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Reductio ad absurda

Serial Greenwald(s) sycophant Mona, writing at Jim Henley’s Unqualified Offerings, accuses me of dishonestly representing her comments in the conclusion to my post yesterday on the Libby trial:

All: We’ve had a little PW invasion because Jeff linked here and quoted one of my comments, quite dishonestly leaving out ellipses to even suggest the existence of text explaining why I specifically will not engage him and people from his site, as opposed to anyone who disagrees with me. Then BDR put up another puerile post linking here. And so, I am now the main excitement over there.

After long experience trying to reason with Jeff and his commenters, I gave up on it many months ago and have no intention of resuming. I may link to PW again, but only for the same reason I did so in this instance, namely, to showcase right-wing derangement, of which there are frequently excellent examples to be found at that site. “Defending” myself from such creatures would be like finding it necessary to explain that one is reasonable to critics at The John Birch Society.

[my emphasis]

How Mona tries to reconcile the fact that she (and Greenwald, eg) believe my views—and the views of my fellow Birchian-like “creatures”—are fairly representative of the “right’s” “pathology,” with her protestation here that she was limiting her disgust to me and my readers when she discussed her disinclination to “engage,” I’ll leave to you to untangle. 

She is correct, though, that the comment I quoted was truncated.  There was nothing “dishonest” in the gesture, however, since I took the quote not from her site but from a comment left by BRD.  So clearly, there was no intent to mislead.  Still, to prove my good faith, I’ve updated the post to include the entirety of the comment, along with some of Mona’s additional commentary.

I’m also posting it here, so that I can’t be accused of trying to bury the “correction” in an update to an older post.

So.  Without further ado (all subsequent emphases mine)

Ladies and Gentlemen: I have zero intention of engaging BRD in a substantive discussion springing from the deranged, absurd spewings in his posts. I do not undertake exchanges with persons who “think” at that level and thus risk legitimatising their fevered and obnoxious premises; what I do do is highlight how the modern GOP/right-wing has destroyed civil discourse in the body politic by foisting repugnant memes, themes and narratives on the public, and I intend to hold examples of same up for the ridicule and exposure they merit, so as to “unmainstream” them. That is not my only interest nor the only focus of my blogging, but it most definitely is one of them.

BRD: I do not believe I could have made it any clearer that my disdain — contemptuous amusement, really — is for your premises, far, far more than for your prose. You operate from assumptions I find politically dangerous and which it is among my goals to render impotent in the national conversation. Debating those premises with you would not be fruitful, any more so than I found it to be useful to engage Jeff and his commenters in attempts at reasoned exchange quite some time ago.

I no longer aspire to “understand” or persuade people who think as Protein Wisdom bloggers/fans do. You are part of the political pathology whose effectiveness I seek to neutralize; dialogue isn’t on my agenda. I mean that with no animus or snark; Cernig is a nice guy and I see he engaged you at his comments section. I, however, have been down that road and learned it is futile, and have no intention of going down it again.

Exactly right. Back in the 90s I was no particular Bill Clinton fan, but I began to become uncomfortable with the right’s vile, base and sheerly maniacal hatred of both him and his wife. Nothing was to grotesque or extreme to say about the Clintons — or their daughter. The right’s real sickness began then.

At this point, I don’t think a lot of neocons and other Bush supporters see — or can be made to see — how gross their views and assumptions are, and some are coy enough to only imply them or to obfuscate and deny the only reasonable (repugnant) meaning of what they do publish. Many righty bloggers, with right-wing radio and Fox leading the way, have imposed some pretty foul memes and narratives and made these “normal” discourse; this normalization needs to be undone.

I do what I can to effect that undoing.

Goldstein is entirely correct about one thing he wrote in comments above: I’m a moralist, and not infrequently I do find him and his ilk outrageous; I don’t generally stifle my outrage. What he said about all that is completely accurate.

I don’t believe this substantively changes the clipped version quoted earlier, but there you have it.  Mona wishes you to believe that she refuses to engage only with those who, like me and my commenters, are coated in the filth of our own deranged political assumptions.

And yet, when we look at the entirety of her commentary, it is difficult to find any separation in Mona’s descriptions between those who read this site and the rest of “the right.” If anything, the pool has grown even larger under her defining auspices—to include those who hated Clinton, regardless of where they may now stand politically (though the assumption is, once you adopt “right” views, you are forever condemned to hold them—unless, of course, you are Mona or Greenwald, who are smart enough to overcome them). 

Of course, that many neocons, classical liberals, and libertarians have been quite open about having supported Clinton (over, say, the foreign policy realism of George HW Bush:  you may draw your own conclusions from that) does not give Mona pause.  After all, she is in gathering mode, and so any “sorting” would just slow down the runaway train that is her worldview.

Look at the language in Mona’s commentary:  The “right” is “vile,” “base,” “obnoxious,” “puerile,” “fevered,” “repugnant,” “maniacal,” “deranged,” “absurd,” “contemptuous,” “pathological,” “gross,” “outrageous,” “foul,” manipulated by FOX News and rightwing radio, and filled with haters suffering from a “sickness”—that is, when its representatives aren’t being obfuscatory and cleverly disguising their pernicious, non-normative memes as somehow just a difference of political, strategic, or tactical opinion rather than as a CANCER to proper and civilized discourse, which is what those views truly are (particularly when Mona or Greenwald gets to define those parameters).

Which is why, while free speech is well and good in theory, in practice, engaging the political speech or ideas of “the right” (of which I and BRD are representatives) is to give credence to poison and hate and to spread the pathogen of their ideas, and so it is the goal of Mona and Greenwald, et al., to SAVE DISCOURSE ITSELF from those vile, maniacal, deranged, absurd, contemptuous, pathological, gross, foul blah blah blah puppets clever enough to try to use obfuscatory language and code-words to infect people far less sensitive to our gambits than Mona, Greewald, and others like them—who, thank heavens! are able to see through the lies and save simple, good-hearted, innocent Americans from being caught in our AWFUL RHETORICAL SNARES!

Gee.  I hope somebody is appreciative enough to send you a card, Mona! 

And here I thought those two couldn’t find a way to become MORE arrogant.

Incidentally, in a separate post, Jim Henley characterizes my “blogging persona” as

a case study in showy overcompensation on the masculinity front […]

Henley grants, though, that while this hypermasculinity may mark me as a pussy, he is not willing to go along with the suggestion that I’m somehow a closeted homosexual for supporting the war in Iraq, or the separation of powers, etc.

For which I’m terribly grateful.

The question of whether or not my blogging persona is “hypermasculine” is of course both dubious and rather reductive—those who read me regularly know that I take great joy in self-deprecation and in ironizing the “personas” others have saddled me (and the “neocon right”) with—but beyond that, there is the implicit suggestion here that rhetorical forcefulness is somehow “masculine”, which means that, as Amanda Marcotte so famously noted, she has more hanging from the vine than do I.

