From Ace’s comments:
OK, does anyone read ProteinWisdom regularly? What’s happened over there? I used to read it, but kind of lost interest when the main host got involved in some sort of blog battle and subsequent whiny emotional meltdown. But now I discover (via a link at Patterico) that they have really jumped the shark and are accusing Ace, HotAir, and Patterico of going full-blown Katrina over the Japan coverage. They’ve decided that all is well with the nukes in Japan and that’s the end of it.
And there are about a dozen commenters over there.
What happened? Are we seeing the emergence of LGF 2.0?
And there’s plenty more cheer where that came from.
So. Let’s set this straight. First off, I didn’t “accuse” anyone else of anything. In fact, I didn’t even mention “coverage” from other sites, because I wasn’t monitoring “coverage” from other sites.
A commenter here noted the rather breathless way the media was taking on the story and thanked me for taking a different approach. In response I noted how I’d tried to take the same approach during Hurricane Katrina; back then, a number of conservatives (and Shep Smith) pissed me off because they were acting guilty and defensive about a natural disaster, as if conservatism or Bush had anything to do with what was happening in New Orleans.
That’s it. That was the extent of my entire commentary on the Japanese nuclear situation. How that constitutes “rushing to declare everything is OK in advance of the facts” I have no idea. I am not a nuclear expert. I don’t claim to be. And so I’ve had little to say on the matter.
I’m also not a reporter. And I’ve never claimed to be that, either. So my “coverage” is simply my noting, by way of a link, a particular news story that happened to be the most recent at the time of my posting, and then adding a brief comment on it some people might find useful or entertaining.
My tag line for the site? Is meant to be ironic.
Look: My job here, such as it is, is to press for conservatism and classical liberalism as a remedy to the statism that daily assaults us and that, once institutionalized, robs us more and more of our liberties. When people on “my side” enable such behavior (as I see it), I say so — and I try to make the case.
Some people don’t like that.
Here’s an easy solution for such people: don’t read me, don’t link me, and try to spend less of your free time trolling my comments looking for things to pluck out and use to gin up the HATRED you so need people to feel toward me.
Me, I’m gonna have a couple of breakfast burritos and some coffee and get on with my life.
****
update: Hey, anybody know of any place on the internet or TV I might be able to find out something about what’s happening in Japan?
****
update 2: Never mind. Spiny found a link.
****
update 3: John Bradley, who made the original comment that so distressed some Ace readers, posts a follow-up:
Oh dear, I’ve annoyed the DA.
This fellow John Bradley over there in the linked thread seems to think we have all been screaming that we’re all going to die. Part of our “pragmatism.” We haven’t, of course, but his impression is certainly more important than the truth, I think we can all agree.
It’s apparently a matter of political outlook how you respond to this, if Bradley is to be believed. Apparently the “true conservative” thing to do is declare there has been no meltdown, even as you link to articles that say there have.
That’s what I liked about McCain’s coverage. He is second to none in his “true conservatism” but isn’t letting his politics govern how he reacts to the facts on the ground. That’s journalism.
Which seems like another fine example of willful misreading. I wasn’t suggesting that the hyperactive rumor-mongering of the ‘pragmatic’ blogs is a particular example of their pragmatism; I suppose I could have just as accurately referred to them as lesser blogs (IMHO). Whatever.
Though I must admit, I’m not sure that breathlessly posting update after update, before finally admitting “I’m sticking with my previous stance. We don’t really know what is going on and making any positive declarations about anything is premature” doesn’t sound like a particularly conservative approach. Why only ‘positive’ declarations? Isn’t it premature for all the negative declarations as well? Perhaps we just don’t know shit, and the 24hr rule should be in effect?
But my actual point was: the frenetic aggregation and dissemination of highly-suspect ‘information’ (and the inevitable corrections to previous ‘information’), all in an effort to appear “on top of the situation”, well, it’s downright unseemly. The sort of thing I’d expect from Shep Smith.
And it’s a huge distraction from the actual story. No meltdown, partial meltdown, full meltdown — it makes little to no difference. I can say, based on my esteemed position as “some asshole on the internet”, that not one person is going to die as a result of whatever the hell happens with the reactors.
There’s unimaginable devastation and lord knows how many deaths from the actual disaster, but all the talk is so much “look, a shiny distracting thing! And it’s nuclear — ooh, scary!”
Others, I’ll note, are similarly inclined.
