think I'll wait for DVD...

Me too, not that I have much choice in the matter....But if they play it in English at a theatre around here, I'll try to go...

Two random quibbles:

First, it was Bush's cousin, not brother, who falsely called FL for Bush.

Second, on the reading of bills, under normal circumstances, at least a few aides from each party will have read the bill -- or rather, different aides will've read through different sections, compared notes, and come up with an opinion, which their bosses sign off on and hand along to other party members.  So there is normally a vetting process.  It's possible that Conyers was going to go on to explain this, after the place where he was saying, basically, "There's no way one person could read it all."

In any case, the Republicans have, in the last four years, violently abused this process, by scheduling votes weirdly -- delivering the text of a bill at 9pm in the evening, and then having the vote on it at 7am the next morning.  Under those circumstances, it really is impossible to be sure what you're voting on.

Similar rules abuses are getting used to try to embarrass Kerry -- whenever he suspends campaigning to go back to DC and take part in actual Senate business, the &@*# Senate leadership cancels debates, moves votes around, and so on, so they can subsequently accuse Kerry of not doing his job.

In any case, aside from the ghoulish focus on Ms Lipscomb (sp?), the film was considerably better than I expected.  And the silly music didn't even bother me, really.  I rather liked the Bonanza reference. *g*

Overall, I'd say the argument is a lot more subtle than just "Bush is bad."  The argument is that Bush (and his friends) are owned by oil interests, that they and many of the people who support them don't serve the best interests of the United States, and that the mainstream media has largely been co-opted by them.  Damning facts like Bush actually being backed in business and campaigning by the Bin Laden family are mere details.  But fun.

[ June 28, 2004: Message edited by: Auros ]

See, the thing is, I agree that F911 is partly propaganda, but it's important to recognize the distinction between reporting and propaganda.  Reporting an embarassing fact (such as that the Rs schedule votes weirdly), without further comment or analysis of why you think they do it, is not propaganda.  The media has become timid about reporting on facts that embarrass people, because they see that as partisan.

The "how can we stop it" is answered by the above -- the media needs to investigate, and give us all the facts, especially when those facts contradict and embarrass politicians.  If they had bothered doing a little math, or even comparing rhetoric to what was published on campaign websites, then George Bush would've been widely recognized as a liar in 2000.

I'll add that commentary and analysis, though inherently biased, are still worthwhile.  After a while, you can pick up that some analysts (e.g. Ann Coulter) make arguments that are founded on falsehoods, or make arguments that are fallacious (in the classical rhetorical sense -- circular logic, begging the question, straw man, post-hoc, etc), while others make arguments that are subsequently seen to be consistent with new data.  (e.g. Krugman, who was the first mainstream media figure to recognize the nature of the California energy "crisis".)  Once you know who's basically trustworthy, you can still take their analysis with a grain of salt and pay attention to the facts, so you can decide if sometimes you disagree.  But it's nice to have some reasonably reliable sources.

[ June 30, 2004: Message edited by: Auros ]

On propaganda vs. reporting:

That's a great point.

But I don't know about the generalization of the media confusing partisanship with embarrassing people. The media did report that Bush's turkey in Baghdad was a prop. Editorials from prominent newspapers bash Bush regularly (the New York Times and Washington Post, for example, criticize his politics all the time).

What I mean by asking if we can know they're lying is this, and it's kind of hopeless I guess:

The PR guys surrounding public figures can easily dress them up as attractive. As I just read in a book called Bushwomen, assuming the analysis is accurate, is that Bush's administration was designed to get votes from  wide range of people who wouldn't have voted for the administration otherwise. Condi was told to tell stories about growing in the most racist part of the U.S. to get swing Democrat votes, for example.

Ah, I'm rambling. You probably understand the public image dillema better than I do.

My point is that... "they" can paint any political candidate any way they want, and successfully get votes that way, regardless of true intentions.

That's all. I probably just need more faith in the system.

A movie that even liberal reporters have been forced to admit is full of inconsistencies, half-truths, and outright lies!
I'm afraid the left, which I saw myself as part of till 9/11, has gone off the wall with this anti-Bush frenzy. It's great that the U.S is a vibrant and open democracy with many opinions, but paranoid outrageous accusations that the government is some kind of nightmare regime with corrupt, traitorous officials that have sold out their country, is simply unhealthy. And yes, this movie does basically insinuate that President Bush is a traitor who puts the interests of Saudis and his own personal agenda before his nation's interests. I have to say that I'm in Germany right now and here unfortunately there isn't a ballanced media. Here all you hear is one side of the story. That America is bad and anything the administration does in this war on terror (please don't forget people around the world hated America before Iraq and even 9/11 - even before Bush was president, yep really...) is impirialistic and driven by greed. But who was owed billions by Saddam if not the French, Germans, and Russians! Who has so far spent (not gained!!!) over 100 billion dollars to liberate Iraq from a regime responsible for the deaths of over a million people! Who has taken the war to the terrorists and united the world (democrats never acknowledge the coalitions formed and the cooperation with countries around the world whether against terrorists or in Iraq)in what is going to be a long struggle against people bent on the destruction of America and western democracies.
Don't be fooled by this negative rhetoric which only serves to weaken our resolve and basically says the U.S should run and hide under the bed till the enlightened and more experienced democracies of Russia, Germany and France show us the right way...

"I disagree with everything you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it!"