In fact, Henley himself hints at the problem, though his acknowledgment is used as an intellectual crutch:

This is something I’ve struggled with ever since Ginger Stampley and I formed the GAPA Party (Grow a Pair, America!) way back in 2002, back when I wrote an essay called “The Million Mom War.” I concluded, and struggled for a vivid way to say, that the drive for invading Iraq plus all the other countries the hawks wanted to invade was driven by raw, gibbering, “unmanly” fear. Ditto the mania for torture and domestic surveillance. Rank cowardice. Back then I conceived of myself writing for an audience of persuadable right-wingers who probably existed mainly in my own brain, and more than anything I wanted to say, “Don’t act like a bunch of pussies!”

But that’s a problematic discourse, as they say in school, or used to. Construing values of courage and level-headedness as essentially male, stigmatizing the female as and you know the drill.

Of course, it’s only “problematic” if you take the premise of the question seriously, which Henley then pretends to do.

For my part, since I’ve never been a believer in “masculine” vs. “feminine” language (or things like a “Black aesthetic,” to cite yet another attempt at essentializing speech) I think the critique falls flat—though one can see why Henley, who writes in a way that is notoriously dispassionate and aimed at appearing, above all else, eminently “reasonable,” has reason to champion the distinction, despite its logical flaws:  first, it purports to show how he is truly comfortable with his sexuality (none of that crass hypermasculinist “overcompensation” for Jim!—a character trait whose importance to people who believe it a sign of their worth that they have severed ties to “traditional” social roles cannot be overstated, and so is itself a form of “overcompensation”); and second, it serves to differentiate and champion his rhetorical strategies over (what he suggests are) mine.

If Henley wanted his readers to pat him on the back, why the labored artifice?  I mean, why not just come right out and ask?

Or is that somehow, you know, unmanly?

105 Replies to “Reductio ad absurda”

  1. B Moe says:
    March 13, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    Well, hell, this changes everything!  See I was worried because this:

    You are part of the political pathology whose effectiveness I seek to neutralize; dialogue isn’t on my agenda.

    Pretty much requires censorship and oppression, it seems to me, so I was not real happy about that, but you devious bastards left out this part:

    I mean that with no animus or snark

    Which allays my fears completely, I mean a little friendly oppression never hurt anybody, now did it?

  2. Squid says:
    March 13, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    Don’t you know that it’s unkind to shine such a bright light on their “arguments”?  For starters, it shows how transparent they are.

  3. cupcake says:
    March 13, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Anhy male creature who uses words like “hypermasculine” as a pejorative is a metrosexual pussy.

  4. JR says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    Dude, chill on the Mona bash, eh? She’s up to like level 8 on Guitar Hero.  So that kinda offsets the whole label-slinging/speech police thing, you know?

  5. PMain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Mona,

    Fear not baby-cakes, the word ”excitement” & you will never, ever, ever be combined in action, thought or deed here at PW. However, Henley in his “hypermasculine” line of projection exerts the classic symptoms of being closeted… who knows, maybe you might “excite” him enough to garner another possible mixed-sexual marriage or more? Me, why after I finish my double decaf chai mocha latte, will don my spandex workout suit & re-watch Hooper while perfecting my squats, because nothing says hetero-normal like a firm pair of gluts or unjustified ad hom attacks, while refusing to engage in rational debate. To my shame, I just wish I was half the man you are or Jim claims to be.

  6. syn says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    I admit I was snarky with regard to Clinton and the Monicagate but not as one of those Mona- perceived vile and nasty right-wingers since at the time the only thing I knew about right wingers was that Rush Limbaugh was a right winger out to destroy America (I live in NYC).

    I was snarky with the fact that NOW (National Organization of Women) circled their wagon around a notorious ‘male chauvinist pig’ named Bill Clinton.  At the time I considered myself a ‘feminist’ but when NOW embraced the every thing they claimed to detest, I lost all faith in the thing called feminism.  NOW’s betrayal of their beliefs lead me to question their motives and in my discovery I found much of what I had believed in was bullshit based upon lies.

    Though I was unaware of my transition to becoming a right-winger when NOW betrayed me, it certainty was 9/11/2001 which compelled me to pull my head out of my liberally induced self-serving narcissism and realize that for most of my life I believed in a movement driven by self-serving narcissist.

    Stepping outside of the narcissistic circle I have seen what I once was and am ashamed for having been so gullible, naive, and sheepish.

    We all grow up at some point in our lives, even at the age of fourty.

  7. Dan Collins says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    I wrote a Kristevan analysis of Blue Lagoon once.  The feminists I read it to told me that it was technically correct, but it lacked the proper feeling.

  8. BoZ says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    ;

    RAPE!

  9. Lost My Cookies says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:39 pm

    How can someone who exhorts Americans to “grow a pair” and calls people cowards and “afraid” indict the group here of “hypermasculinization” whatever the hell that is?  Is that a joke?

    And finally, based on that whole “grow a pair” business, if you suspect someone of trying to kill you, and you do nothing, is that brave or foolish?  I mean, really, how positively Victorian.

  10. tachyonshuggy says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    The “right” is “vile,” “base,” “obnoxious,” “puerile,” “fevered,” “repugnant,” “maniacal,” “deranged,” “absurd,” “contemptuous,” “pathological,” “gross,” “outrageous,” “foul,”

    You forgot “dehumanized.”

  11. RC says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Syn,

    Welcome to the world.  Your rebirth will, most likely result far more happiness than you ever had the chance for before.  Seems like the NOW crowd and the other usual suspects feed on the misery of their true believers.

    So the thesis here is that “Manliness” is described by standing stock still and letting bad people have their way with you and those you hold dear.  Hmmm…and here I always thought that was the definition of cowardice.

    As to Mona, too bad nobody can lift off those beer goggle like blinders she has over her eyes.

  12. Sigivald says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    One wonders what Henley believes the motive for America’s entry into WW2 was.

    “Fear” of continued Japanese attacks?

    “Fear” of Hitlerism (is it was commonly called) being a significant threat to, well, decent Western civilization, what with that whole “taking over Europe” thing?

    People who are “pussies” don’t fight back; they roll over, but the distinction must be too subtle to grasp, I guess.

    (The “manly” reaction to fear is to act to remove or otherwise alter its source, not to pretend it’s not a threat.

    The “pussy” without “a pair” is the one who does the latter.

    But, again, too subtle a distinction for anyone but the vast majority of mankind.

    Henley can argue that the threat in this case was mis-identified or thought to be larger than it was; but given the information available, he can’t claim there was nothing to “fear”, and still be held credible.)

    (TW: Year98. As in, perhaps, 1998 – as in the year that the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed, by people who obviously had nothing to do with anything else, ever, and certainly weren’t Al Quaeda, no matter what the US thought at the time, under non-warmongering pair-haver William Jefferson Clinton.)

  13. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    Puerile?  I thought it was kind of funny.  But, as an aside, in the “puerile” post of which she speaks, noting that I had linked her comments directly, I recapped her comments here, with edits to try to tone down the language a bit so she didn’t sound so terribly, terribly screechy.