AceHole jumped the shark when he(?) supported RINOs (and still does, for all I know; I won’t read none of his crap). For all his(!) bluster, (s)he’s just another irrelevant lawyer with a penchant for stabbing people in the back.
That’s a must-have requirement for lawyers I suppose.
Jeff, didn’t you and Ace used to do a podcast together a few years back?
Not that it has anything to do with this post. I’m just trying to figure out if I’m remembering that correctly.
Of course, I might be waaaaaaaay off.
Patterico has actually been on a full-employment program for sharks. If you searched all the oceans and seas I doubt there are any left he hasn’t jumped.
Sorry ’bout that, chief.
I left a response over in the Japan thread. It probably won’t be very helpful, though.
..or even have a correct closing tag.
Ace, and some of his cobloggers, have been taking serious rations of shit from their own commentariat for quite some time now. During the Egypt crisis Ace even had a post where he estimated a crowd could march from Tahrir square to the presidential palace, a distance of several miles, in under an hour (indicating he thought humans walked at over 15 mph.) He actually had to go back and delete comments that were flaming him to high heaven over his total display of ignorance.
The Japan nuke crisis hasn’t been much different. He and a few of his cobloggers are showing a marked ability to fall for spin and hyperbole, while ther have been multiple commenters, better educated and more level headed, striving to offer some context and perspective.
I don’t think Ace has “jumped the shark” (though the expression “jumped the shark” certainly has.) It’s legitimate, I think, to disagree on electoral strategy and/or tactics – to include the supporting of RINOs when the non-RINO is a complete nutter. What matters is the goal towards which you want to go.
If you want to excommunicate people based on their choice of strategy and/or tactics, I think that makes you the asshole. I look back at, e.g., Mark Levin and Dan Riehl in the run-up to the elections last year, with their declarations of what constituted True Conservatism and who was anathema.
What comes most to mind is a line from, of all places, South Park: “You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn’t think like you.”
Such dickishness seems to be increasingly popular.
Yes we did, Bordo.
Spiny’s link in update 2 is required reading if you want to understand the Japan nuclear plant event. Japan will have all its plants up and running again before we even build one more new nuclear plant here. People will still be bitching about energy shortages that are completely avoidable.
A good portion of my fellow citizens make me sick.
The Ace commenter responsible for the idiotic comment quoted above strikes me as something of a Know-Nothing. Her problem with PW seems to be that she doesn’t understand anything outside her particular field.
If I were like that I’d be in deep, deep trouble.
This isn’t about electoral strategy or tactics. Thank you for playing, here are some nice parting gifts.
Of course, Russ, it IS a problem when disagreement — and arguing your case against one of “your” team — comes to be seen as dickishness (rather than as an attempt to discuss what’s best for “our” team).
Oh. And this is an aside, but I really do think a certain DA would do a full-on swallow of RSM right now if it meant he could turn that (possible? likely? READER POLL!) racist against me.
It’s like watching a mousy junior high school girl trying to become popular by agreeing to let the JV lacrosse team pull a train on her.
I don’t think Ace has “jumped the shark” (though the expression “jumped the shark” certainly has.) It’s legitimate, I think, to disagree on electoral strategy and/or tactics – to include the supporting of RINOs when the non-RINO is a complete nutter. What matters is the goal towards which you want to go.
I don’t think the problem with Ace is about strategic vision per se. It’s more like he’s that guy in high pressure situations ( a sinking ship, lost in the woods, etc) whom most everyone else in the party wants to beat to death. He’s weak and not a steady hand at all, though he sort of masks it with the tools that every jerkoff lawyer has at his/her disposal.
There’s a guy peddling his nuclear expertise on all the networks. He begins his analysis with “This is a nuclear disaster of unprecedented proportions!” And he ends with “In 12 to 24 hours we’ll find out if this will rise to the level of 3 Mile Isle and then even Chernobyl.”
Don’t know if it’s related.
See the very first sentence in the very first comment above. So, pardon me, but I’ll not be departing.
I concur – it ought to be possible to have disagreements and remain civil, and I absolutely hate to see disagreements between parties with whom I tend to agree devolve into anything worse.
Thanks, Jeff. I wasn’t sure if my memory was starting to go or not.
Hey, worked for me!
Wait…TMI?
Actual Nuclear Scientist on Fukushima…
http://tinyurl.com/6fmkbek
Had you quoted it in your first comment your intent would have been much clearer. Apologies.
Yeah – I type so slowly that when I started, I would have been comment #2, but when I finished I was #7.
