Relating to the Coulter-Canada thing:
Consider four countries, A, B, C and D. Each has a government and a bunch of ordinary citizens. Now let's talk about money. The government keeps its money in the Treasury. The ordinary citizens keep their money in their pockets.
Disaster strikes abroand, and money begins to flow from these four lands to help victims overseas. Reporters covering the story from every conceivable angle hit upon the idea of ranking the countries in terms of how much money each has sent (or promised to send) for relief efforts. They even calculate the per capita donations, by divided money by population.
Here's the catch: suppose money from A comes primarily from the government Treasury, while private donations from the Pockets of ordinary citizens (or the charitable organizations they fund) is much less.
A(T) > A(P)
But in country B it might be the opposite. Their government doesn't send nearly as much as the ordinary people do:
B(T) < B(P)
Now comes the article, where the newspaper writer praises country A for sending so much money while criticizing country B for its stinginess.
A is the highest - counting only government money
Someone in B says, "Wait a minute: you can't ignore private donations. We actually gave more than A, if you factor in non-govermental contributions."
B = B(T) + B(P) - counting both Treasury and Private
People use the names of countries differently, depending on the context and on the point they're trying to make. If the TOTAL amount aid out of a country
B(T) + B(P)
is highest, then it's the "winner" in this contest. Unless we only count government aid, in which case A is the winner, i.e., its GOVERNMENT is the winner.
The point is that Canada sent troops all right, just not Government troops. Canada (the nation as a whole) send 12,000 men - or they "went", anyway - and they did fight on the South Vietnamese side.
Coulter's mistake was in not knowing (or saying) that CANADIANS did serve as soldiers in Vietnam. The interviewer's mistake (or deliberate deception) was in not acknowedging that Canadians DID SERVE as soldiers in Vietnam.
He wanted to make it all about the government, which he knew (either at the moment, or when editing later or when discussing with his producer how to show Coulter in a bad light) hadn't sent the men.
So we really need to use this example in an article about how the liberal media goes out of its way to discredit "the right" while NEVER conceding any error of its own and even DELIBERATELY deceiving the public.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed