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[Politics] Julia Hall: Obama's Possibly Planted Question and Reactions
Posts
GWB used plants? I thought we all agreed about that already. Or am I watching the wrong video...
Isn't flip-flopping just constantly "flipping" from one political stance to the polar opposite? I'm not sure if that's the same as a double standard.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
The OP begs the question. Ignore it.
Now, can someone show any proof that this girl was a plant?
The only notable feature of those plants is how fucking incompetent they are. What's the point of a plant if it's blatantly obvious they're a plant to the immediately physical and viewing/listening audience?
Although considering how much some people fawn over idols/pols, I guess it's not that easy to distinguish between a plant and a kool-aid drinker.
So if they seem like clumsy plants, that's not really their fault. They weren't planted so much as touched in the head.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Oh I get most of those points, but why -as with cases such as Jeff gannon (sp?) during the Bush years - do some of these plants have to pepper their prepared questions with sycophantic remarks that will likely give them away? I mean all it does it make a journalist/blogger suspicious enough to look into their links to the campaign. All I can think of it that reliably dedicated people are used as plants because even if their questions aren't prepared, they will likely say something supportive/throw a softball set-up question at the candidate. Of course being 'reliably dedicated' could also mean "fanatic", hence the fawning.
Well, I actually agree with you over the basis of hypocrisy relating to "my guy does it so it's okay," I'm simply baffled at why the conversation is being had in the first place. The natural reaction (from what I see) to "Dude is doing something bad, even though there's no evidence to suggest it, but that's okay, because I like him" is "PIX OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN." Well, not that, exactly, but the sentiment.
During the campaign, I did a lot of blogging on the various liberal sites, and that was the argument used by lots of trolls and Republican sockpuppets: that Obama was to Democrats what Bush was to Republicans, and that he should act like Bush would to win, and rule like Bush with left-leaning policies instead of far right policies. That Democrats who didn't like anything he did should shut the fuck up, because he's Our Glorious Leader. We would inevitably expose these false-facers and send them scrambling for a new sock puppet, but during their run there's a good chance that they could make the liberal blog look like what FOX News types like to describe as "leftist nazis." Which is, of course, the entire point of the exercise for many of these people.
So forgive me if I am unwilling to take for granted a bullshit premise that makes people I agree with look like scumbags, even just for the sake of argument... because it almost never is.
Actor-observer bias seems to fit.
We never actually see her feet.
Feed me Seymour.
Someday she will flower into a young woman, though.
I'd like him to answer that question.
Frankly, if we're going to talk about partisan plants at town halls, let's talk about Katy Abram. Because there's pretty clear evidence that she is a plant for the opposition.
As for it being okay for Obama and not for Bush to plant questions, which was the original point of the thread. Yeah that makes you a hypocrite.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
How many town halls have you watched?
_J_ went to sleep.
voices.kansascity.com: "For the record, the White House denies Hall's question was planted by the administration."
Boston Globe: "Julia's mother was an early Obama supporter and donor in Massachusetts during the presidential election, so she had previously met First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obama daughters Sasha and Malia, and Vice President Joe Biden."
Given that I am not omniscient I have to utilize news outlets to gain information about particular political events. So when the Boston Globe says "she was a plant" and voices.kansascity.come says "the white house denies that she was a plant" I have to make a decision: I have two contradictory bits of information; which bit is true?
We may not ever know if Julia Hall was, in fact, a plant given the ability of human beings to lie. We can craft a story wherein she is a plant and a story wherein she is not a plant. The willingness to accept either story, it would seem, is based upon one's political bias. For example, some might say "The White House denied that she was a plant, so she was not a plant." The problem is that during the W administration the White House denied a shit-ton of things that turned out to be true.
So, since one cannot know whether Julia Hall was a plant, what do we make of the stances we take on allegations of this sort of thing? For my part, I noticed that I was sympathetic to Obama and either assumed she was not a plant or assumed she was a plant and found ways to rationalize it. This was interesting, so I made a thread about it.
The degree to which either side is questioning / accepting the "she was a plant" story is interesting. My guess is that the compulsion to do further research is spurred by a desire to find contrary information. The Boston Globe says "she was a plant", but those who like Obama then seek out further information while those who are against Obama say "the Boston Globe said so!"
What sort of information would provide a 100% certain understanding of whether or not Julia Hall was a plant? If we ask her she could lie. If we ask Obama he could lie. If we ask Michelle Malkin she could lie. So since we have to just fucking pick a side, what dictates which side we pick?
I don't know about you, but I prefer to pick the side that doesn't have the lying shitbag who thinks that it's A-OK to stalk a kid and his family because he dared to oppose her politically.
You fell into the false equivalence trap, _J_. I'm offering you a rope out. Take it.
I'm fairly unbiased about your country's insane politics, and all I see is people boldly leaping to conclusions.
I can't believe someone as professionally pedantic as you, J, would accept this level of 'evidence'.
Other than actually broadcasting them? The shows I posted were news shows. You're the one who needs to back up your claim that they don't count other than this No True NewsReport non-sense. You're saying "News shows aren't reporting these unsupported fabrications" and then defining any news show that does as opinion. That's fallacious.
The Boston Globe does not say she was a plant. And the fact that you keep claiming they do is a pretty clear sign that the bullshit is leaking from your ears and that your motivation behind posing the question was entirely dishonest.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Exactly.
She may have been fed the question by her mother, but there is nothing to indicate that Obama had anything to do with that. She's not a plant.
Ok, it does not say "she was a plant" but rather provides information by which the "she was a plant" argument could be supported in such a way as to allow the "she was not a plant" argument to still have some traction.
