The criticism focused on articles in The New York Times concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program and, to a lesser extent, on disclosures in The Washington Post about secret C.I.A. prisons overseas.
Some Republicans on the committee advocated the criminal prosecution of The Times. Their comments partly echoed and partly amplified recent statements by
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Justice Department had the authority to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information. . . .
"I believe the attorney general and the president should use all of the power of existing law to bring criminal charges," said Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona.
Several members of the Committee pointed out that the U.S. is not a country which imprisons journalists for stories which they publish about controversial government actions:
Democratic members of the committee, while praising the role of the press in informing citizens, responded only indirectly to the comments concerning The Times. Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said she was disturbed by Mr. Gonzales's statements.
"If anyone here wants to imprison journalists," Ms. Harman said, "I invite them to spend some time in China, Cuba or North Korea and see whether they feel safer."
This was the same Jane Harman who went on Meet the Press on February 12 and strongly implied that she favored prosecution of the Times for informing Americans about the warrantless eavesdropping program, leading many Bush followers to celebrate the fact that the ranking Democrat on the Committee made clear that she advocated prosecution of the Times. But perhaps between then and now, someone explained to Harman that while there are countries that imprison journalists for stories they write about the Government (Harman's examples of China, Cuba and North Korea are good ones), America isn't one of them.
National Review Contributing Editor Jonathan Adler this week wrote a very thorough article in NR explaining what ought not need explanation -- that these increasingly strident calls among "conservatives" to put journalists in jail are squarely contrary to the most fundamental American political values and traditions (emphasis in original):
Such a prosecution would be unprecedented, as the federal government has never criminally prosecuted a journalist for publishing classified information.
We do not mean to minimize the negative diplomatic fallout that Priest’s reporting [about the CIA's "black prisons"] might have caused. It is certainly possible that her stories made it more difficult for the United States to obtain the cooperation of foreign governments in the war on terror. Yet if this is the sort of injury that can trigger liability under the Espionage Act, then many reporters who have disclosed embarrassing, classified information are equally guilty. Just consider all of Bill Gertz’s stories in the Washington Times about the Clinton administration’s national-defense and diplomatic missteps. Were these stories criminal? . . . .
The Founding Fathers understood that a free and independent press is critical to self-governance and to the constitutional order they established. The Constitution states that Congress “shall make no law” abridging the freedom of the press. This mandate is clear and unmistakable. The press should be free to publish news reports without fear that Congress will criminalize those publications.
As one can say for so many core American political principles, the U.S. Government under 42 different Presidents has thrived and defended the nation for 220 years without the need to imprison journalists for the stories they publish, but the Bush administration is the first to claim that it has to dismantle these liberties because it is too weak -- and America is too weak -- to maintain national security unless we radically change the kind of country we are.
And, quite relatedly, we come to this story which claims, based exclusively on anonymous federal law enforcement sources: "Federal investigators say they have evidence that former Chicago street gang member Jose Padilla was a higher ranking member of Al Qaeda than first thought." The entire article is based on the anonymous claims of "federal authorities" -- i.e., those trying to imprison Padilla for life (and just incidentally, why would a newspaper grant anonymity to federal prosecutors to make allegations against a criminal defendant, all in order to publish a one-sided story?).
Among the crowd which has long been ready to string up U.S. citizen Jose Padilla without bothering to even charge him with a crime (literally based exclusively on the President's decree that he is A Terrorist), this story has created a lynching frenzy, somehow increasing the urgency to leave him in a black hole with no due process. Here is what Jeff Goldstein, one of the most intense enemies of American values, oozed out upon reading this story (emphasis added):
Wow. Just, like...wow . . .
Which, Christ, when I think how many earnest people, in advance of having all of the information, agitated on behalf of this guy’s “civil liberties”—civil liberties he had every intention of using to help wage war against the US (which is why we need to have a serious debate on both how it is best, legally, to handle home grown combatants, and how to use the military tribunal process)—I get that same foul taste in my mouth I used to get whenever I’d hear Wesley Clark talk about, well, everything, now that I think about it.
All the Government has to do is utter the words "Al Qaeda" and it's enough, literally, to cause some people to start swooning with glee and open-mouthed wonderment. Needless to say, multiple America-hating commenters at Jeff's blog expressed outrage that the U.S. Government finally charged Padilla with crimes after holding him for 3 1/2 years in solitary confinement based solely on the President's unreviewed accusations.
That's how this group of Bush followers thinks America is supposed to work. If you are a U.S. citizen, the President can unilaterally order you abducted and imprisoned; does not have to charge you with any crime; can block you from speaking with anyone, including a lawyer; can keep you incarcerated indefinitely (meaning forever); and can deny you the right to any judicial review of your imprisonment or any mechanism for challenging the accuracy of the accusations. And oh - while it would be nice if we could preserve all of that abstract lawyer nonsense about the right to a jury trial and all that, we're really scared that Al Qaeda is going to kill us, so we can't.
Here is what Antonin Scalia said in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in explaining why the Constitution bars the Government from imprisoning U.S. citizens without a trial:
The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive. . . .
The gist of the Due Process Clause, as understood at the founding and since, was to force the Government to follow those common-law procedures traditionally deemed necessary before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property.
When a citizen was deprived of liberty because of alleged criminal conduct, those procedures typically required committal by a magistrate followed by indictment and trial. See, e.g., 2 & 3 Phil. & M., c. 10 (1555); 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §1783, p. 661 (1833) (hereinafter Story) (equating “due process of law” with “due presentment or indictment, and being brought in to answer thereto by due process of the common law”). The Due Process Clause “in effect affirms the right of trial according to the process and proceedings of the common law.” Ibid. See also T. Cooley, General Principles of Constitutional Law 224 (1880) (“When life and liberty are in question, there must in every instance be judicial proceedings; and that requirement implies an accusation, a hearing before an impartial tribunal, with proper jurisdiction, and a conviction and judgment before the punishment can be inflicted” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
As Scalia makes so clear -- but shouldn't need to -- if there is any defining American principle, it is that the President can't throw U.S. citizens in jail without charges and a trial. Since the 13th Century Magna Carta, not even the British King could do that. But there are virtually no American political principles left which are not being called into question, if not overtly attacked, by Bush followers. Prohibitions on torture, the right to a jury trial, the obligation of the President to obey the law, the right of the press to publish stories without criminal prosecution -- all of the values which have distinguished this country and defined who we are as a nation for the last two centuries are all being debated and assaulted.
What do you do with people who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct? People like this plainly do not embrace, or comprehend, even the most basic principles of what America is.
Glenn asks: What do you do with Americans who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
ReplyDeleteWhen they constitute the legislature, you put them out to pasture. To say the least.
"I believe the attorney general and the president should use all of the power of existing law to bring criminal charges," said Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona.
ReplyDeletei saw that hearing. the very fact that they were having it disturbed me.
he got into it with jonathan turley too. who expressed the notion that sometimes bad policies lead to illegal tatics, haditha, abu grahib... i though renzi was going to blow a gasket. and turley seemed a very lonely man...
i don't know why, but doesn't much feel like america with the republicans in charge.
Glenn, these demagogues are just reflecting the beliefs and understanding of their voters. Sadly enough, a recent poll shows that a significant minorty of Americans think the press should have moderate to severe restrictions on its freedom:
ReplyDelete* Only 14% of Americans – and only 57% of journalists – can name freedom of the press as a right in the First Amendment.
* 43% of Americans believe the press has “too much freedom,” while 3% of journalists agree.
* 22% of Americans believe government should be able to censor newspapers.
* 72% of journalists said the media is doing at least a good job in reporting information accurately; 39% of Americans agreed.
* Only about one-third (36%) of Americans agree the news media tries to report the news without bias, while 61% claim there is bias in news coverage.
Every time we think that this administration's arrogance has peaked out, we get another "bomb" like this one...the threat to jail journalists! One can only guess as to where this great country will end up if we somehow do not get rid of this excuse for a President. I predict that history will rate this man significantly below Richard Nixon and Warren Harding for arrogance, incompetence, corruption, driving the nation into fiscal disaster, trashing of the constitution, and...well it goes on and on! What will it take for the American people to wake up?
ReplyDeleteGreat points as always, Glenn. On a somewhat unrelated topic, I made a Fourth Amendment argument against the NSA program (the first one that was disclosed) here.
ReplyDeleteThe gist of it is that Bush's statements to the effect that he would seek court orders before tapping a phone created a reasonable expectation of privacy for most Americans. Do you (or any of the other lawyers here) have any idea if that means anything and/or how it interacts with the other concerns involved (like the border exemption, etc.?)
Keep up the good work,
Dave
Many of the issues relating to prosecution of the press for publishing classified information were aired lately in an exchange of letters in the conservative Commentary Magazine.
ReplyDeleteIt's always helpful to remind ourselves of the actual wording of the Presidents oath of office, I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
ReplyDeletePresident of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
It's clear from these words that we should consider the Contitution as the embodiment of America and as John Aravosis likes to point out, its those among who are trying to trash the Constitution who can be properly referred to as "Hating America."
Minor correction: Magna Carta was 13th Century (1215) not 11th Century.
ReplyDeleteI think the person who did the explaining to Harman was her opponent in the June primary, Marcy Winograd.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how opinions change when some pushback from a progressive happens.
www.winogradforcongress.com
You call it what it is: communism.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do with Americans who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
ReplyDeleteYou water the tree of liberty.
What do you do with Americans who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
ReplyDeleteYou water the tree of liberty.
This is about right. America is headed for a civil war, or at least internal unrest. The elections are likely to be "delayed" due to terrorist attack, lots of Americans will support this, lots more won't.
13th century.....
ReplyDeleteGlenn spun:
ReplyDeleteThe United States Congress openly debated yesterday whether the federal government should begin imprisoning journalists who publish stories containing information which the Bush administration wants to conceal.
But perhaps between then and now, someone explained to Harman that while there are countries that imprison journalists for stories they write about the Government (Harman's examples of China, Cuba and North Korea are good ones), America isn't one of them.
What do you do with people who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
Why are you afraid to frame the issue correctly?
No one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. That is spin and you know it
Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications.
The issue and the ONLY issue is whether Risen and the NYT broke one or more felony laws barring the disclosure of classified materials.
National Review Contributing Editor Jonathan Adler this week wrote a very thorough article in NR explaining what ought not need explanation -- that these increasingly strident calls among "conservatives" to put journalists in jail are squarely contrary to the most fundamental American political values and traditions.
I blogged back and forth with the author of that article over at Volkh and he could not or would not tell me where the Constitution gives journalists the right to disclose classified information to the enemy when it does not give the average citizen any such right.
He also avoided answering what was the effective difference between Risen notifying al Qaeda about the NSA Program and an al Qaeda spy in the NSA doing the same thing.
Such a prosecution would be unprecedented, as the federal government has never criminally prosecuted a journalist for publishing classified information.
Until Vietnam, there were almost no examples of the press illegally disclosing classified information about top secret intelligence gathering programs and the like.
There is no laches defense for criminal violations of the Espionage Act.
People like this plainly do not embrace, or comprehend, even the most basic principles of what America is.
Really? What is the basic American principle which allows the journalists to disclose top secret intelligence gathering programs to the enemy targeted by those programs.
If this is a well established American principle, then you should have no trouble showing me where it exists in the Federalist Papers, Justice Story's Commentaries or case law.
The fact is that the Founders would consider this to be treason.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnyone read It Can't Happen Here? Every time Bart opens his mouth I'm reminded on one of the apologists for Buzz Windtrip telling Doremus that you have to break a few eggs to make a omelette. How long will it be before Bart tells us you have to break a few eggs to make an omellette?
ReplyDelete"It compromised a program that allowed us to find Al Qaeda terrorists," Mr. Schoenfeld said of the disclosures.
Yep, and Draco's laws were a program that allowed Athens to punish criminals. Then that darn Solon compromised the program by giving Athens a democratic Constitution.
"No one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general"
ReplyDeleteThe quoted material by this GG speaks of "containing information which the Bush administration wants to conceal" and "stories they write about the Government's conduct."
So, why the spin on "embarassing" Bush? As to the difference between the average public and the press when publishing materials of this sort, perhaps the 1A is relevant.
The 1A speaks of "speech" and "the press," suggesting the average citizen might be a wee bit different from the press as a whole.
But, yes, if the press is shown to have the purpose of passing things to the enemy (such as perhaps some interest group will try to avoid campaign finance laws via setting up a "newspaper"), they can be treated like a regular citizen.
It might be hard to show evidence re the 1A before it was ratified (Federalist Papers). But, yes, I'm not sure where in Story's commentaries, he supports criminalizing the authors of the materials at issue.
To the degree he supported (if he did) "seditious libel," the test of time showed him to be wrong. Anyway, discussions respecting our dealings with France etc. was printed in the newspapers in the 1790s, including sensitive in-house discussions.
Those who targeted the press in that decade were rightly criticized.
Also, as noted, certain people have to sign secrecy pledges, suggesting that as a whole we have no secrecy act even re the average citizen.
ReplyDeleteBart said: Why are you afraid to frame the issue correctly?
ReplyDeleteNo one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. That is spin and you know it
Framing is now the essense of all political debate in America. The facts and the law are not relevant. The entire battle is over dominating the language the media uses to describe the issue and thus the frame the public uses to think of it. Bart is not attacking Glenn's argument, he is attacking the frame the argument is in. Change the frame and the argument becomes irrelevant. Whoever gets to decide how the question is worded gets to determine the answer.
Notice the phase Bart used: "no one is talking about". That is the key. This is how conservatives bave been able to dominate and win almost every debate on almost every issue. While progressives concentrate on winning the arguments with facts and reason, conservatives have concentrated on driving the adgenda and writing the questions. The result is that progressives can have all the facts on their side and still lose before the debate even starts.
Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications.
ReplyDeletePlease ban this idiot. If only al-Qeada and our enemies were this stupid, Allah himself would surrender to Jesus.
Glenn, you're last paragraph sums it up. If people don't understand their grade school civics classes, or perhaps never get civics lessons, and are never taught how to critically think about the "news" they're fed then this is what happens, democracy begins to crumble.
ReplyDeleteWe need a new civil liberties movement with a charismatic leader who can explain the reasons why our liberties are more precious than the illusion of security Bushco offers with one hand while stoking irrational fear with the other.
Right now it seems Feingold is the only one speaking out, but unless he makes a movie like Gore's now done (and that seems unlikely) then we need someone else to stand up and take it to the masses.
We each can do our part online or offline to influence people, but I'm afraid it will take powerful rhetoric with mass visibility to get the ball rolling.
I don't think there ever *was* a Jose Padilla. I think the whole Jose Padilla thing is a creation, designed early enough after 9/11 to send a message to us that if we step out of line, they will throw our asses in jail. For the most part, I think it has worked. I waas just a little kid during the late 60's but there seem to be a LOT more open dissent back then. Now, people are afraid of being branded an enemy combatant and hauled off to solitary for years without seeing a lawyer. If Jose didn't exist, the right would have had to invent him. So, they did. He is a figment of our collective unconsciousness; the Kafka-esque prisoner trapped in a legal nightmare with no one to turn to and no one wants that to happen to them. So, we all sit on our hands and wait for a saviour.
ReplyDeleteThis is how conservatives bave been able to dominate and win almost every debate on almost every issue.
ReplyDeleteThese liberals who are so self-defeatist and see Karl Rove and conservatives as some sort of invulnerable daddy make me sick.
Oh, so conservatives dominate and win every argument, do they? You might want to check any randomly selected poll over the last year to see how stupid that is.
"Wahhhhh, conservatives always win because they cheat - they argue unfair, they cheat in elections, they manipulate public opinion. We always lose. BOO HOO!!!"
Pathetic. And wrong.
Glenn... People like this plainly do not embrace, or comprehend, even the most basic principles of what America is.
ReplyDeleteBart... Really? What is the basic American principle which allows the journalists to disclose top secret intelligence gathering programs to the enemy targeted by those programs.
Bart.... Shhhh! Al-Qaeda doesn't know we are spying on them!
And the Iranians and others didn't know about Brewster Jennings until somebody blew Valerie Plame's cover. Ban this idiot. Please. For a comparison, Glenn. Go to Freep or LGF and sign up. Post some honest criticisms and see how long you last.
Rixor said...
ReplyDeleteGlenn, you're last paragraph sums it up. If people don't understand their grade school civics classes, or perhaps never get civics lessons, and are never taught how to critically think about the "news" they're fed then this is what happens, democracy begins to crumble.
Grade school civics classes are crap anyway. Most of these people took them and passed. It's not enough. You need to be a bit more proficient in a few more areas. not the least of which is a fairly thorough reading of Orwell's Politics and the English Language and be able to read and understand 1984 without misinterpretation. Most people don't get it when they read it and come away with all the wrong ideas.
I think the person who did the explaining to Harman was her opponent in the June primary, Marcy Winograd.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, at least in part. Here is an LA Times article which documents that Harman's change of tune is likely due to a combination of Winograd's primary challenge and the fact that Nancy Pelosi plans to kick Harman off the Intelligence Committee next year - not a moment too soon.
"People who don't understand how America works"
ReplyDeleteI fully expect David Byron will have much to say on this topic...
...[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is
the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.
Fisher Ames, American statesman, 1805
David,
There are more than a few writings by Jefferson, Paine and Franklin to name a few, that suggest an intent other than to deliver control of the new Republic to a new propertied class or aristocracy. Fisher Ames is not someone who I would lend much creedence to.
I fully expect David Byron will have much to say on this topic...
ReplyDeleteMaybe he can start by telling us how much greater his favorite countries protection these liberties than Nazi America does - like Cuba, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, China, East Germany - all his leftist favorites that were such stalwart defenders of civil liberties and freedoms for all those years.
But since they're not the U.S., he doesn't mind, because evil only exists in America in his sicko America-hating mind.
Retired LTC said...
ReplyDeletebart wrote: "...he could not or would not tell me where the Constitution gives journalists the right to disclose classified information to the enemy when it does not give the average citizen any such right."
Gee, when I was first given my clearance to classified info back as a LT, I had to sign all sorts of non-disclosure agreements. Why were those necessary if "the average citizen" is obligated to safeguard classified documents?
To reinforce operational security in the men and women given secret and top secret clearances. None of those documents are required to implement the various classified document laws against you.
For example, if you lost a code book and a private with no clearance picked it up and published it on the internet, I assure you that private would be courts martialed under the various classification statutes.
What do you do with people who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
ReplyDeleteIf you are a part of the elite group that benefits from the looting our our treasury and the theft, fraud, and criminal wars for the military-industrial complex; you thank our public schools for the "heck of a job" they did disconnecting the majority of youth from intellectual curiosity.
You are also grateful that textbooks do not present history in a way that connects with most young learners.
Above all, you are grateful for the lie of "objective journalism" that is used to "balance" truths and facts with lies.
After all, textbooks are only published for national use if they neuter US history by presenting lies and misrepresentations that "balance" what the US Government was suppose to stand for.
Our resident troll represents such a fringe, minority position, we all know that his off-topic talking points, half-truths, and outright lies will sway no one here.
ReplyDeletecan the usual gang of morons please refrain from trying to "one up" the troll
I am especially refering to that self-proclaimed "expert on everything, master of nothing" that seems to have a BS link for virtually EVERYTHING.
Time to cut back on public libraries if this is all they have to do.
These people on the right who are in favor of strong executive power and the overturning of liberties at the discretion of the executive branch, they can't possibly be for that in times when one of their own isn't President, can they?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteanonymous 2:43 said:
ReplyDeletePlease ban this idiot.
