, makes clear from the beginning of his book that he is not big on providing facts to back up anything he writes. In fact, there is not a single footnoted reference in the entire book, and only a handful of attributions of any kind throughout the 192 pages. The vast majority is Joe simply saying things without providing any concrete evidence or references to back up his dishonest claims.
And dishonest they are.
Remember this claim Joe made to us in one of his e-mails: “Democrats vote for the President's tax cuts without finding offsetting cuts, and old bulls in both parties work together to spend more money and pass the debt on to our children," or from the first e-mail above, "My readers and viewers also know that Democrats will whine and complain and then probably support the bill. That’s what they do." He also claimed, "I detail this at length in my book and one cannot read it without coming away with the feeling that I am tougher on my own than Democrats.”
Well sorry, Joe. Here is reality:
Now let’s take a look at Joe’s claim again: ““Democrats vote for the President's tax cuts… That's what they do.”
Maybe in the dishonest, propagandist lala land known as Scaroborough Country, but, sorry Joe, not in reality.
And just to show Joe what people who aren’t lying do, here I provide something called references so people can verify the facts I am providing for themselves. Here are the actual records of the voting from the US Government’s website:
Senate 2003 vote: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00196 Congress 2003 vote: http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2003&rollnumber=182 Senate 2001 vote: Congress 2001 vote: http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2001&rollnumber=149
Yeah, Zell Miller, who has left the party, and couple of other Democrats voted for these bills. But the truth is that the irresponsible, excessive tax cuts, even in the middle of growing debt and war, were passed almost entirely by the Republicans and opposed by the Democrats.
Pretending the opposite is the case is called a lie. And it is a central part of the game Scarborough and other right-wing propagandists are now using to try and blame Democrats for the mess President Bush and his new breed of borrow-and-spend Republicans have saddled the nation with.
Let’s look at the other claim Joe makes in the e-mail above: “…one cannot read (my book) without coming away with the feeling that I am tougher on my own than Democrats.”
This is the other central tenet to the game Scarborough and other faux independents, such as O’Reilly, are playing. They allow themselves to actually criticize President Bush and the GOP some and then claim that that shows that they are fair and balanced; in fact, as Joe claims, tougher on his own party than on the Democratic Party.
The reality is, one cannot read Scarborough’s book without realizing that this claim is just another flat-out lie and fraud.
The two most striking things about Joe’s book are: 1) the massive lack of references and footnotes to support his claims; 2) the complete lack of a single positive comment about a single Democrat, never mind Democrats in general.
In fact, Scarborough’s central premise is that all Democrats and every policy they espouse are entirely, inherently wrong, and that they have always been wrong and never have any chance of improving.
As he states on page 97 of his book Rome Wasn’t Burnt In A Day, after spending some time criticizing the GOP, “If it makes GOP party leaders or the White House sycophants feel any better, no one is suggesting that John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, or any other elected Democrat short of Georgia Senator Zell Miller would spend your tax dollars more wisely.” He adds, “This is because such a suggestion is laughable.”
Sound like he is being easier on the Democrats? Of course not. Again and again throughout the book Scarborough hammers away at this theme, that all Democrats by nature are entirely wrong on every issue. And, in fact, he frequently, throughout the book, blames Democrats for how the Republicans are acting today.
On page two of his book he lays out how he will actually blame the Democrats for how the GOP and Bush have been acting, saying it is, “Democrats and their new ideological allies on Capitol Hill,” who are responsible for the massive deficits. This is his argument again and again throughout the book, that all Democrats are horrible, and that the only thing the GOP is currently doing wrong is acting too much like Democrats.
Yes, he spends more time talking about Republicans than Democrats, but that is because he gives them a fair shake, his premise being Republicans are good and right by nature but only, as he says again and again, acting like those horrible Democrats at the moment. Democrats get much less coverage because they are entirely dismissed from the get go, and because Scarborough again and again refuses to acknowledge their 1990’s shift to the middle and the more fiscally responsible platforms they have run on in the last three elections.
