The WaPo admits to “An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage” — but even in so doing misses the importance of their own admission.
Notes David Harsanyi:
Now, I believe the mass media was solidly in the tank for Obama, but I also believe it’s difficult to judge bias by sorting out stories  a negative one here for McCain a positive one for Obama. One candidate may warrant more negative attention. Another reason coverage may tilt is personality. No one cares about Joe Biden and everyone wanted to know the sordid (often maliciously untrue) detail of Sarah Palin’s life. There is, naturally, a similar skew when it comes to Obama and McCain. Deborah Howell admits these factors.
The problem isn’t that the gracious press covered Obama too much, it’s that they didn’t cover him enough. For the most part they refused to investigate stories that may have injure[d] the candidate  and that’s the bias.
Precisely right.
We’re going to see many attempts to ironize away all the talk of media bias as the ravings of rightwing kooks whose ravings, while statistically showing some slight merit, are nevertheless overdetermined, given the final numbers.
— All of which will purposely obscure the point that it wasn’t necessarily the amount of coverage but the kind — and, in Obama’s case, the real complaint isn’t so much the statistical differential as it is the lack of a certain kind of vetting that speaks to the actual bias conservatives complain about.
In short, it’s what the media didn’t tell us about Obama — despite writing more about him — that bolsters the charge. And this is particularly evident when we stop to recall the coverage given to Sarah Palin — the vast majority of which was a deliberate attempt to over vet, to the point where the public knows far more about Ms Palin’s clothes and tanning bed than they do about Obama’s desire to create a civilian security force and to cajole a form of state servitude from the very youth vote whom he counted on to help swing the election his way.
And when these low information voters wake up, the hangover will hit them like that $5000 credit card charge they brought home from a strip club that one time, even though they could only remember having 2 drinks themselves, and buying a single round for the ladies…
And now they’re invested in the success of Baracky’s presidency. We’ve lost a free press but gained a dirty socialist. That was the deal from the beginning I think. It doesn’t really work any other way.
This was previsible.
According to Pamela over at Atlas Shrugs, the Supremes have yet to rule on the O!’s birth certificate and thus elgibility for the highest office in the land. Apparently they gave him until Dec 1 to produce the document. We shall see… or not.
Jeff, my gmail accounts are down, but you may enjoy this.
I for one, welcome our new postmodern overlords:
“Derrida and Deconstructionism on their own would hardly matter were their disciples not in a position by the late 1960s to lead a long march through Western educational institutions, first the university humanities departments and then later the secondary schools. Because Western intellectuals saw Western society as fundamentally irrational, they became highly dismissive of it. This led them to assume that anywhere that the English-speaking peoples went to war – in Vietnam, for example, or latterly in Iraq – they were necessarily in the wrong. When a physical as opposed to philosophical attack was made at the heart of Western civilization, in Manhattan of 11 September 2001, Derrida refused to describe it as a terrorist attack, arguing that ‘an act of international terrorism is anything but a rigorous concept that would help us grasp the singularity of what we are trying to discuss’…â€Â
A. Roberts, History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900, pp 475
Oh. For those of you interested in the “new media” take on Sarah Palin, go visit Pajamas Media, where they are now publishing columns by Moderate Voice bloggers suggesting Palin stay home.
Fair. Balanced. Unafraid. To be just like everyone else in the mainstream press.
The only thing worse than actual pundits are would-be pundits.
Me, I’m neither.
I’m an Outlaw, and my name is Swan.
I suspect my tenure with this group is in danger. They probably don’t like my attitude.
No doubt the “Media” were in the tank or the One. We’ve focused on the ideological aspect of the bias, but let’s not forget the financial aspect.
The Dinosaur Media financials are in the crapper. Declining viewers, readers, increasing lay offs. The suits in the board rooms made a bet–on the Obama Pony. The hope? That a grateful Administration in true south side Chicago style would help them stave off the inevitable bankruptcies with federal largesse–ahem, I mean, our tax money.
Pinchy’s got his hand out. Let see what ends up in it.
“Now, I believe the mass media was solidly in the tank for Obama”
– David Harsany
kind of says it all.
Thank you for this gift,Dave
Have a Nice Day,
tony
south haven,mi
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Enjoy that BDS.
Don’t worry, there’s always the Conservative Underground.
But yeah, I shouldn’t have made fun of Glenn.
thor:
Enjoy your hitch at cleaning out bus station restrooms.
They really are killing their brand, but they can still aggregate an audience and sell ads I think. It’s just they could have done that better if they had a brand that spoke to people who wanted alternatives to the established mainstream websites… those ones can market rings around them. I blame the Andy Richter guy. He just has this I crave approval look about him.
Jeff, I’d gathered that you weren’t getting much revenue from the PJM affiliation anyway. Is that correct?
If so: rusty crowbar.
Why not post that over at a site that gives a fuck about such things, thor?
Jeff,
It’s so bad, even the former conservative British press are wearing the goggles. This article is just, well, putrid.
Jeff —
It looks like the O! patrol is quietly revising the “required” community service on his changey.gov official soon-to-be-ruler of the world website. Maybe he’s going to be giving those choice volunteer jobs to the soon-to-be unemployed at 10 bucks an hour? O!WPA!
Obama Quietly Revokes His Plan for a Draft
[…] Jeff Goldstein adds: In short, it’s what the media didn’t tell us about Obama  despite writing more […]
It’s my understanding that PJM is not supposed to be 100% right-wing.
Even so, I would never allow anything from TMV to be published on PJM, if I had control, because TMV is crap.
The Telegraph also has this lovely, Sarah Palin and the Wasilla hillbillies.
There’s a long and very meticulous list I think of what PJM isn’t supposed to be. Most of these criteria fall under the heading of unmoderated. What they’re supposed to be is something they’ll have to schedule a meeting on at some point I think.
geoffb,
The moronic Iain Martin writes a blog. That other disgrace was a lead from the front page. Man, that paper has gone downhill post Conrad Black. I only read it for the soccer these days, and for guncleaning. One Saturday edition will keep me in paper for months.
You know what’s missing from Jazz Shaw’s pile of verbal manure?
John McCain — not mentioned once.
That might be a clue right there.
Anyone catch the BBC News Night program aired Friday?
They did a decent job of reporting on the radical premise underlying Obamanomics (building wealth by restraining private sector growth) and the various inconsistencies between the his stump speeches and the reality of a shrinking economy and growing global competition. “How will he pay for any of this?” asked the reporter…
Three days after the election, suddenly this all became relevant news.
With these and the WSJ article linked earlier it becomes more and more apparent that the “elites” knowledge of the wider world is Wiki accurate and Cliffs Notes deep.
Anyone catch the BBC News Night program aired Friday?
Any Beeb program other than Match of the Day has me yelling at the telly, so, to spare my kids and the dogs, I avoid it.
Well, Swan, if I may call you Swan, comment #2 proffers that President-elect Barack Obama may not have a legal birth certificate. Lest risking Birth Certificate Derangement Syndrome enveloping PW’s angry masses, I believed it in the best interests of all to clarify the truth.
No harm was meant, unlike last night when I greased your saddle and hand fed your horse ten boxes of Ex-Lax.
it becomes more and more apparent that the “elites†knowledge of the wider world is Wiki accurate and Cliffs Notes deep
They’re all busy writing their next book about the how conservatism is dead. David Frum’s got about a dozen of them, I think.
Comment #3, I stand corrected.
Swan is my outlaw name. You can just call me CITIZEN #1566189.
That’s not the point. They’re 100% redundant.
There are lefties who say lefty things that MSM lefties don’t. Not there.
There are righties whose takes aren’t derivative of more famous righties’. Not there.
There are “moderates” who aren’t cowardly partisans. Not there.
PJM is a knockoff. No one needs that shit.
Someone needs to posit, a la Alan Sullivan, that Obama’s gramma died a week or two before he went to visit her. His real purpose was to get the local officials to order up a dusty old forgery of his b.c. Has anybody seen granma’s death certificate, as long as we’re at it?
(Yes, I’m kidding. Maybe…)
Sorry. Sorry! ANDREW Sullivan. Alan Sullivan is a helluva decent guy and excellent blogger.
Arnold once knew how to deal with Luther also, now not so much.
Not unlike the Palin-hating/fearing/loathing wing of the Republican Party.
The so called MSM: Comrades can’t we call them by their proper name – Pravda.
Like the Pravda Nyt overlooking that little Ukrainian famine thing all to support that “good” man Stalin.
I’ve been objecting to the use of the word “mainstream” in that label for years. By going along with it we provide them epistemological cover.
And if we keep doing that somebody’s gonna grow hair on their palms.
If they’re not the mainstream media, they are at least the dominant media.
Give us your linguistic seminar. I’ll listen respectfully then respond.
Blast. And I missed it. Got a link, inlaw?
PW stays wishy washy and approachable specifically to sell adds. Too edgy and you might lose that FleshLight account.
Oh… if we are calling dibs on names… I’m El Tejón… The Badger
Oh, and back OT. Re #1, I think you will actually see the media not be entirely on the side of O! It will be in their interest to keep things interesting…. have some controversy. Afterall, it is all about the ratings. Period. Otherwise you might lose the
FleshLight GM ChryslerViagra account.Methinks, Rich Cox, that you meant “PJM” rather than “PW.” Before anybody starts flaming…
I hate to rain on y’all’s parade here, but I actually think the media’s piss-poor financials are going to get better under an Obama administration… and not just because of Chicago-style handouts.
Consider the Great Overmountain Invasion of Pakistan. One of the reasons media $$$ went in the tank was that, if you wanted a hefty dose of defeatism / “our troops are baby killers”, why pay for it when you could just cruise your local college campus or click over to Daily Kos? With Obama’s wars, on the other hand, the media is going to make Ernie Pyle look like Josef Goebbels. Suddenly our troops will be portrayed as the good, decent heroes they are. Not because the media hates them any less, but because such coverage helps Teh One. Upshot: regular folks, aghast at seeing the media NOT pissing on our soldiers, will start second-guessing themselves about the rest of the MSM’s coverage and give them another chance.
Such is my prediction, anyway.
Don’t they tattoo that number on the inside of your upper lip?
Maybe I’ll preemptively tattoo “eat me” up there.
By the way…. why hasn’t McCain stepped forward to defend Palin?
I think Palin fought hard for him and loyalty and honor should dictate an extremely forceful defense from McCain on her behalf.
Even if McCain feels the Couric interview fiasco was all Palin’s fault, McCain should man up and tell the press and his former aides to STFU. He should NAME the former aides too by the way and leave the disloyal bastards as pariahs in the industry… forever marked as self serving back stabbers.
They probably don’t like my attitude.
If not you’ll just have to try harder.
i just exit polled myself
ouch!
Wiki edit
Pravda (Russian: ßрðòôð, “The Truth”) was a leading newspaper of the United State
Soviet Unionand an official organ of the DemocratCentral Committee of the CommunistParty between 1932 and 20081912 and 1991.We were biased…but we were “ahead of the curveâ€Â.
