Fast and FuriousFollow

I know you hear the term "strawman" used at you all the time but I don't think you've figured out yet what it means.

Your "proof!" links admit that CBS has covered the story, admit that ABC has covered the story and is reduced to whining about a singular NBC program (ignoring any other news programming on NBC). You reject mention of print, internet or radio as not really counting. You completely neglect the cable networks.

Now, if you thought "strawman" meant "Wow, Jophiel sure did show where I keep crying about the media even though it's abundantly clear that I'm wrong", then I understand why you used the term. Sadly, that's not what it means though.

While you're looking up "strawman", keep flipping around until you find another fallacy called "No True Scotsman". I think you'll find it enlightening, assuming you can comprehend it.

Edited, Jun 21st 2012 7:02pm by Jophiel

Did I ever say that there was "No media coverage!"? You claiming that (in quotes no less!) and then arguing against that false claim is exactly what a strawman is. WTF?


You can sit there and point at dribbles and drabs of reporting, and insist that lack of coverage during primetime television news shows really doesn't matter, but nothing you're saying supports your original claim that it received "extensive coverage" (note how I quote what you actually said). Are you still really going to claim that the coverage of this was "extensive"? And how do you measure that? Relative to other similar political scandals, how does the media coverage stack up? More or less than Plame? More or less than NSA wiretapping? More or less than a GOP congressman allegedly having sex with pages? More or less than Bush faking his flight records? Less, right? Want to know what all of those have in common? All big (huge in a couple cases) stories. All alleging some wrongdoing or scandal by someone on the right. All false.


Forgive me if I laugh out loud at the blatant projection when Dems decry this as some kind of politically driven witch hunt. Cause they're the experts on it apparently. And yeah. The media helps them with this quite frequently and blatantly.

Edited, Jun 21st 2012 5:17pm by gbaji

Sure it isn't.

No, it was there last year. That my local paper has not decided run a monthly section devoted to this story does not make it ignored.

The problem is that it was news a year ago. The TDS clip I posted showing coverage from FOX, CNN, C-span, etc. was a year old. People heard about it, through a fit fora week, and then got bored like most of these scandals.

But it isn't. Pretty much everyone agrees this was a huge failure. The left leaning TDS clip I linked was far from apologetic.

You're not mad that liberals are ignoring the issue. You're mad that they were outraged before you wanted them to be and not as long as you wanted them to be.

I've known about it for months, maybe even a year - I can't remember specifically when or where, but I listen to NPR, CBS news radio-NYC and BBC World News regularly.

It's just fairly amusing that you brought up this whole issue only as the story re-surfaced with the recent events, bringing it back into the mass-media spotlight. Almost as if *you* hadn't known about it until now, then suddenly jumped up and proclaimed "Look what's been going on all this time! And nobody knew about it!"

Considering the state of affairs with Mexican drug cartels staging full-scale war on each other, the police and the Mexican army, I would want to keep our meddling under wraps until there was some sort of control established down there. Regardless of who on which side of the aisle did what up here.

Selling guns to Mexican gangs, naming oversees operatives, mercenary soldiers gone wild, personal time with your intern, shady real estate deals... meh. It fits nicely into the overall narrative at least.

Clinton only left office with a 70% approval rating because the media refused to cover than Lewinsky thing.

Don't you like to quote Fox News whenever you think you have a point to make?

Fast & Furious, a Brief Summary for Those whom get their News from Nowhere:

Fast & Furious describes an ATF program where guns bought in the US were tracked to see which Mexican cartels they ended up with. These guns were not bought & given to cartels & without Fast & Furious tracking said guns, the guns would have ended up in the same places they ended up at even with Fast & Furious tracking them.

A border patrol agent was killed in a firefight with cartel members & 2 guns that were tracked by Fast & Furious were found at the scene. Due to the degradation of the bullet that killed the agent, it is unknown if either of those tracked guns killed him.

The DOJ has released 7K+ documents to the committee investigating Fast & Furious. Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents related to F&F after February 4, 2011, which is when congress began their investigation. The reason he says he has done so, is those documents deal with "the department's response to congressional oversight and related media inquiries,". Any "gotcha" documents, they'd be found before the investigation began, when F&F was actually running.

While invoking Executive Privilege pretty much always implies guilt, just like when you do so for firing 7 JD attorneys for partisan reasons & your AG resigns over it, at this time there are zero "crimes" that have come to light in any or all of the investigation related to F&F thus far. Holder's contempt vote is in regards to not turning over documents congress wants for some reason that do not relate to the F&F program at all, as the documents they want (which deal with the DOJs response to the investigation) are dated after F&F was shut down.



Edited, Jun 23rd 2012 6:58am by Omegavegeta

Saying it twice doesn't make it true. Cite, please.

Well, since he decided to go with "Crimes", the extremely poorly run operation was a "crime" that led to the death of 2 federal agents. The AG also stonewalled Congress for almost a year before hiding behind the, possibly, wrongfully used executive privelige.

Oh, and the Congressional investigation is more into the cover-up rather than the actual F&F operation, so those documents being dated after F&F was shut down is irrelevant as they could still apply to the cover-up.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2012 9:16am by Bigdaddyjug