Oh Baby Obama, if Ace is sooo significant and PW is sooo insignificant, why does he even take offense by some tangential (at best) slight from a PW commentator.
As for Patterico, he is a whiney little bitch. Oh oh, I am being misogynistic. Not for calling him a bitch, but by slandering women by associating Patterico with them.
Exactly, Russ. And the goal supported by Ace and Allah and others approaching November 2008 didn’t help us reach that goal one damned bit; the goal being the election of non-pragmatic Conservatives over RINOs of the McCain ilk. Your ‘complete nutter’ meme was propagated not only by the Left but by some on ‘our side’. Mark Levin and others know this instinctively, and call it correctly. I’ve no time to waste reading or considering those who don’t have a hard line when it comes to our collective futures.
Russ strike the right tone.
strikes.
Joe, I don’t think Ace made the comment in question. Not speaking toward the overall interplay between the people involved, just that in this one case it seems like a commenter on one site being a douche about a commenter on another site. With a bit of extra douchiness towards pw as a whole.
Also, DEATH THREAT!
A post from Stacy’s place–FYI:
But if you hang around Pat’s place for any sificant length of time, chances are your testosterone levels will drop about 50%.
But (and here my street Fred goes bye bye) I didn’t actually see the comment at Ace’s, so I might be talking out my ass, which I’ve been known to do from time to time.
Street cred. Stupid autocorrect.
Bacon Ninja, good point. Check that code at the bottom of the post. For all we know Patterico put that post in.
See, I don’t think that was the goal at all, I think that was the tactic. The goal was a GOP majority in the Senate.
Well, I meant to type 2010 instead of 2008, of course. And I can’t even blame autocorrect.
christiann ampoor just told me about hydrogen gas in a reactor. she doesn’t tell why it is there. that i found out from spiny’s link.
If you care only for the GOP, that’s truth. But I’m not a Frumian or Brooksian, period. The GOP isn’t worth keeping unless it’s worked over by the Tea Party; the GOP could wander in the wilderness for 40 years, as was predicted after 2008, if not for the Tea Party. That’s where my money goes.
I think street Fred would be an awesome movie, completely off topic. I imagine it would just be a camera following Fred Thompson while he goes about his daily business. You know, walking around, punching chumps, hawking reverse mortgages, and setting hippies on fire for a hundred and twenty minutes.
I’d pay $10 to see that.
Yeah, I learned about that the hard way myself.
“I’m sticking with my previous stance. We don’t really know what is going on and making any positive declarations about anything is premature.” Patterico.
And that Obama is a good man.
Rush is wrong to say mean things about Obama.
Patterico has questions about RSM. Reader poll.
Jeff G issued a death threat.
That’s what I get for commenting so infrequently.
Check that code at the bottom of the post. For all we know Patterico put that post in.
Eh, I doubt it. I think the internet is big enough for multiple pretentious douchebags to inhabit it simultaneously. Although the idea of Patterico having an alternate personality that claims to be a blog dominatrix is pretty funny, if you ask me.
But then, I’m also a person who would pay $10 to watch Fred Thompson set hippies on fire for two hours.
The comment in question was by one “Y-not.”
Later switched to “Y-not, thread dominatrix.”
(pW208), for those of you keeping score at home.
Thread dominatrix. I was close.
I don’t think I’ve typed dominatrix as much as I have today, at least not since I started college back when search engines were in their infancy.
What? Columbus gets cold in the winter!
I can’t speak to what gets written at those other sites since I no longer visit them. All I can say regards Protein Wisdom, I come for the death threats, but I stay because of the street Fred!!
Is anybody else getting wistful over how the 2008 GOP primary season should have come out?
I think we all, each and every one, can get behind this.
Someone ought to pitch that idea to the folks at Declaration Entertainment.
The one thing you can count on Ace, et. al. to do is believe everything a talking head on TV tells them. In this case, I think Ace in particular is being bitten hard by his northeastern herd-mind tendencies.
Thing is, if it’s a movie then it’s only as many hippies as he can set fire to in two hours.
What we need is for Street Fred to go on a world tour. Live performances.
T-shirts that say, “I followed Street Fred on his World Tour and all I got was this badly scorched t-shirt.”
(iczUV)
I am not a number, I am a FREE BIRD !!!
What we need is for Street Fred to go on a world tour. Live performances.
T-shirts that say, “I followed Street Fred on his World Tour and all I got was this badly scorched t-shirt.”