This mendacious shill is worse, if that’s possible, than the morally bankrupt cretins who distort the news in the first place.
It is her job to protect the READERS…not the paper. When cops go “rogue†and Internal Affairs is a sham, you have a conspiracy of silence, coverups and sham investigations.
The Ombudsmen and Reader Representatives who shill for the paper commit TWO offenses. The first, creating an alibi for the fraud and corruption that appears in their medium.
Second, they abandon their post and act as traitors against their mandate. PROTECT THE PUBLIC. This is a double violation of a public trust.
The PUBLIC ought to hire these people as independent contractors…and fire them when they become corrupt themselves.
The “admission†of bias was weak, lame, understated and essentially a prep for the whitewash that was to follow. It is standard operating procedure for these shills.
Eliminate their jobs entirely. Since they don’t do what they pretend the job is…why not just call them part of the PR department to better reflect the BS they put out.
hand fed your horse ten boxes of Ex-Lax
Actually, Inlaw fed them into my wrong end, but he seemed to be enjoying himself, so…
Yo, Silver Whistle….
What’s this about “guncleaning”? I thought you guys across the pond were no longer allowed to own firearms…or swords…or knives much longer or sharper than the average butter knife.
Of course, I figure it won’t be long before the Obambi starts up with the same thing over here; after all, a disarmed prole is a subservient prole…
They are ahead of the curve. Look where Pravda NPR’s ombudshack is…
There’s a hundred paragraphs of we really looked but nope … no bias here what the socialist cooze cranked out.
well
the my left foot hates me
and my right cross hates me..
so it kinda evens out
i get complaints ALL the time
from both sides
so i’m fairy/
and skateboard balanced
pschyce![sp]
got editors
to measure my inseams
and chocalatey frosty hopey dreams
what’s todays meme?
sold!
McCains distancing himself from Palin is a good example of what is sickening the Republican party.
They are trying to learn from Dem success, but emulating the wrong tactics. Palin is under the bus because it always worked for Obama. Meanwhile we are told bi-partisanship is a noble thing, even though the Dems are so partisan it’s breathtaking, and we are supposed to start our new era with love in our hearts and a clean slate as of Nov. 4.
I make the sad prediction right now, that Republicans won’t have learned anything of value to their base and in two years they still won’t get elected.
It’s going to be a long four years my compatriots.
Somebody fetch me Sparkle. See if she’s still cheerleading for this “honorable” douche.
Cave Bear,
They took our pistols after Dunblane, but we still have our shotguns and rifles. Each one is registered, and there are separate certificates for shotguns & rifles. The ground that you intend to shoot on must be listed and approved. The species you intend to shoot with the rifle are listed. It is an offense to shoot a species not listed. Semi-auto rifles are banned. Semi-auto and pump shotguns are restricted to 2 in the mag., unless it is entered on a firearms certificate. The police will examine your premises to determine if you are keeping your weapons securely. Any folding knife over 3″ is an offensive weapon unless good reason can be shown for possessing it. Any locking blade is an offensive weapon…etc.
Yes, this is the brave new world. I pray you don’t come to know it.
have u ever worn a suit before..
no- your honor
are you planning on returning said suit for a rebate..
yes-your honor
well-stop chewing on the price tags
I voted for McCain, but only while gritting my teeth. It’s hard to decide if he would have been better than Obama or not, really. The last straw, for me, was his loud, public brickbat against Wall Street over the financial meltdown while standing amongst scores of Congressional Democrats who perpetrated the Fannie/Freddie heist.
I think McCain’s sense of honor led him to some disturbing conclusions.
Silver Whistle, I call those rules you just outlined, “Modern-day Britain’s effort to justify the American Revolution.”
It’s what I like about your political class over there — they’re givers.
I think McCain’s sense of honor led him to some disturbing conclusions.
Well, yes, he wouldn’t want to finger his buds in the Senate — to which he will now return to reach across the aisle.
And then there’s what Rick Davis was up to between the 2000 and 2008 campaigns.
And La Raza — they have one of those “housing” programs, just like ACORN. It really paid off for McCain, didn’t it?
But, hey, let’s not talk about all that — let’s throw Palin under the bus.
“Mr. Unicorns And Rainbows, you’ve just won the election, what kind of dog are you going to get?”
It’s fucking bizarro-world.
Whatever happened to voter fraid, registration fraud, and the LAT video? Fucking instant memory hole. Or memory singularity, is what it took to suck in all the bad news about Barry.
Shit.
McGehee,
I will never forget that a conservative government took our pistols away. Our political class are, on the whole, takers rather than givers.
cowards attack Palin from anonymity, her foreign policy advisor goes on record
McGehee…. yes….. I denounce myself. May the Swan forgive me. And edit if desired.
BTW. Do we get jackets? Will Billy Jack be some kind of mentor or leader or something? Because I want a hat too.
She didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, nor that Africa was a continent.
Face it, Bimbo-tard, that Wasilla woman is dumber than the fumes off a moose pie.
Obama saved America.
Would that be a white swan or a black swan?
thor
where’s your source? you got nuttin’, puddin’. Your gynophobia keeps you in the basement with the latest inflatable doll.
“O”bots are racist, sexist, asshats. My source: thor.
Nothing says Outlaw more than a homburg!
<a href=”http://www.gothamist.com/attachments/jen/2006_07_warriors1.jpg”?Swan, the unfettered.
Swan, the unfettered.
The fixed html version..
#66: You have to remember that thor is “write only”. The post calling him a liar in this case came only two before his lie. He will now proceed to lie louder, as usual.
Regards,
Ric
My webspace is farked. I wish I could upload a link to the song running through my head …”Brilliant Mistake” by Elvis Costello. That and “i am not your broom” by TMBG. Actually I suppose I could dig it out of a drawer and upload it to youtube, videoless.
She didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA,
Palin’s not your concern, bitch.
Free gas, bitch.
That’s what you’d best be working on.
‘Cause The People Have Spoken, bitch.
thor
where’s your source?
Porta-John graffitti, be my guess.
The MSM, by granting Obama a pass on gaffes, cover for his nefarious associates and chequered past, and credibility during his race card plays have directly violated the principle of the free and independant press that the founders of this nation intended…
They are anathema to that ideal, and now that O! has been elected they can be argued to be little more than propaganda arms of his administration…
Let’s all hope that they experience an ethical epiphany, soon…
She didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, nor that Africa was a continent.
Thank God we dodged that bullet and elected the smartest guy to ever govern these 57 United States.
dre,
I thought fedoras were more outlaw than homburgs…
Unless you’re from NYC; then they are only worn by wise-guys and Jewish diamond merchants…
Substitute Mexico for Alaska and you can read thor’s prose in every construction site Porta-John in Atlanta.
Of course Sarah Palin knew which countries were in NAFTA, and that Africa was a continent. Only fools would believe otherwise.
Of course, to lamers like thor such lies become their raison d’être. He’s got nuttin’ else, except 24 shots of cheap vodka and a fat dowager for a date.
Deerstalkers.
Give us your linguistic seminar. I’ll listen respectfully then respond.
Yet probably smart enough to know one end of a horse from the other.
Still, it was kind of fun.
Same stall tonight, inlaw?
“Comment by thor on 11/8 @ 4:45 pm #
She didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, nor that Africa was a continent.
Face it, Bimbo-tard, that Wasilla woman is dumber than the fumes off a moose pie.
Obama saved America.”
Thor makes Corky the Retard look smart.
Or are you still hungover?
Swan,
I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but do I have a name?
Fedoras? I think Swan would agree NOT Outlaw
Horse?
beanies with helicopter blades!
cuz u dont’s needs gas to runs ’em
if u twirl fast
downhill
uphill?
i’m gonna need a ski lift-stat!
but if i stay in my rubber room
i shall twirl/twirl/twirl
[advice-keep ur arms extended-’tis harder to throw a net around u]
I’m guessing your Sarah Palin inflatible, with its mouth frozen in the shape of O!, has replaced your rubber black mambo dong as your favorite masturbatory aide. Sick!
“It’s just a misunderstanding! Lot’s of people, room, in-and-out, distractions!”
All but a pure admission that there were too many witnesses to fully deny the truth. Effen cold stone busted. Sarah Palin is making a clown of you, Darleen, you old broken down mare.
Picture of thor best in show,miss transgendered usa
this old brown mare she [hic]
ain’t what she used to be[hic]
ain’t what she used to be[hic]
ain’t what she used to be
i’m fucking voting for her anyway!
cult of personality and shit
and bobby jindal too
hackey-sacks in ur court now…
lead/follow/or get behind me in the gas line[hic]
Thor, here’s what creates a monkey from your rum soaked hide:
She was distracted from what Biegun was saying, and said, roughly, “Ok, who’s in NAFTA, what’s the deal with CAFTA, what’s up the FTA?â€Ââ€â€her way, Biegun says, of saying “rack them and stack them,†begin again from the start.
Context, Screech, something for the higher ordes.
orders even…
“All but a pure admission that there were too many witnesses to fully deny the truth. ”
That the one known as thor of trustfundia is a type of olberdouchebag.
You know, there has to be a certain freedom to be as stupid as thor. He has no self awareness. No introspection. No pride. No humility. No integrity. Nothing distracts him from being an absolutely worthless dick. It has to be liberating. But he reads Celine. So there’s that.
Sarah Palin is making a clown of you, Darleen, you old broken down mare.
This is getting filed under not-nice things I read today what thor said on the Internet in Barack Obama’s America I think.
thor, it’s as much the trooooth as Trig is Bristol’s baby by way of Todd.
People who speak facts put their name to it. Not anonymous pernicious ratfuckers.
like you
What the hell is thor still doing here? Gas. Now. You little pansy. Get busy.
Thor’s Symphony…
‘Variations on a Theme of Stoopit in Gm.’
Played one handed whilst stroking your Hormel Snack Weinie with the other…
sssh-the babysitters asleep
time for some revolution!
“thor” isn’t just a liar, but a false accuser. And there’s very little lower than a false accuser.
EVERYTHING you say is worthless, “thor.” Everything.
And you know it, which is why you spend your time not trying to find answers, not trying to convince anyone of anything you think you’ve found, but just running around metaphorically pissing on people’s front doors because, unable to make friends or allies in any healthy way, you figure that a list of enemies will at least mean you’ll be remembered.
In the long term, you won’t, except in the same way that the last soda in the fridge turning out to have a small leak that leaves it flat and tasteless is remembered as another in an endless chain of minor inconveniences.
Gee AMC is playing “The Enforcer” with Clint. The revolutionary looks like Billy Ayers.
simp-pony #9999999999[beatles/half-white album]
in the key of “yoko in a garbage bag”
the string sections is dressed like boy george
the winds are dressed-half miles davis/half cracker white jack benny crackin’ jokes
the kettle drum guy is naked…
oh my god! i just wrote a dylan song!
#80- No, I would have to turn it sideways to keep a clear sight picture, that might look kinda gay.