    Now, as a matter of ‘journalist’ ethics, in doing so, and noting that I had pointed it out at the time, was that an unethical use of the ellipsis?

    BRD

  14. RC says:
    March 13, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    As a thought experiment, how about this:

    Relating to a small section in Robert Heinleins’s Starship Troopers (you should like this, N.O’Brain), if Mona could be made sane and really see the world around her, would she be able to live with the things she has done and the things she has enabled through supporting evil?  Would she turn into a true convert, bent on correcting all the woes she and her kind have created, or would she simply give it up.

  15. happyfeet says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    having supported Clinton … does not give Mona pause.

    Mona pause

    heh.

    For my part, I’ve never been a believer in “masculine” vs. “feminine” language…

  16. The Sanity Inspector says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    I’ve long been concerned about creeping hyper-masculinity on Protein Wisdom, and did my part to combat it late last year.  Not that Jeff is responsible for what us guest-bloggers get up to, of course. Except when we’re all in the same petri dish with the other right-wing pathogens.

  17. N. O'Brain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:04 pm

    And leftists wonder why I always refer to them as reactionaries.

    It sounds like she could be a member of the Spanish Inquisition, hunting down heretics, Muslims and Jews.

  18. markg8 says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    I’ve been here less than a week and I can tell you a few things I find objectionable. Trying to extrapolate views I don’t hold from something I wrote. That was a pretty cheap shot from Jeff.

    BDR’s habit of ignoring what I’ve written previously to claim I’m only looking at one side of an issue. And doing it again when I answer other sides of it. It gets exasperating when a guy who’s down to exploring slathering corpses in pig lard as a deterrent to nuclear jihadism plays shell games like that. Maybe he has a attention deficit thing, I dunno.

    But for the rest of it, enticing Mona or anyone else from the left to debate how many Muslims or Arabs have to be killed until you feel safe or they all agree to become Republican financial donors or something – and there’s no assurances there either – you’ll have to forget about it. It’s not just the rhetorical tactics I site above and Mona objects to, it’s the premises you guys start from.

    I mean c’mon, terrorists might take out New York, should we take out the whole damn umma now or wait for X number of bombs to go off? Because it’s obvious there’s nothing we can or have the will to do to stop them. Should we feel icky bad or just look at it as a practical exercise of American military might we can all reluctantly get behind?

  19. J. Peden says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:09 pm

    In Mona’s case it’s becoming pretty clear that, try as they might, the bats can never even hope to escape the Belfry.

  20. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    Your entire ouervre is filled with cheap shots, mark.  You came in here blasting, and you wonder why we returned fire.

    And speaking of extrapolating views from something no one wrote, I believe this

    enticing Mona or anyone else from the left to debate how many Muslims or Arabs have to be killed until you feel safe or they all agree to become Republican financial donors or something – and there’s no assurances there either – you’ll have to forget about it.

    is a fine performative.

    The premises to which you claim to object are hypotheticals that we think worth discussion.  You aren’t required to read them.  But to couch them as bloodlust rather than the “contingency planning” your ilk is always on about is disingenuous.

    And to state that your goal is to devalue that speech by dehumanizing its purveyors rather than by addressing its assertions is about as anti-liberal as any of the more cherished progressive maneuvers.

    If you don’t accept our premises, Mark, then say so and be on your way.  Why do you feel the need to engage if, as with Mona, you don’t believe what we write is worth engaging?

  21. MarkD says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:14 pm

    If people dishonestly left out my ellipses, I’d threaten to leave the country.  Take away their right to vote.  Put them in concentration camps.  Shoot their pets.

    You’d think the lack of ellipses caused Global Warming, the way she carries on.  I have every intention of continuing to mock stuffed pansies wherever they hide.  I’m easily amused and Syracuse is not in the tournament.

  22. mishu says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:14 pm

    Stoicism=manliness

    No wonder they embrace this Stoic philosphy towards terrorism. It doesn’t matter if they die, they’re dead inside already.

  23. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    MarkG8,

    I apologize, for my part, for any failings I’ve had in engaging you substantively.  I think part of the problem behind some of the mutual frustration is that blog comments are inherently low-bandwidth, and the volley-to-volley nature of the comments, which works in personal conversation, gets lost in poor turn around times and slow input.

    Believe it or not I’ve not answered at length, the engagement of you, and others, both directly and indirectly, has been shaping my thinking about the issue.  Granted, I’m still probably not going anywhere near your end analysis, but it is having an effect – even some of the reductive and absurd comments I get from here and elsewhere.

    I guess part of what animates a lot of my response to folks such as yourself, is that it seems that issues come in baskets.  I ask about procurement and your first response out of the gate references the ‘useless’ F-22, ‘deathtrap’ V-22, and so on.  And frankly, these descriptions and some of the positions I’ve seen you take seem purely reflexive.

    I mean, for instance (and these next two questions are purely rhetorical), what role does the lifetime development cycle, the role of lead systems integrators, technology development cycles, and industrial defense base preservation (particularly in the post-consolidation era) play in the utility of the F-22?  How does tilt-rotor technology play into developments of guided missile technology and ‘over the horizon’ and the development of AAAV, or the restructuring of the Army into UoAs affect strategic force redeployment priorities?

    These are all difficult questions, so when, seemingly out of nowhere, you bring up two complex systems with long, complex histories, and just trash them out of, what appears to be nothing more than pure reflex, it led me to believe that many of your reactions would be purely knee-jerk.

    This all being said and done, however, my personal experience online has given me confidence that if you and I and others stick at it and remain civil, folks can establish a sense of personality behind the handle, which then allows for something that looks a lot more like genuine conversation.  You might not be able to make a point stick the first time around – Lord knows, if we could, people would have stopped blogging years ago – but, if you keep at it, bring new data, engage in good faith, and work on it, maybe a point can be made.

    Then again, YMMV, but hey, that’s life.

    BRD

  24. J. Peden says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    “Because it’s obvious there’s nothing we can or have the will to do to stop them.

    Gee, markg8, I kinda object to that premise, except as it applies to you, of course. And your premise is the problem, in my humble opinion, not merely the difference.

  25. Squid says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    As far as I can tell, the serious strategic thinkers (including our host and some of the inmates here, myself included) have spent the past five years or so trying to come to grips with the new world order, trying to figure out how to reshape U.S. geopolitical strategy to maximize domestic security and minimize the chance of all-out war.

    The nightmare scenario is one where a U.S. city is obliterated by a nuclear device.  Such an event would precipitate a terrible reaction, since the population would demand retribution, and our feckless Congress would fall over themselves authorizing—nay, demanding—that the President carry out such retribution with all haste.

    So we contemplate ways to avoid this.  Some of the options are horrible in their own right, yet less horrible than the nightmare scenario.  Nevertheless, every option merits inclusion in the debate, if only so that the community can see the advantages and costs explicitly stated for each alternative.