And what evidence does Scarborough use to support his claim that Democrats are just as much to blame for the fiscal mess we are in as the GOP and White House that promoted the bankrupting policies? Does he use their voting records? Specific policies they pushed?
Of course not - because their policies and voting records, as shown above, would make clear that they fought against many of the policies that have led to our fiscal disaster.
Instead, what Scarborough relies on to make his case against all Democrats is one out-of-context quote from one Hillary Clinton speech in which he claims she told voters in California that, “she wanted to raise taxes 'for the common good.'”
Notice the quotes within the quotes. He is not even quoting a single sentence of the one speech from the one Democrat he uses to represent the entire Democratic Party. He is only showing us that, in July 2004, Hillary Clinton said, “for the common good.” He claims she was saying that she wanted to raise taxes “for the common good,” but he provides no reference so we don’t know if he is making it up or not. All we do know is that we have one contextless quote from one speech by one Democratic Senator from New York used as justification for trashing and dismissing the entire Democratic Party and blaming them just as fully as the GOP and Bush for the fiscal mess the nation is now in.
In fact, Scarborough is so excited about this one out of context excerpt that he mentions it not just on page 1 but again on page 97. He has to, as it is all he apparently has to make his entire case that the Democrats are just as much to blame for the nation’s fiscal woes as Bush and the GOP.
What about all the speeches by Kerry and the Democrats saying we shouldn’t run an absurd privatization scheme for Social Security that would cause us to borrow $2 trillion while the GOP argued for it? What about all the speeches by Democrats and votes against the absurd tax cuts that have caused the deficits we now face while the GOP and President Bush, even needing to bring Cheney in as a tie-breaker, rammed them full-steam ahead upon the nation?
Not mentioned in Joe’s distorted, dishonest world. No, Joe simply claims in his e-mails to us, “Democrats vote for the President's tax cuts.” That’s his lie and he’s sticking to it.
The New York Times review of Joe’s book says, “He is honest enough to recognize the problem, but can't quite bring himself to the solution: since Republican-controlled government can't produce the spending cuts he wants, and he hates deficits, shouldn't he favor raising taxes?”
And right they are. Striking throughout the book is Scarborough’s absolute refusal to acknowledge that it was the massive, bankrupting Bush/GOP tax cuts that directly have led to the deficits the nation now faces. At no point does he address this, at no point does he give the Democrats credit for being on the right side of this one.
Instead, Joe spends a lot of time criticizing spending in a pretty general way. He throws around some numbers meant to shock, some subsidies that may or may not be excessive – it is hard to tell, as he gives little to no detail about how the funds he calls out, such as "$631,000 to figure out new and imaginative ways to use salmon by developing “alternative salmon products,” or money for beef and dairy research, will be used. And of course he provides no references. The spending may be wasteful, may not be. But Scarborough doesn’t bother with things like details.
He bares his small-mindedness boldly, saying, as a means of attacking cattle subsidies that go to Nebraska, “Alaskan workers shouldn’t be forced to pay for bovine research that will only help Nebraska corporations.” Yes, he ignores the fact that we are actually a nation, each part of which provides something for the other. Otherwise he might realize that people in Alaska eat the beef that is raised in Nebraska, and so if the subsidies help keep this beef affordable, free of Mad Cow disease, and plentiful, might not that person in Alaska also be benefiting?
But Scarborough’s goal is not to have an intelligent, useful discussion. It is to attempt to blame everything on excessive spending while denying that the voodoo economic scheme of the far right, of which Joe is a part, simply does not work. If you keep cutting and cutting taxes, you cause a debt. As our Ben Terton laid out in great detail in this article, you can not do as Joe is pretending and simply tighten America’s belt a bit, get rid of entirely unnecessary waste and solve the problem that way.
That is the lie Schwarzenegger ran on, that he could balance the more than $10 billion debt California was saddled with without raising taxes by simply eliminating unnecessary pork barrel-type spending. Since taking office, he has been shown to be, as this article article details, a complete fraud, and had to keep borrowing more and more, with $16 billion being the amount he ran up the state’s debt in the last round of bond selling. And the reality is the same with the national picture: you cannot address the situation without realizing the excessive tax cuts were a major part of the problem.
