The Doonesbury "Say What?" thread

[Andara Bledin]

From the victims standpoint, it would read:

"what is horrific is the child that could come from this."

Spending uncomfortable months being constantly reminded of the rape by being forced to carry a child that wasn't wanted in the first place is going to be bad for both mother and fetus. Nevermind that the horror of rape is the loss of bodily autonomy, and then the Church and state compound it by further removing a victim's bodily autonomy. That's just sick, no matter the end goal.

[lordlundar]

"Cars were king. If you had transportation out of town to high ground you might eat, you might get some water. So here we are driving through town in our rental cars. Eight troopers had to cover us by aiming at the men in the street just to tell them, 'Don't think of doing a smash-and-grab and killing this guy for the car.' I carried a case of Vienna sausage, cans of Vienna sausage, as collateral in case we had a smash-and-grab cracking. I was gonna offer it to someone in exchange for my life."
—

Brian Williams, on covering Katrina in New Orleans

How much of this is true I wonder.
And such is the penalty when you make a big lie. Now everything you say is suspect.

[lordlundar]

"Here's a view of rockets I have never seen, passing underneath us, 1,500 feet beneath us. And we've got the gunner doors on this thing, and I'm saying to the general, some four-star: 'If we're just 1,500 feet [in the air]...it wouldn't take much for them to adjust the aim and try to do ring toss right through our open doors, would it?'...Anytime you want to cross over to the other side, baby, travel with me."
—

Brian Williams, to Jon Stewart in 2006

For those of you thinking "It's just a little lie, nothing to be concerned about" this shows just how elaborately he crafted this.

[lordlundar]

"I was remembering something I tend to forget: the war with Hezbollah in Israel a few years back where there were Katyusha rockets passing just underneath the helicopter i was riding in. A few years before that, you go back to Iraq, and I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us and had hit the chopper in front of ours. And I'm so fortunate to be sitting here."
—

Brian Williams, in a 2007 interview

Wow, so much can be said about this, not a lot of it kind.

[Andara Bledin]

Honestly, I don't think the guy was telling tales on purpose; rather, he fell victim to his memory changing things because our mind's are treacherous and if we hear a story often enough, our memory starts acting like it's our own. It's actually disturbingly trivial for people to end up with false memories.

[TheHuckster]

I would support that argument. After all, I know I've been known to exaggerate certain details of decade-plus old stories, but there's a large distance between, "Somewhere nearby some helicopters went down" and "I was in a helicopter that went down and I remember seeing the RPGs that brought it down." If you ask me, this is as delusional as telling someone that ten years ago you were in a horrific car crash and giving very specific details about it when, in fact, you were simply in a traffic jam and you merely rubbernecked the crash.

I would imagine if something like this were to happen to anybody, it's not just a one-day event. You'd spend time debriefing military officers over what happened, fill out paperwork, and certainly something like this would be on the news shortly after it happened. All of those things simply didn't occur.

[lordlundar]

Honestly, I don't think the guy was telling tales on purpose; rather, he fell victim to his memory changing things because our mind's are treacherous and if we hear a story often enough, our memory starts acting like it's our own. It's actually disturbingly trivial for people to end up with false memories.

Let me point something out to you:

I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us and had hit the chopper in front of ours

This is a typical RPG being pointed for comparison sakes:



Any hole is roughly 2 inches across MAX. Seeing down a RPG launcher from several hundred meters up when it wasn't even being fired at you (and that doesn't even factor the fact that RPG's are horribly inaccurate to begin with) is at best borderline impossible unless you have literal eagle eye vision.

This barely begins to describe the other lies he's said about assignments that he just returned from. After the first blowout his entire career is being analyzed and it's not looking good. Lot's of at best inaccuracies for someone who prides himself on telling the truth means his career's in the tank.

[Andara Bledin]

"After Katrina, Walmart and private charities helped people in many more ways than FEMA did. Because FEMA is incompetent because government tends to be. But also Walmart everyday needs to know what people need, and they were ready. They had more weather forecasters than some of the local governments do."
—

Fox Business host John Stossel

Apparently, some people have this idea in their heads that out of chaos we'll get spontaneous order because magic I guess.

[lordlundar]

Williams: "I guess I do say to myself and others, 'I've got this!' And I don't know where that unbridled confidence comes from. And I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe."

Baldwin: "Did you think you were going to die?"

Williams: "Briefly, sure."
—

Brian Williams, interviewed by Alec Baldwin, March 4, 2013

And the hole just goes deeper...

[lordlundar]

"Friends, this is a very important post I respectfully ask you to read through. Forgive its length. May it help you nail the coffin that's given shelter to a corrupt press that would stop at nothing in their fight against right."
—

Sarah Palin blog post on Brian Williams

And hypocrite of the year award goes to...

(which is impressive considering it's only February and it's already a very tight race.)

[lordlundar]

"Did they only come for lice and petoleleum?"
—

Argentine president Cristina Kirchner, tweeting about investment meeting with China's president and business leaders

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why Twitter is a horrible abomination.

[lordlundar]

"A recent Bankrate poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans didn't have savings available to cover a $500 repair bill or a $1,000 emergency room visit."
—

Paul Buchheit, in "New Evidence That Half of America is Broke"

This does not surprise me.

[TheHuckster]

It's especially scary considering many ER visits can go beyond $1,000 especially if it requires followup doctor visits afterwards.

[Andara Bledin]

It's especially scary considering many ER visits can go beyond $1,000 especially if it requires followup doctor visits afterwards.

What most people don't know is that there's financial aid for hospital visits.

I don't know if it's available everywhere, but when Nekojin was in for a week with his brain bleed, we paid nothing for the visit and nothing for the 6 months of follow-up care, and we're not particularly poor.

[TheHuckster]

I would imagine most of the financial aid is in the form of loans, correct? If so, it doesn't necessarily improve the situation, especially if the patient can't afford an extra load of debt and decreases their ability to save money even more.