Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) seemed to be rehearsing a new version of the scene from Treasure of Sierra Madre when “Gold Hat” proclaims “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!” In the new version King says that he doesn’t need facts in claiming that President Obama went on an “apology tour” in the Middle East despite the conclusion by independent fact checkers that he never apologized or said I am sorry on the tour. King barked “I don’t care what fact check says.” It appears that, according to Santorum below, the GOP has also decided to give up on trying to attract “smart people.”
Here is the exchange:
O’BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they’re a fact checker.
KING: No. Soledad. Any commonsense interpretation of those speeches, the president’s apologizing for the American position. That’s the apology tour. That’s the way it’s interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for Islam, that’s an apology. How else can it be interpreted?
O’BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it. So I don’t think that everybody agrees it’s apology.
Finally, someone who is willing to liberate politics from tyrannical hold of facts.
This seems to dovetail well with the statement of former presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-PA) who told an audience this weekend that “We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.” Yes, those pesky “smart people” are always such a drag.
I hereby nominate Alfonso Bedoya for president . . .
Source: Think Progress
When you are from New York and you are familiar with language such as “Turdy turd and a turd” which imparts a reference to 33rd Street and 3rd Avenue, then you can live in the realm of a schmuck like this. You folks are on another planet. When I am channel surfing on my tv and I come across the likes of Jay Leno then I fast surf. You NY folks are odd ducks.
ID, I live in the Badger State.
QUOTE “It appears that, according to Santorum below, the GOP has also decided to give up on trying to attract “smart people.”
No kidding, as soon as they hi-jacked the Rep convention and told all the Rep’s in the whole 50 states that what they wanted mattered not at all to the high ranking GOP…all they had left were the Rep robots that would vote for whoever or whatever they presented for a candidate! All the rest of them, that realized what happened, were PISSED!!! LoL
Darren,
Would a Republican (or Democrat?) notice the difference between things stated as facts and those stated as opinion??? Don’t thing you believe
so either.
Or as one saíd above, as long as what is stated concurs with ones own opinions, then all is hunky-dory.
I’m not even sure that the average pol can do the complicated mental switch involved.
And my thanks fo the “badger” folks. Badges? Sounds like a legacy party pol to me.
I seem to remember George H W Bush making the same “I don’t care about the facts” back when he was prez.
Frankly,
You see you’re interpreting your basis of your opinion based upon you’re preconceived ideals of how it should be…… You’ll see lots of crap, you just have to sort through it to see if it passes the sniff test…..
Dogs will eat basically anything….. There are somethings a dog won’t eat or befriend…..small children are generally the best interpreter of character….. In my book, if a child under the age of 3 likes someone…. The person must have something basically good about them…. They feed off of the emotional being….. For the most part they have not been tarnished by big people’s twisted ideals of how life should be….. They are not into rational thinking…… Then again…. Some so called do adults aren’t either….
Some good news, Blouise. Warren is surging in the polls.”Warren’s gaining because Democratic voters are coming back into the fold. Last month she led only 73-20 with Democrats. Now she’s up 81-13. That explains basically the entire difference between the two polls. There are plenty of Democrats who like Scott Brown- 29% approve of him- but fewer are now willing to vote for him. That’s probably because of another finding on our poll- 53% of voters want Democrats to have control of the Senate compared to only 36% who want Republicans in charge. More and more Democrats who may like Brown are shifting to Warren because they don’t like the prospect of a GOP controlled Senate.” Public Policy Poling People liked what they saw of her at the convention.
Who needs facts when you’re The Peter King? Armed with a blatant disregard for the truth, now all he needs is a Dick Armey and together they can have a fact proof government that lasts for less than eight hours without consulting a physician. No assistance from the Trojans required.
Seriously, the first time anyone in public office says any form of the words “I don’t care what the facts are”, they should not only be drummed out of public office, they should be ridiculed mercilessly and made to wear a pointy hat and sit in the corner for at least a year. Or in the infotainment alternative, forced to star in the upcoming “reality” show “Real Morons of Public Service”.
