Rebuttal needed (dailykos)

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/12/23/133233/73/?pid=145#c231

"Kerry has no accomplishments except BCCI for his 22 year Senate career"

This from a Gore supporter.

:rofl:

I didn't want to hijack the thread so I didn't ask for examples of Gore's accomplishments during his senate career. Nor did I mention NAFTA. Or a few other things I'd best not get into.

Anyway, I posted a couple of quick responses, but I really need to get off the computer. I hope some here can join in and set the record straight.

I referenced your list and tried to explain some of the issues.

starting here:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/12/23/133233/73/435#c435

One post for each item.

(It took me an hour just to post these. Mojo would be appreciated, ahem.)

I thought I knew a lot about Kerry, but I guess I was wrong. You linked to a lot of great stuff there. Great commenting from Karynnj, too, and there was another person whose name I didn't recognize who talked about his work as a prosecutor that was really, really good.

I just was pissed at his attitude of slamming Kerry without even doing the tiniest bit of research.

But, I figured this morning that it was better to make the effort and post everything.

is that I didn't know any of this stuff (or very little, I probably knew about LCV), during the 2004 campaign. Even though I was out canvassing for Kerry.

If Kerry runs again in, we **MUST** make sure that doesn't happen again.

but aren't you breaking copyright to post the entire thing?

Anyway, you are right, BCCI is no small thing.

I assumed since the whole article is up on internet, as is-without logging in, that it is fair game but I really don't know. I would be open to advice on this.

The article does have a copyright notice at the bottom of the page, without any added explanations, so presumably "normal" copyright law is applicable.

There is some disagreement as to how copyright law applies to material that is already posted on the internet at a freely accessible site. Generally speaking, you should treat it as printed material and link to the site, because the site may gain some benefit by the traffic of those who click the link to read the entire thing (advertising for example).

Fair use means you can post parts of someone's work to critique it, but not the entire thing. Generally, textual works are subject to the fair use provision.

So, what are the limits of fair use? How much of an article can you post? DU uses "maximum 4 paragraphs" as a rule. Depending on the size of the article, and the average lengths of paragraphs, that number may be too high or too low. But it is a good starting point.

The other thing to consider is that many people will *not* read long posts of pure text. (Quotes, bullets, highlighting, and such make it more likely someone will at least skim the post for the good stuff.)

I think in the case of the Sirota article, the first 3 paragraphs covered the main point very well. And the beginning and end of the third paragraph are especially good:


So, those are some things to consider when using an article like this. But I am very glad you posted it - like I said above, it is an excellent article. Good find.

in fact in Senator Clinton's work, she claims it as the greatest increase in federal Health Insurance since Medicaid. She refers to helping Kennedy and was mentioning it after glossing over her health insurance fiasco. Could the original authorship of this bill be a reason that certain forces would like a certain junior Senator out of the picture? It was done with Bill Clinton as President and without him she could get away with the claim in her autobiography. Claiming a successful program beats being identified with a monstrosity of a program - which the Finance committee hated as well as the insurance companies.

and wrote something fleshing out some of them. I'm sure your links are far better. I think others saw through what he was doing - though your list countered it well. (Is that factcheck RW - it seems to miss stuff.)

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/12/23/133233/73/468#c468

I should scrounge a link to their bogus "fact check" on the social security ads, that made me hip to their fallibility. I guess we all want to believe there is someone out there doing 100% accurate, non-partisan work like this for us, so that we don't have to. Don't fall for it though.

I don't know if factcheck.org is "RW" or just not perfect. I do know that I've seen them get it wrong a few times, and that's reason enough to take their analyses with a bit of skepticism.

:yourock:

Iran-Contra and BCCI were very long investigations that consumed the better part of a decade and parts of BCCI are still in the news.

This investigation did result in several bills, but they were torpedoed by the Repub and monied interests in Congress. This happened with the Money-Laundering Bill in the lat 1980's. The original legislation was not passed and the Repubs stole several provisions of it and that one passed, but I don't think it was signed into law. (George HW Bush was not really a reformer, you know.)

So, parts of that legislation were carved up and resubmitted over the years in the form of Amendments to other bills. Lots of it was passed piecemeal. A lot of it wound up in the Patriot Act, which is why Senator Kerry, I think, voted for it and praised it. There are several parts of the Patriot Act that represent changes that Kerry had fought for for the better part of 20 years. (There is bad in the Patriot Act. The whole thing is not bad. A lot of people who live in black and white worlds refuse to see that. Sigh!)

Separating out what the ideas are that passed and in what final form is an enormous undertaking. Sigh! That's why this is a bit of a trick question.