Careful there. While I find all of bart's arguments ridiculous and unpersuasive, he is in general a good citizen here. Remember that passionate opposition to arguments help make those arguments tighter. And while this is a private enterprise, and Glenn can run it any way he sees fit, if this blog's comments become nothing more than an echo chamber, I say we all would have lost something.
Hey, King John never had to face an enemy as terrible as Al Qaeda.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't have to worry that the paynims were going to truck-bomb his local JC Penney and murder his children right there in the food court.
He could afford magnanimous gestures like Magna Carta.
At least some good news today, a Court of Appeals upheld the decision that the Patriot Act's National Security letters provision is unConstitutional.
ReplyDeleteSource.
There called Fascists Glenn! They hate us because of our freedoms and they're systematically removing them.
ReplyDelete"leading many Bush followers to celebrate the fact that the ranking Democrat on the Committee made clear that she advocated prosecution of the Times."
ReplyDeleteMTP transcript:
MR. RUSSERT: But if this came from a whistleblower—if this came from a whistleblower, should The New York Times reporter be subpoenaed?
REP. HARMAN: Well, it’s not clear it was a whistleblower. You have to prove that first. No. The answer is if it’s protected under the whistleblower statute, then it’s protected. Goss in his op-ed said he was trying to protect whistleblowers, but these were despicable people going around the process.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11272634/page/6/
Harman doesn't advocate prosecution of the Times reporter.
russert asks if the reporter should be subpoenaed. Harman says no, not it is a whistleblower.
And some of the rat-wing links you provide use doctored Harman quotes.
Careful there. While I find all of bart's arguments ridiculous and unpersuasive, he is in general a good citizen here.
ReplyDeleteI would find his arguments even more persuasive if they didn't rely at their base on the idea that anything GW says is true. If the survellance propgram indeed existed merely to eavesdrop on such Americans who were in contact with Al Qeada operatives, there weren't be any arguing going on.
Unfortunatly, history has shown and recent history in particular, that the President cannot be trusted and he will gladly sacrifice National Security in exchange for political expediency and relying on his public pronouncments as a basis for arguing for the legality of his conduct is certainly putting the cart before the horse.
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteI'm reading your book right now, and this morning I read the Media Matters article about the differences in covering this White House and the previous one. The hypocrisy is so sharp I'm bleeding from it. Thank you for writing the book, and continued support to you for taking on the...erm... "patriots" who so desperately desire to dismantle America.
I would like to make the argument that Bart provides an important service. He's articulating a viewpoint that I'm not likely to hear, denizen of liberal east-coast enclaves that I am. And since I'm not likely to spend much time at redsated.org, or whatever it's called, it's so much more convenient to read it here.
ReplyDeleteAs Bush might say: he's attacking the strawman here, so we don't need to watch him attack it over there.
For instance, Bart writes:
"The issue and the ONLY issue is whether Risen and the NYT broke one or more felony laws barring the disclosure of classified materials.The issue and the ONLY issue is whether Risen and the NYT broke one or more felony laws barring the disclosure of classified materials."
This is an entirely understandable viewpoint if you assume that All the President's Men have pure motives, would never abuse the use of classification to partisan ends, and have a thorough grounding on what makes an open society thrive.
Add to that, if one tends to see the NYT as "The Liberal Death Star", (no offense meant, Tom Maguire), then it's understandable that one would be as suspicious of James Risen's motives as some are of the Bush administration.
Careful there. While I find all of bart's arguments ridiculous and unpersuasive, he is in general a good citizen here
ReplyDeleteYou mean because he doesn't use profanity, or name call when he argues passionately for an American dictatorship and the complete revocation of our civil liberties?
I wonder if polite facists are any less dangerous than impolite ones.
I wonder if polite facists are any less dangerous than impolite ones.
ReplyDeleteInsofar as politness accompanies a lesser liklihood to resort to violence, then um yes.
I don't have trouble envisioning things getting much worse before they get better. I hope I'm wrong.
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ReplyDeleteI like the part at the end where the Rep. asks why a for-profit organization should be the sole arbiter of what's in the national interests.
ReplyDeleteHere's the question, is he dishonest or stupid? Its one or the other.
The issue isn't about the press being sole arbiter of national intersts, its about the President being sole arbiter. If the president decides to unilaterally define national security, then its the job of the press to let the people know, and then the public acts on that information. The public is the ultimate arbiter of national security.
We transfer trust to our leaders to act on OUR authority to protect our national interests, the press is our quality control officer. Its their job to let us know if that trust has been violated.
Like Glenn says, either these guys and gals don't know how democracy works, or they are enemies of democracy.
Either way, they have no business being in office.
Oh, so conservatives dominate and win every argument, do they? You might want to check any randomly selected poll over the last year to see how stupid that is.
ReplyDeleteI guess you haven't been paying attention to election results for say the last decade. Bush and his party are low in the polls because people are angry about Iraq, Katrina, globalization and a host of other issues that can't just be bloviated away, not because progressives are suddenly dominating or winning the debate. Even if people are angry enough to vote in a Democratic congress and a Democratic president it will not be because of a progressive realignment of American politics. The Democrats have been pulled so far to the right even that would be only a minor setback before the next wave.
The right has spent decades and many millions of dollars building up an intellectual infrastructure, not just to make sure the conservative point of view is heard on every issue, but to determine the terms every issue is discussed in. That won't change because Democrats get elected.
The administration, Republicans in congress and right wing pundits are relentlessly pounding out the security theme on this issue not because it has merit, but because if they are the loudest and the most often heard the issue will be discussed and thought about in their terms. You can see the effect of that tactic clearly from Bart's first post. Bart did not attack Glenn's argument on the merits, he reframed the issue so that Glenn's argument no longer fit and Bart's argument won by default. The key to winning is to reject Bart's frame and keep Glenn's, where Bart's argument doesn't fit and Glenn wins by default, as well as on merit. Unfortunately, doing this on a national scale is a matter volume and on-message repetition, a game where the right has a distinct advantage.
As ususal, a great post and lively discussion. I agree that the wingnut representatives like Bart should be here to play "devil's advocate" even with the usual weak arguments. The flaws in the wingnut view, in my opinion, are these: 1. They refuse see themselves as a potential target for government abuse of these programs. 2. They stubbornly overstate the danger of the "terrorists." As has been pointed out in this blog, the USA has faced many powerful enemies over the history of the nation without resorting to the assumption of powers this administration is seeking. I have read every bit of information I can on the 9/11 hijackers and they were not even close to the cunning and diabolical crowd the wingnuts have declared we have to protect ourselves from today. As a matter of fact, if this administration was as interested in terrorism on 9/10 as they were on 9/12, I believe 9/11 would have never happened. 3. They think they are smarter than they are. I love it when they get into an argument with someone who actually has experience in the subject, much like Bart and Retired LTC in this comment section.
ReplyDeleteI believe it is here, more than anywhere else, that we see the fruits of America's failed education system. In particular, our social studies (or civics) classes have failed miserably.
ReplyDeleteThe core focus, to be repeated with more and more depth as a student advances in school, should be the basics of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The history, the circumstances, that brought on the Revolution and both documents needs to be repeated again and again. By the time a student graduates highschool they should know, backwards and forwards, up and down, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, what they mean, and how they came about.
You want a test that needs to be passed before you get a hs diploma? How about a full-on test on the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Nothing else matters as much as these.
Wallace said...Zzzzzzzzzz
ReplyDeleteIf I was Fidel Castro and had what is now the sole superpower on the planet trying to overthrow my tiny country's government for the last 45 years by terrorism and assassination and other illegal means, a government whose elections are probably more free and fair than our own of late, I'd probably jail you too. One reason they don't have to use methods like we use all over the globe to falsify democratic elections in Cuba is the literacy of the average Cuban. The illiteracy rate in Cuba is .02%. One of the lowest in the world. As we can see by your post, you are part of the 30% who still supports Bush. That 30% corresponds exactly to the illiteracy rate in this country. 30%.
hume - very good points.
ReplyDeleteAnother good reason that Bart, standing in here for "the right wing" is less often discredited than deserved is that he/they never answers directly any question that directly undermines his arguments. He ignores them and starts over on the next thread.
He also, to his unfortunate credit, is able to go into substantial detail - misleading detail, but detail nonetheless.
Glenn, I have a note for you. Part of the problem with a blog is that the conversation on an event begins when the event begins. Sometime after that, the specific argument about the event reaches its highest level of detail, and is thereafter only referred to indirectly.
The problem this creates is for people who haven't been here from the beginning. If I were running this blog from the beginning, I'd be alarmed that Bart is making more detailed and coherent arguments than his detractors, who are quite frankly sick and tired of breaking down his false talking points for no real gain. For people just arriving here, however, it doesn't look good.
I think you should create an online event - offer to debate Bart on, say, the NSA leak - and leave the results proimnently published as, essentially, a permanent addition to the reference material of this blog.
If the thorough discrediting of his arguments were preserved in detail and on promiment webspace, he would have to come up with some new ones,
or else, continue to restate old ones that could be countered with a simple hyperlink.
To the vast relief of most of the audience.
I'm not for banning dissenting viewpoints, but I'm all for stapling a dictionary of their dishonesties and weaknesses to their every comment.
-----
In case this bright little idea of mine never happened, some points to remember for the impressionable out there:
1. No one ever can, should, or will be prosecuted for publishing or exposing information pertaining to an illegal act committed by the government.
2. The NSA wiretapping program directly violates Congresional statutues - the law.
3. Pretending that #1 and #2 don't exist, the government's technical ability to monitor electronic communications of all kinds has been public knowledge for decades. The NYTimes story focused almost entirely on the changing - shrinking requirements neccesary to obtain permission to use the electronic tools. Publishing information on governmental violations of privacy and other forms of abuse of its citizens' rights is absolutely a part of US tradition, as well as a tradition of western civilization since the advent of the printing press.
4. Governments classify materials on the basis of finding them embarrasing to be released all the time: the classification process frequently has almost nothing to do with technological or military secrets. A passing example of this is the years-long struggle to obtain the names of the defendants in Guantanamo Bay, an absolutely neccesary first step to gathering information on them neccesary to prove that they are not related to Al-Quieda. The government has known that the vast majority of the GB prisoners had nothing to do with AQ for years. It classified this information to avoid the embrassment of the public finding out the same thing, and it continued to withold it until ordered by a federal judge to disclose it.
To counter this, whatever laws exist relating to prosecuting disclosures of classified information, they are dormant. They've never been used in American history. Classified information, as Glenn documented in his very post, is leaked to conservative media sources all the time when doing so might seem to undercut a non-rightist argument.
If Bart's POV was implemented - consistently - rather than, say, using the selective prosecution of the NYTimes as a revenge tactic - you could throw Glenn Greenwald in jail for repeating the NYTimes' information, as well as every blogger on this webpage, every newspaper reporter who put NYTimes information on their own page, and every reporter and media outlet who has ever reported on classified information at any time in our history. The Iran-Contra reporting involved classified information. Reporting on the war in Afghanistan involved classified information. Reporting on the defective Marine Corps V22-Osprey program involved classified information, as did reporting on nuclear tests off the Hawaiian coast, reports about our government's approach to Al-Quieda prior to 9/11... reports on US activity bribing Iraqi newspapers... classified information is consistently also information that is in the public interest to be public knowledge. We have informally solved this problem for decades by not enforcing laws against publishing classified information.
Consistent enforcement of them in the manner neccesary to prosecute the NYTimes would involve jailing just about media organization in the country, and changing the entire face of reporting in the news today.
Bart suggests that "No one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. ", but this is a flat-out lie. Since the only law that the NYTimes could be claimed to violate is the 1950 Espionage Act, and since the goverment can classify literally any piece of information it chooses to classify, enforcement of this law would allow the government an unlimited ability to declare any piece of information in the world off-limits, and throw anyone who repeats it in jail.
This is the cause that Bart is advancing.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI shouls add that if you, wallace, had half the brains as David Byron, regardless of your politics, this would be a much stronger country.
ReplyDeleteYou want a test that needs to be passed before you get a hs diploma? How about a full-on test on the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Nothing else matters as much as these.
ReplyDeleteI had to take 2. One in eighth grade and one again to get out of high school. When did they stop giving those?
Harman doesn't advocate prosecution of the Times reporter.
ReplyDeleteShe said their "immunity" only goes so far, that they disclosed secret information about a legal program, and that she deplores the link. And there was another statement she made before MTP where she was even clearer about being open to criminal prosecution, which I couldn't find but recall distinctly.
People interpreted her answer to favor criminal prosecution because when you put her statements together, it is tantamount to that. If that wasn't her belief, it was her fault for being so unclear. But that's what happens when your real goal is to show the administration what a "reasonable" good Representative you are by constantly bending over backwards to say nothing that might offend the President, which is what Harman did every time she spoke - at least until a couple weeks ago.
Praedor said...
ReplyDeleteI believe it is here, more than anywhere else, that we see the fruits of America's failed education system. In particular, our social studies (or civics) classes have failed miserably.
Americans are quite possibly the most ignorant and ill informed people in the industrialized world at this point. That is evil waiting to happen.
I wonder if polite facists are any less dangerous than impolite ones.
ReplyDeleteRead Hannah Arendt's with "Eichmann in Jerusalem". The "banality of evil". There are no "monsters and demons" unless you are a six year old child, a fundie wingnut, or engaged in demonizing political opponents or a population targeted for genocide.
anonymous 2:43 said:
ReplyDeletePlease ban this idiot.
Come on, the idiots are the ones that "challenge" fringe viewpoints that MOST AMERICANS see thought.
If anyone is going to be banned, it should be the morons that get up on their tiny little soapboxes, picking up each and every one of the troll turds, and then giving the rest of us a condenscending lecture about the obvious.
It is more than stupid -- it is the reason we get the tons of stupid trolls.
GET A GRIP -- THEIR IDEAS AND POSTS ARE NOT EVEN ACCEPTED BY THE KOOL-AIDERS AND CHIMPY IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE UNPOPULAR EACH DAY.
Why jump in the "backwash?"
Bill Day, Retired Vietnam Vet said... What will it take for the American people to wake up?
ReplyDeleteHopefully just a few more people with similar backgrounds to yours speaking out just as you have. Thank you for speaking out, a civic duty equal to your previous service to this country, right or wrong.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteanonymous 2:43 said:
Please ban this idiot.
Come on, the idiots are the ones that "challenge" fringe viewpoints that MOST AMERICANS see thought.
If anyone is going to be banned, it should be the morons that get up on their tiny little soapboxes, picking up each and every one of the troll turds, and then giving the rest of us a condenscending lecture about the obvious zzzzzz....
Ban this idiot next.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteGrade school civics classes are crap anyway. Most of these people took them and passed. It's not enough.
That was my point. I may have been too brief. When I said people didn't understand their civics I meant they didn't get it beyond the abstract (passing or failing grades notwithstanding). People need to internalize the values behind statements like "Give me Liberty or give me death". If they did, everyone would be outraged at the ridiculousness of Republican Pat Roberts' statement "I am a strong supporter of civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead."
(The reply should be "We're human beings and without our inalienable rights we are no better than animals!" instead of mindless agreement, or silence.)
I never read 1984, but we did have a few hours of "how to identify and evaluate propaganda" in 4th grade. It must have been very effective for me, because I can close my eyes and picture the handouts. From brief observations of posters and displays during a public meeting at a grade school a few years ago, the schools are now brain-washing the children to not question authority and to place obedience and "getting along" above all else.
Retired LTC said
... I apologize if I sound like some kind of campaign ad. But I get so frustrated when fellow progressives don't seem to recognize how much Clark is doing just because he doesn't have a Senate platform.
Retired LTC, thanks for those links on Gen. Clark. I'll watch the videos ASAP, and probably bookmark them in del.icio.us too so others might "stumble" upon them.
You're right Clark doesn't have a bully pulpit, and I don't watch TV, that's why I said it "seems" Feingold's the only one speaking out. And that's why I think someone who can command the mass market's attention is needed to jump start this issue, and the more charisma they have the better.
Ban the idiots that demand the idiots be banned that demand that the troll baiting idiots be banned!
ReplyDeleteThough I think it would be more effective to just use a simple math statement like 3+2=? for verification.
Obviously, many of your commenters are not smart enough to get even grade-school math correct.
Surely, they have nothing meaningful to add to the dialog either.
Curious about something I googled toxic "authoritarianism". This was the top hit.
ReplyDeleteOur liberties and sovereignty under assault as Harper remakes Canada in Bush's image
by Greg Felton
(Wednesday May 17 2006 05:18:16 pm)
South of the border, we know about Bush’s corruption, dishonesty, and rampant cronyism, and that he has committed treason and war crimes. One wonders how far this image applies to Harbush. They share similar Christian delusions, prostrate themselves before The Lobby, do the bidding of Big Business, and rail against taxes and public spending. I’m not saying Harbush IS Bush, but he exhibits the same predisposition to irrationality and abject zionist servitude.
Felton’s First Law of Electoral Politics:
The louder an Opposition Party rails against government unaccountability and the more it speaks of ethical reforms, the greater the danger that it will be even more unaccountable and unethical if it gets into power.
First Corollary to the First Law:
God has no place in the legislatures of our nation.
Second Corollary to the First Law:
Stephen Harper is a dangerous idiot.
Sounds about right...
http://mobile.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/30464
Thor Likes Pizza
ReplyDeleteYour an idiot who thinks you know it all and are WOWING us with your great intellect and insight.
I know I can't be the first person to tell you that you are not really very smart cuz its just too obvious.
Please, glenn, use simple math equations to verify comments AND screen out the mental midgits.
If you wanted an intellectual group, you could have equations with fractions.
Better yet, you could have rational expressions that needed to have each polynomial factored before simplification.
Anything to get the dredges of the gene pool out of here without actually banning anyone.
Thor Likes Pizza, the trolls drop that crap into the threads anyhow, thats why, you know, they're called "trolls."
ReplyDeleteIts what trolls do.
What we are talking about is not turning the threads, day after day, into a display of idiocy.
You see, that's how the trolls "win"
Can you ban 'bart' yet?
ReplyDelete"Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications."
The number of lies and amount of misinformation here is extraordinary.
(1) The program consists of the NSA intercepting *everyone*'s telephone communications. The NSA has not demonstrated to *any* judge that *any* of the spying it's doing is even *related* to al-Qaeda.
(2) The government already had the ability to legally intercept communications with al-Qaeda.
(3) Al-Qaeda knew this.
(3) The program is illegal.
(4) The program is unconstitutional.
(5) It is illegal for the program to be top secret; it does not meet the legal requirements.
(6) The only thing exposed was the illegal, non-al-Qaeda-related aspects of the progam.
glasnost:
ReplyDeleteI think you should create an online event - offer to debate Bart on, say, the NSA leak - and leave the results proimnently published as, essentially, a permanent addition to the reference material of this blog.
If the thorough discrediting of his arguments were preserved in detail and on promiment webspace, he would have to come up with some new ones,
or else, continue to restate old ones that could be countered with a simple hyperlink.
To the vast relief of most of the audience.
I'd like to second an idea like this.. bart gets away with ducking any question that he knows will demonstrate his naked motives.
I also believe this approach is preferable to a ban on anyone. Having had bart duck questions of mine that he felt uncomfortable tackling, I certainly understand the frustration of many here who've called for such action. But I submit almost all of us who engage him fail to recognize that we're talking past one another in a critical area.
I think that most of us, regardless of our other political beliefs, argue our case based on the common ground of some form of the idea that war is something we'd like to see avoided above most any other interaction between our fellow humans. I think we tend to give bart the benefit of the doubt and fall for his legal sounding obfuscations while still imagining that he, like us would prefer peace over war.
I suggest that there is absolutely no evidence that this is true...and lots to suggest the opposite is the case. If you pay attention, bart spends most of his time defending what the administration can do, not what he believes it's moral that they should do. When pressed, he'll trot out the "if we don't, the terrorists will have already won" which is a good indicator of the depth of his sense of morality (not to mention originality).