But to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge that the radical, Reagan-bred model that Joe raves about over and over in his book is a flawed one and actually central to the problem our nation faces. Reagan’s massive tax cut when he took office led to massive deficits which he blamed Democrats for. That is how the game works.
So why is Joe, while blaming Democratic spending for the mess right-wing tax cuts made, also blaming President Bush and the GOP as well, straying from the usual right-wing blame-and-lie game of pinning it all on the Democrats?
Scarborough lets us in on the real purpose of his little charade. From page 94, “Should thoughtful conservatives duct-tape their mouths and wrap their bodies in cellophane until Democrats once again take control of Congress?”
In other words, a right-wing talk show hack has to make a living somehow, and as there are no Democrats around to blame, he has no choice but to sort of lay into his own a bit – even if really just smearing all Democrats in the process and blaming them despite all reality.
I challenged Scarborough again and again in our e-mail exchange to not pull an Arnold-like snowjob and, if he really claims that it is just excessive spending responsible for the debt, provide the numbers and programs of what he would cut, as well as details about how he would cut these amounts from each program.
He replied, “Want more answers, they’re in my book.”
Well, sorry Joe, but they’re not.
All he offers are a few examples of possible pork barrel spending, but nothing near the $450 billion in cuts one would have to find to actually balance the budget, never mind pay down the debt.
And all the while Joe holds himself and conservative ideals blameless and summarily smears and discards the Democrats.
Scarborough tells how he campaigned with then-Governor Bush in 2000. From page 55, "Over the next eighteen months, I worked hard on the Bush-Cheney ticket, appearing on cable news shows more than two hundred times on behalf of the campaign. I used my time to whack supporters of John McCain, Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader, Al Gore, and a slew of Florida Democrats."
Despite the fact that he helped Bush run on the very platform of irresponsible tax cuts and excessive spending that have bankrupted the nation, Joe doesn't connect himself to the disastrous result that occurred when Bush put those policies into play. Nor does he have the integrity to admit the man on the other side, Al Gore, was right when he warned Bush's tax cuts would erase the surplus and that a lock box was a better idea.
Even more, look how Scarborough brags about how he used to "whack supporters of John McCain." He helped ensure that the fiscally responsible McCain, who we at The Moderate Independent would have preferred above either Gore or Bush, didn't get the nomination by campaigning against him, and yet throughout his book Scarborough wraps himself in the McCain mantle time and time again, pretending that he has been a responsible McCainiac all along - even as his direct account above tells the opposite story.
And look at this from Joe's proposed solution at the end of his book, which is extremely unspecific. On page 180, he begins to list a few general principles as an excuse to evade the reality that the central argument of his book, that there is enough wasteful spending that if cut could balance the budget, is a fraud that he can't backup with numbers and facts. Where what he would cut should be listed, he instead lists these ten general principles.
Sad enough. But take a look at number 7 of these general principles: "Create a federal rainy-day fund."
Um, sound a bit like Al Gore's "lock box?" Sure does. But of course, Joe doesn't mention that he campaigned against the candidate who would have already created such a rainy day fund, never mind that a Democrat, in particular Al Gore, had a good idea in that instance.
When Scarborough says in his earlier e-mail, "(My readers) know where I come from. A Republican who attacks Republicans when it is in the best interest of America," he is setting up his justification for lying. By saying he is "a Republican," he believes he is justifying his endless partisanship and summary dismissal of all Democrats.
Never mind his call to, "Try to see both sides," and, "don't give in to hate." Throughout the book he makes clear he refuses to even consider saying anything positive about any Democrat, and spews endless hate about all things Democratic, such as his talk on page 47 about how he, "ran on a platform against Bill Clinton," and couldn't "even look at the man's face on TV" he despised him so much.
Joe gives Gingrich credit for any good that occurred during the Clinton administration (page 74, among other places,) and blames Michael Moore for making the media conversation shrill and hostile. Rush Limbaugh he praises, the 10,000 other hateful right-wing hacks like himself he ignores. But somehow, like with the economic mess, he tries to blame a lone Democratic example for a situation the Bush/Limbaugh-right clearly created. In Scarborough Country, Moore is the problem in the media, not Rush, FOX, Elder, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc.