Al D’Amato used to make King look reasonable and intelligent. Now he has no cover.
Representative King would have done himself better to instead of proffering it as a fact, he could have instead shared it as an opinion or what he interepreted it to mean.
Proffering blieves or feelings as fact can set a person up to be called on it. Often times it is better to state facts and then convey that a personal analysis of those facts are personal opinions.
Nice try at diverting the issue Bossy!
Yes, we certainly can’t trust the WaPo or AP to be right, look for instance at the hack job the WaPo did on Clinton’s addressing Paul rAyn’s lies at their conventions. The WaPo “fact checker” dismissed Clinton’s evidence that Paul rAyn had lied by stating that Clinton had once lied about an illicit relationship he had. Thats not fact checking thats just modern media BS.
But in the case of the lie Rep King is telling it is quite simple to verify. Simply produce a single statement where the President, or anyone acting under his orders, has apologized. King can’t do that, you can’t do that and the WaPo can’t do that. Pretty clearly a lie.
We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers!
This is propaganda-nothing more. Obama, a man who is killing innocent civilians in Muslim nations’ everywhere, is said to be “apologizing” to them. This idea glosses over the killings in Democrats’ mind. This makes them happy because they get to pretend their lord is the prince of peace. It enrages the Republican base who won’t admit Obama isn’t apologizing for shit. He’s killing Muslims with out a shred of facts, evidence or conscience.
It further sets up the divide that Obama supporters are intelligent while Republicans are stupid. It stokes a false class division which benefits the 1% who run things. This group needs their propaganda so people will not unite in the face of the real class war, the one the educated and well connected of both legacy parties are waging against the rest of us and the planet.
Here is Rocky Anderson on breaking the iron fist of both legacy parties. It’s a perspective we don’t hear much of because once enough people understand what is actually going on, things can change. Ever wonder why the legacy parties forbid voters from hearing from their actual competition. Think about it.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/09/13/rocky-anderson-president
King is not one of a kind.
They seem to have some sort of factual vacuum when it comes to their patron saint Ayn Rand too:
(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy). There seems to be a lot of “Lying For The Lord” going on in neoCon land.
Some people tend to interpret evidence in a manner that confirms that which they want to be true rather than that which is actually true. It’s called motivated reasoning or confirmation bias on steroids. They seldom realize that their own desires have totally influenced their evaluation of the evidence.
Disappointing but not surprising. It seems that the party that accepts “faith” for religious belief is actually being consistent, in not requiring evidence for anything.
I don’t know if I agree or disagree with Mr. King’s position on the underlying issue, but I certainly agree with his premise that the fact checking done by the WAPO, AP, and others is worthless. He is correct to say that those sources are hardly reliable.
The drone attacks, NDAA, Patriot act, coddling Wall st. no torture prosecutions. These are all facts to go after and criticize Obama for.
OOPs the neocons Love every single one of them. Sometimes I wonder why Obama isn’t the republican nominee.
My conspiracy theory is …. He is…. That’s why Romney is such a bumbler.
The neocons, that privately love Obama, brought out their dog and circuses
act to entertain the far right, distract them and go down swinging. A compromised Obama, a divided electorate, is fertile ground for dream fulfillment of the 0.1%. They will continue to get what they want, and the electorate will continue to neuter itself.
The democratic party committed hari kari when they purposefully threw Ralph Nader under the bus, the DNC drew a line in the political sand on the left and they themselves declared NOT US. We won’t go there. Any Dem that is too far to the left will be persona non gratis.
In my understanding of negotiating, shooting oneself in the foot (or other appendages) is stupid-stupid-stupid. …… Or the Dems are so compromised
…they shot and hit exactly what they aimed at.
Rep King works from a deeper truth. A truth that comes not from the head but from the gut. Truth from the gut is always truth unlike truth that comes from observation, testing and evidence. Those truths can change as new facts come out so they can’t be trusted.
Rep King, and those like him know the real truth comes from the gut and rely on it so much that much of the truth the speak is pulled right out of the very far end of their guts
Why do facts matter….