    How does one get from “nightmare scenario to be avoided” to how many Muslims or Arabs have to be killed until you feel safe?  Furthermore, how does one, after going through such contortions, dare to accuse one’s rivals of engaging in a “cheap shot,” to borrow another phrase from our visitor?

    Alas, but these mysteries may never be solved…

  26. happyfeet says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    It gets exasperating when a guy who’s down to exploring slathering corpses in pig lard as a deterrent to nuclear jihadism plays shell games like that.

    I thought that was steve’s idea. I think the idea started here though and has kinda just evolved.

  27. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    markg8;

    All of that is just swell but none of it reflects in any manner, shape or form the intention or the conclusion in any of BRD’s posts (or Jeff’s for that matter.) Either you are being willfully partisan or simply lack the grey matter to discern real meaning from those posts.

    You can, of course, continue to post comments that show your ass and bleat your contempt for everything that “conservatives” stand for (even as you cartoonishly paint with Bugs Bunny’s broad brush all of the varied participants in this wacky village) and then have the temerity to complain that neither BRD or Jeff are paying you enough attention (poor baby!) You and Mona have demonstrated your arrogance by being less concerned with the ideas than in denigrating the individuals, a point that has been made countless times by countless contributors (both posters and commentators.) It simply doesn’t matter. The messenger is flawed, evil and corrupt on the basis of his views, as broadly misrepresented by you and mona. Therefore any and all interaction will be determined by rules set by you for your benefit and all others will knuckle down.

    How very Stalinist of you.

    A word of advise: if your goal in engaging an online community is to clearly, from the start, declare your utter contempt for them as some self defined group insanity and dismiss them en mass, then don’t expect to be treated like the king of discourse in the process.

    Because, if you play nice, as BRD has done, you may get pie.

  28. alphie says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:48 pm

    Every ten months or so, Protein Wisdom needs to pick up some small crappy little blog and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.

    The Goldstein Doctrine

  29. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    Which small, crappy little blog are you talking about, alphie?

  30. Major John says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    Let me lay it on the line,

    Jeff had two on the vine.

    I mean two sets of testicles so devine.

    On a horse made of crystal he patrolled the land

    With a Mason ring and armadillo in his perfect hands…ooh!

    Goldstein, Gollllddstein.

    Six foot-twenty #$&*ing killing for fun

    I have no idea where that came from.  Maybe it is time for me to go home from work now.

    Jeff, with foes like yours, I would be might secure in what I was doing.  And so should you be.

  31. Ric Locke says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    Coming in a little late —

    …was that an unethical use of the ellipsis?

    Well, of course it was. I mean, the specific offense is trivial; what has happened here is that Glenns Greenwalds have DECREED the REVEALED TRVTH, and their acolytes have graciously condescended from the Olympian Heights of Pure Goodness™© to inform you. Your only “ethical” option was/is to tug your forelock, murmur “yassuh”, and slink away, to hide in whatever fetid hole you may inhabit and contemplate your deficiencies. Isn’t it obvious?

    Regards,

    Ric

  32. alphie says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    Never heard of ‘em before this hubbub started.

    Alexa says they aren’t even in the top 100,000 traffic ranking.

  33. Lost My Cookies says:
    March 13, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    Isn’t it obvious

    It was a total ellipsis of the heart.

  34. Major John says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:00 pm

    Never heard of ‘em before this hubbub started.

    And that’s all that matters, eh?  Whether you had heard of them…not all the others that read it.

    What’s the word I am looking for…?  Conceit.

  35. Dan Collins says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    I’d have said solipsism, but conceit’s good.

  36. cynn says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Some of the options are horrible in their own right, yet less horrible than the nightmare scenario.

    … Just out of curiosity, what are some of those options?  I may have missed that discussion.

  37. N. O'Brain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Solipsism.

    Maybe.

    Because alpo really IS alone in his own little universe.

    Of course idiot works, too.

  38. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:10 pm

    Jim Henley occasionally writes for Reason magazine, alphie.  I’m a subscriber.

    Besides, I was challenging the ideas presented there, not commenting on his blog’s popularity—though were you to ask around rather than using yourself as the center of the universe, you’d find that Henley is well-regarded in certain circles.

    Mona, on the other hand, is simply Greenwald run through some cheesecloth.

  39. J. Peden says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    It was a total ellipsis of the heart.

    And nearly Faster than the speed of sleight.

  40. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    Mona, on the other hand, is simply Greenwald run through some cheesecloth.

    Hee, hee, thank you for that.

    Is that what it takes to create a Mona reduction? Or …  will we have to slow boil for a while?

  41. ed says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:22 pm

    Hmmm.

    @ Jeff

    I had no idea back in the 1990’s that being snarky would somehow lead to the end of civilization as we know it.

    Wish I had.  Then I could’ve been snarky *and* appeared cool to the ladies ‘cause then I would’ve been a bad boy and we all know how women love bad boys.

    Well unless they’re all Riech-Wing and shit so I guess I lose again.

    …

    On a more serious note.  Doesn’t this shit make your head hurt?  I swear trying to follow the crazy-ass logic of lefties makes my brain want to explode.

  42. kelly says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:24 pm

    Never heard of ‘em before this hubbub started.

    Apologies for the lack of attribution but some one’s comment last week was priceless (paraphrasing): alpee demonstrates signs of acute narcissism; if he’s never heard of something it doesn’t exist.

  43. ThePolishNizel says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    I have always thought that line about the people who actually engage terrorists AND their benefactors as pussies is pure projection.  Like someone else mentioned, isn’t the person that ACTUALLY fights back NOT the pussy?  It seems to me that the real pussies (if there are any real pussies in this scenario) are the ones who are deathly afraid of rattling the lion’s cage.  The problem (among many) that the likes of mona, gigi, markg8 and others have is that they FEEL (remember FEELING is all that really matters) that the rethuglikkkans, and classical liberals with a more muscular foreign policy, want to kill ALL Muslims.  Obviously that is complete BS.  As everyone in here agrees, the struggle against islamofascist pieces of shit has to be countered using a multi-pronged defense and YES some offense.

    Killing the islamofascist pieces of shit is great and probably will be a life long endeavor for the next couple of generations.  Capturing the heart and mind of the moderate Muslim is just as important.  Because, imo, it will ONLY be through them that the islamofascist piece of shit, ultimately, is brought to his knees.  However, it doesn’t help the situation when the useful idiots (mona, gigi, maybe markg8, etc…) can’t even understand that simple principle.  To them, ALL republicans really want to kill ALL Muslims.  Or is it all Arabs?  Oh, I don’t know, but they FEEL that we want to kill all of some race/religion/culture.  And as long as they FEEL that way, nothing else matters.

  44. BC says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    What’s absolutely hilarious about Henley accusing anyone of being “unmanly” is that he’s an old-school D&D nerd. Uh, projection, much, Jimmy?

