DEFENDING FAKE-HERO MURTHA: MORE DESPERATE LEFTIST "AD HOMINEM" NONSENSE

"Ad hominem" arguments (i.e. denigrating your opponent) are what you use when the opponent's facts are all against you

The January 18, 2006 NY Times Op Ed by James Webb attempts to discredit Marc Morano's reporting by stating in part: "One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh."

Marc Morano has circulated by email the following reply (partially quoted here): "So I guess all news reporting by ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, who worked for the Clinton administration, and NBC News's Tim Russert, who once worked for former Democratic Sen. D. Patrick Moynihan, should all be disregarded because they have a Democratic Party background.

Questioning a politician's war record has always been a legitimate role of journalists. Former President Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by some in the media for serving in Hollywood making films supporting U.S. participation in World War II. The AP and the Washington Post in 1988 questioned whether or not then-Vice President George H. W. Bush's (G. W. Bush's father) bailed out of his air plane too soon during a Navy bombing mission in World War II, causing the death of his two co-pilots. (See the August 12, 1988 the Associated Press article entitled: "War Buddy Reluctantly Disputes Bush's Account of Bomber Bailout."). The Nation magazine questioned the inflating of Sen. Bob Dole's war record in 1996. Of course, President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard has been scrutinized by multiple news outlets, as was Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War service. Why do so many believe Rep. John Murtha's war record should be above scrutiny?

Nobody has disputed the facts of the Cybercast News Service article written by myself and Randy Hall."

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ELSEWHERE

Vive la France! "France said on Thursday it would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack against it, reaffirming the need for its nuclear deterrent. Deflecting criticism of France's costly nuclear arms program, President Jacques Chirac said security came at a price and France must be able to hit back hard at a hostile state's centers of power and its "capacity to act.""

Another Leftist clutch at straws: "Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book. In a statement released on Jan. 13, Scripps Howard News Service Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." [The payments actually went to the Hudson Inst. -- which DID disclose them!]

Amusing comment on an Irish Catholic priest who fathered a child: "It's great to hear of a normal heterosexual priest for a change. There's nothing wrong with a loving relationship. He should be left alone".

Another loony Leftist who cannot tell the difference between Nazism and democracy (not really surprising): "These are not your father's Republicans. These Republicans take no prisoners. Cross them and, even if you are a fellow traveler, they will have you rubbed out. They tasted first blood during the Clinton years, and like chicken-killing dogs, liked it. So when they picked Texan George W. Bush as their candidate, they decided it was time to see just how far they could take the smear, how far they could push it. But pushing it -- bending the truth, even breaking it -- was politically dangerous. They needed deniability and distance. So they outsourced their smear work. That's when the Brownshirts arrived. It was one thing to accuse a sitting president of lying about sex, and quite another to accuse war heroes of being lying cowards."

There is an amazing article here about the racial slurs that have been directed at SCOTUS nomineee Alito by Democrats. Calling him a "wop" was the least of it. It seems that Italian-Americans have joined WASPs as fair game for the Left. For people who claim to deplore racism, ethnic slurs directed at ANY group are pretty amazing. But principles and consistency have always been alien to the Left.

Ann Coulter: "As noted here previously, George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck," about pious parson Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, failed to produce one person unjustly accused by McCarthy. Since I described McCarthy as a great American patriot defamed by liberals in my 2003 book, "Treason," liberals have had two more years to produce a person - just one person - falsely accused by McCarthy. They still can't do it. Meanwhile, I can prove that Murrow's good friend Lawrence Duggan was a Soviet spy responsible for having innocent people murdered".

'Plantation' remarks still echoing on Hill: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's fiery political remark Monday that the Republican House is like a 'plantation' has triggered charges of playing the race card and a sharp rebuke from first lady Laura Bush, who called her comment ridiculous. The New York Democrat's racial broadside during a Martin Luther King Day appearance at a Baptist church in Harlem continued to spark debate yesterday on both sides of the political aisle. Black Democratic leaders such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois defended and attempted to explain Mrs. Clinton's remarks, saying she was referring to a "further consolidation of power" by Republicans in Washington. But Mrs. Bush, en route home from a trip to West Africa, said, 'I think it's ridiculous -- it's a ridiculous comment.'"

There is an appalling story here of how the (mostly French) Belgian Left have allied themselves with the Muslims to hit out at the Dutch-speaking Belgians (Flemings).

There is a story on Australian Politics of a quite extraordinary outburst of rage and hate from a prominent Australian Leftist.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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