My point is, that until you recognize that for bart, war is the good and natural state of affairs , every single one of your arguments will be met with more legal tap dancing and avoidance of moral questions and the frustration will continue. And you might even have to endure trying his patience ("I've told you before, this is the LAST time I'm going to tell you").
I'd like to repeat my endorsement of a "once and for all" sort of settling of fundamental issues...and I'd also like to suggest beginning with the Article II superpowers that I have a feeling bart doesn't understand nearly as well as he'd like us all to think...certainly not in proportion to the number of times he's invoked it to stop any discussion dead in its tracks.
Still ignoring the elephant in the room...
ReplyDeleteAmerica's rank and file (and hence the politicians) won't care about this stuff until there's a WHITE Padilla.
As long as the perception is that only brown people's rights are being infringed upon, America will by and large go along with it.
Moonbatism of the day:
ReplyDeleteThe elections are likely to be "delayed" due to terrorist attack, lots of Americans will support this, lots more won't.
Illegal drug use makes one increasingly paranoid. The mind of a voter is a terrible thing to waste.
Quote of the day:
don't know why, but doesn't much feel like america with the republicans in charge.
Don't know why, but doesn't feel like america when traitors working at the New York Slimes violate the law to subvert our troops while at war and increase deaths among our soldiers just to make a few bucks and take a few bows at an awards show.
Says the "Dog"
America's rank and file (and hence the politicians) won't care about this stuff until there's a WHITE Padilla.
ReplyDeleteAny proof for this racist assertion, or you just felt like saying it to make yourself feel better and show how morally superior you are?
Lots of soldiers who have died in Iraq are white. It's mostly white people whose telephone numbers called and received are being recorded by the data-collection program.
Do you have any evidence at all that America's supposed indifference to these things is based on the color of the person, or is this just some standard character smear with no evidence other than your own cliched ideology?
From the dog at 6:30PM:
ReplyDelete"Don't know why, but doesn't feel like america when traitors working at the New York Slimes violate the law to subvert our troops while at war and increase deaths among our soldiers just to make a few bucks and take a few bows at an awards show."
And you complain about drug abuse? Precisely how much electroshock did they give you in the Ministry of Love, anyway?
Glenn, do you think the government should keep secrets? Should there be such a thing as classified information?
ReplyDeleteanonymous 4:08:
ReplyDeleteYou mean because he doesn't use profanity, or name call when he argues passionately for an American dictatorship and the complete revocation of our civil liberties?
I guess I do. I consider a good citizen to be one who expresses their views, doesn't spam, doesn't bomb the comments section with a million posts of novella-length, and doesn't make personal attacks (like, oh, I don't know, accusing people of illegal drug abuse).
Oh, and this is just me- actually attempts to spell things correctly, and use decent grammar.
ReplyDeleteHume's Ghost said...
At least some good news today, a Court of Appeals upheld the decision that the Patriot Act's National Security letters provision is unConstitutional.
This highlights the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the judiciary. It is intolerable that activist liberal judges keep sabotaging the work of dedicated law enforcement professionals to protect the lives of innocent Americans against the evil machinations of our sworn enemies. It is high time to exercise the nuclear option, break the liberal obstructionist logjam, and sweep into office a tide of patriotic conservative judges. [Alabama Judge Roy Moore would be an excellent SCOTUS replacement for that senile old fool Stevens.]
Shooter242, our OWI attorney must know that OBL could never be convicted if there was a trial - maybe that is one reaason why our "great decider" let him get away and went after Iraq instead.
ReplyDeleteThe Bush administration had the motives, means, and opportunity to create the events that enabled a war of conquest and personal profits in Iraq. The administration acted to bring their preconceived war in Iraq to fruitarian.
Only the U.S Government could have orchestrated the events that started the war drums and fed the mighty Wurlitzer that was used to build support for the Iraq war.
The Department of Defense stood down
The WTC was demolished with a controlled demolition
The pentagon was “attacked” with a hoax about a passenger airliner
Another hoax was used to create a distraction in PA, flight 93 and build the myth of “Let’s Roll”
Pre-9/11 intelligence failures-by-design were used to create “patsies” with excuses for the events
The power of a grand jury or even the "discovery" process in a civil suit would result in a meaningful investigation. It might convince some to talk and the ability to grant some people immunity might result in "flipping" some conspirators.
The actions of the defendants tell you they are guilty. For example, it would be a serious violation of rules and regulations to let a president read an upside-down goat book while the nation was experiencing the worst attack on U.S. soil in history.
The “official story” would be laughable on its face if it wasn’t so tragic and if it wasn’t used to commit even greater war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is no way the administration’s version of events could withstand cross-examination by competent counsel.
--------------
Even those that shill for corporations and defend drunk drivers can plainly see this.
Thor Like Pizza, would love to see you comments after you solved some math "test" as your ticket to adminssion - perhaps in the future, you can WOW us with your understanding of critical thinking as it relates to abstract math concepts.
ReplyDeleteYa sure aren't doin' it when it comes to logic and reason at it applies to the issues of the day.
This highlights the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the judiciary. It is intolerable that activist liberal judges keep sabotaging the work of dedicated law enforcement professionals to protect the lives of innocent Americans against the evil machinations of our sworn enemies. It is high time to exercise the nuclear option, break the liberal obstructionist logjam, and sweep into office a tide of patriotic conservative judges. [Alabama Judge Roy Moore would be an excellent SCOTUS replacement for that senile old fool Stevens.]
ReplyDeleteThe worst liberal activists were the Founding Fathers, who were liberal obstructionists, placing checks and balances in the way of hard-working law and order types. If you want someone to start breaking up their logjam, the US COnstitution, then Roy Moore is the perfect person to start with.
Oh yeah, and your liberal activist judge, Cardamone, was appointed by liberal activist President Ronald Reagan.
Screw Godwin. This is Bart's and the Bushes new America.
ReplyDeletePhotos Indicate Civilians Slain Execution-Style
An official involved in an investigation of Camp Pendleton Marines' actions in an Iraqi town cites `a total breakdown in morality.'
Hume's Ghost said...
ReplyDeleteThis highlights the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the judiciary. It is intolerable that activist liberal judges keep sabotaging the work of dedicated law enforcement professionals to protect the lives of innocent Americans against the evil machinations of our sworn enemies. It is high time to exercise the nuclear option, break the liberal obstructionist logjam, and sweep into office a tide of patriotic conservative judges. [Alabama Judge Roy Moore would be an excellent SCOTUS replacement for that senile old fool Stevens.]
That has to be a parody, HG. Even that idiot Bernard Goldberg put Roy Moore on his list of 100 Americans destroying the country. He got one or two out of a 100 right.
Is there any actual evidence other than self-incrimination that he is responsible for 9/11?
ReplyDeleteIs there any evidence that Ossama is anything other than coputer simulation designed to keep you and your bed-wetting fellow-travelers scared and compliant?
Or how about if he is real, maybe he plays for the home team for the same affect.
Youre basic assumption is the Bush admin would never lie, my basic assumption is they always do.
I think my case is stronger. And if you have a vapor attack and start clutching your pearls at such a notion, then you expose yourself as not having the capability to think outside your tiny little box.
Willfull ignorance is no way to go through life.
Retired Itc:
ReplyDeleteAnd it's made all the worse by the fact that so few citizens are grounded in simple high-school civics. It renders them far too easy prey to soundbytes and slogans.
This describes by far, many more people in line voting democratic than republican. Wake up and take a look around next time you're voting in a presidential election. You'll be in the line with the illiterate felons, whom the democrats recruit to vote; the homeless, whom the democrats provide bus rides and cartons of cigarettes to buy their votes; the vast majority of high school drop outs who not only couldn't pass a civics class but dropped out before they got that far; the illegal aliens paid by democrat party officials to vote illegally; the mentally infirm from nursing homes who the democrats provide a bus, a happy meal, and directions on whom they must vote for.
We on the left spend far too much time preaching to the choir
That's because the far left choir are the only ones who don't laugh at your preaching.
Says the "Dog"
From the dog at 8:58PM:
ReplyDelete"This describes by far, many more people in line voting democratic than republican." After which the dog demonstrates a literary talent no more coherent or grounded in reality than the script for "Gigli".
You definitely need some new drugs, friend. Or for somebody to take you back to psych ward.
Here is an eloquent precis of Judge Roy Moore's qualifications for SCOTUS.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe worst liberal activists were the Founding Fathers, who were liberal obstructionists, placing checks and balances in the way of hard-working law and order types.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The founding fathers established a constitutional republic under God, not a democracy, which is another name for mob rule. Only by submitting to Divine guidance can our government rule justly and wisely.
What do you do with Americans who never learned that American citizens can't be imprisoned by Executive decree and without a trial, or that American journalists aren't imprisoned for stories they write about the Government's conduct?
ReplyDeleteThey should be forced to read the entire works of Kafka. Sometimes I think he was the only literary figure who really understood what happens in the bizarro universe which always comes to pass when an irrational authoritarian government operates outside a just codified system of law with an impartial judiciary to uphold an individual's rights under that law and eventually abandons even the last pretense to reason.
Not only is there no court of last resort---there's really no "court" at all as Padillo is finding out.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Secular Iraqis Unimpressed by New Government
Many secular Iraqis have been expressing their displeasure with the new Iraqi government that was sworn-in Saturday and introduced with much fanfare by politicians in Washington, Baghdad, and London this week.
"All Iraqis know this government is totally irrelevant to the realities that they're facing," said Houzan Mahmoud, the international representative of the left-wing Iraqi Freedom Congress, an umbrella organization of workers' and women's groups that opposes both the U.S.-led occupation and Islamist control of Iraq.
"It's a government of rightist militias who are terrorizing people on the ground," she added, noting the government is dominated by the same religious, Shi'ite, political parties that have been in power since 2005.
"They are getting abducted and killed on a daily basis," the North American representative of Iraq's trade union movement, Amjad Ali Jawahary, said of Basra's Sunni population. "Just recently, 18 people were abducted, and they found them dead somewhere else....
The New York-based women's rights group MADRE, which works with feminist groups in Iraq, is calling for the deployment of a United Nations-led peacekeeping force and an immediate end to the U.S. occupation. They maintain that, unlike sectarian militias and U.S. occupying forces, the United Nations will be considered a legitimate authority by many governments and people in the Middle East.
Such a force, the group maintains, would help dispel perceptions of a U.S./European/Israeli conspiracy against Muslims that is currently being mobilized to garner support for militarism and a reactionary social agenda in many countries of the world.
MADRE's Middle East coordinator, Yifat Suskind, told OneWorld she "hasn't seen any indication that turnover to this authority will mean protection for human rights and basic security."
"It's hard to look at the situation in Iraq and feel any kind of hope at all," she added.
"But people in this country should know that there are people in Iraq besides the insurgents and people who are affiliated with the Islamic forces. There are people who care about genuine democracy and human rights and who are struggling against tremendous odds to build a future for their communities with a separation between mosque and state."
Things are pretty bad when you have to hope the UN is going to save you but it has apparently come to that now.
The NSA's political fiction
ReplyDelete...Most people, even highly educated ones, go through their lives without ever examining the way rhetoric works, and the way evidence is used (or abused) in its service. These people weren't stupid by any stretch of the imagination. They simply didn't understand how narrative persuasion works, in the same way that many people who are smart nevertheless don't understand how their car works.
And just as technical naïveté makes you vulnerable when your car breaks down on a deserted road, so too does narrative ignorance when your nation is breaking down right before your eyes. That such a paltry majority is convinced the government has gone too far with surveillance is a perfect example of this....
Parody, possible. But there's plenty of theocrats in the Constitution party who believe exactly what anonymous is saying. That "republic not a democracy" meme is one of the theocrat talking points.
ReplyDeleteWhat they want is an undemocratic Republic, as opposed to a democratic republic. What they call "mob rule" is the majority of Americans who don't want to live in a Dominionist/Reconstructionist nightmare Christian theocracy.
GOP Heavy Hitters Pressuring White House to Talk With Iran
ReplyDeleteApple Loses Bid to Unmask Bloggers' Sources
ReplyDeleteI'm no political strategist, but it strikes me as not at all a bad idea to begin pointing out that the boogeyman--er, that is, Communists--had/have the nasty habit of imprisoning journalists.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to chime in and say enough with calling for Bart to be banned, ignored, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with him or his politics, but he is the rare rightwinger who comes offering the semblance of debate rather then childish tantrums.
While his arguments are generally either nonsensical, based on faulty sources, or otherwise quickly dissected by other posters, he does once in awhile point out a flaw or two in Glenn's arguments, or bring up a relevant point left unaddressed in the article. Sometimes Glenn does have to stop in and clarify what he meant, and that's a good thing.
In other words, please stop calling for the silencing of Glenn's critics on a post decrying government censorship. It's rather self-defeating.
Besides, even though they generally use only blog/Fox News propaganda to bolster their arguments--what else do rightwing outlets offer their followers?--a few lousy critics are still worth several dozen sycophants.
I'd like to ask Glenn what he thinks will happen if--when--we have another terrorist attack. Even now, with Bush so low in the polls, the Democrats needlessly capitulate over and over again to the most brazenly anti-American Republican tactics. Can we really expect them to stand up to the Bush administration's inevitable power grab in the event of another 9/11? And if we can't, then shouldn't we be working on a contingency plan right now?
ReplyDeleteIf that happens, what are we going to do then?
ReplyDeleteWhat they want is an undemocratic Republic, as opposed to a Democratic republic.
Damn right. That's why I vote Republican (and I am very picky about which Republicans I vote for).
Besides getting the right kinds of judicial appointments, another major step in straightening out our country would be the passage of the Constitution Restoration Act.
Am posting "mini-reviews" as I am getting them in emails and here's one from an extremely intelligent, wise, and politically aware 80 yr.old Democratic male Patriot who truly cares deeply about this country and about justice:
ReplyDeleteMuch obliged for this book. I'm halfway through it, and it says everything I'd want to say.
How America "works":
ReplyDeleteI love your work, Glenn, and am very glad and excited about your book. However, I can't stop thinking about something. That is, that this country was founded on bloody sand and, until we make it right with the human beings that were already on this land when it was "discovered", we will not prosper. It doesn't matter how correctly we interpret the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, or how hallowed we make them. We slaughtered the folks and took their land in the name of our own "freedom" and in order to line our own pocketbooks. It's still happening today. The Native American is the poorest, least thought-about group in this country. And we're still trying to take what land they've got left. Check out the Shoshone today. I guess that's okay though? Do it to them, but not to us?
How Would a Patriot Act? I consider Red Cloud to be a patriot.
I find it fascinating that the only other president to be censured was Andrew Jackson, of the I-signed-off-on-the-forced-removal-act Jacksons. Now his image and likeness is on our twenty dollar bill. What a great country!
How America "works":
ReplyDeleteI love your work, Glenn, and am very glad and excited about your book. However, I can't stop thinking about something. That is, that this country was founded on bloody sand and, until we make it right with the human beings that were already on this land when it was "discovered", we will not prosper. It doesn't matter how correctly we interpret the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, or how hallowed we make them. We slaughtered the folks and took their land in the name of our own "freedom" and in order to line our own pocketbooks. It's still happening today. The Native American is the poorest, least thought-about group in this country. And we're still trying to take what land they've got left. Check out the Shoshone today. I guess that's okay though? Do it to them, but not to us?
How Would a Patriot Act? I consider Red Cloud to be a patriot.
I find it fascinating that the only other president to be censured was Andrew Jackson, of the I-signed-off-on-the-forced-removal-act Jacksons. Now his image and likeness is on our twenty dollar bill. What a great country.
How America "works":
ReplyDeleteI love your work, Glenn, and am very glad and excited about your book. However, I can't stop thinking about something. That is, that this country was founded on bloody sand and, until we make it right with the human beings that were already on this land when it was "discovered", we will not prosper. It doesn't matter how correctly we interpret the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, or how hallowed we make them. We slaughtered the folks and took their land in the name of our own "freedom" and in order to line our own pocketbooks. It's still happening today. The Native American is the poorest, least thought-about group in this country. And we're still trying to take what land they've got left. Check out the Shoshone today. I guess that's okay though? Do it to them, but not to us?
How Would a Patriot Act? I consider Red Cloud to be a patriot.
I find it fascinating that the only other president to be censured was Andrew Jackson, of the I-signed-off-on-the-forced-removal-act Jacksons. Now his image and likeness is on our twenty dollar bill. What a great country.
I know most of you don't really care about such mundane topics as economic theory of which you have little first hand understanding because you prefer to believe in partisan mythology but this is a very good tribute:In Memoriam: Lloyd Bentsen, An American Leader
ReplyDeletePrior to President Reagan’s election, congressional Democrats had started the Supply-Side Revolution. The original instigator was Republican Jack Kemp. Kemp was addressing a real problem, not just playing politics. Democrats, who controlled Congress, saw the point and took the lead in implementing the new policy.
It is part of leftwing mythology that Ronald Reagan deceived the country and implemented "trickle-down economics" in order to enrich the already rich. But as the Democrats realized, stagflation was destroying their constituents, not the rich. Supply-side economics broke the back of stagflation. We have not seen it since.
A quarter century ago Congress still had members who were accustomed to lead. They could think for themselves and did not rely on the executive branch or on lobbyists to tell them what to do. Lloyd Bentsen was one of those leaders.
-Paul Craig Roberts
Shoes of Peace,
ReplyDeleteYou are right. It is a great country, and we aren't giving it back no matter how much you cry and stomp your poor little me victims moccasins.
So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.
Stop crying around the campfire, get over it, and move on.
Says the "Dog"
Everything the Bush Regime has said has been a lie
ReplyDeleteFreedom of expression still exists in America, but only on behalf of lies. Truth is forbidden, except on the Internet. The Internet is still free, because Americans are accustomed to believing what they hear on TV and read in the news columns of newspapers, whereas the Internet is new and iffy to most Americans and of less concern to the government. The mainstream media, which serves as a government propaganda organ, and the Internet are two parallel universes....
The most recent excuse--building democracy--is also a lie. It is perfectly clear that what the Bush Regime has done is to bring the three Iraqi factions to the brink of civil war, while constructing a massive US fortification in the guise of an embassy and permanent military bases.....
The Republican Party has been reduced to one principle--its own power. It protects the Bush Regime from accountability and covers up its lies and misdeeds. Under the myths and lies that enshroud 9/11, the Democrats have collapsed as an opposition party.
The Bush Regime has destroyed Iraq without being able to defeat the resistance. Its greater casualty, however, is the American people, voiceless with no political representation, defenseless in the face of police state depredations, such as illegal warrantless surveillance, and the possibility of property seizures and indefinite detention without charges.
The Bush Regime’s war on terror has defeated truth and the constitutional protections of liberty in the United States. No conceivable number of Muslim terrorists could inflict comparable damage on America.
-Paul Craig Roberts
the "dog" said...*collapse*
ReplyDeleteshoes of peace says:
this country was founded on bloody sand and, until we make it right with the human beings that were already on this land when it was "discovered", we will not prosper. It doesn't matter how correctly we interpret the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, or how hallowed we make them. We slaughtered the folks and took their land in the name of our own "freedom" and in order to line our own pocketbooks. It's still happening today. The Native American is the poorest, least thought-about group in this country. And we're still trying to take what land they've got left. Check out the Shoshone today. I guess that's okay though? Do it to them, but not to us?
How Would a Patriot Act? I consider Red Cloud to be a patriot.