    Further, if anybody’s guilty of “showy overcompensation”, it’s Henley, via his ongoing attempts on his blog to affect erudition as a substitute for reason. The last four years of his blog entries can be summarized by the tired old “war is the health of the state” libertarian trope lavished with haughty contempt for the Evil Hawkish Warmongers who are the villains in his psychodrama.

    The guy’s as dumb as a box of hammers, and twice as boring: if you cloned Greg Djerejian, shoved a copy of The Fountainhead up his ass, and then gave him a full frontal lobotomy, Henley’s approximately what you’d end up with. Engaging him just gives him the attention that he craves, and dignifies his idiotic braying.

  45. N. O'Brain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    From

    “The Moral Emptiness of the Left”

    By James Lewis

    The greatest disappointment since 9/11/01 has been the total moral vacuity of the Left —— a complete and utter nullity —— both here and in Europe. Today, five years later, psychological denial still rules the day, and the few Democrats who raise their heads above the screaming mob are chased out, like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.

    One—third of American voters are still being suckered by the left—wing media, who live in some sort of Toon—Town where you can Have your Cake and Eat it Too, where Lunches are Free and Health Care is Too, and where there are no ideological killer movements in this world, and to achieve World Peace you just have to point your finger at the “Warmongers” and scream really loud. The Left is now populated by “mewling, puking infants,” as William Shakespeare put it, utterly lacking an understanding of the world as it is

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/09/the_moral_emptiness_of_the_lef.html

  46. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:31 pm

    Cynn,

    I don’t think that, in terms of the lesser options that anything specific has been hammered out quite yet, but I’ve got a few notions that I’m thinking through and when I get a bit of time, I’ll try to put something together.  Right now, the state of comments in the discussion is the question of deterrence through holding something at threat with a greater political or societal value, rather than through a purely destruction-based deterrence.

    BRD

  47. markg8 says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:31 pm

    Why so defensive Jeff? Look, the whole world is discussing how the US will get out of Iraq. The left blogosphere is discussing how long it is before Gonzales is fired or resigns in disgrace and whether or not that latest scandal will bring down Bush.

    None of those things or all of those things might happen. I don’t even know what Mona or Hendley are talking about these days. But I’m sure their topics du jour are more important to them than your nuking the world scenarios. You can understand then why they might think changing the subject to your nightmares isn’t of interest. You match that up with your proclivity to twist the argument not so honestly the way you’d like it and it’s no wonder they don’t want to play. Why should you be upset that you’re being shunned by lefty bloggers? Are you afraid you’re getting the FOX News treatment?

    Don’t be such a WATB.

  48. E. Nough says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:32 pm

    You operate from assumptions I find politically dangerous and which it is among my goals to render impotent in the national conversation.

    Thoughtcrime is back.

  49. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    Alphie,

    Honestly, I wouldn’t have bothered with this silliness if the response had been – as KC and others did get around to – something along the lines of “Well, you may have valid concerns, or good points, but the tone – swinging right out of the gate – isn’t going to get far.  Now, if you’re willing to to view the assertions made here that you’re some sort of psycho as just being nonsense not worth your engagement, and write something up that tackles this in a more moderate tone, I’ll be willing to read through it and provide whatever constructive commentary I have.”

    But, when the link to the post is busy telling me that The “right” is “vile,” “base,” “obnoxious,” “puerile,” “fevered,” “repugnant,” “maniacal,” “deranged,” “absurd,” “contemptuous,” “pathological,” “gross,” “outrageous,” “foul,”, in addition to the assertion that I’m some sort of dangerous foul beast for whom even discussion is beyond the pale, well, I can’t say that I was super inclined to just turn around and walk off.

    Shallow?  Foolish?

    Most likely.

    Human?

    Very.

    BRD

  50. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:39 pm

    <blockquote>But I’m sure their topics du jour are more important to them than your nuking the world scenarios. </blockquote

    Jeff;

    Is it just me or is our leetle friend not reading the comments and barely reading the posts. All I can see is the needle stuck on the same mischaracterization groove of your views.

    It could, however, just be the green tea with ginseng talking…

  51. alphie says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:45 pm

    BRD,

    Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

    – Jonathan Kozol

  52. Aldo says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:46 pm

    I had this same discussion with Mona in the comments to Jim Henley’s March 11th Post entitled “Puiss-Ants” (sorry, can’t hyperlink).

    Here, the gang at Unqualified Offerings rationalizes that it would be OK for them to begin labelling as fags the people who disagree with them on Iraq.

    I’m working now, and don’t have time to summarize, but in the comments thread Mona elaborates her ideas on these same themes that you are dissecting here.

    I tried to point out to Mona the disconnect:  she is using “Coulterism” as her rationalization; indeed, all of her examples of the type of discourse that she wants to “kill” are from Coulter.  Yet her anger seems to stem from the debate that she has been engaged in with other libertarians, such as the guys at Q and O, who do not share Coulter’s views and who have denounced Coulter’s rhetoric in the strongest terms.

    She gets around this by asserting that “pro-Bush neo-libertarians” are in bed with the “GOP base”, and her mission is to take on the whole right-wing monolith.

    So, anything uttered by the nuttiest religious right conservative can now be imputed to libertarians who disagree with Mona, Greenwald and Henley on Iraq and used as justification for employing Coulter-like rhetoric against them.

  53. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    You match that up with your proclivity to twist the argument not so honestly the way you’d like it and it’s no wonder they don’t want to play.

    Mark, you entered this thread by saying you’ve been here for a week.

    And yet you presume to state, with a straight face, that I have a certain “proclivity”. 

    On what mountain of evidence do you base your thesis?

    Links, please—and annotations, should the “twisting” not be so obvious.

  54. kyle says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    Mona, on the other hand, is simply Greenwald run through some cheesecloth.

    Do we have any evidence Mona isn’t Greenwald(s)?

  55. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    And who says I care about being “shunned by lefty bloggers” (would that it were so!)?

    Instead, I argue that announcing that those “on the right” should be dehumanized rather than debated is anti-liberal.

    Seems to me, Mark, you have “proclivity” for mis-stating my arguments.

  56. Techie says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    Guilt by association is very popular on that side.

    But remember, the Left(tm) is compromised of thousands of individuals with no connections.  Therefore, no actions or thoughts of an individual speaker can be held against the political group.

    However, the Right(tm) is a organizational and idealogical monolith.  Thus, Ann Coulter speaks for me as does Pat Robertson etc. etc.

    People I have debated have actually put forth this type of arguement.  It boggles the mind

  57. J. Peden says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    All I can see is the needle stuck on the same mischaracterization groove of your views.

    A concussion syndrome can do it, significant carbon monoxide poisoning, possibly heavy metal poisoning, drug side-effect, or alcohol intox., unknown otc compounds/constituents, etc.. I guess they’re all waiting for Nat. Health Care before getting it checked out.

  58. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    Do we have any evidence Mona isn’t Greenwald(s)?

    [pokes head up and looks around]

    Well, I don’t see any cabana boys…

  59. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:05 pm

    However, the Right(tm) is a organizational and idealogical monolith.  Thus, Ann Coulter speaks for me as does Pat Robertson etc. etc.

