Deinonychus antirrhopus

Steve, you're being willfully obtuse.

Conason is speaking historically, about the era in which these laws were passed. Who was on which side of those debates is not open to discussion, it's a simple and well-documented fact. The "implication" you assign to Conason's quote exists in your head, and perhaps in the heads of some of his readers, but not in that passage.

For someone so awfully wound about about the "technical" accuracy of other people's words, you are awfully quick to divine/implant secondary meanings in them when it suits your purposes.

And your being an ass. You really think people actually advocated poisoning food?

Further, this mindset is still in the liberal community today. You hear it form the politicians. The talk about right-wing agendas, plundering the environment, poisoning the air, re-instituting racial segregation, and so forth. Why don't you go read some of the thing Davis has been saying. The stuff about the Republicans wanting the elderly to crawl off and die, is a classic.

My friends, from day one I have fought to improve our schools. This year in Sacramento, believe it or not, the Republicans wanted to kick 110,000 kids out of kindergarten.

That is a lie. The suggestion was to help cut costs some children would delay entering kindergarten by a year. You know what? For boys that can actually make a positive differncne--i.e., they do better if they wait that extra year.

Stop deluding yourself.

>Stop deluding yourself

Stop changing the subject.

Mentioning Gray Davis is an utter non sequitur. I live 3,000 miles away from California. I couldn't give two shits what Gray Davis says. He's your problem, not mine. He is utterly irrelevant to me or anything I believe. He doesn't even enjoy grudging popularity among California Democrats, so how he is suddenly the spokesman for liberals is a little obscure.

No, I do not believe that anyone advocated poisoning food, nor have I ever levelled the charge. Nor did Conason or Kevin Drum. You are the one throwing that charge around, but unable to actually attribute it to anybody, except the dreaded "liberal mindset." It is, however, an inescapable fact that food and medicine became much safer after the establishment of the FDA, and that its proponents and opponents were clearly demarked at the time of its establishment.

If the fact is so "inescapable", then surely you have statistics to prove it? Perhaps some that isolate the effect of the FDA itself from changes in tort law and technology.

We'll wait.

Do you? I'll just go with the plainly self-evident. Have fun digging in the arcana.

Handwaving isn't "inescapable".

Its a shame you've no intention of backing up your claims. What I was actually looking forward to was your attempt to pick a date. You see, the real birth of the FDA can be traced to 1906 and that famous "liberal" Teddy Roosevelt.

Now the plain fact was that the modern concept of the "liberal" doesn't map to the political spectrum of 1906. More amusingly, Conason - as ignorant as he is - wouldn't recognize Teddy Roosevelt as a "liberal". And that's why Steve and I ridicule Conason and you.

Fair enough, though if you'd like to get really technical about it, it dates back to 1862 under Charles Wetherill in the Department of Agriculture. After several failures, the Food and Drug Law finally made it through Congress in 1906, over the objections of Southern conservatives, on the surge of anger following the socialist author Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

And yes, Teddy Roosevelt signed that law and helped push it through Congress, and he was neither a liberal nor a conservative. And if anybody was really responsible for it at this stage, it's Dr. Harvey Wiley more than TR.

This law was enforced by the Bureau of Chemistry until 1927, when then the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration was formed, and four years later changed its name to the FDA. Except it didn't work, because judges couldn't find any specific authority in the law for the standards, plus the law was made obsolete by changes in the way food and medicines were produced and marketed.

It was an FDA without enforcement power. Just a bunch of scientists, in effect, issuing their opinions.

After five years of battling Congress, Franklin Roosevelt - most assuredly a liberal - managed to get the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act passed in 1938, which for the first time in its history gave the FDA real enforcement power and the ability to set standards, giving birth to the modern FDA - a wholly different (and, I am sure, to libertarians, a wholly more sinister) creature.

So we can argue exactly when its birthday is or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but as with much of the rest of the achievements Conason cites, the true birthplace is in the New Deal.

apostropher,

The Gray Davis example was just that an example. You sit there and arrogantly call for an example and I give you one and you call it a non-sequitur. This shows you are being willfully obtuse.

The facts about the 100,000 students claim are this:

To cut costs the Republicans proposed that the date for accepting students to kindergarten be pushed back. Currently it is children who will be 5 on or before Dec. 1st. Now these children would wait an extra year in getting into kindergarten. These would be among the youngest students in kindergarten and based on my research on this, young students often benefit by waiting a year in this case, especially boys.

Got kids apostropher? I do, a son. My wife and I made the decision to hold him back a year for precisely this reason.

You see it is an example of the kind of Rhetoric Conason is using. It is still being used to this very day.

Another example? How about Mike McCurry saying the Repbulicans wanted the elderly to go off in a corner and die. What prompted this outburst of bile and vituprutiveness? Republicans want to privatize Social Security. Lets run down it.

"Conservatives" argue the following:

1. Social Security is heading for eventual bankruptcy (yes its a ways off--40 or so years).
2. One possible solution is to privatize it (there are several ways to do this).
3. It could also have the added benefit of allowing for a greater rate of return.

"Liberals" argue that:

1. The Rebulicans don't care about the elderly.
2. Want to raid the Social Security fund for their Wall Street cronies.
3. Want to ruin a system many have come to depend on.

A few will argue that the system isn't going to go bankrupt for a long time and even then revenues from income taxes can be used.

So we see the bile filled rhetoric again. Now maybe the Republicans do want the elderly to suffer and die, want to take "their money" for their Wall Street cronies, etc., but what evidence is there of this.

Oh yes, Enron. Gee, good thing Ken Lay never played golf with Clinton....oh wait....

Now lets try this. We have safe work places, wages are usually above the minimum wage, unions are no common place, and are food and water are very clean and safe. So lets do the following:

1. Get rid of OSHA and all similar state level agencies.
2. Get rid of the minimum wage.
3. Any laws benefitting unions.
4. Do away with the FDA.

We got all those things, the liberals did a good thing, so now lets stop spending money on them.

If you don't like this idea explain why?

You sit there and arrogantly call for an example

Read that first post in this thread and tell me where, Steve. What I said was that you had specifically accused Conason of saying something that he had not. As you just did with me. Your Gray Davis "example" was volunteered, not requested.

I'm plenty arrogant, sir, as are you, but let's try to stay on point here all the same. You have plenty of Gray Davis posts I could respond to if I cared about him in the least.

Got kids apostropher?

Yes, a six-year-old son who is top of his class in the first grade. Every child is different and learns differently. I have no doubt that we both do exactly what is best for each of our sons, regardless of what journalists or officeholders of any stripe say. It still has no bearing on the Conason quote.

Look, we can sit here and play the misdirection game until we bore everybody to tears. The idea that "bile-filled rhetoric" is the exclusive domain of one side of the spectrum or another is ridiculous. I, too, can pull out instances of hyperbolic rhetoric from specific Republican officeholders or Libertarian think tanks aimed at the nominal "Left." And you'd have precisely zero responsibility to defend any of them.

I'll remark to you only on words you actually write. That's a good standard. You should look into it.