I find it fascinating that the only other president to be censured was Andrew Jackson, of the I-signed-off-on-the-forced-removal-act Jacksons. Now his image and likeness is on our twenty dollar bill.
dog: Go to HELL motherfucker
P.S. "dog":
ReplyDeleteI'm mixed-breed. Much of my family is European..."white" even. Does that make me "okay" in your eyes?
And do I "care"?
Answer: NO
*collapsedogcollapse*
Also..."dog"...?,
ReplyDeleteI know a few things that you don't.
You have come up before the Ancient of Days and the Ancient of Days is not at all happy with you.
Whatcha gonna do about it, asshole?
(sorry glenn)
A former Blair insider, "Geoff Mulgan ... the ultimate New Labourite. He used to be head of policy at No 10 and founded the Blairite thinktank Demos." On how important it is to see the effects of policy from the outside:
ReplyDeleteTen minutes later, he is musing on the domestic effects of the "war on terror". "I think there have been quite a lot of occasions when there has been too little concern with civil liberties, and too much with going along with the arguments of the security forces, who always will want more powers and be less attuned to the risks. You should always keep in mind what the state looks like from outside. I think I say in the book, from the inside it tends to look cool and rational and sensible, and from the outside it usually looks pretty inefficient, capricious and dangerous. And the more powers you give to the state, the more danger there is of those capricious and dangerous abuses really damaging people's lives."
Shoes of Peace,
ReplyDeleteI just spoke to the ancient of days last Tuesday. He told me to tell you to quit crying and get a frickin job, and he also said to tell uncle Geranimo to quit drinking and slapping his wife around.
He said he was there the last time old Gerry got drunk, and there wasn't a white man in the room or anyone else holding a gun to old Gerry's head and making him drunken and unemployed.
I'm mixed breed myself, I just don't use it as a crutch to avoid confronting life and making the best of the hand the ancient of days dealt me.
Maybe a little less victimization theory and a little more work and effort at making things better in your life, and you wouldn't feel the need to get whitey to pay you reparations for something done to somebody you never met.
Says the "Dog", because somebody has got to say it.
Gonzales pressures ISPs on data retention
ReplyDeleteU.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned.
In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business.
In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time."
"I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."
Why don't they stop snooping on everyone else and just "monitor" their own political appointees? They would probably nab the majority of child molesters in the country.
Can't be long before Gonzales shoves through a mandate to record everyone's brain waves.
Is there anyone seriously still in favor of illegal immigration from Mexico in light of the actions of this fascist off-shoot of same?
He is a one man argument against illegal immigration.
At a minimum there should be a DNA sample taken from Gonzales and every illegal immigrant in the country should be matched against it and anyone who might be even remotely related to him should be instantly deported under the bad seed theory.
Shoes of Peace: You are just so cute and delightfully mischievous. Those "put 'em in their place" posts of yours are so much fun to read.
PS. That is not to say Shoes of Peace that I agree with you about reparations. What could be sillier than making a group of people who had no responsibility for the actions of another group of people pay reparations to another group of people who weren't even alive when the things about which you write happened?
ReplyDeleteThe sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons is the type of preposterous religious mysticism that is so ruinous to a rational government.
On this issue, "dog" is right. Every individual has to take responsibility for his own life and all he is entitled to is to be left alone by his government and have his basic freedoms protected by them on his behalf in accordance with the Constitution.
Wake up and take a look around next time you're voting in a presidential election.
ReplyDeleteAnd the majority of Republican voters are, of course, standing in line with people who despise and laugh at them as they are fooled - who promise them godliness and give them more corporate pollution, who promise them honesty and give them loger hours and stagnant pay, who promise them American values and give them wars designed to funnel tax payer money into shareholder pockets.
The majority of Republican voters are, of course, merely wage slaves voting for people who will pile on more chains because these new slave-owners have learned to sing the blues so beautifully.
The majority of Republican voters are dupes. And the rest of the US is divided into Democrats who fulminate against it - and that small, rich minority of Republicans who profit from it.
You have sold your birthright for a two hour commute, a job you hate and a mortgage you can't sustain. Well done.
Charlie Savage has a very important piece in the Boston Globe today.
ReplyDeleteIt tells us stuff we already know like, All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley's data show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.
But the real eye-opener for me was this:
``If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra Committee," Cheney said. ``Nobody has ever read them, but . . . I think [they] are very good in laying out a robust view of the president's prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters."….
``Judgments about the Iran-Contra affair ultimately must rest upon one's views about the proper roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy," Cheney's report said. ``The fundamental law of the land is the Constitution. Unconstitutional statutes violate the rule of law every bit as much as do willful violations of constitutional statutes."
In effect, Vice President Cheney has endorsed the Reagan policy of breaking the law by directly overriding Congress attempt to stop funding of the Contras by claiming – yes, of course – absolute presidential power.
Now, Ronald Reagan admitted what happened was wrong, and he apologized for it.
Cheney is making no such apology, and he’s telling people like Ronald Reagan who believe that presidential power does have its limits to go Cheney themselves.
Cheney just said that former president Ronald Reagan didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to the Constitution.
I guess it’s time for Bush supporters to start trashing that wimpy little Reagan for not sticking up for executive power.
Bring it on.
would not tell me where the Constitution gives journalists the right to disclose classified information to the enemy when it does not give the average citizen any such right.
ReplyDeleteI'll show you where in the Constitution it says journalists can disclose classified information if you show me in the Constitution it mentions "classified information" period. I see no where in the Constitution where the President gets to classify anything and everything he wants, on whim. I fail to see anything about the government being able to keep its business secret from the People that OWN the government and everyone in it.
They work FOR us. The SERVE us. We do NOT serve them. We do NOT work for them.
People like this plainly do not embrace, or comprehend, even the most basic principles of what America is.
ReplyDeleteAre they that scared or is their inner monarchist coming to the surface?
As Matt Yglesias pointed out we won the Cold War because we were the opposite of the USSR.
Everything these Bush groupies are saying is EXACTLY what the commies were doing.
To paraphase Lenin to make a really stupid idea work, you've got to have useful idiots. Bush has them in spades.
Oh wait a minute. You're not defending Communist regimes, right? You're just criticising the breaking of the law that prohibits helping the Communist opponents, which contributes to the defense of Communist regimes.
ReplyDeleteRonald Reagan said it was wrong to break this law, and he apologized for it.
In our trolls view, this makes Ronald Reagan a defender of Communism.
Enough said.
From shooter242 at 10:40PM:
ReplyDelete"According to this column
Kerry wanted to avoid another Vietnam. Or as I wrote elsewhere, the only way to sure peace is surrender. Apparently Kerry is willing to sell anyone out for the appearance of peace. Much like this crowd."
Let's see, you're taking a three year-old column from the Boston Globe, one detailing Senator Kerry's career in detail, and label that a 'sell out'.
Your logic escapes me, but then I'm guided by facts and reason.
"Sorry people, but when you advocate making life better for terrorism, you can't escape the observation, that you're making life easier for terrorism."
Exactly how was this column, particularly that sad business of Iran-Contra (a Reagan Administration flop-of-a-half-baked-idea, btw) have anything to do with 'terrorism'?
"If you don't like that, too bad. It's true."
I confess once more, I've no idea how you're stringing these connections together. Really.
Are you off your meds or something?
Meanwhile that leaves you defending the Sandinista welfare act, commonly know as the Boland amendment. Tsk.
ReplyDeleteOur trigger-happy troll equates support for the Boland amendment with support for the Sandanistas and support of communism. Is this true?
Does our troll realize that the Boland amendment passed 411-0 which means that every single Republican in the House voted to support Communism.
It was also signed by Ronald Reagan.
The Boland Amendment did not restrict funding, what it did was to say that such funding must be “overt” : The assistance must be overt. For this overt aid $30,000,000 is provided for FY'83 and $50,000,000 is provided for FY'84."
Since I support not having a “secret” government, I guess that makes me a communist. But I apparently have a lot of company – every single Republican member of the House at the time.
I guess I just don’t understand our American system of a secret government with no checks and balances where the President is a dictator unaccountable to the laws or the representatives of the people – no I must have missed that lecture.
Bart is a coward, a traitor and a liar. He isn't a "war hero". Until we see his DD-214, for all we know he never even served in the military. He padded his resume and probably changed a few quotes and facts like every other puke does. Bart is a coward and a traitor and a liar and he should be shot for crimes against America.
ReplyDeleteAsshole: Just out of curiousity, since you folks are so hot on the rule of law can I presume you are all in favor of deporting illegals?
National security trumps this issue. Most of the "illegals" you refer to are no threat to this nation while illegals like you and Bart do pose a clear and present danger to our nation, like Tim McViegh, so the fact that you are citizens and traitors presents some prickly issues with regard to deportation, (no other country wants you, anyway). I say we just shoot you.
The First Amendment is very clear about the freedom the press has in our nation.
ReplyDelete"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The government shall make NO law that cuts, edits, undermines or reduces the freedom of the press. The fact that it is being debated in Congress in very scarily because the press serves as a check and balance between all of our government and the citizens. If the government is doing something that can hurts us in any we have the right to know. How can covering torture, domestic spying and evidence about the illegalities that got us in Iraq be justified and permission granted by the people?
While we are looking at the first amendment lets take a look at another one of your "rights" but also duty as citizens of this country. "The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances," it is our right to be discontent with the way our country is being run. I am disgusted with the way politicians ignore the needs of many for the interests of a few. Most of the current members of Congress do not have the right to calls us traitors, cowards and unpatriotic. It is because I want the best for this country and I worry about the people in it who are suffering that I want all of the undeserving members of Congress to be replaced by honest, hard working and caring individuals, who actually represent this country more than a bunch of rich and privilege few.
What will it take to make people angry at the way our civil liberties and future is slowing being eroded by this administration? We must show our government that we are fed up and will not elect someone who will not represent all of their constituents.
I'm used to a more intelligent level of discourse on this blog. Commentators who attempt to argue about events, facts, adn even motives, if you don't agree with them, should be disputed, as long as they're within a reasonable degree of relevance to the topic. On the other hand, people with hate screeds, paranoid conspiracy theories, and laundry lists of profane insults should be ignored. Not responded to in kind. Everything you need to know about the true nature of humanity can be found on the internet...
ReplyDeleteIf you like Grenn Greenwald, try to emulate him. Don't just hang about calling people dumb motherfuckers, even if they deserve it.
Actually, as far as defending the country is concerned, you work for the Republicans. At least until the election of Democrats comes around.
ReplyDeleteTimothy McViegh is a "great American hero" to Bart and Shooter. They only wish he had been able to kill the Clintons and Janet Reno. The next Democrats in office will need special protection while these morons walk the earth. They must be stopped.
Dread Scot said...
ReplyDeleteThe right has spent decades and many millions of dollars building up an intellectual infrastructure, not just to make sure the conservative point of view is heard on every issue, but to determine the terms every issue is discussed in. That won't change because Democrats get elected.
The administration, Republicans in congress and right wing pundits are relentlessly pounding out the security theme on this issue not because it has merit, but because if they are the loudest and the most often heard the issue will be discussed and thought about in their terms. You can see the effect of that tactic clearly from Bart's first post. Bart did not attack Glenn's argument on the merits, he reframed the issue so that Glenn's argument no longer fit and Bart's argument won by default. The key to winning is to reject Bart's frame and keep Glenn's, where Bart's argument doesn't fit and Glenn wins by default, as well as on merit. Unfortunately, doing this on a national scale is a matter volume and on-message repetition, a game where the right has a distinct advantage.
Your argument would be legitimate if directed at Glenn's misrepresentation of the argument for the prosecution of the NYT.
In my post, I gave three examples from Glenn's blog where he claims that the right is arguing to imprison journalists for merely publishing facts which embarrass the Administration which the Administration would rather keep private. Under this definition, it would falsely appear that we wished to imprison journalists for everything from reporting on Abu Ghraib to Cheney's shooting accident.
In fact, our argument is much more narrow and targeted - that the Risen and the NYT has violated specific provisions of the Espionage Act by illegally disclosing a top secret intelligence gathering program to the enemy being surveilled.
I called Glenn on his misrepresentation of our argument.
As for the merits of our argument for the prosecution of the NYT, you appear to concede our argument when you admit that I would win by default.
Phd9 wrote: "I would find [bart's] arguments even more persuasive if they didn't rely at their base on the idea that anything GW says is true. If the survellance propgram indeed existed merely to eavesdrop on such Americans who were in contact with Al Qeada operatives, there weren't be any arguing going on."
ReplyDeleteHow exactly does the question of whether Risen and the NYT violated the Espionage Act and perhaps other statutes for disclosing the top secret NSA Program rely at all on trusting George Bush?
I haven't cited any statement by George Bush in my indictment of the NYT. Indeed, nearly all of the facts you would need to convict the NYT are in Risen's book and his NYT articles themselves.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." -- Ed Howdershelt
ReplyDeleteGood post as always, Glenn. I do believe that the soap box has exhausted its potential for remedy in this instance. I agree with part of Rick Renzi's statement, "[to] use all of the power of existing law to bring criminal charges." I just think that the attorney general and the president should be in the role of defendants, where the law says they belong. Charges would include multiple counts of kidnap and murder.
It's time for madam justice to remove the blindfold, put down the scales, and pick up something heavier. A hammer, perhaps.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteBesides getting the right kinds of judicial appointments, another major step in straightening out our country would be the passage of the Constitution Restoration Act.
By your implication, I have to assume that "Constitution Restoration" includes the elimination of all Constitutional amendments beginning with #11, including the reinstitution of slavery and the indirect election of Senators. Then we can fight the Civil War again.
glasnost said...
ReplyDeleteAnother good reason that Bart, standing in here for "the right wing" is less often discredited than deserved is that he/they never answers directly any question that directly undermines his arguments. He ignores them and starts over on the next thread.
He also, to his unfortunate credit, is able to go into substantial detail - misleading detail, but detail nonetheless.
Glenn, I have a note for you. Part of the problem with a blog is that the conversation on an event begins when the event begins. Sometime after that, the specific argument about the event reaches its highest level of detail, and is thereafter only referred to indirectly.
The problem this creates is for people who haven't been here from the beginning.
This is a very good point.
I am more than a little tired of being accused of not providing support for or finishing arguments I make when I have actually posted the equivalent of a dozen or so legal briefs over the 3-4 months worth of blogs since I have started posting here.
For those genuinely seeking the information as opposed to snarking and lying, I have patiently repeated my posts on most of the major issues here several times because I think we are debating very important issues here which deserve genuine substantive effort rather than the usual partisan sniping.
I am the first to admit that I am not very net savvy. However, Glenn, would there be a way to crate ongoing permanent threads on the main issues which you like to raise so we have an ongoing history of the arguments for newbies to refer?
I think you should create an online event - offer to debate Bart on, say, the NSA leak - and leave the results proimnently published as, essentially, a permanent addition to the reference material of this blog.
I would be honored to debate Glenn on any subject on which we disagree. The legal foundations for the NSA Program and the liability of the NYT for disclosing that program would be two such subjects.
However, so we do not waste time speaking past one another from different framings of the issue as we have on this thread, we need an agreed question on which to debate.
If that is agreeable to Glenn, I am game.
In case this bright little idea of mine never happened, some points to remember for the impressionable out there:
1. No one ever can, should, or will be prosecuted for publishing or exposing information pertaining to an illegal act committed by the government.
We agree. This is the bright line I would use to determine whether a journalist has violated the law by publishing classified material. You cannot legitimately classify illegal activity and disclosure of the same should not be a crime. However, disclosure for any other reason is a crime.
2. The NSA wiretapping program directly violates Congresional statutues - the law.
The NYT should be allowed to argue that as an affirmative legal defense in a motion to dismiss any criminal charges levied against them.
They would lose. The program is clearly authorized by Article II of the Constitution, which trumps FISA. To the extent that FISA could constitutionally apply to intelligence gathering, it would not apply to the NSA Program because international calls do not have any more reasonable expectation of privacy than does international mail. In any case, the AUMF against al Qaeda waived the application of FISA in this case.
3. Pretending that #1 and #2 don't exist, the government's technical ability to monitor electronic communications of all kinds has been public knowledge for decades. The NYTimes story focused almost entirely on the changing - shrinking requirements neccesary to obtain permission to use the electronic tools.
First, the facts of the surveillance and the means and methods of that surveillance were completely unknown to the general public. The fact that the existence of a general technology is known is meaningless is the enemy is unaware that technology is being successfully used against them. The leakers themselves and the press in several reports admit that the NSA Program was being used successfully against the enemy.
4. Governments classify materials on the basis of finding them embarrasing to be released all the time: the classification process frequently has almost nothing to do with technological or military secrets. A passing example of this is the years-long struggle to obtain the names of the defendants in Guantanamo Bay, an absolutely neccesary first step to gathering information on them neccesary to prove that they are not related to Al-Quieda. The government has known that the vast majority of the GB prisoners had nothing to do with AQ for years. It classified this information to avoid the embrassment of the public finding out the same thing, and it continued to withold it until ordered by a federal judge to disclose it.
This is a repeat of the first argument. No one is seriously arguing that the press may not report on criminal activity.
If Bart's POV was implemented - consistently - rather than, say, using the selective prosecution of the NYTimes as a revenge tactic - you could throw Glenn Greenwald in jail for repeating the NYTimes' information, as well as every blogger on this webpage, every newspaper reporter who put NYTimes information on their own page, and every reporter and media outlet who has ever reported on classified information at any time in our history.
Pure hyperbole.
Once the NYT disclosed this information, it was public and no longer classified. Thus, repeating it would not be a crime.
Bart suggests that "No one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. ", but this is a flat-out lie.
Really? Feel free to repost any statement of mine or any of the sources linked to by Glenn which argues for throwing journalists in jail for embarrassing George Bush. It is a ludicrous claim which would result in nearly every journalist in the Donkey press being sent to prison.
You may now apologize for calling me a liar.
Since the only law that the NYTimes could be claimed to violate is the 1950 Espionage Act, and since the goverment can classify literally any piece of information it chooses to classify, enforcement of this law would allow the government an unlimited ability to declare any piece of information in the world off-limits, and throw anyone who repeats it in jail. This is the cause that Bart is advancing.
What does you argument above have to do with my point that no one is talking about throwing journalists in jail for embarrassing George Bush?
As for your unrelated point, the decision to classify is made by the political branches. Elections matter. If you are upset by over classification, then make it a campaign issue in the next presidential election.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteCan you ban 'bart' yet?
Bart: "Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications."
The number of lies and amount of misinformation here is extraordinary.
If by "here" you mean your following statements, I heartily agree...
(1) The program consists of the NSA intercepting *everyone*'s telephone communications.
This is a lie. Prove it.
The NSA has not demonstrated to *any* judge that *any* of the spying it's doing is even *related* to al-Qaeda.
I never said otherwise. So what?
(2) The government already had the ability to legally intercept communications with al-Qaeda.
All the intelligence gathering programs disclosed by the press to the enemy to date have all been legal. What is your point?
(3) Al-Qaeda knew this.
If al Qaeda knew that their international telecommunications were compromised, why did we keep intercepting them?
(3) The program is illegal.
Article II trumps FISA.
(4) The program is unconstitutional.
Exactly what provision does the program violate?
(5) It is illegal for the program to be top secret; it does not meet the legal requirements.
The NYT can argue this to the judge after they are indicted.
(6) The only thing exposed was the illegal, non-al-Qaeda-related aspects of the progam.
What aspects were those since this program targets al Qaeda and its allies.
"Our resident troll represents such a fringe, minority position, we all know that his off-topic talking points, half-truths, and outright lies will sway no one here"
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 3:26 PM: To begin with, you need to get yourself a screen name.
A perfect example of someone that doesn't understand how America works, you seem to think that you are always winning the debate, yet you continullay attempt to stifle others.