The merchandising possibilities alone are staggering. I imagine there’s a certain brand of torches and pitchforks that might be well-placed for such an eventuality.
“Fred would be an awesome movie, … I’d pay $10 to see that.’
And he’s got a hot wife. What’s not to love?
I’d even throw in the extra $2 for the 3d version without blinking.
STREET FRED: IT’S WHAT’S FOR BREAKFAST!!!
I’d pay to watch Fred in a pimp suit drinking scotch for 2 hours. I’m easy.
I don’t think that Ace, Hot Air, or Patterico have reached the level of LGF 1.0 much less 2.0 and never as that is a quite singular event.
Oh, wait he means PW equals LGF? Damn, the stupid is strong right after the time change. Sleep deprivation is known to cause hallucinations of all kinds.
Weird that Y-not’s hash ID is pW208.
Add a will where needed.
moore
that reminds me.
i can haz cheezburgerz iv?
OT: I linked this grip challenge the other day.
I said I’d upload a short vid, so those of you interested can see me do the lift here.
Like I said in the other thread…this is one of those things that looks so easy and you just know it’s not.
I have to say there is small amount of irony with PF posting on the media treatment of the Wisconsin death threats:
If every time he tries to suck up to RSM you mentally add “who may or may not be a racist. READER POLL!”, both the comedy and the tragedy take care of themselves.
But seriously. I don’t want to talk about the guy. He’s but another dishonest jaggoff with his finger in the wind looking for a new niche. Now that “tough, candid, spirited defender of all that is good and pure!” has been so obviously wrenched away from him.
You mean… just anybody really can summarize the news?
Holy SHIT!
What’s a credentialed moron supposed to think? (To say nothing of establishmentarians.)
#56 Joe,
I think we should refer to PF as “Mr Sanctimony” from now on…
For the record, I found the sane nuclear scientist link at Tim Blair’s blog, where it was posted by reader Dave.
That probably wasn’t fair to establishmentarians. I should have said “ax-grinding, false-concensus manufacturing, would-be gate-keepers.”
This thing just kicked my ass.
And no, that’s not me in the vid. That’s Ryan Pitts, who runs Stronger Grip. A really strong dude.
I am very disappointed to find out that grown men also play high-school politics, but instead of doing it like their high-school male equivalents, they do it like high-school girls do.
WTF, Ace and Patterico. I have enough reasons to be sick and tired of my own sex and their completely batshit insane behavior toward each other without y’all mimicking it.
It wasn’t “tactics” that got Pat in trouble, the fact is Patterico was willing to jump over all the flimsy ‘evidence’ that O’Donnell was a “nutter” and prop up Castle who had a mountain of evidence that he was not even a RINO, but a liberal.
Why? because Patterico like Newt, is a centrist who wants a “big tent” so no wonder his “tactics” involved RINOplasty and GOP worship.
All your talk about, “let’s be nice and not excommunicate people” and “lets not talk about True Conservastism, cause that might hurt peoples feelings” is useful idiocy at it’s best. By all means, let’s forgo any standards, because that really served us so well in the past! NOT.
Marginalia or Manginalia?
epic earthquake, tsunami, nuclear melt down then the volcano now this:
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is heading to Japan and is expected to be in place for his 3pmET show tomorrow,
Let me rephrase that, it wasn’t *entirely* tactics that got him into trouble.
“If you want to excommunicate people based on their choice of strategy and/or tactics, I think that makes you the asshole. I look back at, e.g., Mark Levin and Dan Riehl in the run-up to the elections last year, with their declarations of what constituted True Conservatism and who was anathema.”
Bullcrap. Neither Levin or Dan made ‘decelerations’ on what constituted True Conservatism. What they pointed out is that people like Pat and others were perfectly willing to throw a true conservative under the bus to prop up a basically liberal candidate. The fact that Mike Castle is a liberal is very established. What really bothered them was not so much Pat’s backing Castle, but how he joined with the liberals to malign and dig up dirt on O’Donnell to make his case and ignored the mountain of evidence that Castle was not going to win either and that he was even worse than a RINO. And when people pointed that out, he attacked them. In short, Pat acted like an asshole about the whole thing. And now he’s taken a cheap shot at John on here for no reason. So, yes, he has “jumped the shark” and more than once.
You can tell who a true conservative is by watching them react to when people point out what a true conservative is. If they react by being inspired they are conservatives, if the react by getting defensive and angry, they’re not. If they react by saying “what constitutes conservatism is subjective” they are meaningless post-modernism addled sheep. Patterico is at best a right leaning moderate. So go ahead, defend the little phony.
