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Author Topic:   Help me find a hypocrite!
Jaderis
Member (Idle past 3447 days)
Posts: 622
From: NY,NY
Joined: 06-16-2006


Message 159 of 160 (416359)
08-15-2007 11:21 AM
Reply to: Message 153 by kuresu
08-15-2007 1:03 AM


Re: Hillary Clinton
This one is about how she said she would never vote against funding the war while troops are in danger, or vote for a specific withdrawal date. This article claims she has now done both. Whether this is real hypocrisy is a little difficult to tell. It's easy to see this being an oppurtunistic vote. It's also possible she's had a change of heart.
All the other stuff I'm finding about the hypocrisy of Sen. Clinton is built off of inuendo and a lack of understanding about how politics work.
Exactly. Congressmen vote against bills that they would have passed if it was worded differently, excluded completely unrelated amendments (like attaching controversial items or pork to an education bill, for instance) or any number of reasons. The downside is that your opponents then get to say that you are against the troops or our children or something silly because you could not accept the provisions, wording or amendments in the specific bill passed. That's politics for ya.
For example Hillary explains why she voted against the funding bill back in May in her blog. She states that she voted against it because it did not include a provision for phased redeployment which was in the original bill but rejected by Bush.
The page you linked to also does not provide any evidence that Sen. Clinton ever said that she would "never" vote against funding for the troops only that she said back in January that she wouldn't vote against it "right now." Furthermore, the quote used in that page does not indicate that in the next breath Clinton continued by saying "“But what I do want to do is to send a message to the Iraqi government ” the funding for their security forces and personal security is at risk ” and to send a message to the White House that there are certain conditions that we expect them to meet, or they have to come for new authorization for troops to remain in Iraq.” (NYTimes article.
This evidence is questionable at best and it is almost reminds me of that dumbass line used in '04 and '06 against Democratic candidates, especially Kerry - "I voted for the war before I voted against it." It doesn't mean that the people who are now against the war when they formerly supported it are hypocrites, it means they changed their minds about the war in light of all the evidence we now have that Bush and Co. lied to us. It also means they are a little slow on the uptake since I and many others figured he was lying to us from day one, but they can be forgiven for that.
In order to correctly gauge hypocrisy it is important not to rely on prejudiced sources.

"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London

This message is a reply to:
 Message 153 by kuresu, posted 08-15-2007 1:03 AM kuresu has not replied

  
Jaderis
Member (Idle past 3447 days)
Posts: 622
From: NY,NY
Joined: 06-16-2006


Message 160 of 160 (416368)
08-15-2007 12:54 PM
Reply to: Message 146 by riVeRraT
08-14-2007 10:34 PM


Re: Hillary Clinton
That source (I believe it is the same one that you used at the begining of this whole debate on Hillary) is probably not the best place to get your news, rat. Sorry to break it to ya.
I am not just going to dismiss it, however, since I found out who Ng Lap Seng is and what exactly he did.
He was a businessman from Macao who gave money to the DNC in 1994(which was returned). He is connected, as a business partner, to a Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie who schemed to get foreign businessmen, including Ng, to give him and his business money to contribute to the DNC "legally" since foreigners are not allowed to contribute to political campaigns. He also used other individuals as conduits for the foreign funds. Trie and his associates raised $2.2 million for the Democrats, including Pres. Clinton in 1996 and all of it was returned (as far as we know). Trie also contributed money to Clinton's legal defense fund, but that was also returned after the fund did an investigation.
According to a Congressional report "both Trie and Ng attended DNC-
sponsored events with President Clinton and made a number of
visits to the White House." Clinton was a friend of Trie's dating back to his time as governor when he frequented Trie's Chinese restaurant in Little Rock and Clinton also encouraged him to develop his other businesses. They remained friends and Clinton later appointed him to a Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment which employed people with backgrounds in financial dealings/trade with East Asian entities (Trie ran an import-export business and had extensive ties to East Asian businesses). The website at the end of this post states that Trie didn't influence our foreign policy in any significant manner, if at all during his time on the Commission, although that was probably his goal.
The Congressional report makes note of Ng's ties to the Chinese government (as an advisor) and to his criminal activities in Macao (relabeling garments to circumvent import quotas). They make no mention of either of them being involved in international prostitution. In fact I can't find any mention of Ng Lap Seng being involved in international prostitution or in any major criminal activity anywhere except on the kinds of sketchy sites like the one you linked to. Some of the sites also mention NG as being involved in the Chinese organized crime syndicate, Triad, but the only mention of "Triad" in the Congressional campaign finance investigations is in reference to Triad Management Services which was a corporate shell group started by Tom DeLay and was found to be "channel[ing] millions of dollars from its backers to two tax-exempt groups it had established for the sole purpose of running attack ads against Democratic candidates under the guise of 'issue advocacy.'" (WaPo article on investigations). Maybe Ng really is involved with them or maybe your conspiracy sites just took the name of a company which made the Republicans look bad and decided to twist it into another unfounded conspiracy revolving around the Clintons.
The evidence just isn't there. And even if it was you would still have to show that the Clintons knew about Ng's involvement in such activities in order to show any wrongdong or hypocrisy.
So far all we have evidence for is that the Clintons and the DNC received money from some pretty shady guys. Most or all of it was returned and we have no evidence that they knew of the scheme at the time.
For further reading go here.
Edited by Jaderis, : fixed link

"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London

This message is a reply to:
 Message 146 by riVeRraT, posted 08-14-2007 10:34 PM riVeRraT has not replied

  
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