Look at the O! He surrounded himself with “Rich White People!!! The Audacity of O!
Outlaw gas card:
http://www.baproducts.com/siphon.htm
The Republican party is breaking in two. Those with a modicum of self-respect and those without.
A fuckin’ idiot, no matter how assertive her ignorance, just a fuckin’ airheaded hick. Repubs who can admit that sad fact of Sister Palin retain a base level of self-respect. The rest of yaz… please refer to me by my outlaw name, Thor the Bulldog Skinner.
I was thinking “thor the queef”
A skinner needs a knife and you don’t have one.
The Republican party is breaking in two.
So? What does that have to do with my free gas, bitch?
You Da MAN, now, thor. Fork over the goodies!
Pretty sure you can fire a rifle wearing one of those, Hvy Mtl Hntr. They were designed for deer hunting, after all.
a fuckin’ idiot- no matter his ignorance,just a fuckin’ airheaded
dick
dems who can’t admit the sad fact of bam-bams glow stick remain
out of the loop
refrain/retrain/blame
where’s my gas ?[fart]
The Republican Party broke in half when it threw away most of its principles to try and get the Latino vote. Can’t get people to vote Republican by trying to be Democrats.
Pendulum will swing, had to get through Carter to get to Reagan.
“Thor the Bulldog Humper
Skinner.”“Thor the Pit Bull’s Lipdick”
Thor did O! visit any of Tony’s slums that Tony built for O!’s constituents?
i am selling “help America sweaters”
c’mon-winters coming…
don’t u want to help America?
a u a fucking commie?
if ur a commie please go to my vodka cart [out back]
if ur feeling terrorist-ty
ur goats safe w/ me
straight from china!
nice shoes!
Maybe thor can move into one of Tony R.’s buildings and clean it up for his community service.
I’m sure the homeboys will be all about taking orders from an arrogant trust fund kid.
oh god/ i mean “the sweaters straight from china”
vodka cart?
anyone seen my vodka cart?
Thor the Bulldog Skinner.
The bull part works.
Blast.
passed out in the gutter
i stare at the stars
it’s a beautiful country-wide mortgage nite
sir-sir-
if u can even raise one hand
the home be urs..
sir…?
leave me alone bitch/i already voted twice
zzzzzz
Every time thor posts, this song by Edwin Starr, slightly modified of course, starts running.
thor, huh, yeah
What is he good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
thor, huh, yeah
What is he good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y’all
thor, huh, good God
What is he good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
Of course, thor just blew his wad with all this attention. I’ll do my part and commence ignoring the tard from now on.
Thor the Bullbull Spinner.
Thor the Skinflute player (first chair!)
Truth to Power !
thor the walking eagle
#124.. Thor tried to blow his skin-flute, but the vacuum was set to suck. He ain’t the sharpest player in the orchestra.
thor had hammer
thor got yammer
thor got grammar
thinks he’s a bad mammer-jammer
thor had dissent
repubs spent the rent
[repubes-small government?]
i hate to hate/
i like thor and all u peeps
[i’m gonna cry!-if we don’t get a new thread!]
Thor the Bulldog Skinner
-translating-
Thor = Troll
BullDog = His Penis
Skinner = His lubricated hand
-translation ended-
Have a Nice Day
tony
south haven,mi
The thor Fedora.
english bulldog?
i puts me baseball cap on backwards
so when i pee inna the wind
it reminds me of momma
then i get all gangsta like
“yeah-i got pee on my face–wassup?”
May I comment on the topic of the post? I think I have indicated before my amazement that such microscopic attention was paid to Palin. While I saw a lot of hoopla on the blogs about Obama’s multiple failings, I didn’t see a comparable amount of follow-up in the mainstream press. I don’t see that as a failing of the press.
As others have mentioned, the press is an industry that makes money with eyeballs and ad revenue. Their market wasn’t responsive to Obama exposes, for whatever reason, but was lapping up the Palin crap. Maybe mcgruder could weigh in, but my sense is that the press, including print, electronic, and new media, is atopic, and merely responds to stimuli.
As opposed to straightforwardly reporting the news, they increasingly try to create it, based on bottom-line market analysis. But that’s hardly a new suggestion.
Plus, I think I totally ruined my point by using the word “atopic,” because I couldn’t remember that word that describes how plants react to light by turning toward it. Always a fugitive, never an Outlaw.
4 for 4
tinkle tinkle lil’ star
how i wonderwhite bread where the peanut butter is
andy sullivan fluffer!
Do you wear your pants halfway down your ass, too?
#109 Spies- Deer? I thought… oh,well- the damn muzzlebrake on that Barrett would just knock it off anyway.
“Comment by cynn on 11/8 @ 9:23 pm #
May I comment on the topic of the post? I think I have indicated before my amazement that such microscopic attention was paid to Palin. While I saw a lot of hoopla on the blogs about Obama’s multiple failings, I didn’t see a comparable amount of follow-up in the mainstream press. I don’t see that as a failing of the press.”
There is none so blind…..
Oh, and I just figured thor out.
Vagina envy.
Yo Sir Thor ain’t “The GOD DAMN AMERKKKA” dude of the O! man pushing the anti-science view about AIDs?
Phototropic.
oh snap cynn!
a topic
a tropical location?
a bloviatin’ vocation?
cuz i’m in cynn
like flynn
“Comment by cynn on 11/8 @ 9:23 pm
While I saw a lot of hoopla on the blogs about Obama’s multiple failings, I didn’t see a comparable amount of follow-up in the mainstream press. I don’t see that as a failing of the press…
As opposed to straightforwardly reporting the news, they increasingly try to create it, based on bottom-line market analysis. But that’s hardly a new suggestion.”
Huh?
pants?
i don’t need my stinky pants
as long as i have my stinking badges
NoBrain: My suggestion was that maybe the press didn’t fail because they were merely responding to public demand. I’m sure you have some other high-minded purpose you’d like to assign, but perhaps that’s not the reality.
In other words, Palin moves more tabloids at the checkout line. Why shouldn’t that motivate the legacy media, whose fortunes are declining?
The media used to have journalists what did the reporting though. I remember, when I was little.
knock knock
whos there?
knock knock knock knock
who’s there?
knockety-knocky knock knock
who’s there?
just us guvmint queers/
papers?
It’s not their job to “respond to public demand.” It is their job to report activity that is occurring in the local/regional/national/international arenas that affects/could affect the readers or viewers. Period. If they are responding to public demand, then they are not reporters but publicity hounds and opportunists.
I realize that ratings can drive the news (but should only to some small extent), but the ratings are going down, so that implies that they are not operating on your premise of responding to public demand.
“My suggestion was that maybe the press didn’t fail because they were merely responding to public demand. ”
O! poppycock for thor mostly.
“Why shouldn’t that motivate the legacy media, whose fortunes are declining?”
I’m “GIRDING MY PORKLOINS” for that.
And you know this assertion to be a fact? How so?
If you mean it as a hypothetical, then that could be a consistent view. However, I don’t accept the premise without more proof.
I’m sorry, cynn. That dog won’t hunt. Oh, it’s a fairly typical fallback for the Press to use, but it doesn’t work in real life.
Look at it this way: You’ve got two Presidential candidates. One of them is suspected of sloughing off his Reserve obligations forty years ago. The other has a sizeable minority accusing him of something just short of treason, and perhaps lapping over into the real thing. Just on the face of it, which of the two is deserving of a full-court press on the likelihood of uncovering something that will titillate the supermarket checkout line?
As for Palin’s family, the Left has spent the last half-century deprecating, and attempting to destroy, Traditional Family Values, seeing them as stifling repression to be eliminated. It’s working. Most anybody nowadays has a relative or relatives with similar arrangements if he or she doesn’t work that way. Screaming headlines about things that are as ordinary as a Big Mac and fries aren’t going to sell many papers.
No. Let’s face it, Republicans are boring. We like it that way, which is why Jeff will have an uphill slog to get his WE ARE THE OPPOSITION! bandwagon going. If the Press was picking stories on the basis of screaming headlines and attracting the attention of the people who read tabloids, they picked the wrong party to support.
The real reason they’re losing? –nobody wants to pay for political campaign literature, even (perhaps especially) the people who agree with it.
Regards,
Ric
“BARACK OBAMA’S CREEPY FALSE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL IS BACK!”
Did you guys notice this?
There it is, plain as day, on his podium. That guy is a menace. He is no fucking Jimmy Carter.
O!Bama Harvard/Ivy FRAUD
As one of the regulars here who always trumpets the “its for the advertising!” I think I had better put in my new rubles.
In the case of O! I have construe that the media created, nay, marketed his candidacy for the narrative. Like the Olympics, setting up some athlete we very well have never hear of, but all of a sudden we are all fucking experts. Videos in soft focus, walks by the lake, dieing grandmother, a hooker with a heart of gold….. and with the youth of today as fucked up as they are, and programed to do buy what they’re selling…. add the vicious enemy and harpy villain for dramatic effect (and the possibility of an upset. Oh MY!).
Yes… they got what they wanted. And now, they must lower some expectations, and be sure to make him last long enough to get all the stories, exposes, interviews, and very special episodes. Until the next round.
But also, yeah. They went with what was going to work… after they created the environment first.
And right behind the O! is my very own Governor Jenny. You guys are all Michigan now.
All Wolverines, and all broke.
The media’s seeming reasoning has a rather circular-logic, Orwellian quality to it:
“We framed the reporting slanted in a certain way because the facts as we reported them were slanted toward a particular conclusion, therefore it was ok to slant the reporting in favor of that conclusion.â€Â
Not a good thing for a democracy. Jeff couldn’t be more right about the need to take back language; equally so, we need to take back logic.
Oh, and a brad new mainstream media, the old one is broken and past it waranty.
All Wolverines, and all broke.
Just ask Fat Eddie Rendal
everytime i look a michigans helmets
i think watermelons
am i a racist
i denounce ohio state!
No pdbuttons, you’re just hungry.
slurpy hungry!
It may be circular logic but it always slants the same direction. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is the result of enemy action.
There is more than enough evidence of purposeful malice aforethought. This is an ongoing premeditated murder of our political system.
ohio
oreoe[sp]
obamamalam pork chops
and ham!
michagin munchkins
and donuts dee-tuh-riot
happy meal!
u know..i am hungry!
…with a side of HOPE!*
* Campaign representations of HOPE! may vary from actual product. Terms and conditions apply.
HOPE! not available in all areas (this means YOU, Kansas).
snack snack grape crush ur black
white white the deck is stacked
grey battleship grey /’nother terrorist attack
i’m gonna take up knitting!
when i stop making sense to myself….
g’nite
hope u be happy
zzzzzz
“BARACK OBAMA’S CREEPY FALSE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL IS BACK!â€Â
You mean this prophylactic presidential seal?
They’re for sale, you know.
Obama spent more and won. Oh well. In the optimistic American spirit I will be taking bets on when the soft taxation of the working class will occur. The odds bend a little around Summer of 2009 and go up from there. Do I hear $500?
