A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Addendum:

Here's what Hume says in his first paragraph:

"Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial (search) today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security (search) proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it."

"Planned to include . . . " Like, to make them a part of the whole plan. Not to replace the plan. Clearly, Hume was saying what I thought he was saying.

Me: Hume said x, and x is wrong.

B.: Hume also said y, and y is correct.

Let me save you some trouble before you go looking for other accurate things Hume has said in an effort to drive his batting average up: I will stipulate that Hume has, in his career, said a large number of accurate statements.

Nevertheless, he's a hack.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man

Hank has probably been so quiet because he's letting us fight amongst ourselves. Let's remember and apply Reagan's 11th Commandment in reverse and let it go. I'll go back to biting my tongue.

S_A_M

Hank can't read pages of crap to respond to FDR quotes or SS reallocation- I wade it in on the more basic. I really would like to see Ty's timeslips one week, I cannot see how he does it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Me: Hume said x, and x is wrong.

B.: Hume also said y, and y is correct.

Let me save you some trouble before you go looking for other accurate things Hume has said in an effort to drive his batting average up: I will stipulate that Hume has, in his career, said a large number of accurate statements.

Nevertheless, he's a hack.

Name 3 things Bush has done you think are good-

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Me: Hume said x, and x is wrong.

B.: Hume also said y, and y is correct.

Let me save you some trouble before you go looking for other accurate things Hume has said in an effort to drive his batting average up: I will stipulate that Hume has, in his career, said a large number of accurate statements.

Nevertheless, he's a hack.

Ty: "Hume said X."

Bilmore: Actually, Hume said "Y". Here's a quote:"

Hume. "Y."

Ty: "He's a hack."

I'll simply bow to your better knowledge of Hume.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Name 3 things Bush has done you think are good-

(1) Laura - producing (2) Jenna and (3) Barbara.

S_A_M

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Evidently you need to work on your articulation.

Mine was shorter and easier to understand. You need to stop hanging around with so many lawyers.

Note I am not claiming you were too stupid/prejudiced to recognize we were saying the same thing. In hopes that's not true.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Name 3 things Bush has done you think are good-

That's easy. Think of all the countries he hasn't invaded yet.

[Someone's Evil Twin]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
the sock is of course sad, and I am mostly troubled re. why someone would go to this effort. However, the avater I find offensive- how does that not violate the not copying people rule?

It is clear copyright infringement of my original Hank Washington.

See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 114 S.Ct. 1164, 127 L.Ed.2d 500 (1994)

Think, then post, Hank, Think, then post.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Do you think Hume read all of that and understood it, before he made his argument?

OK. So's he's the kind of hack who unwittingly passes on inaccurate, partisan crap, rather than the kind of hack who bothers to learn why what he's saying is wrong. He's still a hack.

My excuse would be that I have things to do other than read carefully and/or post pages of blogs on such critical issues as what, precisely, FDR said about SS in the 1930s and how some conservative news anchor engaged in some horrendous misrepresentation thereof for partisan purposes.

Me, too. That's why I read a blog post making that point, and posted it. What baffles me is why you and bilmore would waste time defending Brit Hume by saying things that have no basis. In bilmore's case, I suspect he had read a conservative blog that defended Hume, and now either cannot figure out where he saw it, or has realized that Drum got it right.

Honest to God, though. This strikes me as just about as important and meaningful as Club's assault on Howard Dean. When you go full bore on every little thing you lose some credibility. That's why I think bloggers are generally as bad as talk radio (sports and otherwise). They have so much dead air/space to fill that they must yammer on and on about every little thing and magnify every anthill into Mt. Everest for about three days until it disappears and the next thing comes along.

I think the episide is revealing because it demonstrates what the fight over Social Security is about. You have an ideological movement that wants to end Social Security, and has been plotting to do so at least since 1983. These people understand all to well that the public does not and will not support what they propose if it is debated openly. So you have the Brit Humes of the world pretending that FDR supporting privatization, and you have the Roger Simons of the world pretending that Bill Clinton and Harry Reid supporting private accounts in the late 1990s, and so on. These things are false, but you have a conservative movement which understands that they can pump this crap effectively because smart people like you don't have the time to get to the bottom of it. And the so-called MSM just won't do the work to sort out the competing claims. Even the better reporters will open with the 'both sides are equally mendacious' frame, and we've seen what the Brit Humes do. Hence the joke that if the Bush administration were to claim that the earth is flat, the story leads the following day would be "opinions on shape of earth differ." The advocates of privatization can keep misleading people because it works.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
so it would be free, like GGG's health plan?

Nothing in life is free, Hank. I thought you knew that.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Someone's Evil Twin
See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 114 S.Ct. 1164, 127 L.Ed.2d 500 (1994)

Think, then post, Hank, Think, then post.

Ty, RT- someone- make it change- and maybe even flip this one given the abuse of the rule.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop In bilmore's case, I suspect he had read a conservative blog that defended Hume, and now either cannot figure out where he saw it, or has realized that Drum got it right.

You put me on ignore and missed all those posts, didn't you?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty, RT- someone- make it change- and maybe even flip this one given the abuse of the rule.

Now that's just pathetic.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Ty: "Hume said X."

Bilmore: Actually, Hume said "Y". Here's a quote:"

Hume. "Y."

He still said X, and I, for one, appreciate that you are no longer trying to defend the part of his statement that I was posting about. So stop digging.

You put me on ignore and missed all those posts, didn't you?

I didn't put you on ignore, but I suppose it's possible that you posted something I missed. I said this. To which you responded thusly. To which I posted this, including the specific sentence of Hume's which misrepresents FDR:

• In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

A ha. Yes, you posted this, which I missed until now (probably because one minute later I responded to something club said). You said:

Originally posted by bilmore
Are you reading Hume to be claiming that FDR wanted qualified accounts to completely supplant SS? If you are, then I would agree with you that Hume would be wrong.

But I don't read him that way. What I took from his comments was that FDR liked the idea of the additional, investment-driven private accounts being a part of the mix. FDR thought they should eventually be an important component to the whole scheme. I took that as a measure of FDR's prescience - he contemplated qualified accounts way back then.

I think you are misreading Hume, plain and simple. I agree with your second paragraph. It's been said many times that "Social Security benefits were said to be one leg of a three-legged stool consisting of Social Security, private pensions and savings and investment. The metaphor was intended to convey the idea that all three approaches were needed to provide stable income security in retirement." This idea is often attributed, incorrectly, as it turns out, to FDR, but it is true that these ideas were shared by FDR and others present at the creation. SSA says: "Although President Roosevelt apparently never used the "three-legged stool" metaphor, he clearly had this concept in mind when he created the Social Security program, and he expressed the idea, in other words, several times over the years."

But that's not what Hume said in the sentence to which I objected. Am I reading Hume to be claiming that FDR wanted qualified accounts to completely supplant SS? Yes. Because Hume attributed to FDR the notion that "government funding ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Not supplemented. Supplanted. I.e., replaced.

Note that a little while later that night on FOX, William Bennett said, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the guy who established Social Security, said that it would be good to have it replaced by private investment over time. Private investment would be the way to really carry this thing through."

But we already know that Bennett's a hack.

And the fact that Hume said something else also does not change that this is wrong.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty, RT- someone- make it change- and maybe even flip this one given the abuse of the rule.

What's your beef?