Cuccinelli: Shannon was once in the same room with a guy who knew a guy who was a communist.

1. Another hit from Tony “Big Pussy” Cuccinelli.

2. Thank you, Cuccinelli. You just made up my mind. I’d not yet seen a single reason to vote for or against either candidate for AG. In all seriousness, I was open to voting for either of these guys. With this press release, Cuccinelli just convinced me to vote against him.

   I don’t take kindly to disingenuous horseshit. And as a hunter, I don’t take kindly to ridiculing the idea of an Attorney General learning how to enforce the laws that protect wildlife habitat.

3. How is that press release bullshit under your definition? It’s certainly not false, unless Shannon didn’t attend the conference, and that seminar was not offered.

   You may disagree whether attorneys general are suing corporations as a means to implement policies that Democrats are unable to enact legislatively, but that is essentially a political question, and not capable of being proven true or false.

4. Mr. Publius (can I call you “Pub”?):

   1. There is no evidence presented that Shannon actually attended the session in question. The only thing apparent is that a Cuccinelli political hack leafed through the conference schedule and found a seminar that he thought he could make some political hay out of.

   2. This assumes that an environmental interest is always less important than a business interest. Suppose company A with 10 employees make some sort of luxury widget, and in the process pollutes downstream for 50 miles, killing every fish in its path. Wouldn’t the greater public interest be saving the river over preserving 10 jobs?

5. “a Cuccinelli political hack leafed through the conference schedule and found a seminar that he thought he could make some political hay out of.”

   Welcome to the big boy world of political campaigns.

6. I. Publius,

   “Welcome to the big boy world of political campaigns” doesn’t really refute the idea that this is bullshit. Yes, political campaigns do crap like this, I don’t see anyone crying over it. What I do see, though, is people calling it what it is: bullshit.

   And to echo Dan on this, the point is, it’s bullshit because the press release implies something (that Steve Shannon is a radical environmentalist who will pervert the legal system to attain his goals) that isn’t borne out of the facts, and it offers the existence of this seminar as evidence.

   It’s not an out-of-the-ordinary political move, but it certainly is bullshit.

7. Jack: You must have missed the Cucinelli Assclown Rodeo of last week…wherein he attempted to connect ACORN to the entire Virginia Democratic ticket.

8. I think that Ms./Mr. Publius perhaps didn’t catch the bullshit part, which is that nowhere in the press release does it say that Shannon attended THAT PARTICULAR SEMINAR, only that that seminar was offered at the conference he attended, which means the press release is attempting to smear Shannon by implication (which does not even rise to the level of association), which is a technique that works really well with people who don’t read very carefully or think very critically about what they read, which seems to be what the Pubster did…

   Either that, or the Pubster thinks that it’s not at all a bullshit move to issue a press release saying, for example, “today Rob Bell entered a multiplex movie theater at which a hardcore child pornography film was playing” in hopes of getting some weak-minded people to think that Rob Bell supports hardcore kiddie porn.

9. Bubby,

   I did indeed miss that, and most of the rest of the news. I had surgery to repair a tendon last week and was bed-ridden until Sunday night. I was in too much of a haze of painkillers and anaesthesia to read any news. Then before that I was in Germany and Austria for about 8 or 9 days with a laptop that fried its own motherboard on the outbound plane ride, leaving me with no wi-fi. So I’m still catching up on about a month’s worth of politics and news.

10. “Either that, or the Pubster thinks that it’s not at all a bullshit move to issue a press release saying, for example, “today Rob Bell entered a multiplex movie theater at which a hardcore child pornography film was playing” in hopes of getting some weak-minded people to think that Rob Bell supports hardcore kiddie porn.”

    If Rob Bell does, in fact, enter a multiplex theatre that is showing hardcore kiddie porn, then how is publicizing that *fact* bullshit? By the simple fact of it being TRUE, it cannot be bullshit — not by my definition, and more importantly here, not by Waldo’s. You can attack it as idiotic and unfair and whatever else you want, but it’s certainly not bullshit under Waldo’s definition if it’s true.

    I still haven’t seen how anything in Cooch’s press release was untrue. Is it misleading? Maybe. You will certainly argue that it is. I don’t know — it depends on how much Shannon agrees with that sort of tactic in advancing agendas. If he was there and the seminar was offered, then it’s all true. I think y’all are just miffed because it’s probably effective.

11. If it looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes like bullshit, it probably is. But maybe that’s only a phenomenological definition to you, Mr. Smartypants.

    You might, empirically speaking, argue that unless one actually sees the male cow doing his business, then it isn’t proven, but I’m not into that sort of thing, myself. I call bullshit on somebody I probably won’t be voting for for AT.

12. Douglas, try reading all of Waldo’s original post. You’re of course free to define bullshit however you like. The rest of us, on this thread, are already using a particular definition:

    * As always, I have a very specific definition of “bullshit.”

13. I read that last year, but had forgotten.

    Is “assert” not pretty danged close to “imply” or “insinuate”?

    There is a falsehood in that Cuccinelli’s campaign insinuates that Shannon is a “radical environmentalist.

    That’s close enough for me. I’m not bound by Waldo’s definition, as you say.

    “Bullshit-like”? “Bullshitish”? “Bullshitoid”? “Kuhscheißetig”?

14. No doubt this latest Cuccinelli stunt is ‘effective’ with his reality-challenged rightwing supporters; however it is equally effective with his opposition who see yet another example how Ken Cuccinelli will do anything, even Bear False Witness – to get himself elected. In Ken’s World you get to choose which Commandments you obey. That’s my definition of Bullshit.

15. The thesis of this press release is, in fact, bullshit. The only purpose of it is to claim that Steve Shannon wants to “hamstringing employers’ ability to create jobs and grow the economy,” and the only evidence is that he was at a conference at which there was a session entitled “Tools Available to the Attorney General with an Environmental Agenda.” That involves a series of leaps of logic:

    1. That AGs who support environmental policies “hamstringing employers’ ability to create jobs and grow the economy.”
    2. That doing so is bad.
    3. That this session presented advice about how to do so.
    4. That Shannon was present at the conference when this session was held.
    5. That Shannon attended the conference.
    6. That Shannon attended the conference because he supports such an agenda, or that he emerged in support of it.

    Only through that series of logical steps can the second paragraph of the press release have any connection to the first paragraph. No reasonable person would read this press release and believe that Shannon’s presence at a conference of his fellow attorneys general meant that he supports wrecking the state’s economy. And no reasonable person would write such a thing and believe what they’re writing. So what we have here is a lie that’s being told by somebody who knows that he’s lying to an audience who knows that it’s a lie. And that’s a steaming load of bullshit right there.

    There were a couple of blog entries [1, 2] a few weeks ago on Democratic blogs attacking Rodney Thomas, a Republican running for BoS here in Albemarle County. Thomas was interviewed by The Hook, a weekly here, and he had a book on his desk, The Hunt for Confederate Gold, by Thomas Moore. (A local author, incidentally.) Well, Moore is a member of the Southern National Congress, which apparently opposes multiculturalism. This allegedly made Thomas a “racist.” That is horseshit. And I called Thomas’ campaign manager and told him so. It requires the same series of leaps of logic for this attack on Shannon to mean anything. I own a copy of Mein Kampf. (Actually, I think I took it to the book bin at the recycling center, but whatever.) Does that make me Hitler? Of course not.

    Bullshit’s bullshit, I don’t care what party it’s coming from.

16. Like I said, “If it looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes like bullshit, it probably is.”

17. I think after looking, listening, smelling, and feeling, I think I’d skip the tasting. ;)

Comments are closed.