First, I’m not a Republican and I doubt you are either.
But second, some style of collectivism is inevitable, Rick. Politics, like human nature, is asymmetric. Just as just law must curb opportunistic disorder, there is no way to compete today’s right and left evenly. Even the dialog is warped. It’s warped because integrity is gone from some half the spectrum. Reason can be fought with reason. How will fight the unreasonable?
The very nature of classical liberalism is to resist instituting social government. The very nature of the corrupt and incompetent human and his leftist party is envy and theft. We’re talking two entirely different tactics here: When was the last time a conservative went into the leftist hive and demanded everybody drop what they’re doing 24/7 to entertain his entirely mad notions about the role of American government? By now the right spends all its time buying itself a place a the table: Bush caved to the left for eight long years just to get a modicum of support. Doing that elected Obama. Quite the irony.
Now compare that asymmetry with the trolls around here. Compare it with, for example, cynn or semanticleo or thor. You get a perfect match, which is why people challenge them on their so much as voting. They can’t as much as articulate a position, much less be trusted to maintain the system of American government because they have a functioning understanding of this very phenomenon. They reject understanding.
So, small government plays like crap in Hollywood, just as evenhandedness, fairness, and reason do. Or traditional values, authentic Christianity, or a breath of originalist theory. Like you say, the left spent decades ginning up postmodernism. From there it was a small step into justifying the relativity and corruption that has fools looking skyward for free mortgages and gas and considering burning cities if they don’t get it.
But hey, we elected a black guy, so there’s that. The media and Hollywood Elected a Minority! without ever once making a single point about the four years following the fantabulous spectacularovision that erased the whole of the human animal’s racism in the course of one simple American election. Speaking of supermarket tabloids, the people magazines currently on the stands come with six-foot pinups of the happy, beaming couple. We’re saved. Finally.
This isn’t about a comfortable, neat, even balance between to co-equal sets of ideologies. This is about bullshit overcoming reason. Which is why its proponents have never once articulated a fundamental reason for it to stand (even though I, for one, have been asking them to for months). But stand it does.
“Comment by bmeuppls on 11/8 @ 9:49 pm #
It’s not their job to “respond to public demand.†It is their job to report activity that is occurring in the local/regional/national/international arenas that affects/could affect the readers or viewers. Period. If they are responding to public demand, then they are not reporters but publicity hounds and opportunists.”
I prefer the term “propaganda”
Although “Pravda” might work in a pinch.
“I hate Communism most for its cold-blooded murder of the truth! Pravda doesn’t mean truth. Pravda means whatever serves the world Communist revolution.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
“Comment by Christoph on 11/8 @ 10:30 pm #
“BARACK OBAMA’S CREEPY FALSE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL IS BACK!—
Thinks highly of himself, don’t he, to make up a title like that.
Surrounded by white folk, too.
CHANGE!
O!
It’s not their job to “respond to public demand.†It is their job to report activity that is occurring
That is the lie they are selling. Their job is to get eyes on the product next to the Cialis ad. I would have no problem with any of this if they would just drop the pretentiousness and admit it. I will choose my supplier based on openness…. not the perkiness.
>>Even the dialog is warped. It’s warped because integrity is gone from some half the spectrum. Reason can be fought with reason. How will fight the unreasonable?
Good question.
Problem is, if one is looking only towards political parties, you can’t. The time frame is much too short.
Call them the long project and the short. The short one is left to the party to muddle through with, and can be aided by talking with others, etc. but it does nothing towards ‘fighting the unreasonable’. In fact, as Rove showed, to some extent one must use some un-reason to accomplish party goals. There isn’t a problem there b/c both parties do so and its more a question of kind and degree.
The long project is the one you’re focused on and I believe we’re still at the beginning of that curve, thinking of it in terms of Renaissance to Enlightenment. We’ve begun already with the easier elements, digging up the past and building the philosophical/religious grounding, but we still haven’t recaptured the scientific.
If one looks towards the Enlightenment era, one notes that those worthies were fighting species of unreason and superstition. So are we. Yet the trouble lies with people who earnestly believe they are the ones using science and logic and we the superstitious brutes. This in the face of persons who honestly hold that swirly lights and windmills will ‘save the planet’, that an infant animal has more right to prosper than a human fetus, etc.
Which is to say we haven’t reached the point where we can approach a turning in the long project yet. It is important to reclaim language to the degree that this helps the next scientists battle future science frauds, and from them their knowledge gaining the day, but it is not the sole answer to the present problem.
There is, by the way, a niggling problem I’ve been pondering, that of the principle of Democratic Peace.
I don’t now if any are aware of it, and I don’t want to get bogged down in arguing it, but it baldly states that Democracies do not fight each other.
Assuming it is true for the sake of the argument, I’ve been looking at the tactics of the New Left – the SDS/Maoist sorts – who have lately captured power. Could one say they hold to Democracy and could one say they pursued power in a peaceful way?
I would answer ‘no’ to both questions. If conservatives were to try to ape their ways, we would be forming evangelical youth groups on campuses to take over admin offices and shitting on desks, using violence and intimidation through biker/street gangs, bombing government offices, and staging die-ins at Diversity seminars, all while counting on their inherent decency [haha] to shame them into compliance.
In short: We can’t do it. It wouldn’t work. Our own inherent natures militate against doing it even if it would work.
But we haven’t yet widely recognised that our opponents are not democratic but autocratic in nature. Once that is more widely known to be so, things may get interesting.
palin is/was no intellectual and that disconcerted me. not that she didn’t have major college background–but that she seemed like she was turned off of ideas as a rule. that said, the press–many of who i know and many of whom have wildly inflated senses of their ability to think their way out of a paper bag, had it in for her, period and full-stop.
here’s one for cynn and thor: if you ever want to plumb pure, naked acerebral activity, you could do much worse than spending a few hrs around the house progressive caucus; they are not what you call inquisitive. oh, and since im feeling like tapping a hot button, the house black caucus…oooh. yeah, maxine watters,,,a reader. jesse jackson jr.—loves him some math…..
the point isnt to draw some mud onto the party ascendant, just to note that the notion advanced in some quarters that Dems like to elect nuanced, complex thinkers….wrong on the facts and the merit.
“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Jesus
JHo, you are your type of igno-idiot got stomped in the election just as I said would occur. Nobody cares that today you’re a name-calling recalcitrant, nor that you choose masturbation over intercourse, after all, even little old I can jizz-bomb bitterness better than you. Best to know just what the fuck you’re talking about when it comes to issues of substance than be a dishonest finger-pointing pussy. Moreover, adult hysteria and phallocentric fuming only begs for more torture. Tempt me! Hope for intellectual honesty and a desire for change has drawn the blinds on your repellent snortings and epileptic fits of embellished hang-ups. You’ve now become seedy bottom resin of a Bogarted bag. Got it, stinky Hippie!
Gunned down at noon in the middle of Main street, JHo’s boots were stolen, his tin badge tossed away, and that’s how his estate totally escaped taxation, counselor.
Bring it on. Give us your linguistic seminar. I’ll listen respectfully then respond.
Oh, and fill my tank, bitch.
Might as well check the tire pressure while you’re at it. BECAUSE OF THE CHANGE!!!
>>“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.†Jesus
JHo, you are your type of igno-idiot got stomped in the election…
Love it.
See? this is exactly the method. Take a steaming dump on the desk whilst counting on the shame-inducement to make you fall in line. We can try the steaming dump, but the shame-inducement cannot work.
thor – my comment isn’t trying to insult you, merely analyzing.
I agree, Mcgruder, all I ask is that you remember that my Leftist credentials are always exaggerated so teh bonging R-wing creepers have themselves a can’t miss Red target.
They smoke, they masturbate, they call me names, rinse, repeat, exhale.
I, for one, have gone Left to stop the decomposition of honest government. The petroleum jelly for the masturbatory Right has for too long been the positively stupid cliches and slogans of the Reagan era. Indulge the little R-wingered roaches today and all you hear is the same brain swell that’s killing our economy. I say toss the bug-eyed Hannity-ninnies some Pepto Bismol, Visine, rolling papers, chocolate frosted cookies, a brass one-hitter, and some discarded books on positive thinking and optimism and slam the lid on their dumpster. Wheel ’em to the back of the building and allow the State’s mechanized machine for discarded materials and thoughts to exert pressure and do its magic. Vroom, vroom! Stinky R-wing Jesus hippies! Away with their lacking sense of obligation for their fellow man. Rapacious dopes. Debauched associators. Let them reemerge once they’ve tasted the metal girders and read the graffiti and obscenities in the dumpster. Hero addicts! Fuck ’em.
You haven’t a fucking clue what you’re talking about… Either man up or be a coward somewhere else.
Compare and contrast.
Thor, I swear you pump more shit than a six inch sewer pipe. Jeff G. has been after you for the longest to come up with SOMETHING, ANYTHING, in the way of a rational case for your boy Obambi. And what have we got in response? Hear that hollow echo…
Yet you have the unmitigated gall to accuse anyone, let alone JHoward, of not knowing what he’s talking about and being a “dishonest finger-pointing pussy”? Tell you what, Goober. When it comes to being a dishonest finger-pointing pussy, that phrase is burned into your forehead.
“Intellectual honesty and a desire for change”, huh? WHAT intellectual honesty? We have yet to see any, either for your Magic Negro or you. We’ve seen a whole lot of unadulterated bullshit from both of you, but intellectual honesty? And “Change”? WHAT change? I read through your Obambi’s plans for these United States just this morning off his “change.gov” website (before they were pulled, that is).
And you know what I saw? The same old leftwing Commiecrat bullshit we’ve been hearing for the past 20 years. Hell, nearly all of it was recycled Bill&Hill crap from the 1990s, for chrissakes. Only a vacuous pudknocker like you could call any of that “change”.
“Change” can be a wonderful thing, or it can be an unmitigated disaster. Given the overweening arrogance and intellectual emptiness and utter lack of anything approaching practical experience in any arena, of your Lightbringer (remember, this is the stud who can’t construct a sentence without a TelePrompTer) I strongly suspect that the “change” that is about to be bestowed upon us will not be what you, in your invincible ignorance, had in mind.
I just hope that not too many of us have to die in order for you to get the fucking message. However, I do fervently hope that when that first Islamocommie nuke goes off, it’s just far enough away from you so that you will at long last be conscious of your error, just before the shock wave hits.
Oh, and fill my tank too, bitch. Shell V-Power or equivalent, as my C6 vert requires it.
#182: That there is some Grade A, Industrial Strength incoherence.
Professional help. Get it. Soon.
And where’s my free gas, Bitch?
Those are a fairly stimulating series of comments up there Ric, JHoward, urthshu, macgruder, well done all. Please continue to refine the questions you’re posing, sharpen them to cut through the malarkey pouring forth from both sides of the chamber. Where we can, I think, we need once again to examine and articulate our principles and where these are sound, bolster them, where deficient, cast them aside.