On page 97, he shows all of his pathetic propagandist tactics in just a couple of sentences. One sentence he is, again, blaming the Democrats for the actions of Bush and the GOP, and the next he is blaming Michael Moore for the coarse, cartoonish, lampooning political conversation that has been brought about by the thousands of right-wing talk show hosts.
"This big-government, Democratic approach should not shield Republican presidents or congressmen from criticism when they take a path that could bankrupt America. Unfortunately in Michael Moore's America, political opponents are painted as corrupt beasts that devolve into the most treacherous cartoon characters... In Michael Moore's America, there is no room for nuance, moral seriousness, or self-examination."
Excuse me, but wasn't it Kerry who was assailed for being nuanced and self-examining by the hate-spewing, cartoonish beast-creating right-wing hate-and-lie machine?
In the real world, yes, but not in Scarborough Country.
And shouldn't the actions taken by Republicans actually be labeled Republican actions and not a "Democratic approach?" After all, it was Republicans who proposed and carried out the ideas.
In the real world, yes, but not in Scarborough Country.
This book is one endless study in sickness, propaganda, and lying.
This is a man who claims to be "tougher on (his) own" party than on the Democrats, and even intimates that he will sue anyone who suggests otherwise, but then puts right in his book, as on page 103, "So what does it all mean (his criticisms about Republican's recent bad spending habits)? Are Republicans unworthy of public office? Are Democrats more responsible when it comes to managing your tax dollars? Does the mismanagement of your tax dollars by Congress mean that America would be better off with San Francisco's liberal Nancy Pelosi as our next Speaker of the House? Is George W. Bush unworthy of your vote? The answer to all of these is not only no, it's HELL NO!" (His capitals and italics, as in the book.)
So let's for a second go back to where all of this began, to the original story our John S. Ashton wrote about Scarborough's recent MSNBC column, the article that sent Scarborough into a rage, led him to cry about supposed "factual errors" and "lies" that "open you up to a libel lawsuit," and led him to claim, "Several of (Ashton's) statements are clearly false and his diatribe calling me a liar, rat, pussy, etc., clearly shows malice."
From Ashton's column on Scarborough:
Do you see anything inaccurate in there? Of course not. Ashton is simply calling him on exactly the same fraud that Scarborough attempts to perpetrate in his book, as detailed above. More from Ashton's article:
Nothing inaccurate there - Joe campaigned with Bush before, and even when his book was released just back in September he had nothing positive to say at all about Kerry but said, "Is George W. Bush unworthy of your vote? The answer to all of these is not only no, it's HELL NO!" And it is entirely accurate that he still is playing every game, using every propagandist tool, and telling every lie necessary to avoid admitting that it is not all "politicians" but mainly President Bush and the GOP who are responsible for the economic mess our nation is currently in. Perhaps Joe was referring to the the title of Ashton's article in claiming "lies" and "factual errors," "RIGHT-WING HACK JOE SCARBOROUGH ADMITS HE WAS ENTIRELY WRONG IN SUPPORTING BUSH." That is what is called the use of rhetorical device known as irony, genius. In effect, Joe's column about the deficit and disastrous idea of privatizing Social Security do make the case that it was wrong for him to support Bush. But Joe is busy lying, pretending that saying, "HELL NO!," Bush isn't unworthy of your vote and campaigning with him for 18 months while summarily dismissing his opponents as inherently unacceptable wasn't supporting the President. Sorry, Joe, but at The Moderate Independent, we call BS BS. And as for the "name calling" you complain Ashton is unfairly guilty of and which you claim serves as evidence of his "malice," here are some phrases we gleaned from your book: "Fat White Pink Boys" (page 4, and other places); "checked their manhood at Washington's city limits" (page 4); after meeting Bill Clinton he tells how he went home and, "scrub(bed) myself down in a cold shower with an intensity that would have made Lady Macbeth proud" (page 49); elderly Florida voters who had problems with the butterfly ballots were, "grown-ups who whined" (page 78). Joe regularly talks like a little fourth-grader. And we at M/I treat people as they deserve to be treated. And we don't just hit back, we hit back twice as hard. So if Joe wants to be treated like a respectable adult, he should start treating others that