Why are you trying so hard to make sure that an honest debate won't be allowed to take place?
Alberto Gonzales said:
ReplyDelete"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility,"
In light of Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, § 798.a.3 of the US Code (Disclosure of classified information), why does Gonzales say you need to read the law carefully? To a non-lawyer, it would seem to directly apply to the NSA case.
Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, § 798
Your friendly neighborhood troll knows that 411-0 is a suspiciously unanimous number for a controversial amendment. As usual the troll is correct. I suspect that 411-0 was the funding bill vote the amendment was attached to. The Boland vote was 243-171.
ReplyDeleteAs usual the troll is full of it. I put in italics funding for 1983-84, which would not be possible for your link which was two years later in 1984.
I obviously was talking about the Boland Amendment of 1982. The unanimous number is correct when it was originally passed.
Even the vote two years later means, according to you, hundreds of outright communists in the House of Representatives.
This is why I try not to engage trolls, they simply cannot fathom the concept of intellectual honesty. If we could get a honest argument with them, they’d be worth engaging, but apparently that’s not possible.
I should know better.
My apologies.
This is probably as good a time as any to dispel a myth or two.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is. Here are a couple of facts for you:
- America is one of the most unequal of the Western industrialised countries.
- America is becoming more unequal as time goes on.
- (and this is the kicker) The US is the Western country with the highest level of generational inequality - the country in which the income of your parentsd most determines your income.
Shooter,
ReplyDeleteLift a can of piss, (American beer, real beer doesn't come in cans) to your hero Tim McViegh today. And sit down with your well worn and dog eared copy of the Turner Diaries and rejoice. Your days are numbered just like Timothy Mcviegh's and the pages of that work of fiction.
I'm drinking to Jane Fonda, among others.
Does it ever occur to you people that defending Communist regimes, doesn't go over well with Americans?
ReplyDeleteOh wait a minute. You're not defending Communist regimes, right? You're just criticising the breaking of the law that prohibits helping the Communist opponents, which contributes to the defense of Communist regimes.
Either Communism works or it doesn't.
If it works, why not let it work?
If it doesn't work, why not let it fail?
Why interfere?
I wrote up my version here, the other day, incidentally.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of "conservatives" who want to imprison without trial, search without warrants, prosecute reporters, etc. It's high time we liberals started referring to these people as what they actually are - "fascists."
ReplyDeleteMany actual conservatives (like Jonathan Adler) believe in the "conservative" principles of personal freedom and strict interpretation of the Constitution. It's time to let people like Adler know that we need their help to defeat the fascists, whose only goal is increasing the authority of the state.
"What aspects were those since this program targets al Qaeda and its allies."
ReplyDeleteAt least thats what they tell us.
DavidByron said...
ReplyDeletePhoenician: America is one of the most unequal of the Western industrialised countries. America is becoming more unequal as time goes on. The US is the Western country with the highest level of generational inequality - the country in which the income of your parents most determines your income.
So what? Our lower middle class has more purchasing power than the middle class in the rest of the industrialized world and our income is increasing faster across the board than is the rest of the industrialized world.
Free markets combined with the rule of law to enforce contracts always without exception creates more wealth than do less free economic systems.
And Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the US for men. This sort of data is a "does not compute! does not compute!" situation for American patriots.
Actually, it makes prefect sense. The Cuban police state has very little crime which kills too many of the young men in our country, they don't suffer from many wealth based first world physical ills like obsesity and they also have very good basic medical care.
However, for some reason, Cubans take any opportunity to flee this peoples' paradise to come to our unequal free market hell hole with a lower average life expectancy.
You are welcome to emigrate to Cuba, though.
The recent polls that were linked to the other day also said that few potential immigrants see America as a land of opportunity these days. Instead they'd rather go to Europe.
LMAO!!! Where do they manufacture these polls?
Europe a land of opportunity for immigrants? The majority of Euro double digit unemployment rates are immigrants. Unless your idea of opportunity is the dole, you must be insane!
Either Communism works or it doesn't.
If it works, why not let it work?
I think you can still find old Soviet style communism in North Korea and Cuba. If you think this represents a superior system, please emigrate.
Threat of a good example. If there was an example of a non-capitalist system working then the slaves might revolt. Same reason is why everybody in America "knows" that America is the land of opportunity. Useful idiots.
The true poll is how people vote with their feet.
Compare migrations of people from socialist countries to freer countries to the reverse.
Article II trumps FISA.
ReplyDeleteArticle I trumps Article II, hence FISA, deriving from superior Article I powers, trumps Presidential fantasy powers.
Article I give Congress the sole authority to legislate (determine the law) while the President is locked into ONLY obeying and/or enforcing the law. If he/she disagrees with a law, the VETO is the ONLY available tool in his/her toolbox...that or a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Prez. No such ruling on anything Bush has declared as his super Article I power has occurred because the Admin assiduously works to prevent any chance of a court getting to rule.
Article I give Congress the sole power to determine the rules of captures in war (that is, they and they alone get to determine how taking prisoners will be done and how they will be handled. The President has no power in this regard except to obey the dictates of Congress).
Article I give Congress the ability to regulate the powers of the President. Not cut them, per se, but to REGULATE them. FISA clearly falls into this area.
The President was designed from the getgo to be a weak position. Article I gives most power in government to the Congress with only the leftovers, regulated by Congress, going to the Prez.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteBart: Article II trumps FISA.
Article I trumps Article II, hence FISA, deriving from superior Article I powers, trumps Presidential fantasy powers.
This should be fun. OK, I'll bite. Exactly how does Article I trump Article II?
Article I give Congress the sole authority to legislate (determine the law) while the President is locked into ONLY obeying and/or enforcing the law.
OK, you weren't dozing through all of your civics class, just the part about the Constitution.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Statutes are subordinate to the Constitution. Unconstitutional statutes are null and void and may be ignored.
Article I give Congress the sole power to determine the rules of captures in war (that is, they and they alone get to determine how taking prisoners will be done and how they will be handled. The President has no power in this regard except to obey the dictates of Congress.
What does this have to do with FISA and the NSA Program?
Article I give Congress the ability to regulate the powers of the President. Not cut them, per se, but to REGULATE them.
Really? What provision of Article I provides the power for Congress to "regulate" the President's Article II powers?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteDavidByron said...
ReplyDeleteSorry Bart but the US just isn't that impressive when it comes to things other than blowing stuff up.
What other things?
Our culture dominates the planet.
Our 5% of the population creates about a third of the world's wealth.
There is not another nation where a person has freedom of choice in so many areas.
And, of course, there is not another nation which can match our military.
Bart: So what? Our lower middle class has more purchasing power than the middle class in the rest of the industrialized world and our income is increasing faster across the board than is the rest of the industrialized world.
Europeans have more purchasing power because they get education and healthcare for free (ie paid for out of taxes). Many Americans have simply given up trying to buy healthcare at any price. Including some with good jobs - the middle class. This would be unthinkable in Europe.
I am including all of the services in which are provided by the government in my statement.
The Euro socialist model attempts to achieve economic equality by artificially increasing the income received by labor above its market value. To pay for this, they tax those most successful in creating wealth.
The taxation reduces economic growth to about half or less of ours.
Moreover, employers will not hire younger workers who do not have the skill set to justify the inflated wages. The result is double digit unemployment.
Because the socialist welfare state provides nearly full income to the unemployed, the inflated wages for those lucky enough to have a job are taxed away to support the unemployed.
Socialism cannot change basic market forces any more than you can ignore gravity and walk on air.
I thought American middle class income was actually decreasing at the moment.
As Fed chairman Bernancke (sp?) observed recently, our inflation measures are always overstated because they do not take in account the ability to shift purchasing preferences in response to price incentives to maximize the efficiency of our income.
After falling as a percentage of income for a couple decades, fuel prices recently rose because of increased demand being driven by formerly socialist countries like India and China turning to freer markets and growing like gangbusters.
That price increase simply provided the incentive to conserve and to find more energy sources. In a couple years, the new conservation and energy sources will come on line and prices will fall again.
I'm pretty sure that's not true of all countries in Europe.
No, England, Ireland, and some liberalized Eastern European countries have growth rates approaching ours.
Sorry Bart, these are the facts:
ReplyDeleteDown Is Still Up
The White House continues to tax reality.
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page B06
WHEN BEN S. Bernanke left the White House Council of Economic Advisers to become Fed chairman, his place was filled by Edward P. Lazear, an accomplished economist from Stanford University. For all his credentials, Mr. Lazear is not doing well.
In a speech Thursday, Mr. Lazear contended that "low taxes are consistent with rising federal revenues, which helps bring the deficit down." This deliberately implies that low taxes cause a rise in federal revenue, even though they don't. Last year one of Mr. Lazear's predecessors as chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, examined whether tax cuts pay for themselves: In other words, do they boost work incentives enough to generate sufficient extra growth that government revenue ends up higher than it would have been without tax cuts? Mr. Mankiw concluded that this "dynamic" effect is way too small to justify Mr. Lazear's message. Tax cuts cause falls in federal revenue, and implying the opposite is irresponsible.
Mr. Lazear also stated that "higher productivity translates directly into higher wages -- even over the relatively short run." But one of his own charts showed how wages of production workers have lagged behind productivity gains for nearly all of the past 50 years and how this gap has grown wider in the past five years. In a recent paper titled "Where did the Productivity Growth Go?" Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University reports that between 1966 and 2001, everyone in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution saw wages grow more slowly than productivity and that fully half the gains from extra productivity went to the richest tenth. Mr. Lazear did not address this issue.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed recently, Mr. Lazear stated that the Bush tax cuts have narrowed gaps in take-home earnings. This is wrong, as a previous editorial noted; but in Thursday's speech Mr. Lazear returned to the subject of progressivity from the opposite angle. "To further investment in human capital, it is necessary that the progressivity of the tax system not become too pronounced," he said; in other words, inequality usefully boosts the incentive to get an education. To illustrate the dangers of equality, Mr. Lazear cited Eastern Europe circa 1990, when "highly skilled individuals chose to drive taxis for tourists."
It is true that equal wages dampen work incentives, but the invocation of communist Czechoslovakia or Poland is far-fetched. In the late 1980s, the Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, averaged around 24 points in the Soviet bloc; the contemporary United States, with a Gini score of about 40, is far less equal. Does Mr. Lazear honestly believe the United States is anywhere close to a situation in which engineers or doctors forsake their professions to act as tour guides? Or is he scraping around for an argument -- any argument -- to play down justified concerns about rising inequality?
So what? Our lower middle class has more purchasing power than the middle class in the rest of the industrialized world and our income is increasing faster across the board than is the rest of the industrialized world.
ReplyDeleteActually, for males, it's *decreasing*, Bart. see here.
As David told you - most Western European countries have a better standard of living than America, due to socialised education and health.
I am including all of the services in which are provided by the government in my statement.
Gee, Bart - all I saw was a statement produced ad anusum. Not a single cite or figure mentioned.
Why would that be?
i watched that hearing and i've had a hangover of dread since. mike rogers' (r-mi) bizzare argument that if martha stewart could be imprisoned for insider trading, then CNN or the Times could also be imprisoned for "insider trading" of secret information in order to make a profit - and the manner in which he interrogated Isaacson - "yes or no?" still has me frightened. you could see isaacson's chagrin, but he did not allow the tactic. rogers and his ilk appear actually to be true believers.
ReplyDeletewhat worries me more than this very frightening hearing, is what i perceive re: bush's appointments to the bench. kavanagh was confirmed. this is unbelievable. it appears that given enough time bush&co will have everything they need to enact their final solution to the american experiment.
i particularly enjoyed turley's aside during one response re: his family's having fought in every war the u.s. has engaged - including the revolutionary war. slap slap slap on the way to his point. but it is a fearful thing that he should have felt the need.
"Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications."
ReplyDeleteHow can you possibly argue that you aren't basing your opinion on the assumption of Bush telling the truth? I'd appreciate a real answer, since this is one of the many questions which you are so sick of being accused of dodging.
"You don't think that all the anonymous anti-american bigots and racists that comment here in support of Glenn's hate scribes aren't enough?
I oppose bigotry myself, and I have written nothing here at any time that is bigoted.
Says the "Dog""
You have serious mental problems which prevent you from seeing reality. You might want to try and fix your head sometime, if you feel like it. Good luck with your guilt complex, too. I won't point out the warning signs of that one for you, let it be a wonderful surprise.
eyes wide open: You should be ashamed for defending the Dog's statement. Plus you're wrong about your "sins of the fathers" stuff.
Glenn: Didn't you have a discussion on here a few months ago about removing people that purposely make negative contributions on a regular basis? Maybe you should read the Dog's posts. He's a perfect candidate! He even likes to tread on the memories of millions of murder victims and racially insult them!
Again, I must say: what happened to the discussion on this blog? There are still strong commenters around, but it's mostly gone in the toilet.
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteI've been a fan of your blog for some time now and have posted on the rare occasion. I started reading the comments and was impressed with the civility and intelligence of the posters... until I came across "The Dog" and his ilk. Word of your post obviously made its way to some right-wing site and brought the culture warriors running. It has a profound impact on the quality of the comments... I didn't even finish reading them I was so disgusted. Please, ban such flagrant abusers. Obviously I'm not talking about Bart (that is one topic talked to death) - I'm referring to those posters who are lobbing grenades into a reasonable discussion in order to distract, enrage and disgust. I think it is fair given the way they behave.
Keep up the good fight!
Cheers,
Xero
Anonymous 10:45 PM said:
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea what you are talking about. The founding fathers established a constitutional republic under God, not a democracy, which is another name for mob rule. Only by submitting to Divine guidance can our government rule justly and wisely.
----------
Forgive the length of this one, but I think it's relevant. Stop me if you've read it before...
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Article I
Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
(I won't post the whole thing. But I searched for "god", "div" (divine, divinity), "providence", and "almighty"; I found 2 "divide" and one "Providence", as in Rhode Island.
Article II
Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:
A few "divide"s, but nothing else.
Article III
Section 1. The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.
Not even a "divide."
Not looking good for the God Squad...
Article IV
Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.
Huh. Nothing. I'm shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.
In all this enumeration of powers, you'd think they'd have given the Almighty Divine Providence that is God at least a tip of the hat. Hell, I'd have given him his own Article, had I wanted him in there. Oddly, though, no Article. Not so much as a Proper Noun referring to him. In fact, the Old Boy's devoid of adjectives, too, in all the enumerated powers of all the constitutent entities that make up this Great Nation of ours.
The F*****G AMENDMENT THAT MENTIONS RELIGION doesn't mention God, Almighty, Providence, Divinity, or Divine.
Stop dunking your Jesus in my coffee. He's becoming rather stained by the experience.
-j
The award for most outstanding buffonery in the comments section goes to Anonymous 12:02 AM for this shining example of "People who don't understand how America works"...
ReplyDelete"Article I trumps Article II, hence FISA, deriving from superior Article I powers, trumps Presidential fantasy powers"
Why then would the President have veto power over new legislation, and what role would the Supreme Court play in determining law if Congress has over arching constitutional authority?
And of course there's this:
"The President was designed from the getgo to be a weak position"
Why is it then that only the executive branch conducts all foreign affairs, and the President alone is the CiC of our military?
bart said:
ReplyDeleteNo one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. That is spin...
Risen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications.
I think it would be impossible for a court of law to distinguish between politically embarrassing stories and stories that harm national security.
It's a slippery slope we go down if we ask our courts to differentiate between information the American public has a right to know and stories that harm the American people.
It's too much to ask of our courts. Better to let the press roam free, and consider it a cost of living in a free society.
Glenn, I gotta second calls for you to ban "The Dog." He's clearly just a hate-monger (aggravated, no doubt, by watching his hero's poll numbers go lower and lower.)
ReplyDeleteTHERE IS NO WAR ON TERROR
ReplyDeletehttp://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/29/memorial-day-truth-there-is-no-war-on-terror/
[...]Terror is an emotion. Emotions are part of human nature and cannot be eradicated. A "War on Terror" is therefore a war on humanity.[...]
[...]Bushco has enslaved Americans into a psychological reign of "War on Terror" that amounts to a criminal protection racket. We are told we must be afraid. That is, we are told we must live in terror. This is to protect us from. . . terror. Then, because we feel terrified, we must give up our freedom - freedom to write what we believe without fear of reprisal, freedom of due process and habeas corpus protection, freedom from secret intrusion into our private lives by government.[...]
[...]If there were really a "War on Terror," an emotion, Wes Craven would be hiring a lawyer: he scares people. The "War on Terror" is a sham. You know what changed after September 11th? We, the people of the United States, forgot how strong we are.[...]
[...]Osama bin Laden wants you to be afraid. So does George Bush.
I know I’m not alone when I say, I’m an American and I’m not afraid. I know I’m going to die. I accept that I’m going to die, no problem. What I do not accept and will not accept is the notion that I must live as a slave to fear for the purposes of craven, cowardly men who, in their time, pissed the bed rather than fight an actual war, later to become powerful and use that power to line their pockets with my tax dollars. Give me liberty or give me death. Take your "terror" and shove it.[...]
[...]If the U. S. were serious about thwarting terrorism or about minimizing our exposure to acts of violence designed to make us afraid, we would have rigorous port security and massive international goodwill and cooperation in the lawful identification of anarchic, violent networks. But we don’t have that. We have our sons and daughters fighting to maintain bases in the sand near oil fields, sacrificing their lives, bodies and minds for a pack of lies.[...]
[...]In each of our minds lies the beginning of our return to freedom, so please, say it after me: "There is no ‘War on Terror.’"[...]
----------------------------
The only things that actually changed on 9/11 can be found in the minds of those that are weak-minded and susceptible to paranoia to begin with.
Criminal acts were perpetrated on 9/11 - nothing more, nothing less. If you really think otherwise then by definition the terrorists have won. Their object has been attained.
If you have any real faith in the Rule of Law and therefore any real faith in America and "The American Way", then consider the heinously criminal acts of 9/11/2001 as nothing more than that, and urge the LAW to do all that it can bring justice. For it is supposed to be the LAW that rules America; not the President, not the executive, and certainly least of all not the Commander-in-Chief in a so-called Global War On Terror.
The events of 9/11 should be and indeed must be yet another test of your faith - just as it was for your patriotic fore-bears in 1812, the Civil War, WWII, the Cold War, the WTC attack in '93, Oklahoma in '95 and many others - for by refusing to do so, and letting "strong-daddys" play fast and loose with the Law, you lose twice over: Once by granting the terrorists their object and categorically losing the so-called GWOT (...you g-ddamn 'effin bedwetting LOSERS). Twice and much more importantly one puts the final nails in the coffin of the great experiment that is the United States of America.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeletePlease name one hateful thing in anything I've posted in this thread. Please back up your assertion with 1. A quoteback of text AND 2. Your reasoning, logic, and methods for asserting that what you quoteback is IN FACT hate mongering.
You could start with defining hate mongering with citation to your source for the definitions, and then compare and contrast the words quoted back by you as an example of hate mongering with clear and complete explanation as to why those words do IN FACT constitute hate mongering.
If you convince me I've posted something that qualifies as hate mongering I will stop posting here forever.
If you can't or don't have the intellectual horsepower to do as requested above than you should just STFU because in such a case you obviously have no frickin clue what you are speaking about.
Dares you, the "Dog"
Hey Sparky,
ReplyDeleteYeah right....
Says the "Dog"
Hey dog: Scroll up and re-read your post again. Then, blow your brains out.
ReplyDeleteI know your type, everyone here does. The best adjective for you would probably be "sniveling". That sounds about right.
"I'm mixed breed myself, I just don't use it as a crutch to avoid confronting life and making the best of the hand the ancient of days dealt me."