Just a short comment to urthshu on the following:
I just wanted to add what seems to me to be a kind of corollary to this (somewhat dubious) phenomenon, perhaps best remarked by Amartya Sen. I ran into it in his “Development as Freedom”. He says that as far as he can see, no Democracy has ever suffered famine, whereas on the contrary, Authoritarian states of all sorts seem to actively engender it. If this isn’t perfectly true (which is to say if some one falsifying example can be found) nevertheless it is very generally the case over the course of the last few hundred years.
Comment by cynn on 11/8 @ 9:43 pm #
In other words, Palin moves more tabloids at the checkout line. Why shouldn’t that motivate the legacy media, whose fortunes are declining?
cynn,
do you know the difference between the paparazzi and Ansel Adams?
If so, Sdferr, then one could perhaps look toward famine as an indicator that my theory of the opposition as ‘not democratic’ is correct or nearly so. Ethanol and corn prices? Possibly a good start, but that may lead to inconvenient conclusions for ourselves as well.
Not that, as a citizen in search of answers, it should be ignored.
There is, by the way, a
nigglingproblem….“I have fixéd your site from ze racism. Zere is no charge.”
Also, of course, the future restructuring of chicken farms in California. We have no idea what final impact this is going to have.
We’re saved. Finally.
Just to riff off on one of your very fine points, JH, I have a cousin who thinks just that – that World peace and personal salvation is at hand – while at the same time trying to rub the Obama victory into my sister’s face by means of a tactic overtly displaying a very malevolent intent and which is also devoid of reason, except insofar as the tactic serves the malevolent intent and, as usual, also serves to conveniently elevate my cousin to a falsely superior ethical status.
That’s what being “saved” means to my cousin. But, if my cousin doesn’t already know it, she is about to find out that she is not invisible and that she will never be saved. – Hey, my sister wants one of those Warrior vests too.
c.c. – thor
Our government is, decidedly, beginning to interfere with food supplies.
urthshu
The CA proposition that states that farm animals need to be caged so they may stand/lay/turn around probably wouldn’t have passed save for the highly publicized downer cow case. The video was bad, the reality worse and the beef from that meat plant went to public schools.
No, micromanaging farms is probably not a good thing… I would rather some sort of private certification agency of high reputation certify farms for good animal husbandry practices; but don’t think that Californian’s passed the proposition by way of radical environmentalism.
“And when these low information voters wake up, the hangover will hit them like that $5000 credit card charge they brought home from a strip club that one time, even though they could only remember having 2 drinks themselves, and buying a single round for the ladies…”
Ah, 1992 I remember you well.
In other words, Palin moves more tabloids at the checkout line. Why shouldn’t that motivate the legacy media, whose fortunes are declining?
I guess the John Edwards tryst wouldn’t have moved very much copy, eh?
How much coercion in the hands of the state (or in a metaphorical sense, those of the party) do the various principles of governance permit or encourage is the line of analysis I would pursue, I guess, urthshu. At what point, since one must act in governance whether one has perfect information or no, at what point must efforts at persuasion cease, conversation end and an assertion that the “right” path is thus and such. “We have the right path! Forward we go!” and shove the naysayers to the ground, trample them.
Party purges may be a surrogate phenomenon for observing these tendencies. In the realm of ntional economic policy, it appears to me that the degree of advocacy of “central control” or perhaps the very idea of “control” at all, may be another. “We know. Therefore, let it be done!”
Darleen –
I don’t know the background of it and am not a farmer, so I refrain from too much comment. I just find it of interest that farming is to some extent now being managed by the popular will.
>>at what point must efforts at persuasion cease, conversation end and an assertion that the “right†path is thus and such. “We have the right path! Forward we go!â€Â
Well, the Dems/Leftists have their answer: When the planet is at stake due to [government-financed and highly suspect] ‘scientific consensus’.
What, pray tell, is ours?
#190 “Clouseau”
Vous êtes un idiot. Les mots “nigger” et “niggard” ne sont pas les mêmes.
The classic point at where we stop is, in theory anyway, when a significant amendment is subverted – the 2nd is repealed, or the 1st is, or slavery comes back. But isn’t it just too late at that point?
#187: A related phenomenon may be The Peace of Dives:
When the return from trading profits more than war, then countries have less reason to attack each other. The problem with socialism is that there’s less profit, and so other factors take over.
The classic point at where we stop is, in theory anyway, when a significant amendment is subverted – the 2nd is repealed, or the 1st is, or slavery comes back.
The Tenth was subverted decades ago.
But isn’t it just too late at that point?
I am trying very hard to believe otherwise, in between trying to save what I can of my 401k.
urthshu
It’s not being “managed by popular will.” It is/was a case where people found out that their food supply was at risk by very very bad practices that were “legal”.
Many people in the dining room of a restaurant have no clue what is going on in the kitchen. Someone has to make sure the employees aren’t serving roadkill to the customers.
Its more than just trade, though. It seems other types of govts fight more for various reasons. Monarchies for honor and vanity, oligarchies to preserve their hold on power, Empires to subdue. Do Socialists fight each other? Is Socialism an end-point or mere variety of Democracy? Or is it something else?
What is it with Thor and Palin? You won. Why do you care. Is the left such one trick ponies now that do not have Bush to kick around they need a replacement.
Thor you now have to defend Obama’s policies. Go for it. That is if you can find out exactly what his platform entails.
I read an exchange between a charter school principal and the director of education policy for his campaign. I realized Obama’s education policy regarding vouchers can be summarized to, “Supports but opposes” “had no response” and “point taken”.
Actually that is fairly accurate summary of Obama’s entire campaign platform. Expect for Pakistan. He really wants to invade/bomb Pakistan.
Darleen –
I’m seeking pattern, not cases. You believe this case does not apply to the pattern – OK.
JHoward has often asked for an honest advocate for the principles and policy prescriptions of the political left (I’ll leave the definition of political left broad and fuzzy for the time being) to step forward and lay down, to the extent possible in a comment forum, a set of markers as a basis upon which to begin to judge the aims (and possibilities for achieving those aims) that the left desires. (Or if I’ve misstated your position JHoward, please correct me.) No-one has been willing to do so as yet (and it’s not hard to see why!), says JHoward, and I’m inclined to take him at his word in this.
I thought I might propose that in lieu of a willing commenter, we undertake to seize such a statement from some worthy representative in print, perhaps even, one from either side of the political/philosophical divide and use them to develop the case for their views (honestly, of course, need it be said?) and the subsequent analysis thereof.
Further, I’d suggest, should we embark on such a path that we take care to use the most reasonable (hence likely not fringe or radical) statements of position and purpose we can find. Dan Dennett — while not a political philosopher — for instance, describes his political stance in “Freedom Evolves”. We also have at hand the more thorough-going political work of John Rawls. And F. Hayek on the other side of the question. Better exemplars than I have offered here may be known to you. If this seems to you a way to proceed, please offer them.
Urthshu,
Trade is just one term for what it is all about. Power. And money/ resources/ people are all forms of an end to power. You need them for money… to have power (and there are any number of board game simulations that use this as the primary mechanism). Socialist states do fight each other, albeit perhaps in more subtle terms (such as Red China and the USSR). And democracies would too, if placed under enough pressure, or with the right circumstances to create a political critical mass (the cult of personality leader in want of petroleum or protein).
“I, for one, have gone Left to stop the decomposition of honest government.”
Too late, you fucking leftoid zombie. The Democrats are in charge.
“He says that as far as he can see, no Democracy has ever suffered famine, whereas on the contrary, Authoritarian states of all sorts seem to actively engender…”
See thors mastabatory fantasy, Joseph Stalin.
Oh, and thor?
Go watc the “Office of The President Elect” Utube video.
O!, surrounded by white folks.
Because of the changiness!!!!!11!!
haha.
we mite take ur 401-m’kay
and put it in a lock-box-m’kay
drugs are bad-m’kay
voting for democrats-priceless!
Comment by trickle down on 11/9 @ 11:20 am #
Why are your sneakers yellow?
Sdferr
For the most part, I see a great many people of the Left as having “good” intentions. They see suffering, they feel it must be fixed. Indeed, they see any suffering as a “failure” on the part of whatever government is in charge.
It is not that their intentions to help are wrong, it is that they are trying to base policy on feelings rather than examined reason.
For all the anti-religious (which really is anti-Jewish/anti-Christian) sentiments on the Left, they refuse to understand what Judeao-Christian tenets teach. Those religions being about, basically, that humans suffer. That is the human condition, and religion is there to help teach a person to cope with suffering and to move beyond incidents of suffering.
The Left is really the sensitive child who refuses to see suffering (or disappointment or any unhappiness) as things that just ARE. Mommy or Daddy makes me sad it is because they are just big meanies.
The real insidious thing about the Left’s juvenile mindset is that there are people, like Ayers and Alinsky, who find a target rich environment to turn these people to their own goals. Pied Pipers using the right buzzwords and demonization of the Meanie Parents who are the only ones standing in the way of eternal bliss on earth.
Ayers didn’t call upon students to go home and kill their parents as a rhetorical flourish.
There is also the question of “free riding” in a nation’s defense posture, say for instance in the case of some of the NATO countries, is there not? When, if for the sake of the defense of the whole, burden-sharing is shifted inequitably onto the stronger partners and the weaker take advantage of the situation and pursue popular and expedient (quasi-socialist) desires rather than uphold their end of the burden-sharing bargain.
<blockquote
Comment by Clouseau on 11/9 @ 10:22 am #
There is, by the way, a niggling problem….
“I have fixéd your site from ze racism. Zere is no charge.â€Â
How’s the nigglehammer feel?
In a narrow sense though, Darleen, yours is just the sort of immediate answer to the relevant questions of principle I would hope to escape through a fair presentation and examination of the positions of the left (and right). Take it as you would your expectations of the working press. Withhold for the time being your prejudices, find the best statement of the relevant positions you can, examine them without pressing upon them intentions they have nothing of and, finally, see where the truths and untruths of either case stand.
Two problems: I got my mortgage statement yesterday and it hasn’t been zeroed out yet. Does that happen on Jan 20th or the 21st. Also, I checked my car this morning and the gas tank isn’t full. And didn’t someone say I would get pie? WTF? Where’s my pie?
We have complex problems to solve that are far beyond what you’re able to comprehend.
Yes, you do. You have my mrtgage to pay and my gas tank to fill. Best get to it.
Oh, and don’t forget my pie.
“…if you ever want to plumb pure, naked acerebral activity, you could do much worse than spending a few hrs around the house progressive caucus; they are not what you call inquisitive. oh, and since im feeling like tapping a hot button, the house black caucus…oooh. yeah, maxine watters,,,a reader. jesse jackson jr.â€â€loves him some math…”
You are soooooooo right mcgruder…
But, what do you think the probablilty of the MSM performing a grand inquisition on these collections of rockert-scientists or coming to the conclusion that they are intellectually incurious or not exactly Rhodes scholars…?