Well, I wouldn't expect them to bring FoxNews here, but I would have expected to eventually find some kind of reporting other than the prevailing opinion; that Bush is bad!

When all the media are reporting exactly the same views you know something's wrong...

But what's important is that there are a lot of Tad Williams fans here!!!

"...you're asking me to put my life in the hands of this...jack-in-the-box?"
"Yeah, it's nice to meet you, too, lady."
(Beezle, Otherland, by Tad Williams - sorry Tad it won't happen again!)

Saltirin wrote:

"...you're asking me to put my life in the hands of this...jack-in-the-box?"
"Yeah, it's nice to meet you, too, lady."
(Beezle, Otherland, by Tad Williams - sorry Tad it won't happen again!)

What exactly are you apologizing for?

Saltirin wrote:

O.K I'll bite, ...

Well, I won´t but I would be willing to donate a white cane and a yellow armband with three black dots on it - but no seeing eye dog. ;)

goofytortuga wrote:

I live in a very Republican area of California (there are not very many

I dunno about that "not very many"...  Central Valley farmland?  Orange County?  San Diego?  Inland Empire?  The state population overall is heavily liberal, but that's because LA and and the Bay have huge shares of the population.  The stuff north of SF is also pretty liberal (aside from the Sacto 'burbs), but that's pretty sparse, and the southern half of the state, outside LA, is quite conservative.

Saltirin wrote:

For giving Americans hope and strength again in the days just after 9/11 when the nation was in shock.

You mean, for giving about HALF of Americans etc etc...

[b]For leading the biggest coalition in history to remove the Taliban and free the Afgan people from one of the darkest regimes in history.

Again half-right.  The vast majority of liberals were behind the Afghan project -- in fact, many of us were for the liberation of Afghanistan back in the 90s, when the Taliban had first come to power, but the Republican congress would have none of that -- the Taliban was negotiating an oil pipeline deal with contributors, and were promising to help out with the War on Some Drugs (in exchange for hefty payments which allowed them to buy more weapons).  Both of those projects were accelerated by Bush, who approved a multi-billion dollar payment to the Taliban (for their efforts to stamp out opium) very shortly before 9/11.

As for the "freeing them" part -- uh, in case you haven't heard, the Taliban is back in control of the southern half of the country, and various warlords are running the north.  The government we installed (though I actually think it's not a half-bad one; considerably better than the cronies we inflicted on Iraq) only rules over one city, and elections are probably going to be pushed back, if they ever happen at all.

We smashed the place, then didn't bother to stick around (with enough forces) to clean it up.  We also transferred all our intel and special forces and civil affairs units out of the various tasks they had in Afghanistan -- hunting Osama, rebuilding stuff, establishing friendly relations with people so they would be less suspicious of the American-backed gov't -- to send them into Iraq.

[b]For working with the U.N and getting a unanimous vote on resolution 1441 which said action would be taken if there wasn't complete and immediate copliance.

But did not specify what the action would be, nor what was meant by compliance.  This, at least, was both the fault of the US and Europe.  The French refused to sign off on anything that included a clear trigger for military action, and Bush refused to sign off on anything that wouldn't lead to war even if there was compliance.  Considering how much effort Saddam actually did go to, to comply, it's possible that had we set clear conditions (no monitoring of interviews, no restrictions on spot inspections, etc), he might have complied.  And if he hadn't, I would've supported the invasion.

[b]with a coalition including ...

... nobody except the UK who mattered.  None of the other contributors have enough of a military power to be relevant.  France and Germany do.

[b]For listening to the intel community who all agreed, including Germany's BND, that he still had WMD.

This is simply a lie.  The intel community in fact said he probably didn't have WMD -- that the team in the 90s had been successful in destroying almost everything, what was left had a short shelf life, and that he probably had not been able to reconstitute WMD programs -- but Cheney and Rumsfeld create the "Office of Special Plans" to comb through the raw reports and pick out anything that made it sound like people did, and ignored caveats from the analysts saying that many of these reports were from biased sources.

The aluminum tubes?  Not high enough grade for nuclear centrifuges; they were for conventional rockets.

The Niger yellowcake?  Forged.  And the CIA knew it, and got it taken out of a speech in the autumn of '02, but somehow failed to have it removed from the State of the Union in '03.

And so on.

[b]For freeing 25 million Iraqis (and the middle east) from a dictator who was responsible for the deaths of over a million people!

Ah, so I guess we should also invade North Korea, Sudan, etc?

[b]For lowering taxes for millions of American families

A median family got a tax break of less than $100 per person in the family, which was more than made up for by cuts in services and rises in local taxes (property, sales) to make up for cuts in aid from the federal gov't to state and local gov'ts.

[b]bringing about the economic recovery

Which continues to undergenerate jobs -- the numbers from the last three months have been revised downwards, the numbers this month were only about a third of the projections the administration had made, and the overall ratio between the working-age population and the number of people employed hasn't budged at all, after declining for the past three years.

This leaves aside his assorted impeachable offenses, such as authorizing torture in violation of the law of the Federal Torture Act and the Geneva Accord (which, having been ratified by the Senate, are the law of the land), lying to Congress on numerous occasions, and abusing executive privilege in ways far worse than Nixon ever dreamed.

[ July 02, 2004: Message edited by: Auros ]

A note to new Smarchers:

When debating Auros, have statistical FACTS to back up your claims, or... well, look above.