Hahaha
Deep down inside that confused bundle of nerves in your head lies a man truly worth pitying.
People who don't understand how America works...
ReplyDeleteSpark,
"Criminal acts were perpetrated on 9/11 - nothing more, nothing less. If you really think otherwise then by definition the terrorists have won"
I suppose in your view the German U-Boat attacks sinking both US based commercial and passenger ships crossing the Atlantic that went on for decades would also be mere "criminal acts" too, because America did not declare war with Germany until December, 1941.
You guys should occasionally do a little independent research, you might learn something about another war that began several years before President Bush took office.
From the fly at 6:05AM:
ReplyDelete"You guys should occasionally do a little independent research, you might learn something about another war that began several years before President Bush took office."
Nice try. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually serious.
As I've repeatedly pointed out, you can't shoot an idea or tactic, which is all 'terrorism' per se is, so the entire notion of the GWOT being a conventional 'war' is idiotic and counterproductive in the extreme.
Far better we take measures that would actually secure our airports and seaports, improve our intelligence-gathering capacity so it actually produces usable intel on actual threats, and perhaps even help address the grievences that fuel so much of the resentment against the US in the world.
But that would require actual thought on the issue, wouldn't it?
The Dog said:
ReplyDeleteSo tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.
And then, in a display of memory disorder that would do Ronald Reagan proud (or would alternately do proud the Clintonian quest for Is-definition), said:
Please name one hateful thing in anything I've posted in this thread. Please back up your assertion with 1. A quoteback of text AND 2. Your reasoning, logic, and methods for asserting that what you quoteback is IN FACT hate mongering.
Mongering: selling; can logically be expanded to encouraging the adaptation of [something].
Hate: "a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action "
hate-mongering: encouraging of a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action.
Reasonable definitions, yes?
So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.
"Your people" establishes the presence of an "Other" mentality; experiments (the Stanford Prison Experiment, among others) have shown that establishing an Us and a Them are key to encouraging dislike between groups, and the criteria for this grouping may be entirely arbitrary.
Unless the reader explicitly assumes s/he is a part of the "them" group, s/he is implicitly a part of the "us" group (i.e., all those who are not "them.")
With this established, The Dog heaps abuse on this group, calling them wife-beaters and various forms of lazy and system-dependent. Since the non-"them" reader is implicitly a part of the "us" group, the us/them group dynamic encourages him or her to make similar attacks; The Dog would presumably be pleased if a pack of chorusing voices joined in to criticize the lifestyle choices and/or circumstances of the "them" group, and the "us/them" dynamic would reward such attacks by building an "us" implicit community that more strongly excludes the "them" group.
Us/Them groups are, by virtue of the "echo chamber" effect, self-reinforcing (see www.wikipedia.com for a definiton and Dave Neiwert's blog for ample example), and tend to be rewarding of extreme positions at the expense of moderate positions.
Ultimately, the group that The Dog encourages would, if echo-chamber dynamics hold true (and while they don't always result in extremes, they do it often enough that it's a forseeable consequence), be pushed beyond "us/them" passive dislike to take some sort of action. The Dog might honestly be horrified at this action... but his words are of a nature to set them in motion nonetheless.
hate-mongering: encouraging of a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action.
Proof?
Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Native Americans, dead by European hands. Millions of dead Jews in Eastern Europe (Inquisition to pogroms, it's all the same beast).Strange fruit in southern trees. Mexican border crossers shot dead. East Timor. Janjaweed. Matthew Sheperd. Intifada. Kosovo. Tibet. Shiite vs. Sunni vs. Kurd vs. America vs. Iran and Korea and Venezuela and Cuba and...
Proof?
Look out the window. See what Us vs. Them does to our city streets. Look at the kids in the back of the class beat up by bullies. Look at the kids shot dead in gang violence.
Look, Dog.
And then re-read what you wrote, and ask yourself how it could possibly have been read in any other way.
And then beg forgiveness, or keep your word and leave.
Somehow I don't think you'll do either, but that's to be expected; you just can't trust a puppy not to shit on the rug...
-j
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteLOL,
Stanford Prison, Experiments, Us v. Them, Echo Chambers, your analysis while nonsense did have the redeeming feature of being so wrong it was hilariously funny.
It wasn't I who separated out the groups indians and non-indians, that would be Shoes of Peace who did this and to whom I was responding. If you've got a problem with that then dance on over to Shoes of Peace because I was merely responding in the language and concepts used by *Shoes of Peace*.
As regards drinking, unemployment, and wife beating, these problems are unquestionably higher in the Indian community than in any other segment of society. Numerous studies have documented these well known *FACTS* quite clearly.
Telling someone or a group of someone's to take responsibility for their own lives and quit blaming their problems on others whom they have never met is the best and most likely form of advice/therapy to be of benefit to those who have fallen into the perpetual victim thinking trap.
Its the highest form of love (a bit tough but tough love is what is most called for rather than enabling love that is the province of leftist idiots) to tell those addicted to drugs, alcohol, victimization thinking, and violence towards women to take charge of and responsibility for their own lives and to stop such unacceptable and inherently self-defeating behaviors.
So telling Shoes of Peace who thinks in terms of groups and us versus them with his *US* being a victimization class that removes from him/her the responsibility for his own life and own choices to get off the sauce, stop crying like a biatch, and make something of his/her life is the best loving advice that could be given to someone in such a pitiful state.
So hardly being a statement of hate, it was in fact a statement of honest help. The only real help anyone on this entire forum has ever offerred Shoes of Peace.
Then Anonymous follows his hillarious entertainment of non-understanding, with a list of nonsequitors of "bad" things wholly and completely unrelated to anything I said or any point he attempted to make as though just reciting a list of unrelated bad things as sort of a mantra of liberal non-thinking constitutes some form of logical thinking or analysis.
Anonymous, you wouldn't recognize a logical argument that stays on point, if it bit you on your arse.
Says the "Dog"
BTW, pup:
ReplyDeleteFolks tend to take you more seriously if you learn to spell and punctuate. Yes, even in blog comments.
-j
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThat's it bad spelling is the best you can up with. A comment of a man just plain out of intelligent ideas and comments.
Says the "Dog"
ReplyDeleteThat's it bad spelling is the best you can up with.
Actually, no. I grimaced when I saw that one come through first, because I knew how it would make me look.
I posted a substantial response (accidentally double-posted it, even, which given the length would I'm SURE have made a lot of folks thrilled with me), but for some reason it hasn't come through.
If I don't see it in the next hour or so, I'll try again...
-j
All right, I guess my previous reply got caught in a spam trap. Let's try this again. Apologies in advance if it shows up later, to all those who don't need their noses rubbed in their own mess...
ReplyDeleteSays the puppy:
your analysis while nonsense did have the redeeming feature of being so wrong it was hilariously funny.
Thanks. At least you're getting something out of it; my life's not completely wasted.
Of course, there's also the fact that folks tend to have two ways of reacting to things they can't quite get their minds around: try again until they get it, or give up and laugh about it. Usually the latter response is rooted in not feeling too good about the fact that the material wasn't understood, and serves to blame the writer instead of the reader.
In this case, I thought it was clear enough; perhaps I was wrong. I'll try to break it down into more easily digested kibble. It's hard work working with monosyllables, though; I'm not sure I'm up to it.
It wasn't I who separated out the groups indians and non-indians, that would be Shoes of Peace who did this and to whom I was responding.
Alas, there's that reading comprehension thing again.
SOP says:
We slaughtered the folks and took their land in the name of our own "freedom" and in order to line our own pocketbooks...And we're still trying to take what land they've got left.
Clearly, SOP is lumping him/herself in with the victimizers, not the victims. There's actually a degree of self-loathing there for helping to perpetuate the system as-is.
Do I agree with SOP's seeming hypothesis, that our current miasma is the result of a sort of karmic payback? Not really. While I agree that grievous injustices have been done, and to an extent continue to happen, one thing has very little to do with another.
But the point remains that one needs to read a post before replying to it, just as one needs to listen to an argument and understand it before it may be successfully rebutted.
As regards drinking, unemployment, and wife beating, these problems are unquestionably higher in the Indian community than in any other segment of society.
Agreed. Root causes aside (depression and perceived impotence in the larger world has a significant influence on alcohol consumption and domestic violence for all demographics; if one were to check the numbers on those influences in reservation-dwellers, I'd suspect one would find them correspondingly higher than the mean), the fact is the fact.
Telling someone or a group of someone's to take responsibility for their own lives and quit blaming their problems on others whom they have never met is the best and most likely form of advice/therapy to be of benefit to those who have fallen into the perpetual victim thinking trap.
Were this advice actually -given- to these individuals, I might see merit in the argument. As it is, it's a digression, because SOP does not consider him/herself a member of the group, as was clear to anyone who read his/her post (regardless of whether one agrees with it or not).
Therefore, there are two options here:
1. Y Kant Puppy Read?
We can all chip in, either for some new glasses or a few classes at Sylvan Learning Center, if you think either might help. I doubt it, but...
2. Y Don't Puppy Care?
This is the more likely issue. Puppy seems intelligent enough (granted a basic lack of grammar and spelling skills, but I'm willing to allow more fault to the system than the individual), which means that Puppy is knowingly offering "advice"...
...to no one in particular. Otherwise known as a rant, a vent, an airing-out, logorrhea, or, more descriptively, a verbal jack-off. Leg-humping? Maybe I stretch the metaphor too far...
Its the highest form of love (a bit tough but tough love is what is most called for
Mm. Were it offered to a friend in need of help, perhaps I'd go for this explanation.
But since SOP isn't that friend, and since I haven't seen any evidence here that many folks here -are- that friend, we're back to electronic leg-humping and self-gratification.
Stripped of the noble intentions (and let's face it, even if SOP -were- a Native American in need of the kind of a good wet nose in the belly, that's -not- what Puppy was all about. Puppy was masturbating to give vent to some of his own prejudices and groupthink; nothing there was out of any love other than self-love), the words are revealed for themselves.
What they reveal is a rabid little puppy who sees a "them" that could stand a good pissing-on, and he's just the mutt to do it.
Which brings us back to us versus them and hate-mongering. But then I've never really left that topic...
rather than enabling love that is the province of leftist idiots)
Nice puppy. Have a biscuit. You just can't help yourself from generalizing and grouping and categorizing until you find a "them" you can sink your teeth into, can you?
to tell those...to take charge of and responsibility for their own lives...
Except, as demonstrated above, there's no one here that's in that group. We're all "us" in this one. So who are you barking to, again? Could it be the ones who you hope to convince to think like you?
Even if that wasn't your intent--and, you know what, I'll be generous and say it wasn't--the effect is still the same:
"Us versus them. All of us versus (perceived) Shoes of Peace. Look at the self-victimizing loonie. Isn't he pathetic?"
As my example said, look at the local playground... is it really that far from the paragraph above to:
"Let's kick his ass."
So hardly being a statement of hate, it was in fact a statement of honest help. The only real help anyone on this entire forum has ever offerred Shoes of Peace.
Aren't you the kindly puppy? Now get off my leg. You're leaving slime trails and creases.
Then Anonymous follows his hillarious entertainment of non-understanding, with a list of nonsequitors of "bad" things wholly and completely unrelated to anything I said or any point he attempted to make
Two points:
1. If you only consider ethnic cleansing and lynching to be "bad" in quotes instead of actual bad things, I've miscalculated; you're worse than misunderstood, and I'd recommend counselling before you get yourself into something that might get you thrown in jail and someone else dead.
2. I'm sorry if I expressed myself in spectrums too wide for your grayscale puppyvision; I forgot that dogs don't see colors too good.
Each item in that list was the result of someone waking up in the morning with a hate on for someone in a "them" group. They proceeded to go out and, for whatever justification they chose to give, damage or murder another human being because they were not an "us."
Your phrasing, whether intended to hurt or no--you may well be a decent human being who would be horrified if his phrasing resulted in someone getting hurt--was inflammatory. In establishing your self-defined superiority, you implicitly invite others to join you; by establishing an "us" you're establishing a "them" and a superiority to them that, in extremes, can be used against others.
That's what it's all about. That's the danger of doing "that group sucks because...".
People listen to shit like that. It establishes a baseline permissiveness that feeds on itself, spreads, and destroys what it touches.
Want an example?
"Republicans would be great folks if they'd just quite stealing from the till."
Everyone who hates Republicans (who wasn't bored to tears enough to skip past this part already) just cheered. Everyone who actually knows a decent human being who self-identifies as Republican went "Hey. Asshole. Bob's a good guy." And every non-thieving Republican (and some who are thieves, for that matter) said "Hey. Asshole. I'm no thief."
Regardless of whether I intended to offend--I was just offering loving advice to the Republican readership, after all, letting them know that thieving leads to bad blood--my generalization made people momentarily aware of their affiliations and caused them to react accordingly, even if it was just a slightly accelerated heart rate or a bump in the old blood pressure.
Us versus them. It's everywhere, puppy, and by contributing to it in your own memorable and inciteful words (So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.), you're feeding the hate.
Hate-mongering, as it were.
as sort of a mantra of liberal non-thinking
FWIW, I'm an independent. I think the whole liberal vs. conservative, dem vs. repub thing is all arbitary bullshit. I wouldn't trust a politician as far as their next special interest group meeting. Generalizations like party or affiliation are exploited because they're quick and easy us-v-them groupings that get them votes.
Psychology isn't inherently liberal or conservative. Analyzing thoughts, actions, and root causes isn't inherently liberal or conservative. Calling people on their bullshit--especially when they beg like Gary Hart to be called on it--isn't inherently liberal or conservative. You begged. I called.
Non-thinking? No, just not thinking the way you'd like me to. Not the same thing at all, pup. Not the same thing at all.
I'll leave the papers out on the kitchen floor in case you need to mess again.
Dammit, "quit", not "quite."
ReplyDelete-j
The GOP is not really interested in a Democracy, or separation of powers or America. They are interested in amassing wealth at the expense of the public, maintaining power, and rigging the courts with fascists in judicial robes. We elected fascists, and what we will have is a fascist government, period.
ReplyDeleteYou got a problem with that?
Damn, Mr. Anonymous. You really shouldn't have taken him up on his little challenge. Sniveling creeps like him love to do shit like that so they can force you to demean yourself in the process. Why should you meet his demands? All anyone has to do is read his posts.
ReplyDeleteBoy, I do love watching this racist little piggy backpedal though. Go faster, the big bad liberals are catching up to you!
"As regards drinking, unemployment, and wife beating, these problems are unquestionably higher in the Indian community than in any other segment of society. Numerous studies have documented these well known *FACTS* quite clearly."
Hahaha... Actually, this is kind of sad.
BTW, I'm not expressing hate towards you, dog! This is the highest form of love! I'm the only one on this forum who has tried to reach out and help you. And the first step is ptting the barrel in your mouth.
Why should you meet his demands? All anyone has to do is read his posts.
ReplyDeleteThat's not the point, though.
Turning away from evil means that one becomes a little evil oneself.
Sometimes the cowardice wins out, and sometimes the laziness does; at the end of the day, those who do bad things often get away with it. Try to stand up 24/7 and you end up with very tired feet.
But I think Giuliani, for all his faults, was onto something with the "broken windows" policing. Even if it doesn't reduce crime, it certainly makes for a nicer place to live.
This is just another broken window that needs fixing.
When there's a chance to maybe do some good, and the cost is within reason (and when it feels so good doing it, to be honest), why not step up? I might never reach the Pup, but maybe something here will stick for someone else who might otherwise have acted with evil in their heart, or inattention that results in evil.
Besides, Puppy knows, now. He can laugh about it, taunt and jeer... but at the end of the day, someone's called him on his bullshit, and that's got to make him think just a little harder the next time he says or does something stupid.
If not . . . well, I've thought more deeply about the stuff myself in the process of trying to explain, so I understand my own positions a little more clearly. So I win, even if nothing else comes of it.
Boy, I do love watching this racist little piggy backpedal though. Go faster, the big bad liberals are catching up to you!
Hey, careful with that label, eh? :o)
As much it would satisfy to get an acknowledgement of him seeing the problem with what he's done, I'd honestly be almost as happy if he just thought twice before he next posts the sort of denigrating nonsense he spouted here. A step in the right direction is better than nothing at all.
And the first step is ptting the barrel in your mouth.
I'd rather he didn't, to tell the truth. Somebody somewhere probably loves the little mutt; it'd be a shame for him to hurt them through any sort of self-harm.
Besides, it might be more fun just to stay on him and keep him honest...
"Turning away from evil means that one becomes a little evil oneself.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the cowardice wins out, and sometimes the laziness does; at the end of the day, those who do bad things often get away with it. Try to stand up 24/7 and you end up with very tired feet."
I just meant that playing his game is giving him exactly what he wants, and that all anyone has to do is read the words he typed to see that his denial is false.
But, hey, keep on rockin' in the free world.
"Besides, it might be more fun just to stay on him and keep him honest..."
You are right...
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteTurning away from evil means that one becomes a little evil oneself.
You can't determine what is evil or who is doing something evil, without first categorizing two groups of people. Evil and non-evil. That of course immediately becomes a point for Us v. Them in your line of thinking and immediately makes you evil. So if you call evil, evil, then you create us v. them which is according to you evil, and therefore you become evil. Gee this intellectual bullshit you spout as though it had some real meaning is terrific. So watch next time you name something evil, because by so doing in your no us v them allowed world, that makes you evil. I guess you becoming evil as soon as you recognize and denominate a category for evil solves one problem, everybody becomes evil and no more us v. them on that point. Gee what funny little circle jerk of reasoning you've created.
Of course, there's also the fact that folks tend to have two ways of reacting to things they can't quite get their minds around:
The simpler explanation however in the case of your posts is that they are understood fully and easily found to be as I stated previously, hilariously silly.
When there are two possible explanations for something the simpler explanation is usually correct. In this case the simpler explanation that doesn't require picking between possible responses is that your posts are just plain hilariously silly.
Clearly, SOP is lumping him/herself in with the victimizers, not the victims. There's actually a degree of self-loathing there for helping to perpetuate the system as-is.
You either haven't read or didn't understand when you did read Shoes of Peace entire set of posts, his/her reference to being mix breed, discussion of the ancient of days. If you did you wouldn't have made such a pitifully wrong comment as above. However, you needed this falsity to support your false self-stimulating oration that followed. So maybe it was just a deliberate misstatement of facts on your part.
Further, the sentence you quoted clearly creates a victim and victimizers, the them and us you claimed to abhor. So again your quote proves me correct it wasn't I that set up us and them, it was Shoes of Peace. Even your own quote shows that.
Then you go on with some infantile fixation (the root causes of which I hate to imagine but likely involved some wet pants and subsequent weeks of bed wetting) from playground childhood whereupon you come up with fanciful delusions about playground bullies chanting for everybody to get somebody. The kind of thing that happens in some fictional after school special. LOL. Sadly for you none of that is in anything I've written nor is it related to a discussion of the claim of hate mongering in anything I’ve written. So save the bad memories of your childhood for your own therapy sessions where they might apply, because they are simple inapplicable to your claim of hate mongering in anything I’ve written.
Then you go on to defend your list of us v them non-sequitors as being something relevant to the discussion of what *I Wrote*. They aren't. They are just plain and simple attempts at demonizing me by somehow linking me to the holocaust, the bully that caused you to be a bed wetter, and global warming. Your list was a pitiful attempt at separating me into a class that's different from you. Oh Oh, you've done another one of those evil, us v them, things in your writing. Guess you are a hate mongerer, wanting to gin up hate against those whom you disagree. You certainly want to gin up hate against hate mongerers, but then you can't figure out who is a hate mongerer unless you first separate people into groups of us (non-hate mongerers) and them (hate mongerers), but if you do that then that makes you a hate mongerer for recognizing groups that are hate mongerers, so that means you are a hate mongerer, but then everybody would be a hate mongerer and if everybody is a hate mongerer and there is no us v them, then we are all ok and nobody is a hate mongerer after all.