    Jiminy crickets. would it be possible for Jim/Mona/Glenn/markg8/Babalooooo to make me a friggin’ list as to who represents my point of view????

    As long as I fraggin’ know ahead of time because, after all, I’m not capable of determining this on my own and need the help of faux wonk ‘real” conservatives to inform me!!!

    Yeesh!!

  60. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    Pardon my hypermasculinity, but I have to go lift, then take my son and dog to the park.

    On the way, I will refrain from pointing to lesser men and calling them “faggot.”

    Please, though, carry on.

  61. Slartibartfast says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    I mean, why not just come right out and ask?

    You’re not supposed to ask for directions.

  62. Kirk says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    If BRD were Ahmadinijad the whole leftist world would be clambering to have a chance to engage him in a conversation and debate.  For the cause of peace!

    But, then again, Ahmadinejad mostly just threatens Jews.

    So, never mind.

  63. J. Peden says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    All real men cower before pussies.

  64. Just Passing Through says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    What’s the word I am looking for…?  Conceit.

    I’d have said solipsism, but conceit’s good.

    I’d have said sophomoric;

    ‘overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature’

    but conceit and solipsistic work.

  65. A fine scotch says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    All this talk of pussies reminds me of Team America:

    See, there’s three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn’t fuck the assholes, you know what you’d get? You’d get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!

  66. Pablo says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:55 pm

    Major John,

    And that’s all that matters, eh?  Whether you had heard of them…not all the others that read it.

    What’s the word I am looking for…?  Conceit.

    Argumentum ad ignorantiam would fit quites nicely too. Our little alphietross is the master.

  67. kelly says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    I’d be lying if I said that little puerile humor tidbit doesn’t me me smirk, Afs.

    America, fuck yeah!

  68. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    If the collective noun is an “Ostentation of Glenns”, would teh counterpart be a “Litany of Monas”?

  69. Pablo says:
    March 13, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    The left blogosphere is discussing how long it is before Gonzales is fired or resigns in disgrace and whether or not that latest scandal will bring down Bush.

    While at kindergartens across the nation, they’re talking about getting a pony of Christmas.

  70. Just Passing Through says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    markg8,

    You are full of it and your whining about your poor treatment ironical in the extreme.

    You misrepresented both what was being discussed here and why from the start in some tortured attempt to fit it into some comforting ad hominem dismissal of the folks involved. You never once addressed, nor do you now address, the reason BRD started the debate. You weren’t able to get by your preconception the the message must perforce be polluted by the character of the messenger and therefore recast as something other than what the messenger is saying to be interpreted correctly, a la mona.

    You are either very challenged understanding the written word – not at all indicated – or had no intention of entering the debate in good faith with any substantive contributions. You simply assaulted the debaters by assigning them positions they didn’t hold and attributing to them points they weren’t making, again, a la mona. On top of that, you leavened your assault with a hefty dose of schadenfreude that isn’t justified by either current events or much understanding of the polity or politics in general.

    At least alphie doesn’t whine. I suspect that goes back to his being sublimely obtuse and abysmally stupid, which to your credit, are traits you don’t exhibit in the least. Shame too, as they’d at least provide you cover.

  71. SGT Ted says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    You and Mona have demonstrated your arrogance by being less concerned with the ideas than in denigrating the individuals, a point that has been made countless times by countless contributors (both posters and commentators.) It simply doesn’t matter. The messenger is flawed, evil and corrupt on the basis of his views, as broadly misrepresented by you and mona. Therefore any and all interaction will be determined by rules set by you for your benefit and all others will knuckle down.

    Yes and isn’t it refreshing when the Marxoids come out and state flatly what their goal is. Because that’s always been the goal; destroy their ideological opponents, not win the debate. Thats been the goal since the time of Lenin.

  72. Rusty says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    Maniacle hatred? Maniacle hatred, Mona. Ya might want to turn the volume down a little ‘cause we can hear your teeth grinding from here.

  73. BJTexs says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:22 pm

    I tell you the truth; the more I read from the likes of Mona, markg8, gleen, et al the more it sounds like the pontificating urgencies of a tent revival. Drink the kool-aide, give your heart over to Liberal, feel the truthiness, reject the spawn of evil which seeks to deny you basic health care, a decent wage and seeks to rule the world through it’s military/industrial hegemony and brown people imperialism.

    The whole analogy breaks down when I try to substitute something for “PRAISE JESUS!”

    PRAISE … what? Gaia? Chomsky? Markos? What? Somebody help me out here!

  74. dicentra says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:34 pm

    Instead, I argue that announcing that those “on the right” should be dehumanized rather than debated is anti-liberal.

    Speaking of apocalyptic endings, could we be in for some of this?

    “Rarely do people set out to start a civil war. Invariably, when such wars break out both sides consider themselves to be the aggrieved ones. … because nobody is willing to accept the simple idea that someone can disagree with their group and still be a decent human being worthy of respect.”

  75. eLarson says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:44 pm

    Forget the Leftosphere:

    Look, the whole world is…

    And it doesn’t even matter what the topic is.

    The vibe I get from a statement like that is “Why won’t you just cave to the damned peer pressure, already!”

  76. Rick says:
    March 13, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    You operate from assumptions I find politically dangerous and which it is among my goals to render impotent in the national conversation.

    Mona and Glenn have certainly proven themselves to be just the intellectual titan to do it, too.

    We deluded haters are sooooo busted.

    Cordially…

  77. Robert Crawford says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    The vibe I get from a statement like that is “Why won’t you just cave to the damned peer pressure, already!”

    Well, yes.

    And have you ever noticed that they will gin up a cause, promote it until they’re blue in the face, then conduct a poll to see if people are concerned, then use the poll results to show there’s a reason to be concerned?

  78. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    Dicentra –

    Very, very good article.  I think he’s right that both sides of the aisle have grown towards polarization.

    But me?  I’m all sweetness and light! smile

    BRD

  79. markg8 says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    Jeff I don’t need a mountain, all I need to do is read your posts. But specifically the first time we “volleyed” as BRD would say you tried to put words in my mouth claiming I thought Arabs were too stupid to form democratic governments. If that’s how you operate right out of the box with your antagonists I can’t imagine your behavior gets better over time.

    What’s so “dehumanizing” about refusing to take your bait anyway? The point is Jeff you and your ilk have spent the past 5 years on the offensive, ridiculing anyone who dared question the policies of argumentively the worst president we’ve ever had and his lapdogs in congress. You may not like it but those days are gone.

    You are known by the company you keep. You don’t get to pick and choose retroactively which Bush policies you support or Republican cohorts you’ve helped empower anymore than the German people could claim they only followed Hitler for his tax policy. You take Bush you get what happens in Iraq, at Army hospitals, DeLay, Cunningham, Haggard, the whole ball of wormy wax as it gets exposed. Period. 

