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Politics is not about reasonable arguments. It is about building momentum for a cause. Both, the harassment of political opponents by the IRS as well as the NS

by stfu 13y ago

Politics is not about reasonable arguments. It is about building momentum for a cause. Both, the harassment of political opponents by the IRS as well as the NSA spy policies were run under President Obama's leadership. He is as personally responsible for these things - just as much as is President Bush was for the Iraq war. Both are extremely resistant to admit any wrong doings except for some half hearted apologies without any consequences. I am all for bashing partisanship when it is based on making mountains out of molehills (in my view the Benghazi story was one of these). But the IRS and NRA cases demonstrate that the United States under the presidency of Obama is using intimidation tactics and intensive surveillance mechanisms that are up-to-par with paranoid third world dictatorships. His line of If he [President Obama] has nothing to hide he has nothing to be afraid of. is exactly hitting home on the hypocrisy of the Obama administration that once campaigned on transparency and accountability.

AmericanOP 13y ago
IRS scandal wasn't a scandal. The only evidence the WH was involved are partial transcript (cherry-picked) vague quotes from junior staffers (literally: "told by a supervisor that "Washington, D.C., wanted some cases."), while the true source of the audits has been identified as decidedly not-Obama: http://news.yahoo.com/conservative-republican-irs-staffer-takes-credit-tea-party-150337890.html http://news.yahoo.com/conservative-republican-irs-staffer-ta.... All of this is completely ignoring the completely legitimate reasons for auditing these clearly political groups in the wake of Citizens United. Just like how Fast & Furious was in no way a scandal, but a symptom of Arizona's lack of gun laws. Law enforcement was unable to arrest or even restrict people linked to cartels as they purchased weapons- the best they could do was keep track of serial numbers. There was no gun running, but that didn't stop Republicans from fabricating another 'scandal:' http://www.thenation.com/blog/168673/facts-get-way-gops-fast-and-furious-investigation#axzz2W8TQ9U44 http://www.thenation.com/blog/168673/facts-get-way-gops-fast... Even this article should clue you in to Issa's obvious political theater for his base. Obama sucks at fighting misinformation, but he is certainly not a dictator.
- stfu 13y ago
  But don't you see that this "oh, it was some low level employee - how could he know" strategy is getting abused over and over again. Sure, it gives those who want to see innocence the ability to believe in some hypothetical "plausible deniability". If you go down this line of argument with Obama you need to do it equally with Bush: than there was nothing wrong of invading Iraq, because some low level CIA employee foreign intelligence services/some nutty informants were confirming the WMDs. If your intention is to let somebody at the top look good and they are smart enough to have others keep them out of the loop of controversial issues, you can always attach the wrongdoings to some low level figure. But it is in the end like saying the Walmart CEO has absolutely no responsibility of having bad numbers this year, because well, he is not the guy is selling the milk bottles in all the stores.
  - AmericanOP 13y ago
    No, it's not the same. If the old narrative is that the administration itself was involved in the bad actions, but facts emerge that the administration wasn't involved at all- then yes, the executive should look better. It has been one of the conservative talking points that if obama didn't know, then he is an incompetent leader. This is also false and bad faith argument- the low level employee didn't think he was breaking the rules with his queries, and his direct manager stopped the activity when she found out. This is so far removed from the white house they don't deserve to be in the same sentence. Plausible deniability still connotes a connection when there isn't one- the IRS's involvement in campaign financing has always been awkward and needs reform. Hopefully, these facts should inspire you to question the anti-obama narrative rather than come up with your own. In changing the subject and making an argument like above without addressing the new information, it looks like you're figuring out how you can protect your beliefs from criticism without actually having to address those criticisms. Please understand this is meta and isn't a criticism of you personally- but it's important for a working democracy that conservatives learn to "understand a complex topic, weigh competing values and considerations against one another, and eventually get behind" the facts. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/in-which-i-feel-sorry-for-ramesh-ponnuru.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/in-which-i-feel-sorry-... I sometimes get accused by my Fox news addicted family of being "arrogant" when I go meta. But it's frustrating when "obviously fraudulent arguments get made; get knocked down; and soon pop up again, as if the original discussion never happened. This makes a gentlemanly issue-centered discussion essentially impossible. If someone says the sky is green, you prove that it’s actually blue, and the next day he comes back once again insisting that the sky is green, and this happens repeatedly, you eventually have to acknowledge that mannerly debate about the color of the sky just isn’t enough; you have to go meta, and talk about the fact that this guy and his friends just aren’t in the business of honest discussion. Inevitably, there are some people trying to turn the conversation meta in a different direction, and make it all about civility. But bad-faith arguments don’t deserve a civil response, and if the attempt to be civil gets in the way of exposing the bad faith, civility itself becomes part of the problem." http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/bad-faith-and-civility-health-care-edition/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/bad-faith-and-ci...

