Quote:
Originally Posted by pavulon
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OT i know, but I really wanted to learn something from the above. Alas, the examples - or it's possible just my own biases - derailed my efforts.
I don't know the author of that blog, but he should have stayed away from the political or the subjective - I had trouble getting past his first premise. Further, he should have shown evidence of his thesis on both sides of political debates, rather than choose WMD and Reagan's Welfare Queen as his examples.
Even the NYTimes - the Old Gray Liberal Lady - came to believe there were literally tons of WMD in Iraq.
WMD
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-iraq-pentagon-secrets.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html
The Welfare Queen as excerpted from Slate (emphasis mine, cittion below)
"Though Reagan was known to stretch the truth, he did
not invent that woman in Chicago. Her name was Linda Taylor, and it was the Chicago Tribune, not the GOP politician, who dubbed her the “welfare queen.” It was the Tribune, too, that lavished attention on Taylor’s jewelry, furs, and Cadillac—all of which were real.
As of 1976, Taylor had yet to be convicted of anything. She was facing charges that she’d bilked the government out of $8,000 using four aliases. As witnesses described her brazen pilfering from public coffers, she remained impassive, an unrepentant defendant bedecked in expensive clothes and oversize hats.
When her sentence was up, she changed her name and left Chicago, and the cops who had pursued her in Illinois lost track of her whereabouts. None of the police officers I talked to knew whether she was still alive.
When I set out in search of Linda Taylor, I hoped to find the real story of the woman who played such an outsize role in American politics—who she was, where she came from, and what her life was like before and after she became the national symbol of unearned prosperity.
What I found was a woman who destroyed lives, someone far more depraved than even Ronald Reagan could have imagined.
In the 1970s alone, Taylor was investigated for homicide, kidnapping, and baby trafficking. The detective who tried desperately to put her away believes she’s responsible for one of Chicago’s most legendary crimes, one that remains unsolved to this day. Welfare fraud was likely the least of the welfare queen’s offenses."
Linda Taylor, welfare queen: Ronald Reagan made her a notorious American villain. Linda Taylor’s other sins were far worse.