way. But if he chooses to continue to act like a school yard bigmouth, we at M/I will nail him harder than he ever thought he could be hit. And, seeing as he turned out to be a wimpy little crybaby who couldn't take back a little of what he regularly dishes out, he might want to consider changing his game and cleaning up his act. No, Scarborough's book presents no concrete, real world answers, just tired old right-wing rhetoric and the sort of cartoonish stereotypes of the opposition that he decries above. And much of the text is just tiresome blathering and name dropping from his brief stint in Congress. He prattles on and on like a schoolgirl. recounting how he flushed and stammered both when he met "frat boy" types Clinton and Bush, yammering on with such envy and infatuation that you wonder if Joe should have pledged a sorority rather than a fraternity. And, seemingly to fill the void where his concrete plan for spending cuts should exist, he goes on for page after page about Newt Gingrich, someone who hasn't been in office for half a decade. Scarborough even takes the time to help perpetuate the lie about why Gingrich left office, claiming (on page 68-69) that it was a "belligerent press corps," "undisciplined performances in press conferences, blown budget negotiations, and backtracking on key issues" which led to Newt's hasty resignation from office and disappearance from the public eye. The reality that Newt, all the while he was campaigning against Clinton's indiscretions, was having an affair of his own, cheating on his then-wife with a Congressional aide, and that this was the real reason behind Newt's hasty departure is something Scarborough avoids mentioning. (Here is Slate's story on the affair and another from Salon.) The fact that the media, which, if it were really liberal would be all over a story like that, if only for the sheer hypocrisy, if not for the juiciness, entirely has ignored this story until this very day is something Scarborough obviously avoids dealing with as well, as it would contradict his standard lying about how the media is "liberal" biased. And so in his book, Gingrich's affair and the media's ignoring of it don't find a single mention in his dozens of pages devoted to telling the entire Gingrich story in painfully boring detail. In Scarborough Country, Republicans come and go as a matter of principle and the media is liberal biased, regardless of the facts. There is no question in reading Joe Scarborough's book Rome Wasn't Burnt In A Day that this is not a fair, independent-minded political work but a course in lying right-wing propaganda 101. This is the latest trend among right-wing liars, to take on the President a bit and so try to claim the mantle of being fair and equally tough on both parties. In reality, the right-wing lying propagandists who are playing this game, like Joe Scarborough, are just trying to expand their market and using a different tactic to push their right-wing Republican agenda. It is a game stolen straight from the FOX News slogan "Fair and Balanced." Joe may be upset that we at The Moderate Independent pulled his sheet and exposed him as the lying fraud that he is. But it doesn't change the fact that Scarborough is undeniably a pathetically biased right-wing hack, exactly as our John Ashton said. And so, Mr. Scarborough, you owe our John Ashton an apology, as you assailed him with provable lies and name calling that amount to malice. And, Mr. Scarborough, you can take your threats of "libel lawsuit(s)" and stick them where your lying claims to "see both sides for the sake of everybody" and to be "tougher on my own than Democrats" belong. You may be used to getting away with lying and bullying people around, and to existing in a media that embraces lying right-wing propagandists like yourself. But the days where scum like you are free to run their game without suffering at least as harsh a fate in return are over. Welcome to the place where real moderates and independents who truly give both sides a fair shake exist. Welcome to the news source where truth and what is best for America are the only things we care about, not party label or anything else. In short, Mr. Scarborough, welcome out of the lying lala land known as Scarborough Country to the land where we speak from America's True Voice. Welcome to The Moderate Independent. And since Joe enjoyed the previous e-mail our readers sent so much, why not drop Joe another note at JScarborough@msnbc.com and tell if he's going to choose to be a lying fraud, at least he should stop whining like a baby when people call him on it. But if he ever wants to learn what it truly means to treat both sides fairly and be an independent, he should spend less time listening to Rush Limbaugh and more time reading M/I. |