by stfu 13y ago

AmericanOP 13y ago

IRS scandal wasn't a scandal. The only evidence the WH was involved are partial transcript (cherry-picked) vague quotes from junior staffers (literally: "told by a supervisor that "Washington, D.C., wanted some cases."), while the true source of the audits has been identified as decidedly not-Obama: http://news.yahoo.com/conservative-republican-irs-staffer-takes-credit-tea-party-150337890.html http://news.yahoo.com/conservative-republican-irs-staffer-ta.... All of this is completely ignoring the completely legitimate reasons for auditing these clearly political groups in the wake of Citizens United. Just like how Fast & Furious was in no way a scandal, but a symptom of Arizona's lack of gun laws. Law enforcement was unable to arrest or even restrict people linked to cartels as they purchased weapons- the best they could do was keep track of serial numbers. There was no gun running, but that didn't stop Republicans from fabricating another 'scandal:' http://www.thenation.com/blog/168673/facts-get-way-gops-fast-and-furious-investigation#axzz2W8TQ9U44 http://www.thenation.com/blog/168673/facts-get-way-gops-fast... Even this article should clue you in to Issa's obvious political theater for his base. Obama sucks at fighting misinformation, but he is certainly not a dictator.

stfu 13y ago
But don't you see that this "oh, it was some low level employee - how could he know" strategy is getting abused over and over again. Sure, it gives those who want to see innocence the ability to believe in some hypothetical "plausible deniability". If you go down this line of argument with Obama you need to do it equally with Bush: than there was nothing wrong of invading Iraq, because some low level CIA employee foreign intelligence services/some nutty informants were confirming the WMDs. If your intention is to let somebody at the top look good and they are smart enough to have others keep them out of the loop of controversial issues, you can always attach the wrongdoings to some low level figure. But it is in the end like saying the Walmart CEO has absolutely no responsibility of having bad numbers this year, because well, he is not the guy is selling the milk bottles in all the stores.
- AmericanOP 13y ago
  No, it's not the same. If the old narrative is that the administration itself was involved in the bad actions, but facts emerge that the administration wasn't involved at all- then yes, the executive should look better. It has been one of the conservative talking points that if obama didn't know, then he is an incompetent leader. This is also false and bad faith argument- the low level employee didn't think he was breaking the rules with his queries, and his direct manager stopped the activity when she found out. This is so far removed from the white house they don't deserve to be in the same sentence. Plausible deniability still connotes a connection when there isn't one- the IRS's involvement in campaign financing has always been awkward and needs reform. Hopefully, these facts should inspire you to question the anti-obama narrative rather than come up with your own. In changing the subject and making an argument like above without addressing the new information, it looks like you're figuring out how you can protect your beliefs from criticism without actually having to address those criticisms. Please understand this is meta and isn't a criticism of you personally- but it's important for a working democracy that conservatives learn to "understand a complex topic, weigh competing values and considerations against one another, and eventually get behind" the facts. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/in-which-i-feel-sorry-for-ramesh-ponnuru.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/in-which-i-feel-sorry-... I sometimes get accused by my Fox news addicted family of being "arrogant" when I go meta. But it's frustrating when "obviously fraudulent arguments get made; get knocked down; and soon pop up again, as if the original discussion never happened. This makes a gentlemanly issue-centered discussion essentially impossible. If someone says the sky is green, you prove that it’s actually blue, and the next day he comes back once again insisting that the sky is green, and this happens repeatedly, you eventually have to acknowledge that mannerly debate about the color of the sky just isn’t enough; you have to go meta, and talk about the fact that this guy and his friends just aren’t in the business of honest discussion. Inevitably, there are some people trying to turn the conversation meta in a different direction, and make it all about civility. But bad-faith arguments don’t deserve a civil response, and if the attempt to be civil gets in the way of exposing the bad faith, civility itself becomes part of the problem." http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/bad-faith-and-civility-health-care-edition/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/bad-faith-and-ci...