Or how about one of the most serious accusations leveled against Booooooosh!, delevered consistently with a straight face, remorseful head shaking, and breathless disgust; that his inability to speak well, owing to his strong Texas accent and halting style, indicated his unworthy-ness and stupidity…
Well, has anyone listened to J.J.Jr, or Maxine Waters closely…? Or for that matter, Cornell West…?
But that, you see, is simply a funtion of their culture…
Diversity!…More like Hypocrisy!
I get so tired of this kind of noble savage argument; just like the ones that contend that native American societies were more civilized and cultured than western ones…
Proggy Poppycock!
We have complex problems to solve that are far beyond what you’re able to comprehend.
Or thor can elucidate.
Thor’s elucidations would be a good name for a rock band.
skinner
I notice you didn’t offer any rebuttal. Just a classic Left cult channeling of a 4 year old tantrum “You are such a MEANIE.”
Being part of the Left cult has atrophied your ability to reason.
thor and elucidate in the same sentence? thor and masturbate in the same sentence makes much more sense.
there’s no gas for my leaf blower
and no gas
for my stove [if i felt like sticking my head in it]
damn- i wish i could burn my leaves[leafs?]
guess i’ll have to rake
steering clear of the cow-pies
my neighbor said if i hold my rake over my head and scream
“storm the bastille” this year he’s gonna call the cops!
“The thing is this, Darleen, you’re a pissbag full of projected animus, a self-serving R-wingered dicktard.”
Dear Sir,
I find your point of view intriguing, and would be interested in recieving your newletter.
Sdferr
What I was attempting was to say that I don’t want to judge the Left’s intentions as “bad” in the whole. I believe both right and left really do want to see society and individuals succeed. However, I believe they come at it from very different perspectives based on how they see the SOLUTIONS to problems and the proper role of government in those solutions.
let them eat freedom fries
“thor and masturbate in the same sentence makes much more sense.”
It happens every thread.
See my comment above.
thor/ high deaf
I understood you Darleen. You are very good at making yourself understood. The thing is, statements like:
“they are trying to base policy on feelings rather than examined reason…”
“…For all the anti-religious (which really is anti-Jewish/anti-Christian) sentiments on the Left, they refuse to understand what Judeo-Christian tenets teach….”
“…The Left is really the sensitive child who refuses to see…”
“…Mommy or Daddy makes me sad it is because they are just big meanies…”
“…The real insidious thing about the Left’s juvenile mindset is that…”
etc. would appear to be made with a partisan cudgel still quite the uppermost in your thought. I want to put the cudgel down for a while.
The MSM has begun to mea culpa for being so far in the tank for Obama and at the same time start their important work of lowering expectations for him as well; proving that they intend to stay in the tank for the one…
The trickle that we have seen this week will become a small flood shortly. Ironically, their need to regain their credibility has as much to do with reinforcing their ability to cover for Obama as it does to do with their economic success…
I know that it’s in large part a fault of the electorate; those of us unwilling to learn enough about the individual issues to spot the MSM bias and call them on it. But, having said that, the MSM enjoys a great deal of protection from litigation based on the founders percieved need for a free, vigourous, and independant press in a representative democracy like ours.
I would argue that at the very least there is a real violation of this principle based on this past election cycle. The MSM outlets that were so in the tank for Obama now become defacto propaganda arms of the government at best. At worst, there has been a collusive effort and widespread malpractice on their part in playing such activist king-makers on the national political stage…
N. O’Brain, you hit the trifecta by using “thor”, “mastabatory”, and “Josef Stalin”, in a sentence. Well done!
“I want to put the cudgel down for a while.”
Ummmmmmmm……..
No.
Comment by Mossberg500 on 11/9 @ 12:01 pm #
Thank you, thank you very much.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Obama & Co that their policies are viewed as ruinous by many in the Investor class either. What is puzzling though, is how they still voted for him and hoped he would change his tune when the time came…
What I’m about to say will make all wonder whether I’m wearing a tin-foil hat, but here goes; Obama-Reid-Pelosi-et al, need for the economy to be totally tanking. Just like they wished for the Iraq war to be hopelessly FUBARed. These people need the public perception of any issue they wish to move on to be one of apocalyptic crisis; that’s where the MSM comes into play. When folks think that there is absolutely no hope in the status quo, and impending doom due to the crisis, they are willing to accept almost anything that could possibly make things better; and believe me, when the time comes, the MSM will be trumpeting how the proposed socialist hopenchange will solve all of their problems…
Basically, the majority of folks want to trust their government so that they don’t have to pay attention to all of the things being done-in their name. They’d rather watch TV sports, American Idol-esque pablum, play video games, or engage in some alternative self-serving pastime. Among the ways that the MSM has worked the electorate into a change lather was to incessantly harp on what they percieved as the failures of eeeeeevil Booooooosh! so that the public felt like they couldn’t trust what was going on. You can be sure that the MSM’s reprise to their Obama love fest during the campaign season will be to convince all that they can trust him to take care of their business. The MSM will try to do this in the hope that we will all go back to our pastimes, and pay no attention until the next election; when they can tell us all how much we like hopenchange and to feel free to vote for him and his congressional allies, again…
Best Wishes
Somehow, N.O’Brain, I have come to expect no less from you. Carry on.
Comment by Sdferr on 11/9 @ 12:08 pm #
Thank you, thank you very much.
Sdferr
Ok. How about the Left’s “top down” solutions to problems … ie: because 44 million don’t have health insurance, then just nationalize medicine and make it “free” for everyone … is not based on historical precedent, contemporary reality (at least half of that 44 million choose to not purchase insurance) and give little consideration to logical consequences (doctors quitting, rationed healthcare, etc).
If I accept that the Left really has good intentions about wanting to improve access to healthcare, I have to then ask myself why they would be so mistaken about the solution.
“Extend an olive branch to Democrats and they bite your hand off.”
-Ann Coulter
N O’Brain
It looks like McCain’s olive branch to the Senate Dems is Palin’s bloodied body.
Dump McCain 2010.
Bob Reed, while I do agree with most of what you’ve just written, Senator McCain did not articulate his policy differences clearly enough. For instance, both candidates had a similar cap and trade policy, but until I heard Gov. Pawlenty explain some of the differnces, like exempting agriculture, I could not distinguish between the two.
While I have to take the responsibility for my own ignorance, Senator McCain should have used these types of agruments to confront the “well John McCain believes in cap and trade as well” statements that were made by Senator Obama’s surrogates.
If any conservative expects to get fairly treated by the MSM after this election, they deserve to lose. That may be wrong, but as we’re often told, life’s not fair.
A piecemeal examination of policies isn’t really what I had in mind. Nor simple assertions of the sort of “the Left’s top-down solutions” etc. I’d rather begin, as I suggested, with finding and achieving a consensus on a reasonable and fairly representative presentation of either sides core principles, study them (as opposed to our assertions about them) and then look back to see where we currently have them aright and where not.
As to the health care question, here, Darleen, is a bit of what Greg Mankiw wrote to Sen. Obama yesterday:
Tinkering with taxation policy to achieve other societal goals seems to have become a common tool to both the political left and the political right. Should it be? A thorough examination of the sort JHoward has proposed may bring this question into stark relief and possibly help toward an answer, in principle, anyhow.
Sdferr:
The problem with trying to come up with greater truth to compete in the marketplace of ideas, which I infer is your intention, is that – as Darleen eloquently points out – there are those who are not so interested in the rational comparison of ideas, but rather how those ideas make them feel. That’s not to say that examining ideas is without merit, just that in and of itself seems unlikely to help advance the greater good. Without good marketing, even superior products risk being undersold.
Front page top of my local Sunday paper was this story from AP. Like Lincoln and FDR, Obama faces nation in crisis.
In the tank. Closed the hatch. Turned out the light.
To tell you the truth Seth, it’s not the “greater” good I’m looking out for here, but my selfish own. Ridding ignorance and all that jazz.
And again, in my own interest, I will for the most part ignore such folk. Are they interested in my interests, I may ask myself, in projecting their “feelings” on what I see as permanent questions of human nature and political action? If I conclude not, why would I care for their opinions, except insofar as I may have need of a wary eye to prevent possible depredations? Just so.
Being part of the Right cult has left you sidekicking and nosepicking.
How did you become interested in intra-Provenicial illiterates?
Without good marketing, even superior products risk being undersold.
Mr. Williams, you’ve hit on the single greatest flaw of Senator McCain’s campaign.
You’re not worthy of licking Saul Alinsky’s spunk off Ann Coulter’s chin.
What is it with Thor and Palin? You won. Why do you care.
Because screeching is all they know. They haven’t yet learned that there is a distinction between criticism and performance.
But they will.
Free gas, thor. Where is it, bitch?
I was out for a bit, still catching up.
It occurs to me that for some enterprising person there is an equivalent to the “What’s Left?” book to be written now. “What’s Right?” is, of course, the best title for it.
It might be a great project for Jeff G and/or mcgruder…
Seth, perhaps I could better boil the difference down to the difference between political/philosophical studies and political/science studies? Take the distinction urthshu upthread referred to as “…the long project and the short…”. Of these two fields of study, one seems to me to focus on the (very) long term, the other on the rather more near term.
Maybe it is idiosyncratic, but the latter has never held much interest to me. The former on the other hand strikes me as crucial. The latter seems to result in lots of cudgeling, the former in something more nearly a cooperative quest, or at the least, quiet contemplation. This is not to say vigorous political competition in the market of ideas isn’t needful, just that it isn’t really my bag. I’ve never been a party man.
urthshu:
Not familiar with that particular title.
Sdferr:
Yes, I too worry about the depradations of the well-intentioned. Which is why I worry about the ability to “sell” an idea to those who feel more than reason.
Again, the examining of ideas is important, but without the ability to convince others it’s little more than navel-gazing. I’m not interested in getting a Hosannah! from the choir so much as I am in getting an Amen! from the congregation.
Also, the left has internalized a fundamental truth about information operations: a simple lie defeats a complex truth. The right is peddling a series of comlex truths, and getting roundly kicked about in the marketplace of ideas. Not because the product is bad, but the marketing is.
So it’s Betamax vs. VHS all over again? 1984 Apple Macintosh vs PC/Microsoft? Where politics becomes marketing, I’m afraid I’ll be of virtually no use whatsoever.
Sdferr:
I’ve never been much of a party man, but I do hate a bully and it seems to me that Republicans have been unfairly portrayed and bulled by the left. So the sheepdog in me wants to bark back.
I grew up on the left side of the spectrum among center-left Democrats, and I came to the right through a series of epiphanies in a fairly short time frame. I’m interested not in labels of “D” or “R”, or even “L” or “R”, above and beyond their utility to describe certain broad categories and collections of ideas.
Ideas matter, because they have real-world consequences. One great truth: when all of society suffers an great and universal ill, so do I. So ultimately, my interest in convincing the left of what I see as its great and inherant folly is my own self-interest. For surely the well intentioned fools want to impose their bad ideas on me for what they see as my own self-interest.
Sdferr: when I say “marketing”, I mean “convincing others of the inherant folly of their bad ideas that they would deign to impose on others”.
