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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (98258)	2/2/2005 9:44:36 AM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911 by David Kopel Independence Institute If all you know is what the mainstream media tell you,then you are living in a world of illusions.But you can ’t free your mind if you merely replace one set of manipulative illusions with another set of manipulative illusions.Fahrenheit 9/11 is a twisted, dishonest,paranoid,and hateful fantasy.Learn the facts,and make up your own mind. The list below is a summary of a much longer report,which is available for free at www.davekopel.org.The report also dis- cusses many other issues about the movie. There are lots of good reasons why people have chosen to vote against (or for)the re-election of George Bush.And there are lots of good reasons why patriotic Americans have decided to oppose (or support)the war in Iraq.One thing that all the good reasons have in common is that they are based on facts.In a democracy,we should try to convince our fellow citizens with facts and logical reasoning.To manipulate people with frauds and propaganda is to attack democracy itself. 1.The Gore “victory ”rally isn ’t celebrating a Florida win.It was held before the polls had even opened. 2.Like all the other networks,Fox mistakenly said that Gore had won in Florida.The first network to retract the Florida mistake was CBS,not Fox. 3.A 6-month study by a consortium of major newspapers shows that Bush would have won the Florida recount under any of the terms which Gore sought in his lawsuits. 4.Investigation by the Palm Beach Post and others shows that race was not a reason why election officials mistak- enly disqualified some voters because they were incorrectly thought to have felony convictions. 5.Bush ’s Presidency before 9/11 was not in serious trouble. No commentator said that he looked like a lame-duck presi- dent.Congress had passed his #1 bill (the tax cut)and was on the way to passing his #2 bill (the education bill).The scene at the end of the movie in which Bush tells a rich audi- ence “I call you my base,”was from an October 2000 charity fund-raiser.Both Gore and Bush spoke at the fund-raiser and,as is the custom at the fund-raiser,made fun of themselves. 6.“In his first eight months in office before September 11th,George W.Bush was on vacation,according to the Washington Post,forty-two percent of the time.”As the Washington Post reported,the figure includes weekends,and includes time in “vacation locations ”such as Camp David, where Bush was working —as when he met with Tony Blair. 7.In the golf course scene (about the middle of the movie), Bush had just heard about a terrorist attack on Israel.He called the press together to make a quick statement con- demning the terrorism against Israel.He was not speaking about attacks on the United States. 8.There is no evidence that Bush did not read the Aug.6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing about al Qaeda. 9.He never claimed that the title ’s “vagueness ”was an excuse for not reading it. 10.The Briefing did not say “said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.”It said that the FBI has “not been able to corroborate ”such a threat. 11.The Saudis left the U.S.only after air travel was opened for the general public. 12.According to Richard Clarke and the September 11 Commission,Clarke personally approved the Saudi depar- tures,and the decision went no higher in the chain of com- mand. 13.Moore lied to a TV reporter in claiming that Fahrenheit discloses Clarke ’s decision to the audience.Clarke called the Saudi exit material in Fahrenheit a “mistake ”by Moore. 14.Contrary to what Fahrenheit claims,the September 11 Commission found that many Saudis were asked “detailed questions ”before being allowed to leave. 15.James Bath did not invest bin Laden family money in Bush ’s energy company Arbusto.He invested his own money.

To: unclewest who wrote (98258)	2/3/2005 2:01:35 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

Two incidents highlight the mainstream media's defects and biases. by Hugh Hewitt 02/03/2005 12:00:00 AM <snip> THE SECOND SUBJECT for mulling is John Kerry's extraordinary interview with Tim Russert last Sunday. There's a lot to absorb here, including Kerry's assertion that he did indeed run guns and CIA men into Cambodia on secret missions--and to aid the Khmer Rouge no less! What is really remarkable is not Kerry's whoppers--he couldn't have meant the Khmer Rouge, right?--or his almost certain not-to-be-fulfilled pledge to sign the form 180. It is the set of questions Tim Russert posed. Russert is generally regarded as the toughest interview in television, and he did bleed Kerry a bit during the campaign; afterwards Kerry never again came close to Russert's set before November 2. But if the questions posed by Russert on January 30, 2005--on Kerry's fantasy life in Cambodia, on the sequestered records, etc.--were legitimate and useful inquiries after the votes have been cast, why then did no one pose them to candidate Kerry when they might have made a difference in the election? The blogosphere and the center-right media were full of such demands from August 1 forward, but not a single reporter from mainstream media bothered to pose even one of the Russert questions prior to the vote. Why was that? If the country's most respected television journalist asks a series of questions after the election that no one asked during the contest, doesn't that tell us all we need to know about the mainstream media's coverage of Kerry? Doesn't that conclusively answer the question of whether the debate moderators really came to the stage prepared to ask the questions that mattered most? But we knew that, didn't we? Tim Russert just provided the proof. The pathetic effort to avoid posing tough questions to Kerry (and by contrast the Mapes-like fanaticism against Bush) highlights the almost lunatic imbalance of ideologies within mainstream media. Tim Russert may have taken aim at Kerry's Walter Mittyisms, but he hit his journalistic colleagues instead. Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com. weeklystandard.com