Gee this circular and masturbatory logic of us v them = hate mongering meme of yours is just wonderful air tight logic. Its just so easy to make anything you don't approve of hate mongering but to do that requires you to establish categories of people and that means establishing categories to which you don't belong and that means establishing us v them and that means.... Oh no, here we go again.......you hate mongering anti-us v them bigot.
An argument or theorem such as your us v them = hate mongering nonsense that is so easily shown to be a huge circle jerk of no discernable value is by definition hilariously silly, and that gets us right back to my point that started your last tomb...
LOL,
Says the "Dog"
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you have no idea what fear is. You claim in your post that conservatives are afraid of being killed or worse and apparently claim that you have no such fear.
What you confuse here is not fear but recognition of a serious problem that requires peventative action. That is not fear, which is an emotional response. When a hunter sees a bear in the woods and takes necessary precautions, he does so out of an intelligent decision making process with a purpose of self-presevation. It is simply a logical and intelligence driven (as opposed to emotion driven) response to objectively determinable criteria.
When a liberal ostrich sees a bear in the woods they stick their head in the sand and say loudly to themselves and others "there is no bear", "there is no bear", "oh shit please let there be no bear". The response of the liberal ostrich *is* an emotional response not an intelligence drive reaction and would constitute *fear* by most definitions.
So you see old Dan, its not the conservatives who are fearful, its the no bears in sight, head in the sand, liberals that are so struck with fear their ability to make logical deductions and inferences from the facts around them has ceased to exist (this of course assumes liberal ostritch's actually had such an ability to begin with).
Says the "Dog"
For anyone who doesn't want to read those last two piles of dog shit, I'll sum them up for you:
ReplyDelete1. Hey drunken Geronimo, go do a rain dance and quit abusing your wife. But I'm not racist! Please don't ban me.
2. I'm a coward, and possibly mentally handicapped. If I trust big daddy hunter with the rifle, no bears will eat me.
Hey Kingfish, get out of the projects and quit smoking crack and eating watermelon. No white man is holding a gun to your head and making you pick his cotton so forget about those reparations. Quit crying in your Steel Reserve and go get a job.
ReplyDeleteI'm not racist, though! Look up the facts, lots more black people than white live in the projects and smoke crack.
Your logic works great, dog. Making mass judgments on entire groups of people using flawed stereotypes and incorrect assumptions as to how things got the way they are for those people is fun!
Puppy keeps whining! And missing the point...
ReplyDeleteYou can't determine what is evil or who is doing something evil, without first categorizing two groups of people. Evil and non-evil.
Not true!
While your point has some superficial logic to it, it skips right past the main point without taking the time to even piss on it; demonizing = bad because it leads to destructive behavior.
Saying "I see antisocial behavior as evil" is indeed, grouping, but it's grouping behavior rather than individuals. I'm not calling you or anyone else evil; I'm saying the behavior is evil. You can say it's good. We can have a nice little values conversation on what constitutes "good" behavior and what constitutes "bad" behavior, and maybe I'll change your mind or maybe you'll change mine and we can shake hands and walk away even if we never agree on anything.
Saying "them thar reservation-dwellin' injuns is rotten to the coor, Jim!" is not the same thing, and that's the (slightly overblown, but not by much) equivalent of what you've done and what I've called you on.
Gee this intellectual bullshit you spout as though it had some real meaning is terrific.
It sure is! It's even more fun if you understand it!
On the other hand, I engaged in hyperbole when I used the word "evil"; in this case, you've been engaged in nothing so interesting as evil. Sorry to have mistakenly elevated your posts beyond pesthood.
The simpler explanation however in the case of your posts is that they are understood fully and easily found to be as I stated previously, hilariously silly.
Yup, that's the simpler explanation; I can see why you'd prefer it.
(That's an "ad hominem" attack I just made there, by the way (just to help you recognize them in your own work).)
You either haven't read or didn't understand when you did read
Alas, I was referring to the specific post you seemed to be referring to at the time; that post did what I said it did. I'm a very good reader. Not much of a writer, maybe (we'll ignore the 'does it for a very nice living thing' for sake of argument), and maybe not so good a human being as I'd like to be, but a very good reader nonetheless.
Further, the sentence you quoted clearly creates a victim and victimizers, the them and us you claimed to abhor.
Actually, no, this is recognizing the division someone else seemed to have made, not mine.
You did miss the one I slipped in there to see if you were paying attention (politicians R Evul!), but so far you're pretty much oh-for-the-evening on catching real ones. 'Tsokay. It's the puppy enthusiasm we find so cute, anyway.
Then you go on with some infantile fixation (the root causes of which I hate to imagine but likely involved some wet pants and subsequent weeks of bed wetting) from playground childhood whereupon you come up with fanciful delusions about playground bullies chanting for everybody to get somebody.
Not a parent, are you? (If you are, maybe you should pay a little closer attention to your progeny.) Not a teacher, either? Huh. Somehow I knew that, too. For the record, when I was teaching I saw more of that than I'd like to remember. Ever been thrown about like a beach ball as you try to stop a guns-n-knives riot from tearing down a school? Huh. I have. And I've seen how it starts, too. Me and mine versus you and yours. Self-identity through demonization of other groups. Just because you may or may not have been let out of the yard, pup, don't assume no one else has been out in the world.
Then you go on to defend your list of us v them non-sequitors as being something relevant to the discussion of what *I Wrote*. They aren't. They are just plain and simple attempts at demonizing me by somehow linking me to the holocaust
Honestly? I hope that's not the implication anyone took away. As I said above, your little ramblings are too insignificant to be considered evil. (Though not too insignificant for me to enjoy calling you on them when you ask folks to.)
I pulled out the over-the-top examples because those are the end result of folks doing what I was talking about--the kind of thing you did in your hate-mongering little rant about Native Americans and their drinking habits. No more, no less. I was not calling you a Nazi or a gay-basher or even an Indian-hater (and I'd sincerely apologize if I thought you were doing more than pulling my chain here); I was saying that comments like yours are what breed societies that think the extreme behaviors are the acceptable and proper ones.
And so...
Oh Oh, you've done another one of those evil, us v them, things in your writing.
makes you 0 for 3. And you still missed the gimme I gave you.
...but to do that requires you to establish categories of people
No, it requires me to establish categories of behavior.
I'm no Christian, but "hate the sin, et. al," always made a certain kind of sense to me.
Of course, here I am engaging in a semi-rational conversation with you, which would seem to indicate that I haven't grouped you in with the "bad people" that you seemed determined to insist I have in my head...
...but in any event, let me break something down for you, and then I'll call it a night, much to everyone's relief I'm sure.
(Catch that, by the way? that's an "everyone but me" generalized grouping. Just so you know what they look like. I went and stuck myself in one group and all the rest of the universe in the other. That is what might be known as an "overly broad" generalization, hyperbolic to the point of meaninglessness, but at least it's what you've been trying to pin on me.)
In any event, it's not "us versus them" if it's "me versus you." Specifics (I dislike your yappy voice; you dislike my hot air) aren't generalizations (I hate yappy little miniature pinschers like you; you hate long-winded gasbags like me). That's a dictionary thing. You know, the big book with the proper spellings for all those words?
You want to call X an asshole because s/he does certain things you loathe? Even if I'm X? Go for it; I'll retain the right to do the same.
You want to say X's group are all assholes because they all exhibit the same behavior? You want to say X's group are inferior because they have the wrong color skin, or superior because they have the right color? The right/wrong sex, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs, or attitude toward vegetarianism?
There you're stepping over that ugly little hate-mongering line, and that's exactly what you did that I took exception to.
And that's a specific, and it's a behavior. By the way.
-j
James,
ReplyDeleteYour summaries certainly demonstrate why you are a liberal moonbat. Your reading comprehension is near zero. Your open mindedness is below zero. You have no ability to consider thoughts not part of your pre-programmed script you maintain in your mind, and react to anything not on the script with all kinds of false gross stereotypes of the kind you seem to what to complain of in others.
At least anonymous makes an attempt, pitiful though it be, to present a rational argument for his positions and labeling. That makes him a far higher order of intellect and human being that the little childish name calling idea bigot which you present yourself as being.
Says the "Dog"
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteNice attempts at backpedaling, but your are just spinning your wheels.
Nice try at dodging creating two groups by saying I'm condemning behavior not a person, but it doesn't fly to avoid having created two groups, and any time you create two groups you create an us and a them.
Its simple. If you don't create a group of evil people you create a group of evil behaviors (according to your back pedaling). However, its impossible for evil behavior to exist in and of itself. Evil behavior can only exist as expression by a real live person. So a grouping of evil behavior can only be discerned by observing a group of people exhibiting evil behavior.
Now as soon as you indentify a group of people (even one person is a group) exhibiting what you define as evil behavior, then everyone else by definition is not exhibiting evil behavior and therefore not part of that group. Therefore, bingo you have psycho babbled yourself right into creating two groups of people. Those exhibiting evil behavior (as you define evil behavior which may or may not be how its defined by others) and those who don't. Us v them. You create them. You can't avoid creating them unless you go all the way down the liberal path of moral relativism and refuse to judge anything and anybody, (excepting of course white people and sometime men, but especially white men) who are exempted forever into perpetuity from the moral relativistic view of judging nothing.
I see you are a teacher, well that explains your being so well versed in the cirular logic of moral relativism and the psycho babble of grouping people by their beliefs while denying that you group people at all.
You write well, especially for a teacher in a government school. Your understanding however is quite limited, and you have utterly and completely failed to show anything I've written is hate mongering. What you have shown is that you define hate mongering as the expression of ideas not officially approved by the socialist/commie totalitarian lovers at the NEA.
That was a generalization by the way about a group of people (NEA), just in case you missed it. Its also a quite accurate description of the people who run this repugnant anti-american anti-child welfare and anti-capitalist (which means anti-personal individual freedom but they aren't smart enough or well educated enough to know that) organization.
Says the "Dog"
dog said:
ReplyDelete"That makes him a far higher order of intellect and human being that the little childish name calling idea bigot which you present yourself as being."
Again I must implore you to read your own posts from earlier in this thread.
"Your summaries certainly demonstrate why you are a liberal moonbat. Your reading comprehension is near zero. Your open mindedness is below zero. You have no ability to consider thoughts not part of your pre-programmed script you maintain in your mind, and react to anything not on the script with all kinds of false gross stereotypes of the kind you seem to what to complain of in others."
What are you talking about here?
It's hard to acknowledge jokes when you are the butt of them, isn't it? I am amazed that you actually think I believe what I said in my last post.
Oh shit, I'm getting off script. Better go read some more Chomsky books to reinforce my robotic thought process.
By the way, I love it when people like you make challenges in which they know they will never admit defeat. You know you're right, don't you? If I actually thought I could convince you that you are a racist and you would go away on your own, I would've taken you up on it. That's why calling for a ban is so much easier, especially considering (sorry to repeat myself) that all anyone has to do is go back and look at what you said. And you have the gall to accuse me of "false gross stereotypes"!
I applaud you for taking a courageous stance and saying "Hey! I can use racial stereotypes in an extraordinarily insulting way as long as I avoid key words that would mark me as a racist!"
It's quite admirable.
"the Dog" said...
ReplyDelete[Nothing but the dying gasps of a fish left stranded high and dry on a sandy beach]
HWSNBN gets his "talkikng points" confused:
ReplyDelete[glasnost]: If Bart's POV was implemented - consistently - rather than, say, using the selective prosecution of the NYTimes as a revenge tactic - you could throw Glenn Greenwald in jail for repeating the NYTimes' information, as well as every blogger on this webpage, every newspaper reporter who put NYTimes information on their own page, and every reporter and media outlet who has ever reported on classified information at any time in our history.
Pure hyperbole.
Once the NYT disclosed this information, it was public and no longer classified. Thus, repeating it would not be a crime.
Ummmm, nope. According to HWSNBN (at a different time, and for a different rhetorical purpose), the preznit or his designated minions decide when something's declassified (sometimes ex post facto). Classification isn't something that has anything to do with reality, practicality, security, or even laws and prcedures ... nooooo ... it's the preznit's prerogative, and his decisions there can't be gainsaid. If he says it's "classified", it's classified, no matter who knows it ... unless it conflicts with HWSNBN's "spin du jour", of course.
Cheers,
HWSNBN "reframes" the issue:
ReplyDeleteNo one is talking about jailing journalists because they are embarrassing George Bush or the government in general. That is spin and you know it.
Of course they aren't going to talk about it. But that has no bearing on whether they're actually doing such....
I'd note that the "embarrassment" theory gets some support from the fact that the maladministration can itself out CIA NOCs, and the people that did it can not only continue their jobs in high places in the maladministration but also keep their security clearances....
Cheers,
HWSNBN is singing the same "Macarena" for the gazillionth time:
ReplyDeleteRisen and the NYT disclosed classified information to al Qaeda describing a top secret intelligence program by which the NSA was intercepting al Qaeda telephone communications.
FISA doesn't apply to surveillance of al Qaeda. That wasn't what the program was about. This has been pointed out ad nauseam but the troll HWSNBN continues to ignore it. Not to mention, al Qaeda and/or their buddies really don't give a sh*t about whether warrants are obtained or not ... or, perhaps, they're quite glad that the maladministration is not seeking warrants, because it will bollix up any potential prosecutions. "You're doing a heck of a job, Dubya...."
Cheers,
Hey Doggy,
ReplyDeleteOh, you better believe it.
...and as for your post @6:30, you just keep on chewing on that straw man "librul" you so detest. That'll show it! Good Doggy! Good boy!
To fly,
I know my history well enough to know that there is absolutely no equivalence between fascist Germany and a number of mostly stateless organizations all with widely varying motives, tactics and allies with the ostensible unifying characteristic of supporting and/or engaging in acts of terror on primarily civilian targets.
And since we're giving advice here's some for you: Perhaps you could stop seeing what you want to see and, y'know, open your eyes. The reality-based community isn't nearly so scary as the one you're in now.
It must be said that both yours and Doggy's posts continue to show absolutely no faith whatsoever in America, no faith in what makes America what it is, and no comprehension in "how America works".
It would seem for some the "terrorists" can do nothing but win.
"If you have any real faith in the Rule of Law and therefore any real faith in America and "The American Way", then consider the heinously criminal acts of 9/11/2001 as nothing more than that, and urge the LAW to do all that it can bring justice. For it is supposed to be the LAW that rules America; not the President, not the executive, and certainly least of all not the Commander-in-Chief in a so-called Global War On Terror."
ReplyDeleteYes, and the law could've prevailed had it not been for the attitude of the US. Like I said before, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama to a 3rd party for a fair trial. Just another inconvenient fact down the memory hole, right?
I wonder how long terrorism will work as the new bogeyman? Communism certainly worked for a long time...
Hiya, pup!
ReplyDeleteNice attempts at backpedaling, but your are just spinning your wheels.
I don't think I've backpedaled; conversations that don't introduce new ideas invariably end up in "neener neener, I'm right. No, I'm right."; as I don't find that that sort of thing terribly interesting or useful, I try not to repeat myself overmuch except to prove a point.
Too, I'm actually reading your points (such that they are) and doing my best to clarify my thinking for you in response to them. I can see where a thoughtful response might seem like "backpedaling" for someone not used to thinking before talking.
Nice try at dodging creating two groups by saying I'm condemning behavior not a person, but it doesn't fly to avoid having created two groups, and any time you create two groups you create an us and a them.
Okay, let's try this again.
Saying "the Red Sox and Yankees are two baseball teams" doesn't slander either the Red Sox or the Yankees. It's not inciteful to acknowledge a group's existence. "Conservative Christian Republicans" is a group, and it's not particularly slanderous to say so; I'm saying that there is a group of Christians who are both conservative and Republican. I'm not imputing that all Christians are conservative; nor am I imputing that all conservative Christians are Republican.
This is a descriptive. Descriptives are inherently neutral. "Indian alcoholics" is another descriptive. There are Native Americans, who are, at this moment, alcoholics.
The line is when you imply that all Christians are conservative Republicans, all baseball players are Yankees, or all Indians are alcoholics. That type of statement--you know, the one like So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.--creates a monolithic group of res-dwelling, drunken unemployed wife-beating Injuns in the eyes of the audience. This dehumanizes the individuals (they're not Rudolf and Gustav, they're beer-swilling Germans who wear lederhosen under their Nazi uniforms), turns them into Other, and makes it acceptable to attack them.
Hey, look, the left does it too. Everyone does it. It's bullshit no matter who does it--even when I do it. And if it's bullshit when I do it, it's bullshit when you do it, pup.
Think of it this way. (Honestly, take a second and think about it; mock me after you think about it but at least think.)
You're in a room with two people. Both are obviously a member of whatever group most antagonizes you just by being; straight white males, gay bicyclists, clowns, mexican immigrants, whatever.
You know one's name, from overhearing it somewhere. You have no idea who the other one is. You know absolutely nothing else about either of them.
A man comes into the room and says "one of these two individuals [did something that you hate]."
For that split second, before you start applying logic to the situation, assessing who looks to be more guilty, what's your assumption going to be?
You're going to go with the individual whose name you don't know--everyone is. It's the way we're wired as mammals to form bonds, and it's the thing we have to transcend if we're going to be more than animals.
That's why they teach you that, in a hostage situation, you're supposed to help the hostage-taker learn about you. The more of an individual you are to them, the less likely it'll be that they'll kill you. This is basic mammalian brain function. We form bonds with those who become individuals to us much more quickly than we form bonds with those who are not individuals to us.
And that's exactly what you did. You created a group of Others in the reader's mind with your phrasing, and made it just the slightest bit easier to hate them.
I see you are a teacher, well that explains your being so well versed in the cirular logic of moral relativism
Those are almost very good reading skills! (Almost as good as the spelling and punctuation.) Except that I said I used to be a teacher... it's subtle and tricksy, that language thing...
Yes, it's nitpicking. But it's symptomatic of the fact that you're just reacting, not reading and thinking before you react. You seem to be doing that thing where you're talking to someone else, and you're not so much having a conversation but rather waiting for your turn to talk. It's annoying, and neither person in the conversation gains anything by it.
In any event, that's not why I quoted that bit. For what it's worth (because I'm fascinated by trying to guess how you'll answer this one), can you tell me how morality isn't relative to the culture it's a part of?
Your understanding however is quite limited, and you have utterly and completely failed to show anything I've written is hate mongering.
Well, you've given me nothing to understand except for "I'm intentionally misunderstanding your points so I can score points with... uh, I dunno, someone?" and So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life..
Yeah, I think I have a handle on the understanding part.
And as for failing to prove my point... well, I really -could- have left it at So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life., because that proves my point almost without me saying a word, but it's far, far too late for that now, isn't it...
I think I've done an adequate job; if you choose not to understand, that's on you, puppy.
the expression of ideas not officially approved by the socialist/commie totalitarian lovers at the NEA.
Whee! What fun it is to puke on the carpet!
Its also a quite accurate description of the people who run this repugnant anti-american anti-child welfare and anti-capitalist (which means anti-personal individual freedom but they aren't smart enough or well educated enough to know that) organization.
Er...
The NEA? Anti-freedom? Anti-child-welfare?
That's a whole 'nother conversation, but I'm not entirely sure all that fits in at an organization dedicated to promoting artistic expression.
But the bile spewed forth here does fit nicely with one thing that most libertarians don't quite have a grasp on--the concept that your right to swing a fist stops at my nose. Missing that basic point does go a long way to explaining how you're (willfully or no) not seeing how dehumanizing a group can lead to hatred of that group.