What sort of information would be required to discern whether or not she was a plant?
The only people who are claiming that she is a plant are Malkin and her ilk, and they're projecting so hard they might as well have "InFocus" tattooed on their foreheads.
Now, if you want to talk about an actual town hall plant, let's talk about Katy Abram - a supposed "disinterested housewife radicalized by Obama" that appeared on national TV, who has since been outed as a Glenn Beck 9/12 organizer and who has been politically aware and active since at least 2006, if not 2004. That's a plant.
Except your argument for Katy Abrams being a plant is just as inductive as the argument for Julia Hall being a plant.
Oh I see what's happened, you've completely misinterpreted what I originally said. If I was talking about merely reporting that the Birther controversy exists I would have said:
What I actually said was:
Furthermore, the post I was replying to - a couple of posts above mine - was this one:
If my post was disputing that the media were simply noting that the crazy obama controversies existed at all, it makes no sense why I'd be replying to the above post, which posits that the media was trying to push the "obama is a socialist" story. You responded with videos that offered no evidence for the assertion that the networks endorsed the birther/socialist hullabaloo.
edit: replaced "arguing" with "disputing"
George Bush "Town Halls" screened the political orientation of all attendees, including excluding Democrats from publicly funded events. Obama allowed what turned out to be a supporter to ask a question.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
A "plant" is a question that the moderator has inserted into the audience.
In the runup to the 2008 elections, the Town Hall debate, had everyone submit questions, then the moderator would select the ones they wanted, and have the candidates answer. No one from the left or the right claimed that those were all plants (maybe the insane did, but I dont want to go there).
I fail to see any arguments that have indicated that the Obama staff in any way provided or pre-vetted the question posed by Julia Hall.
But it exists as a possibility, and that possibility is enhanced by her mother's relation to the campaign.
I'd be happy to back away from my "she was a plant" claim in the OP and instead go with "she might be a plant". But I think that still allows for the conversation about how one's personal political views skew their interpretation of data.
Huh?
You have a woman who portrayed herself as being just an average housewife who only became active in politics because of the UHC debate. Except that was a complete lie - she's actually been active politically for several years, and she's one of the people organizing these protestors for Beck. And there is actual evidence of this!
Abram is the definition of a plant, and the evidence is there for it.
Lou Dobbs says Birthers complaints are legitimate
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
She might be the host to a hostile alien lifeform as well. Certainly her support of a radical muslim socialist nazi would suggest that she doesn't have the best interests of Planet Earth at heart.
If you wanted to talk about personal bias regarding politics, you could have easily have brought it up in the context of something else. Like, in Battlestar Galactica, was it okay for Laura Roslin to rig the election against Gaius Baltar because Baltar is a sell-out who has collaborated with the enemy? My friend, this shit is why we have speculative fiction. When you give false equivilence to unproven and, quite frankly, completely unsupported allegations regarding existing political figures, you lower the discourse and run a very strong risk of Giving People The Wrong Idea.
I didn't give the time of day to people who thought that Bush arranged for 9/11, or even entertained the notion as a "what if?" because it clearly was not true, and honestly distracted from all the legitimate reasons the guy sucked and was a disaster for our country.
Wow.
If you go back and read my OP you will note that my position was not "ZOMG OBAMA ANSWERED A PLANTED QUESTION HE'S HITLER ZOMG NAZIS!" Rather, the OP discusses the implications of particular political tactics and the degree to which one's personal political bias will skew one's interpretation of the utilization of those political tactics.
Also, OP updated.
Reverse engineering that statement means that your baseline for possibly being a plant is asking a question. If someone ask a question, it raises the possibility of them being a plant. Being related to someone who worked on the campaign only enhances the possibility that already existed due to them asking a question.
That doesn't strike you as being just a tad too close to something out of Rorschachs journal?
occasionallywearsahat.com, my rambly ramblings of ramble
Jesus I thought you'd just give up when I pointed out you thought I was saying something else.
I'll ask you again: Do you know the difference between an Opinion Segment and an anchor reporting the news? One guy on an opinion show does not represent the agenda of an entire news organization. By the ridiculous logic you're using here, MSNBC has a conservative bias because Joe Scarborough, as a conservative, gets to argue with a table of liberals, despite the fact that MSNBC also hosts the likes of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann. Is a paper like the New York Times somehow a GOP mouthpiece because it deigns to permit Conservatives to write opinion pieces? If National Review let Ezra Klein write a column, does that make it a lefty rag?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
So are you arguing that MSNBC is endorsing the idea that Obama is a socialist, or that CNN is doing the same with the birth certificate?
Apparently one fits your argument and the other doesn't? When you find the flashing icon that says "now its opinion time" or what distinguishes them from every other show on cable news, you let me know
edit
Goalpost moving?
Which as you pointed out was in response to the statement that the "old media" was "too busy trying to find out why Obama is a socialist and what Britney Spears is fucking now..." Now not only must they be spending time on these stories but actively and universally pushing them?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
So no, then.
The problem is that your methods of discussion are irresponsible and quite frankly suspicious. Like I said before, if you wanted to discuss whether or not it's okay for a politician you like to do bad things, there are better ways of doing it; speculative fiction might be a good outlet there. If you want to discuss how people's perception of the truth colors their bias, you could talk about a group with a clearly wrong assumption, like the birthers or deathers. If you want to wallow in the muck of trolldom, though, you picked the right course of action: bring up a completely unfounded attack formulated by right wing hatchetmen, assume it's true, and speculate from there.