    We’ll keep hitting you over the head with it as long as it takes. Because that never happened in the 70s and 80s. The pardons of Nixon, Weinberger

    etc left the neocons free to keep coming back like bad pennies. Well they finally arrived in all their glory in 2001 and what a mess it’s been.

    People like Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have taken it upon themselves to make sure people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again. It isn’t easy but it’s good, honorable, necessary work. It’s just the beginning. There’s a long way to go.

  80. McGehee says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    If that’s how you operate right out of the box with your antagonists

    Hey, d’ya think that might be where you went wrong, being an antagonist instead of a guest with something to say?

  81. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:22 pm

    MarkG8,

    You state:

    You are known by the company you keep. You don’t get to pick and choose retroactively which Bush policies you support or Republican cohorts you’ve helped empower anymore than the German people could claim they only followed Hitler for his tax policy.  You take Bush you get what happens in Iraq, at Army hospitals, DeLay, Cunningham, Haggard, the whole ball of wormy wax as it gets exposed. Period.

    Are you sure about that?  Are you really, really, really sure that you want to throw down that particular gauntlet?  Really, really sure?

    There are about 4.7 x 10^8 other things, premises, assertions and so on that you toss in that last comment.  But if you want to get into the headspace of that first comment, you best be willing to take the counterpart argument:

    You are known by the company you keep. You don’t get to pick and choose retroactively which anti-Bush policies you support or anti-Bush cohorts you’ve helped empower anymore than the German people could claim they only followed Hitler for his tax policy. You take BDS you get what happens in Iran, in UN Oil-For-Food Scams, Kim Jong Il, bin Laden, Ahmednejad, the whole ball of wormy wax as it gets exposed. Period.

    I don’t believe that second paragraph is true for one damned instant.  I also am of the – sorely battered as late – belief that dialog in democracy is both possible and essential.

    You may want to click on the link in dicentra’s post above, take a deep breath, and realize if you’re going to make any sort of usable headway, you might not be choosing the most efficacious way of doing so.

    BRD

  82. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:24 pm

    MarkG8,

    Actually, I’m going to take a bit of my own advice and step away for a bit, and refrain from the temptation of disassembling every last line of your comment and beating you roundly about the head and shoulders with it.

    And do you know why?

    It’s not because I’m some uber-Xtian martyr, or I’m too stupid to type.

    It’s because of something you don’t seem to have drifted away from in this thread.

    Screaming Is Not Discussing

    BRD

  83. Aldo says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    You are known by the company you keep. You don’t get to pick and choose retroactively which Bush policies you support or Republican cohorts you’ve helped empower anymore than the German people could claim they only followed Hitler for his tax policy.

    The logical implication is that you are opposed to people making up their own minds on policy issues.  You just want them to support your team.

    No going off the reservation and looking at issues ad hoc!  You might end up favoring something that Republicans support, and that would be the equivalent of empowering Hitler!

  84. Just Passing Through says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    People like Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have taken it upon themselves to make sure people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again. It isn’t easy but it’s good, honorable, necessary work. It’s just the beginning. There’s a long way to go.

    No, a short way. Back into the reality based community’s cocoon.

    Whatever chimera of political power there was after 11/06 is fast fading and the backpedaling of mainstream democrats away from the likes of Greenwald, Mona and their thousands of others more furious by the day. Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have already shifted from crowing in delight in November back into their normal siege mentality. The media, who sees something in the polls that Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others don’t is turning against Pelosi’s pimping for Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others. Pelosi is fighting for her credibility by trying to integrate the delusions of Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others into some kind of legislative accomplishment as promised, but I don’t think it’ll be long before Pelosi succumbs to the inevitable and tosses Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others into the dustbin of history.

    I do like the image of ‘Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others’ though. Gives one a realistic grasp of how shallow the BDS pool really is.

  85. Rick says:
    March 13, 2007 at 9:44 pm

    …how shallow the BDS pool really is.

    Yeah, but that Broome Community College swim team is a force to be reckoned with in the kiddie pool, no?

    Cordially…

  86. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    You know, Ace del Spades might not be all swanky and highbrow like my precious little pretentious self, but I did find this post interesting, especially as a study in comments with respect to this post and the article linked by dicentra.

  87. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:16 pm

    The point is Jeff you and your ilk have spent the past 5 years on the offensive, ridiculing anyone who dared question the policies of argumentively the worst president we’ve ever had and his lapdogs in congress. You may not like it but those days are gone.

    Again, I remind you that you claim to have been here one week.

    Got links for your claims?

    I have, of course, ridiculed some people who “dared” [AT RISK OF BEING TOSSED INTO A SHREDDER, NO LESS!] “question the policies of argumentatively [enjoyed THAT Freudian slip immensely, by the way] “the worst president we’ve ever had and his lapdogs in congress”—but not for questioning the policies so much as for actively agitating against them by way of distortion, lie, and all other manner of bad faith argument.

    Those who have truly questioned Bush’s policies I’ve attempted to engage.  Which is easy, because there are a number of Bush policies I myself have not agreed with.

    You seem to think, Mark, that you are clever enough to show up here, hang out a week, and somehow know everything about me, my soul, my mode of expression, etc.

    Put up or shut up.

  88. Aldo says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:20 pm

    I do like the image of ‘Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others’ though. Gives one a realistic grasp of how shallow the BDS pool really is.

    The question is:  How many are real people and how many are sock puppets?

  89. alphie says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:22 pm

    Brad Goodman: Troy. This circle is you.

    Troy McClure: My god! It’s like you’ve known me all your life

  90. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    MarkG8,

    At the risk of offering unsolicited advice and hopefully not sounding too condescending, if one were to come in here and assert that:

    ‘Once it became absolutely apparent that Iraq was not going to be a 3-week deal, the Bush administration – by then at the very latest – should have started making a widespread move to increase the size of the military (even if it meant delaying a lot of other defense programs), so as to ensure enough troops to do the job and reduce degradation of our military readiness.’

    One could have gone with the assertion that:

    ‘Even if Bush was right in reasons for attacking Iraq, given that domestic support was eroding quickly, he should have backed of, to forestall the possibility that political support would have eroded before the job could be finished.’

    I don’t know, there are a whole host of things.

    I give you credit, for instance, in digging up the info on the container screening in Hong Kong.  I find the concept intriguing and would like to know what practical obstacles to implementation.

    You also, in other threads, have noted that not all no-bid contracts are bad, but those done without proper oversight can be an absolute hazard.

    Far as I can tell, you’re a bit hot out of the gates, but haven’t done that badly – until this thread – of more or less following the plot.

    But, boss, when you unleashed that comment which included “We’ll keep hitting you over the head with it as long as it takes” followed by “People … have taken it upon themselves to make sure people [Bush et al.] and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again. It isn’t easy but it’s good, honorable, necessary work. It’s just the beginning. There’s a long way to go.”

    Well, let’s say that it sounds a lot more like someone constantly simmering, just looking for an excuse to go apeshit and start screaming.

    That ain’t helpful.  Nobody here, there, or anywhere is a saint, but you’ve got to ask yourself if that’s why you’re here, where are you going with it?