Stop to think, just for a second, puppy.
Think about what other folks are saying rather than what you're thinking.
Embrace an idea as if it's your own and examine it first for its worth, and then for flaws.
I didn't come to reject isms by blindly insisting to all and sundry that they were wrong, and working from that perspective.
Instead, I looked at the animal part of myself that -is- "ismist", the part that sees a different [x] and screams "not my kind! danger!" and chose to acknowledge it and move on.
And then I listened to the people spreading homophobia, assessed their arguments on their own merits, and modified my beliefs accordingly.
I listened to the people spreading racism, compared what they feared to what I saw of reality, and modified my beliefs accordingly.
I listened to the people spreading religionism, investigated their claims as fully as I had opportunity, and modified my beliefs accordingly.
I'm sure there -are- flaws in my beliefs. I'm sure I believe things that are provably false. I'm open to hearing about them; if the holes are there, I'll do what I can to patch the holes, or I'll change the beliefs. No sense believing in a lie.
Can you say the same, Puppy? Are you there yet? Or are you still working from base instincts--from fear and doubt and the security of your self-defined pack? Are you listening, trying to understand, and making a judgment based on the facts on the ground, or are you applying your worldview to everything around you and blindly rejecting the things that don't fit?
It doesn't matter how old you are--you're still just a puppy to me until you prove you're capable of higher thought.
I know what I believe about you. Change my mind.
One amendment, before I'm called on it--
ReplyDeleteI meant to say "most libertarians whom I've met or interacted with."
I didn't, but I meant to.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteblah, blah, blah, various ad hominems, various us v them catergorizations while denying he does it.
then,
I know what I believe about you. Change my mind.
I know what I know about you also teach, and I don't care what's in your mind.
You describe me with all the cliche's you save for one of your "groups" of us v them, but I doubt that you admit to yourself you hold such beliefs about any "groups" of people. You probably try to rationalize to yourself that the groups you create in your mind aren't groups at all but just a series of recognized by you behaviors in an otherwise unrelated set of individuals.
Yes thinking is important. Now instead of talking about you should try doing it. You could start with the NEA, since you've failed so miserably and demonstrating anything I've said is hate mongering.
Yes the NEA is anti-child welfare, start with that one. Protecting lousy teachers from being fired, from having to pass basic skills tests, from having the results of their teaching tested and measured, to lobbying against poor/low income parents from having the choice to remove their children from their failing schools. As for studying and learning about the NEA's other traits which I accurately described previously one needs only visit their website. Of course you have to be able to read, think about, and understand what one finds there. Perhaps this is the obstacle you have difficulty overcoming. That is likely quite a problem for the average NEA member.
Says the "Dog"
I know what I know about you also teach, and I don't care what's in your mind.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Interesting dichotomy; I know what I believe, you know what you know. Not much to say in the face of that...
But out of curiosity, what do you know about me? Give me five things. I really am curious, because apart from saying I used to be a teacher, make a living with my writing, have done a lot of looking around before I came to my current mindset, I don't think I've said a lot about myself. So who am I, that you know so well?
(Apparently you still missed the point that I'm not a teacher, I see...)
You describe me with all the cliche's you save for one of your "groups" of us v them
Oh? Care to list them? The cliches, I mean.
All I've really done is call you immature and a shallow thinker, in various permutations. I could expand on them if you'd like, but I'd need to know more about you so I'd know which groups to lump you into for best effect.
(The above being sarcasm, by the way. Since there's an apparent lack of reading comprehension, I find it best to address such things head-on.)
You probably try to rationalize to yourself that the groups you create in your mind aren't groups at all but just a series of recognized by you behaviors in an otherwise unrelated set of individuals.
:: blink ::
I'm trying with this one. You don't make it easy, with that syntax.
So I see two Tribe of Israel guys (for instance) standing on the corner preaching that the white man must fall before the black man can rise up, and I tell myself I dislike them because they're preaching hate, not because they're black. But you're saying that I really dislike them because they're black, and I've assigned the hate-preaching label to them as a cover for my own racism?
If I have that interpretation right, then it might go a way into explaining why you can't or won't see my point. It doesn't say much about me, though.
If I have it wrong, please do give me a better example so I can get my mind around what you're saying.
Yes the NEA is anti-child welfare, start with that one. Protecting lousy teachers from being fired
Ah! Now at least I get what you're saying! I was thinking you were talking about the National Endowment for the Arts, which has been something that conservatives have typically loved to kick the hell out of, at least as early as Serrano's Piss Christ. I didn't even think about the union.
The teacher's union . . . well, honestly, I'm not well-enough informed on the union to know what's going on there, and I don't have the time or inclination to go research it to direct the conversation away from the fact that you -did- make hate-mongering statements.
That said, I do believe that unions are a very necessary thing, but they're necessary because there needs to be a balance between worker and owner. When one gains ascendancy over the other, abuses can't help but result.
From my limited exposure to teaching and the educators' union, I've seen the union fighting in many cases at cross-purposes to the betterment of the child, but I've also seen school boards that often have their heads firmly lodged in their asses, parents who too often don't do their half of the educating, an economic system that discourages parental participation in the education of children, and a bunch of kids who are caught in the middle.
So you can blame the union, but you should probably look at the system holistically to see why the union has gotten that way.
On a complete tangent, "school choice," by the way, is problematic because if it's public-to-public, you end up with the uninvolved parents (who typically have the most at-risk kids) leaving their kids in a bad district or school, and the involved parents (who typically have the higher-achieving kids) pulling their kids; this is a problem because kids learn from each other almost as much as they learn from the curriculum, and if you pull all the hopeful people out, desperation sets in.
If it's public-to-private, it's even worse; the for-profit schools get the higher-achieving kids, and the lower-achieving schools not only don't get the "role model" kids, they also get all their funding pulled. What happens to those kids? Should the teachers use their fat 30-40k salaries to buy pencils and books and pay the school's heating bill?
Oh, and by the way, I'm all for testing teachers regularly; I'm also for re-testing drivers over 65 or 70.
But that's all tangential.
So tell your people: Get off the friggin reservation, stop drinking, stop abusing their women, get a job, start a business, and build a frickin life.
That's the thing we're talking about.
Don't presume to know me, puppy.
-j
yankeependragon, spark,
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily disagree with you about terrorism being an "idea or tactic" or about small scale terrorism in general being considered "criminal activity". That's fine to a certain extent.
Sure, it's true that ALQ may not be directly comparable to Nazi Germany's war machine, until you look at the similarities in tactics. Consider Germany's attempts to sabotage the US both from within our own borders and internationally, then factor in ALQ's various attempts to target our economic interests, US embassies, military personnel and Washington DC itself on 9/11, with their stated goals of obtaining and using WMDs against us.
I can understand why people may want to argue against warrant less surveillance and large scale military action, but it seems to me that domestic law enforcement alone, particularly with limited surveillance, is not going to be aggressive enough to discover and prevent another attack.
BTW - That is why I oppose the MSM disclosing classified surveillance programs [for national security and not out of fear that the media spin might embarrass the administration]
Also consider Axis of Weasels poster boy Jacques Chirac's proposed response to state sponsored terrorism:
"France said on Thursday it would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack against it, reaffirming the need for its nuclear deterrent."
Lastly, yes I know that you are likely to respond that ALQ is "stateless", but I would counter that they had a state in Afghanistan, and had attempted to start another in northern Iraq, that is until the US took over both.
Yep, and I'm still waiting for you to point out anything hateful in those words of honest tough love and helpful advice.
ReplyDeleteOkay, pup. One more try.
Tell me how they were intended in a spirit of love for a poster for whom you seem to hold nothing but contempt.
Not to say that SOP didn't lash back at you after your post; s/he did. But both your direct posts to SOP are rather vicious attacks on SOP's perceived (or real) NA affiliation.
So how was it "love" again?
And while you're at it, feel free to answer my earlier questions:
How is morality not relevant to the culture in which it's established?
Tell me five things you know about me that I didn't already enumerate for you.
Is my Tribe of Israel/racism example illustrating my interpretation of your
You probably try to rationalize to yourself that the groups you create in your mind aren't groups at all but just a series of recognized by you behaviors in an otherwise unrelated set of individuals.
accurate or inaccurate, and if I'm wrong, can you give me a better example so I can understand your point?
-j
PS. That is not to say Shoes of Peace that I agree with you about reparations. What could be sillier than making a group of people who had no responsibility for the actions of another group of people pay reparations to another group of people who weren't even alive when the things about which you write happened?
ReplyDeleteReparation?
It's too late for "reparation", Mr/Ms eyes wide open.
There will now be justice. Watch and learn.
Pay attention, now.
Just a couple of things. The writer points out that.."the US is not a country which imprisons journalists for stories which they publish about controversial government actions:..." This is a clear misrepresentation of what's going on here. The journalists involved published national security secrets which directly aided our enemies and placed the citizens of the United States in potential danger. The writer is deliberately making it look as though these people are being persecuted for discussing tax reform. Also, Bill Gertz exposed treason on the part of the president. To lump him together with those who have placed Americans in jeopardy is dishonest. Moreover, quoting the Founders is fine. But I doubt they would have argued that Freedom of the Press would have extended to providing the British with General Washintons' plans. Treason is defined in Article 3 Section 3 as providing aid and comfort to the enemy. I believe that it can be argued that these journalists are guilty of treason based upon this language.
ReplyDeleteShoes of Peace,
ReplyDeleteDelusions of successful criminal enterprise, extortion, murder, or other violence is not a likely to be successful career plan.
Take all this energy you have for violent threats and analysis and put it towards bettering yourself, your education, your employment prospects and you will be a lot happier than if you continue down the path you seem to have created for yourself.
This post says the same things, I've previously said to you using different language.
Says the "Dog"
How is morality not relevant to the culture in which it's established?
ReplyDeleteWho said it isn't?
Says the "Dog"
But both your direct posts to SOP are rather vicious attacks on SOP's perceived (or real) NA affiliation.
ReplyDeleteThe posts to which you refer had nothing to do with Shoes of Peace's American Indian affiliations. They were about taking control of and responsibility for one's own life, instead of blaming others for it. As long as a person deludes themselves into thinking other people or groups rather than their own life choices, behaviors, and attitudes control the outcomes in their life, they are incapable of achieving their dreams or achieving any significant improvements in their lives.
In this manner the things I wrote were good and helpful (if listened to and taken to heart) pieces of advice wholly unrelated to SOP's group affiliations, because that same advice applies to any person affiliated with any group that sits around crying poor pitful me in their beer.
Says the "Dog"
Fly said...
ReplyDeleteSure, it's true that ALQ may not be directly comparable to Nazi Germany's war machine, until you look at the similarities in tactics. [...]with their stated goals of obtaining and using WMDs against us.
The reason why Fascist Germany is not equivalent to terrorism or Al Quaida is because terrorism and terrorists do not pose an existential threat to the United States of America, got it? Purported and superficial similarities in tactics does not change that.
The Rule of Law in America has survived relatively intact through several existential crises in her history. Now that it faces a global equivalent of the 99 pound weakling, who may have a scarily pointed stick, NOW we have to cede evermore liberties to a plenary executive? Get a grip.
I can understand why people may want to argue against warrant less surveillance and large scale military action, but it seems to me that domestic law enforcement alone, particularly with limited surveillance, is not going to be aggressive enough to discover and prevent another attack.
Y'know what is really aggressively secure? I mean secure as in the object of their existence with guns and armour and state-sanctioned denial of almost all civil liberties?
Prisons.
And even they can't prevent the odd riot, shiv or escapee.
BTW - That is why I oppose the MSM disclosing classified surveillance programs [for national security and not out of fear that the media spin might embarrass the administration]
For what will hopefully be the last time, terrorism and terrorists do not pose an existential threat to the USA - they are not a threat to national security. They are certainly a threat to life, limb, property and opinion polls, but they can not wipe the USA from the face of a map.
Also consider Axis of Weasels poster boy Jacques Chirac's proposed response to state sponsored terrorism
Like I or anyone else should care what Chirac says. He has his own polls to worry about.
Doggy sez...
As long as a person deludes themselves into thinking other people or groups rather than their own life choices, behaviors, and attitudes control the outcomes in their life
Unless of course we're talking about American foreign policy choices, behaviours and attitudes in the ME. In which case it's ALL THEM and you and yours are now the ones who need a pity party and insist on some self-righteous, ass-kicking revenge. Ain't that right, Doggy?
SOP said:
ReplyDeleteIt's too late for "reparation", Mr/Ms eyes wide open.
There will now be justice. Watch and learn.
SOP, I am kind of curious as to what you hope to accomplish here. Yes, there were injustices, to put it mildly. But going on about it like a raving lunatic isn't going to win any support to any cause you have...
separately, the puppy said:
This post says the same things, I've previously said to you using different language.
And it says it -so- much more to my liking, not that that matters to you except to get me to stop swatting you on the nose. Folks can have conversations about the damnedest things if they can keep them in a civil tone...
I said:
How is morality not relevant to the culture in which it's established?
and then I was caught being stupid:
Who said it isn't?
To which I'll say . . .
er, that should have been relative, not relevant.
I'll drop my request for answers from the puppy, as he obviously doesn't have any, but I most definitely didn't ask the right question the second time I asked it. (The first time, well, I think I got it right there, at least.)
And then in yet another post the pup still doesn't get it:
In this manner the things I wrote were good and helpful (if listened to and taken to heart) pieces of advice wholly unrelated to SOP's group affiliations
Y'know what, pup? I'm bored with this conversation enough to let you keep saying that you had SOP's best interestes at heart (though you've pointedly ignored my repeated requests that you point me toward anything you've said that would give the reader the slightest hint in this direction). I'm pretty damn sure you're lying, but I'll let it go, because I can't prove what's in that skull of yours.
But the point remains that, whatever your intention, your phrasing was such that it could not be construed by any reasonable reader operating outside the confines of your skull as anything other than insults.
Hell, maybe I'm wrong; that's why I asked for any sort of proof you could point me toward to correct my error. The more likely option is that you're lying. If that's the case, at this point you can live with that however you'd like, but you still owe folks here an apology for phrasing things in such an awkward fashion as to come off as a race-baiting moron. Like everything else, you can live with that debt as you please.
-j
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteStop lying about my posts and thoughts.
There was nothing about race in the posts to which you referred. The fact that you made them so in your skull is based upon your own invalid preconceptions and closed minded view of the issues involved.
The language of the posts were intentionally shocking to try and wake up the minds of those you read them. To induce them into breaking out of their comfortable mold of preconceived thinking, groupings, and responses.
In this sense these posts are really "ART", commenting on various social ills that befall the thinking of the far left.
I mean if an upside down crucifix in a jar of urine is "ART" to the far left, then certainly my prose can also be "ART".
Stop being such a bigoted "ART" censor, and stop lying about my "ART".
Says the "Dog"
There was nothing about race in the posts to which you referred.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. I thought moccassins and reservations were historically (and stereotypically) associated with Native Americans. Obviously I was wrong; "moccassins" and "reservations" have global application when linked with wife-beating, unemployment and alcoholism! Why, that could refer to my uncle Amos, who was bitten by a water moccassin, just before he was due to show up for dinner reservations at a restaurant where he'd planned on drinking coffee. Intead, he ended up abusing the hospitality of two women who took him in because although it wasn't their job they couldn't walk by like it was none of their business; this was Uncle Amos's frickin life we were talking about.
What a fool I've been!
The language of the posts were intentionally shocking to try and wake up the minds of those you read them. To induce them into breaking out of their comfortable mold of preconceived thinking, groupings, and responses.
Of COURSE they were! Now it all makes sense! You weren't using stereotypical images of Native Americans! You were saying . . .
you were saying . . . you were saying . . .
Oh, hell, you know what you were saying. I'm laughing too hard to type anymore...
Oh, by the way, puppy -
ReplyDeleteCongrats on recognziing the Serrano reference. FWIW, the crucifix was right-side up, though.
-j
"The reason why Fascist Germany is not equivalent to terrorism or Al Quaida is because terrorism and terrorists do not pose an existential threat to the United States of America, got it? Purported and superficial similarities in tactics does not change that [...] They are certainly a threat to life, limb, property and opinion polls, but they can not wipe the USA from the face of a map"
ReplyDeleteSpark,
You seem to have missed my point altogether.
Let's try a different angle.
Hitler was eager to get his hands on superweapons that would allow Germany to dominate the world. In the early 1940's, he made some fateful decisions about his use of advanced technology:
One was that the jet fighter aircraft that Germany had already deployed were ordered to be re-engineered as "blitz" bombers, thus setting back the entire program. The other was that although nuclear weapons were a known theoretical possibility at the time [Germany had even explored building hydrogen bombs], Hitler concluded that building a successful nuclear bomb would come to late too change the outcome of the war.
ALQ also has a fascination with getting their hands on superweapons [WMD] and world domination. Unlike Germany in the 1940's, today nuclear material and expertise have already been circulated by at least one clandestine network for profit. Can anyone tell us with certainty who might have access to this technology at the present time?
I do agree with you in one sense, that is overstating the threat posed by ALQ may tend to validate whatever delusions of grandeur they might be suffering from, and this is yet another reason why leaks of classified programs that are part of our response to the threat would be harmful to national security. In any case, unlike Hitler, there are fewer time constraints on groups like ALQ acquiring and using WMD. Hence the need to track terrorists down using every asset available.
"NOW we have to cede evermore liberties to a plenary executive? "
Again you are off point. We are not ceding anything, because civil liberties as you describe them either never existed to begin with, or are not being trampled as you claim. The executive branch has always been responsible for national security, and has always had broad inherent constitutional authority to act as it sees fit to defend the nation.
Just one example of how ridiculous it is for people to complain that the NSA may have acquired anonymous records from the telephone companies or whatever:
Just compare the current use of NSA surveillance with the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Whether or not you agree with the decision is beside the point, which is: Did President Roosevelt have the inherent constitutional authority to order that? If not, why not?
See Executive Order 9066:
"Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, l hereby authorized and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deem such action necessary or desirable to prescribe military areas"
[...]
"I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Department, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities and service."
Before Pearl Harbor, America had declared neutrality and was fully prepared to let Europe go up in smoke. Mind you a few days after the attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, with a resulting scale of destruction fairly similar to 9/11, the US entered the war [declaring war on both Japan and Germany]. The obvious exception to the WWII comparison is the fact that ALQ is purposefully targeting civilians, and has vowed a much more devastating attack [again, on civilians] if they ever get the chance. Do you really think it's reasonable to expect domestic law enforcement to handle this?
You can be as glib about life as you like, however you shouldn't be surprised if others disagree with your observations. Rest assured that others still remember the fallen and are more than willing to defend our freedom against foreign sneak attack.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on recognziing the Serrano reference.
There go your US v Them elitist groupings of hatred again.
;-))
My posts weren't about Native Americans, they were about taking personal responsibility for one's own life and placed in the local venacular for SOP's ease of understanding.
The references to moccassins and reservations were merely a setting and the shocking color of my "ART" for the content that urged him/her on to take responsibility for their own life and their own success and failure. That content is race neutral and applies to Amos, Andy, The Hatfields, and the McCoys.
Therefore, again I say with a confident and straight face, my posts had NOTHING to do with race. You are confusing the color of the prose with the meaning of its content. Perhpas some ART appreciation classes would help you gain further understanding and a more open mindedness.
Says the "Dog"
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI missed this little point of agreement from your last post. Maybe we should stop here on something with which we both can agree. That being your statement:
What a fool I've been!
;-0
Says the "Dog"
There is a VERY SNARKY MP3 posted at
ReplyDeleteBrainSurgeryWithSpoons.blogspot.com
and it rather patronizingly mocks Glenn!
There oughta be a law!