02-06-2009, 07:54 PM
swampy wrote:
Come on Deckeda... Reid granted him an interview.
Perhaps you think Reid brought this upon himself, by granting an interview knowing he'd be ambushed.
The point of interviewing is to discover something you or your audience doesn't know, not to lead the interviewee into a trap so that you can satisfy a personal or company agenda. And THAT, my dear, is the difference between Journalism 101 and being a goofball.
Here's a clue for the clueless. The "interview" was preceded by this statement, which revealed the setup,
tie guy wrote: Trying to argue that governmental action is not forceful, Sen. Harry Reid claimed that income taxes are voluntary."
It all sounds absurd and shocking, and tie guy delivered absurd and shocking to anyone who wants to view Reid look like either an idiot or a lier. You're tie guy's audience, swampy. Each of us enjoys their own form of entertainment. But journalism it is not. Your clue to that fact will be the silence in respected media and national discussion that won't be happening outside of the tinfoil community about any of this. I'll wait here to be proven wrong, m'kay?
swampy wrote:
Tie guy first asked about taking money from the people and giving it to other people and "what are Americans supposed to think of their government?" When Reid responded with "Your premise is wrong, we don't take...", Tie guy went for the throat. Tie guy kept rephrasing the question and Reid kept digging his hole.
Reid immediately recognized the premise was a setup. "Rephrasing" wasn't gonna then very productive, since tie guy never acknowledged the premise was blatantly outrageous. In fact, tie guy spent the 4 minutes defending his premise again and again. Here it is again,
tie guy wrote:
If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people who's money is being taken feel about the government?
Ready? Here we go:
"If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people" << sound right to you? That's government's objective? What about prior to the IRS' existence? Did government ever have functions back then? Did they all disappear? If so, when?
"in order to provide welfare benefits to others," << that's clever because it has that favorite buzzword of conservatives 'welfare' (as if welfare is a bad thing) and because it assumes that those that pay taxes don't enjoy benefits of taxes being paid by others. Bizarre.
"how will the people who's money is being taken feel about the government?" << duh
In retrospect there are a ton of ways Reid could have responded better --- no one here disputes that, do they? It remains however, not the point.