The latter is simply more cumbersome.
An aside, I worked at Erol’s in Arlington Va when the betamax vs VHS fight broke out. I went with betamax. When it came time to buy a personal computer, take a guess? Yep, Apple all the stupid more expensive way. I’m just a poor chooser of winning trends, I guess.
I know what you mean. I bought a Zune.
In defense of your “marketing” comment, I assume that there are many people who are in fact serious about such things (though I will not include you among them hereafter). I hear and read stuff about “brands” and the like all over the place. None of it makes much sense to me but then in general I’m an ignorant what-have-you as to such stuff. Maybe it’s actually important, maybe not? Certainly an awful lot of people are quite worked up over the behavior of the press and their biases in treating the “personas” of Biden, Palin, McCain and Obama in the election season and much of that seems to me to resolve to a species of marketing.
gas now, bitch!
Yeah, I’m no marketing guy…if I were I would probably be better at expressing my own ideas artfully.
“What’s Left?” refers to this book.
as the daughter of an ad man, I don’t find advertising or marketing the soul-sucking enterprise so many do…
It’s a tool, and like all tools it can be used constructively or destructively. Hammers can build a birdhouse or kill someone.
The Federalist Papers were a marketing tool, a way of trying to both explain and persuade people to ratify the Constitution.
LBJ’s “Daisy” commercial was a notoriously brilliant way of marketing Goldwater as a crazed warmonger set to burn the world at in a moment of pique.
One of the things I learned at the dinner table and then later in mass communications classes was how to critically analyze advertising and marketing programs.
Keep in mind that all the advertising in the world won’t change a mob of humans who have already been convinced to the contrary. Look at 9/11 Trooothers, or Andy Sullivan for that matter. They cling to their “trooth” and the more reasoned and factbased arguing against them goes no where. Because they have an invested emotional interest in hanging with their “truth.”
The The only decent result of the recent election is that we will now have liquor sales in resturants on Sundays! Party McGeehee?
For someone who claims to be a dissident within the press, you sure as hell live within the press’ bubble.
Was Palin running for chief-ideas-officer, or for the #2 slot in an executive role? Is her experience — and the primary draw of her candidacy — ideas or execution?
The “intellectuals” — those enamored of ideas above all — have given us an infinity of pain. They’re the ones behind the Fannie Mae/Fannie Mac meltdown, behind the whole Great Society mess, behind the drive to perfect society. The idea men tell us that nations don’t matter, that culture doesn’t matter, that we can ignore the laws that we’ve instituted to protect ourselves because they’re “unfair”.
I don’t want King Stork even if it’s a conservative stork. I want a King Log who’ll leave me the hell alone and do his job. Right now, I’d be thrilled to have an administration less concerned with trying to perfect the world but more concerned with taking on the corrupt and destructive.
Instead, thanks to the pseudo-intellectuals in the press, we’re stuck with an administration that’s all about “Change”, that won’t let us “go back to [our] lives unchanged”, that is primarily focused on deciding who wins and who loses.
Not that the press bothered to actually report any of that in any depth. Like you, they were less concerned with the ideas that animate Obama than they were with sliming Palin.
“Slavery” is such a 19th century word. The modern terms are “mandatory volunteerism” and “community service”.
Sdferr —
Where politics becomes marketing, I’m afraid I’ll be of virtually no use whatsoever.
It is about marketing — to the uninformed. There needs to be a clear, consistent and simple message that resonates. Reagan was the master of that.
For the informed, however, it’s about principles. But those principles are arrived at by various paths: some by upbringing in traditional families with traditional beliefs; some by epiphany such as Seth Williams describes; some by pragmatism (i.e. a small business owner that is sick to death of government regulation and taxation); some by association with right-minded people; and some by intellectual enlightenment (which would seem to include yourself). There are, I’m sure, more categories.
The problem is, in the presently constituted Republican Party, thanks in no small fashion to people like John McCain, instead of uniting under one common goal — these groups are shooting at each other. The intellectuals are firing off salvos at the “uneducated” rubes; the Palinists are responding with disgust at the intellectuals; the business owners are preparing to close up shop in disgust at both, etc., etc., and people such as yourself are giving up.
Don’t give up, but more than that, don’t blame your frustration on those who are your natural allies. Teach, inform, and go forward, dude. You don’t know who may be lurking.
Donald, I was planning on visiting a package store and doing all my drinking alone. In a darkened room. While clinging to my Bible and gun.
Nah, redneck , you’re the psuedo-intellectual. You couldn’t get a job at the NYT even if you went for a phallectomy. They’re educated. You’re a idiot. Know it.
Sarah Palin is/was/will always be a stupid hick, hack.
Give up, JBean? I’m not sure what has given you that impression. If you can, point to it upthread and maybe I’ll see what you mean. In the meantime I’ll continue to believe I’ve done no such thing. As to frustration, if I exhibit that please point as well. I’m not sure at all that would adequately describe the position in which I find myself.
Damn this is a good thread! I hardly know where to start.
It’s not being “managed by popular will.†It is/was a case where people found out that their food supply was at risk by very very bad practices that were “legalâ€Â.
Darleen, gotta disagree with you on this.
The fact that chickenshit proposition was a ballot measure is by definition being subject to popular will. We are supposed to elect people to do that. Those people hire other people to research the matter carefully, consider environmental impact, price consequences, supply impact, import control(are we just going to buy even worse treated Mexican birds to eat because of those pesky laws of supply and demand?), etc., etc.
But it’s OK. Six months after it takes effect, and that $2/lb. bird is $5 and even less safe because of the unintended consequences that those voters didn’t/couldn’t know about, it will all be blamed on Republicans mis-management of the ecomony.
You’re a idiot
All hail teh bullbull spinner !
#274 thor
where’s the free gas, bith? and my mortgage ain’t going to pay itself.
Get on it.
Oh, and sorry Carleen, I have to hit you with this one too:
on the Left, they refuse to understand what Judeao-Christian tenets teach. Those religions being about, basically, that humans suffer. That is the human condition, and religion is there to help teach a person to cope with suffering and to move beyond incidents of suffering.
Religions are about recognizing that humans have a spiritual dimension, and finding the truth therein.
Learning to cope with suffering is one of the benefits of learning that truth.
Atheists refuse to acknowledge that third human dimension, believe we are just another species of animal on this planet, and there is no truth other than Darwin.
If one group is bound to the morality of Jesus, and the other to the morality if a jackal, you can see how we got what we have the last 8 years.
lee
If you have a beef with California’s way of doing direct government through propositions in conjunction with representative government, so be it. But you ought to understand that there would be no propositions if the CA citizens hadn’t felt sold down the river by the so-called representatives in Sacramento who, rather than the careful contemplation you describe, served their own agendas.
It is, of course, not perfect. Humans are involved.
Sdferr —
Where politics becomes marketing, I’m afraid I’ll be of virtually no use whatsoever.
Sorry to be repetitive, but again, it is about marketing. And if that turns you off to the extent that you are “of virtually no use whatever,” then the casual passerby would most certainly interpret that as “giving up” or “frustration.”
lee
you’re correct, I wasn’t expansive enough with the spiritual dimension of religion. It really goes back to the nature of humans… we are not born “good”. Goodness has to be taught, because our animal nature is just fine with bonking our neighbor over the head and taking what we want.
Sdferr
Added note re: Republican “branding”
I just hired a new employee that used to work for an armored-car company. We were swapping “you’re not going to believe this but….” stories. His was he had met more than one person while out on his rounds filling up ATM’s who sincerely believed that ATMS print the money they dispense.
That is how too many people view the Government … as a giant magic ATM that will create, out of thin air, all the stuff required to satisfy their needs.
Until the Republicans can find a good coherent, reasoned way to educate people from that delusion, we will just endure more Howard Deans, et al, stating that Republicans want to starve children and seniors.
I thought that I had explained JBean, that the very position you cite may be idiosyncratic to me. I don’t see that as giving up, no more than I would see my fondness for Bach and Brahms, or better perhaps, Britten and Barber and not for, say, Led Zeppelin and Queen as giving up on “modern” music.
I’d propose that Sdferr and JBean are talking past one another. Just my take, since it seems to be different projects you’re each after.
Darleen –
Leftists believe that people are born good.
Ah yes! There it is again. The nub of the matter, touched on at length in this blog 7 days ago in the “You want a return to classical liberalism?” thread. But in a sense, what I have proposed in this thread is nothing but a better education for ourselves and — widening to others who may happen by here or be affected or actively persuaded by us in other contexts — for the rest of our friends and fellows as well.
You may be right urthshu about the talking past one-another. Hopefully. But perhaps you see what JBean considers “giving up” on my part and can fill it out for me?
And the belligerency prize goes to comment #182.
194: I agree. Free range chicken farming isn’t good because the birds step in their own shit. Kinda like how the Obama voters will be fairly soon.
194: I agree. Free range chicken farming isn’t good because the birds step in their own shit. Kinda like how the Obama voters will be fairly soon.
That wasn’t really my point. I was just refuting your contention that “It’s not being “managed by popular will.â€Â
I don’t know what to say about the initiative process as a whole, except maybe they all need to go through a more thorough legal/feasibility study before being added to the ballot.
Don’t put it past the enviro/PETA/vegan crowd to have ranchers dressing their herds in formal wear to protect bovine dignity and keep nature pretty. If they could get Obama to do a spot, it would pass in a landslide.
Oops, sorry, wrong quote. I meant this from #280:
If you have a beef with California’s way of doing direct government through propositions in conjunction with representative government, so be it.
>>But perhaps you see what JBean considers “giving up†on my part and can fill it out for me?
Near as I can figure, that ‘putting down the cudgel’ bit was seen as giving in. Now, nowhere have you said that you think Baracky is a ‘good guy’ and just give him a chance and ‘lets not fight’, but somehow it came off that way when all I see you doing is wanting to discuss first principles, take a step back for a second and regain bearings. You see it as more important to do right now, and perhaps thats right, perhaps not.
I see it as a worthwhile thing, BTW. Its possible, too, that you or I, by speaking of first principles vs. branding, are looking at [maybe] ‘conservative’ rather than ‘Republican’ things.
>>Free range chicken farming isn’t good because the birds step in their own shit.
I suspect that a youtube video will soon appear showing that the chickens are peckng each other – sometimes to death! – and a new law will go on the books, forbidding pecking orders. Farmers will comply by pulling off their beaks.
Kinda like how the Obama voters will be fairly soon.
Or “merely” theoretical as opposed to practical, a distinction Aristotle was fond of favoring to the side of theoretical.
>>If you have a beef with California’s way of doing direct government through propositions in conjunction with representative government, so be it.
I don’t. I realize that CA has gone through crap and that this process gives more of a voice in many cases. But, again, I’m looking at patterns, trying to divine whats coming down the pike.
Just a passing observation. The best part of “thor’s” collective commentary is the whooshing sound it makes when you scroll past it without a second glance.
Jeff, did you get this thread approved before you put it up?