    BRD

  91. N. O'Brain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:40 pm

    People like Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have taken it upon themselves to make sure people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again. It isn’t easy but it’s good, honorable, necessary work. It’s just the beginning. There’s a long way to go.

    Posted by markg8 | permalink

    on 03/13 at 03:03 PM

    Oooo, look, our very own pocket Heinrich Himmler.

  92. markg8 says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:48 pm

    BRD he lost me at this:

    Because the national media elite are so uniformly progressive, we keep hearing (in the elite media) about the rhetorical excesses of the “extreme right.” To hear the same media, there is no “extreme left,” just the occasional progressive who says things he or she shouldn’t.

    Go read Kos. Do any of you know he considers himself a libertarian too? Do you know he cut his political chops canvassing for Henry Hyde when he was 17? No? You people don’t know any of that shit

    and neither does that clown because you don’t go to his site. You mock “Kos kids” even though the median age of people there is 44.

    I, at least show up at places like this. Oh your buddy is right on one point. I can see how cloistered we are on the left just as well as I see it on the right. I have no delusions about how I’m going to fit in at sites like this. I am an antagonist no matter what I write here or how I couch it. I have no desire to make nice but most of them time I’m civil because it works better.

    But sometimes after reading stuff like this and this and this I get frustrated. Go read those articles. That kid in the second story, Toney lives about 5 miles from me.

    Now maybe you’d like to rub your chin a little more and pedantically lecture me again about lifetime development cycles, industrial defense base preservation, the utility of the F-22 when nobody we’re going to fight in the next 20 years can touch let alone match any fighter we have now and how tilt-rotor technology for a goddam program the Marines themselves wanted to kill is important and deploying – not developing – deploying a missile system that doesn’t even work is a good idea when we shortshrift medical care and body armor for the soldiers who are actually fighting for us.

    I’m not buying it because frankly that kind of talk is just shilling for the defense industry at the expense of our military.

    It’s partisan bullshit at it’s most extreme and will cripple the services as badly or worse as they were in the 1970s and makes your nightmare nuclear exchange much more likely. It’s how Bin Laden hopes we bankrupt ourselves.

  93. rooster says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    I’m Time’s Man of the Year and I caused global warming.

  94. Bravo Romeo Delta says:
    March 13, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    MarkG8,

    Next time I’m in your neck of the woods (you know Kos went to Northeastern NEIU?) I owe you a beer.

    You’ve said the two things I can’t agree with any more about:

    “I, at least show up at places like this. Oh your buddy is right on one point. I can see how cloistered we are on the left just as well as I see it on the right. I have no delusions about how I’m going to fit in at sites like this.”

    And…

    “It’s partisan bullshit at it’s most extreme and will cripple the services as badly or worse as they were in the 1970s and makes your nightmare nuclear exchange much more likely. It’s how Bin Laden hopes we bankrupt ourselves.”

    We may fight like cats and dogs, but you’re right on the Big Essentials.

    BRD

  95. N. O'Brain says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    I’m not buying it because frankly that kind of talk is just shilling for the defense industry at the expense of our military.

    Posted by markg8 | permalink

    on 03/13 at 04:48 PM

    hey, henrich, just a heads up: I heard the same kind of bullshit carping during the Regan years.

    And guess what? Every one of those reactionary leftists critics were proved wrong, wrong, wrong.

    Your posts are like reruns of “As The Meme Turns”.

  96. dicentra says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:04 pm

    BRD he lost me at this:

    <blockquote>Because the national media elite are so uniformly progressive, we keep hearing (in the elite media) about the rhetorical excesses of the “extreme right.” To hear the same media, there is no “extreme left,” just the occasional progressive who says things he or she shouldn’t.

    Go read Kos. Do any of you know he considers himself a libertarian too? Do you know he cut his political chops canvassing for Henry Hyde when he was 17? No? You people don’t know any of that shit

    and neither does that clown because you don’t go to his site. You mock “Kos kids” even though the median age of people there is 44. </blockquote>

    Dewd, I’m not sure how the second paragraph follows the first. Card is right when he says that, in the MSM, there is no such thing as “extreme left.” I defy you to find any MSM broadcast where a radio talk-show host has been described as “left-wing” or an author as “liberal” or anyone, anyone at all on the left who is identified as such. On the other hand, anytime someone on the right appears in the MSM, it’s “Conservative Pundit Mark Steyn” or “Right-Wing Talk-Show Host Hugh Hewitt.” Modifiers on the right (because they’re different from normal) but none on the left (because they’re normal.  Had I the resources, I’d count the times myself.

    I’m not sure what Kos has to do with this. Kos isn’t the MSM. And calling them “Kos Kids” is, yes, a way of making fun of them, because we know that they’re roughly the same age as we are.

    Can you help me with this? Why did Card lose you when he talked about the MSM as being easier on the left than on the right?

  97. Major John says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    People like Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have taken it upon themselves to make sure people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again.

    Oooh, another word comes to mind.  Delusion.

    I find your military analysis unpersuasive when you proclaim your ability to know what anyone we would possibly fight in the next 20 years will have.  The idea is to stay ahead of what everyone has or will have when that time comes.  You seem to argue a Gary Hart 1980s navy strategy…

    I prefer to be much better armed, protected and able to hit targets with discrimination.  Unless you’d rather we simply play out the Russian Air Force vs Grozny scenario from here on out.

  98. dicentra says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:06 pm

    What, Jeff, no embedded blockquote tags? That sux!

    TW: So I’d be able41 to quote within quotes. PIMF!

  99. Jeff Goldstein says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:09 pm

    See, had you been here longer that one week, Mark—and had you done any research into the site on which you were commenting—you’d know that some of us have been around long enough to count Matt Yglesias, Poorman (Andrew Northrup), and Atrios as among our early commenters, and that yes, we do, in fact, know what Kos claims.

    The first step toward your rehabilitation will be to lose the preconceptions and just listen to the give and take that goes on here.

    Because it does. 

    It only stops, ironically, when aggressive “antagonists” like you pop in and immediately start pigeonholing everyone here as some cartoon out of the imagination of Greenwald, Mona, etc.

    Look closely, though (that is, stay longer than a week), and you’ll see who is and who is not a cartoon.

    Greenwald could not be any more predictable.  And Mona?  I honestly don’t care—except that she went after a conscientious and unduly fair guest poster here and tried to tar him with a brush that she means for me.

    She’s a posturing demagogue.  And if you wish to escape the same fate, you’d be advised to treat people here in a way that is cordial, and you’ll get very substantive responses in turn.

  100. Patrick Chester says:
    March 13, 2007 at 11:19 pm

    markg8 stated:

    People like Greenwald, Mona and thousands of others have taken it upon themselves to make sure people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their supplicants are driven from power and never rise again. It isn’t easy but it’s good, honorable, necessary work. It’s just the beginning. There’s a long way to go.

    Ah, a purge. How quaint.

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