Great observation regarding the delusion of the Right Wing in America

[dalmations202]

Originally Posted by SeanL

At least 7 embassies were attacked during the Bush administration with far more casualties. Did you criticize Bush for even one of those attacks?

Well such and such did it toooooo..... and they were worse than me.

LOL- Typical

[SeanL]

Originally Posted by dalmations202

Well such and such did it toooooo..... and they were worse than me.

LOL- Typical

Actually you misstated my position. I don't think Bush deserves blame for the embassy attacks, nor do I think Obama deserves blame. It is very hard - almost impossible - to keep dozens of U.S. embassies in the Arab world safe from terrorist attacks. As crazy as that may sound to you, it is true.

Unlike you I'm consistent in that I'm not criticizing either President. But after one embassy attack you have conservatives coming out of the wood work lambasting Obama, while at the same time they were silent when the problem was much worse under Bush. They are hypocrites and craven political opportunists.

[dalmations202]

Originally Posted by SeanL

Actually you misstated my position. I don't think Bush deserves blame for the embassy attacks, nor do I think Obama deserves blame. It is very hard - almost impossible - to keep dozens of U.S. embassies in the Arab world safe from terrorist attacks. As crazy as that may sound to you, it is true.

Unlike you I'm consistent in that I'm not criticizing either President. But after one embassy attack you have conservatives coming out of the wood work lambasting Obama, while at the same time they were silent when the problem was much worse under Bush. They are hypocrites and craven political opportunists.

I wasn't mis-stating anything. I quoted from above. I actually wasn't getting onto you persa -- I just had a child who did the same thing to me. Such and such did it, and they were worse than me.

I just stated that this is typical in America today -- don't address the issue, but place blame somewhere else and claim it is worse that what "ZZZ" did.

I think all of the presidents since before my time ...... have not been there for the best of the people but out for the best for themselves. And I know that they don't speak for or represent me well.


--- And just as a question- are you in the security business, or how do you know it is almost impossible to defend an embassy? I am curious how much military and tactical training and combat you have seen. PS: I think you are absolutely correct here -- but am curious why I should listen to what you have to say about it.

[SeanL]

Originally Posted by dalmations202

I wasn't mis-stating anything. I quoted from above. I actually wasn't getting onto you persa -- I just had a child who did the same thing to me. Such and such did it, and they were worse than me.

If you were talking in generalities then why did you reply to my post? Seems like you are covering your arse now.

Originally Posted by dalmations202

--- And just as a question- are you in the security business, or how do you know it is almost impossible to defend an embassy? I am curious how much military and tactical training and combat you have seen. PS: I think you are absolutely correct here -- but am curious why I should listen to what you have to say about it.

No I'm not a security expert, nor am I an economist, nor am I a former NBA player. But guess what? I have opinions about all those things. That is what this forum is for. You don't have to listen to me if you don't want to. But don't try to shut me up (which is what you are trying to do whether you'll admit it or not) just because you don't like where I'm coming from.

And if you want to have a legitimate debate then fine, but if you are going to argue in bad faith and make ad hominem statements then we are done here.

[Jack.Kerr]

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How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File

By Conor Friedersdorf

Nate Silver was right. His ideological antagonists were wrong. And that's just the beginning of the right's self-created information disadvantage.

Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?"

Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike four years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday's result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout -- Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs.

Those audiences were misinformed.

Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election '08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed that President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected. Other experts echoed his findings. Readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other "mainstream media" sites besides knew the expert predictions, which have been largely borne out. The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver's expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan.

Sure, Silver could've wound up wrong. But people who rejected the possibility of his being right? They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.

Conservatives should be familiar with its contours. For years, they've been arguing that liberal control of media and academia confers one advantage: Folks on the right can't help but be familiar with the thinking of liberals, whereas leftists can operate entirely within a liberal cocoon. This analysis was offered to explain why liberal ideas were growing weaker and would be defeated.

Today?

It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thinking; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear.

But guess what?

You haven't just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

Why do you keep putting up with it?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbesbrought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern.

How many months were wasted on them?

How many hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories did Fox News broadcast to its viewers? How many hours of transparently mindless Sean Hannity content is still broadcast daily? Why don't Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy as they once did? In part because conservatism hasn't grappled with the foreign-policy failures of George W. Bush. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the subject. Romney could neither run on the man's record nor repudiate it. The most damaging Romney gaffe of the campaign, where he talked about how the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes are a lost cause for Republicans? Either he was unaware that many of those people are Republican voters, or was pandering to GOP donors who are misinformed. Either way, bad information within the conservative movement was to blame.

In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts arethe only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood's convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama's America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense -- not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there's no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it's often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.

On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.

It ought to be an eye-opening moment.

But I expect that it'll be quickly forgotten, that none of the conservatives who touted a polling conspiracy will be discredited, and that the right will continue to operate at an information disadvantage. After all, it's not like they'll trust the analysis of a non-conservative like me more than the numerous fellow conservatives who constantly tell them things that turn out not to be true.