P.S. Suppose I was in the army and my commanding officer decided that he would use scorched earth tactics and kill civilians to gain our equally desired common goal. Using your logic, If I said he should be removed from office, I’m the asshole and not the commanding officer because I am trying to “excommunicate” him based on mere tactics! Your idea that ones chosen strategy and tactics don’t reflect their character at all is asinine.
I’m salivating.
Sorry, by John I meant Jeff.
Your defense of Pat is also laughable, because he attacked this site because he didn’t like it’s tactics! Still want to defend the guy?
My God. Haven’t the Japanese suffered enough?
Just completed the finger walk on that eight pound sledge. Right hand. Going to try it with the left after I’m done crying.
Rupert apparently thinks not.
OTOH, every time Shep gets on a plane is one more chance for the laws of probability to take a vacation, so to speak.
I like how Pat says RSM is a true conservative, but puts the phrase in quotation marks. So even when he is praising someone for their conservatism, he fells compelled to imply that it an invalid term by the passive aggressive use of quotation marking.
Interesting.
I like the Guardians reporting. First they say leaks are above safety levels and then they quote someone saying they’re not. STFU guys, please, till you actually know what you’re talking about.
Its funny how blogs, now that many are high-profile, feel the need to speculate and opine on the things that the MSM can’t even get right, like natural disasters.
I thought Jeff’s approach was correct: Something terrible happened over there, its chaos and fluid, let’s see what happens as things evolve. That there could be a left or right position on this is debauched.
[…] […]
But Roddy, Jeff unpanicked in advance of the facts!
That’s irresponsible!
I am kind of glad Jeff pointed this out to us… now I can use the update, reupdate, speculate, respeculate, poll, update, retract, reconsider, awtohellwithit as a shining example of how our JFHQ should NOT operate in a natural disaster. I could just get some screen shots of Pat’s site and slap ’em in Powerpoint for the next Officer Professional Development class I give. “OK, anyone from G-2 here? Good. OK, start at the top and point out the errors…”
I was disturbed by that powerpoint from hell, that McCrystal said was a key to understanding the insurgency, not long after that, he was forced to resign, I know there’s no direct causation
I was waiting for Shep to relay stories of how the Japanese people had to resort to eating themselves. I’m still amazed at their depiction of Katrina. I think they still give each other awards for their coverage. The reach-around effect is truly amazing to watch and Shep doesn’t disappoint.
Blog reporting on the nuke crisis in Japan is useless for the most part, unless the blogger has a person on ground in direct comms with. You can contrast it with the useful, excellent blog reporting done by althouse in WI. It’s really that simple.
Oh, and the sniff about the low number of commenters just reeks of the type of superficial sneering used by libs towards conservatives being unpopular and thus to be dismissed as fellows.
Well, SGT Ted, it also fails to take in account that I now require registration, and that the site is experiencing all sort of outages from DOS attacks issued out of Turkey.
the site is experiencing all sort of outages from DOS attacks issued out of Turkey.
Been praising the Four Lads again, eh?
Oh, and regarding that whole sneering superficial sniff, that was just weird.
The Ace commenter responsible for the idiotic comment quoted above strikes me as something of a Know-Nothing. Her problem with PW seems to be that she doesn’t understand anything outside her particular field.
I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I was slightly astonished when she candidly said it had nothing to do with substance and more to do with the language (wherein the left’s philosophy and various other po-mo type things are discussed).
That matters?
To some people, certainly. Me, I’ve never given a shit about how you say something, just what you say. I’m an all about the substance all the time.
The thing that bothers me about the LGF comparison is most people still don’t understand WTF happened to LGF. Nothing happened to LGF – Johnson was to some degree always like that, and the whole trajectory – which played out nice and slow-mo over a year or two – was utterly predictable IMO.
Some commentators on his site have made “LFG 2.0” type comments with regard to Ace, as well, and they’re equally stupid. Whatever complaints anyone may make of Ace he’s no CJ.
Did she say the language isn’t helpful?
She did not, which personally, I find very unhelpful of her.
If they react by saying “what constitutes conservatism is subjective” they are meaningless post-modernism addled sheep.
Oh come on! To be fair, what constitutes conservatism IS subjective.
As is what constitutes a liberal. It all depends on what you mean… the terms have been demagogued so much hardly anyone has the same idea of what they constitute anymore.
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