Just a passing observation. The best part of “thor’s†collective commentary is the whooshing sound it makes when you scroll past it without a second glance.
thor changes his name to avoid being trollhammered. thor.gas bitch.now!
Fill’er up, sir!
I offer a free blowjob with every O’fillup! Be glad to check under the hood afterwards!
Its ‘provincial’ shit-for-brains. But what can you expect from a semi-literate conch.
Palin? Elections over,bitch,get yer readingisfundamental ass in gear and get the free gas,bitch.
The nub of the matter, touched on at length in this blog 7 days ago in the “You want a return to classical liberalism?†thread. But in a sense, what I have proposed in this thread is nothing but a better education for ourselves and  widening to others who may happen by here or be affected or actively persuaded by us in other contexts  for the rest of our friends and fellows as well Hopefully. …
But perhaps you see what JBean considers “giving up†on my part and can fill it out for me?
Go forward, Sdferr, in your enlightenment. How silly of me to believe that one statement couldn’t be taken in isolation, but would instead require 7 days of thread-plowing. How ridiculous to actually believe that words mean things.
And, no, urthshu, I don’t think we’re talking past each other. Rather, I think this is where the battle — on the right — is joined. Especially, you know, with references to “Bach and Brahms…Britten and Barber and not …Led Zeppelin and Queen.” Ahhh!
(Disclaimer: as a member of the toiling middle class, I work evenings/nights, and am now — through my own damn fault! — late for work, so adieu for now, mes amies, or, more appropriately, adios, mi amigos.) Damn, I’m multilingual !
Elections over,bitch,get yer readingisfundamental ass in gear and get the free gas,bitch.
Yes sir! I’m an expert in handling a hose with my mouth. I learned how from a Russian whore!
Sdferr:
Prompted by a certain troll’s inability to converse rationally, I started by asking for the underlying basis by which his presumed leftism actually redefines and then justifies what I merely claimed was an inherent envy and theft – from and about which Jeff’s cataloged and exposed an enormous host of other sins, all of them illustrating either incompetence or corruption.
If we take for example Castro, we see more or less the violent overthrow of a system of disliked commerce and with it its presumed amoral capitalistic core. Hurrah: A number of decades later we see commerce destroyed (that despite it’s eternal hope of bootstrapping itself wherever and whenever it’s oppressed) and the amorality of a tyranny that visibly, systematically, and incontrovertibly ruins the individual at any level you’d care to cite (save perhaps the very human instinct to survive – if we haven’t already, one day we’ll have a leftist claim the artistic beauty prison camps occasionally produce in rare individuals is reason enough to have prison camp, but that’s an unfair digression. I hope.)
Add in the profanity and ugliness of this particular left-leaning, Obama-supporting troll, it’s a natural step to conclude there’s not much to either recommend broadly leftist, collectivist, redistributionist political theory — whether Mao’s, any of the European continent’s dictators, or others — nor is there a core of philosophically elegant thought to defend it, that despite it’s eternal self-professed superiority. History simply disagrees with the mindset of which Darleen observes:
On a fundamental level you can conclude that this phenomenon reflects the sheer naivety of the shallow thinking liberals that organize into bands of mindless Obama-bots. Even setting aside the obvious manipulations and corruptions of power the more experienced, sinister leftist uses to his political advantage to violate necessary, originalist American principles – Kossites openly admit to appreciating this tactic — the common failing of masses of progressive voters is a lack of understanding of everything from such constitutional principle to supply and demand and free markets to unintended consequences to, yes, a philosophy of freedom that ties them all together and not only makes them work as “nature’s god intendedâ€Â, but makes them both absolutely essential to happiness as well as uniquely embodied in the country we held to champion them, many times at great cost and loss of life (not that all causes undertaken by the American people are just).
So to refine the question from positive practical outcome, which is illusive if not impossible to find, to philosophical, which was and is my aim, given that there are hosts of classic conservative and classical liberal principles that can be summarized by straightforward appeal to the higher virtues and thoughts, where is the underlying philosophical basis with which to conclude that leftism occupies an equal seat at the table of human achievement and freedom? I simply cannot find it. Even federal benevolence and charity is a fraud. Everything less, which is everything less, has no more to recommend it.
Welfare creates welfare dependency and destroys person, family, and hope. Collective medicine destroys advances and quality. State education – probably the greatest failure of the entire American left’s entire history – is breeding the incompetent, manipulated thinkers who then vote to further wreck the original American ideal. And so on and so on and so on. Today leftism assaults very meaning, as intentionally as otherwise.
All that’s evident is that leftism is not only a failure, it is so because it indulges baser instincts, rewards acts that would be criminal if the individual practiced them, and cannot be supported by anything approaching reason. What a lovely recommendation for the left end of the philosophical spectrum. Seriously, I seen little reason to see leftism as anything other than the nihilism it’s inevitable social suicide beckons.
Again: The extension of Darleen’s observation is that the best you can say about leftism is that fools think central power can be converted from the historical thug it’s always been — the very obvious counter to which up to approximately now has been the American Republic — into a perfectible and finally safe servant, one able to magically reform everything between its costing a great share of every dollar that passes through its hands, to a history of the entire human race that clearly refutes it as a valid means of organizing societies and civilizations.
Given who’s in power come January 20, 2009, I’d dearly love to be wrong. But nobody’s risen to the simple challenge to illustrate such a presumption.
I like borscht infused sperm – a Russian whore delicacy.
JHOWARD: Hence America’s current “blue” period.
My Russian whore taught me the “Kamchatka Special”, which involves taking the hose in my mouth after swilling borscht vodka and ice.
>>All that’s evident is that leftism is not only a failure
Not so, for it is a resounding success. Memetically, at least. Further, if you were just starting out, ambitious man that you are, and were presented with both conservatism and leftism, you would of course choose the Left, for that is the swifter, surer course to power, money, advancement, partnership, etc. People generally come to the Right through conviction and reasoned effort, a caring for the wider world.
History, though, shows that in any conflict between right and left, one should support the left if one hopes to succeed. Revolutions proceed leftwards and there are precious few Restorations anywhere.
Not to say I’m happy about that.
JBean, it seems, wants to have a fight. With me no less! Because of my tastes in music which he seems to believe portend something dark and untoward. How odd. Further he says snidely,
urthshu
if people were born good there’d be no need for religion or door locks
which is also why I’m shocked (but not too surprised) that PE BarryO! is getting away with the “wealth is built from the bottom up” perfidy.
The mob never builds wealth. Poor people don’t build wealth. Wealth is created, usually by the different drummer, the person with a personal dream. The person that the committee takes credit for.
Well yes, I’ll avow they do mean things. He has so much as accused me of “giving up” and “being frustrated” and when I tell him this is not so, I didn’t intend anything of the kind, he quotes back at me my declared ignorance of “marketing” and “branding” and my pre-disposition not to care for such things, which I then attribute to a matter of taste. Whereupon, he tells me back, well then, you do not know how important the things you don’t care about are, and not knowing, have, says JBean, by definition given up. You must be frustrated (I suppose he would say).
Such nonsense. JBean seems to think he knows best though. I don’t. But neither do I begrudge him or any others who do care about such things as “marketing” political ideas their concerns and activities in support of them. I just don’t believe I’ll be much help to them. Have at it though, by all means, if you think you can find some better way for your party forward doing so. You may be right.
Sdferr – I think we must each hack at our own vines.
/classical allusion
Don’t recognize the allusion immediately urthshu but don’t think it’s necessarily inapt. Maybe that’s what JBean means by “…this is where the battle  on the right  is joined. …” though I would prefer that it not be. I can sit and listen and learn about marketing and the like while not contributing much to that conversation as such. And I would hope the like could be done with the discussion I was desirous of having about principles etc.
ROWL!!!
Just means basically we have our own work, can’t do another’s. Its Roman.
“Where the battle is joined” means, to me, conversion of minds towards your brand. There’s value in that certainly, but its the short project. The long one is keeping and growing those converted, deepening conservative thought, etc.
I suppose it would help if they could be succinctly captured in one or two word phrases. Think of how we see the Left’s version – short project: win. Long project: world socialism. By any means necessary.
According to P.J. Rourke (or JHoward above, for that matter) today, the short project might be titled “Prosper”. The long project, I’d say, could be broken down to “Learn”.
Doesn’t accord with my meaning, at least. “Learn” is good, it just doesn’t accomplish the overall goal in any particular sense. As a self-improvement project its fine.
What I was meaning by the long project was akin to Jeff’s retaking of language, except I was fitting that retaking of language into an even larger scheme, that of historical phenomena.
Someday, someone is going to learn from that retaking and pursue their own goals, hack their own vines. If many someones, it becomes a movement that, one hopes, can survive and prosper. From there, new eras, Restorations, etc. This long project is therefore loooooong but one hopes it has more lasting effect than this or that election.
Essentially, the difference between battles and war. I don’t want to have my great-grandkids still battling against socialism – I want it dead. I want them to look back in pity at anyone who ever espoused such nonsense. Thats the long project.
Self improvement is a pretty narrow way to look at my intent, though it isn’t on its face unreasonable I think.
What I am pointing to is actually at the root of what has been termed “western civilization” as distinct from other paths taken in the course of time and human history. To me, “Learn” represents the best teaching of the greeks, “Athens”, as opposed to the teaching of the judeo-christian tradition embodied in “Jerusalem”. Learning stands at the root of our science and that is what sets us apart from other civilizations. Question always, re-think even the most self-evident matters and we find Einstein overthrowing the great and well established principles of Newton. That is what I mean. I don’t believe we have come to the end of our search into the nature of mankind. Much of what we may take for granted may be simply untrue. Which in turn means that contrary to the certainties exhibited here-above as to our shared political-philosophical positions, we for our part may be wrong about some things regarding human nature (horrors, perish the thought) and even worse, some on the left may be right about some things. (Ohnoes!) It’s hard to tell though. When the examination remains undone, one can only have guesses as to potential conclusions.
In fact urthshu, reading a bit upthread I see you said to JHoward:
Better said than I could do.
Well, get your swirly lights and windmmills on. Good luck ritebrites!
Hell, in just a few short years I want those who espoused the greater nonsense to be paraded on pikes. I want their eyeballs floating in jars of liquid, their kidneys served over rice in Chinatown, their children sterilized and made to bus tables at IHOP. That’s the pressing urgency of now.
That’s nice, thor.
I want my free gas.
Where is it, bitch?
Spies, I got your foie gras coming right up. In the meantime, thor’s a bit graphic.
Good luck ritebrites!
Thank you.
From my perch in Kamatchka I can see Sister Palin performing sexual acts on seasonal workers from the salmon fisheries. Immigrants, mostly, and the lines are long. Amazing imagery: Gucci pumps, sleeveless designer dresses, Louis Vuitton handbag, all covered in the natural secretions of mobs of low income line workers. Beacon of gooey on a hill. Quite a sight.
Give us your linguistic seminar. I’ll listen respectfully then respond.
cure hangovers.