It is a lesser known fact that while he was recording "Ziggy Stardust" David Bowie threatened to kill no less than seventy-three children. But he only actually killed forty. And he did so in a very humane manner.
"Young Americans" inspired this thought?!? I mean, I like the song, but: how much tequila did you have?
Normally when I see Bowie being discussed, I like to make snarky comments about "The Laughing Gnome", but I don't have the energy tonight. Just consider it done.
Man I feel so guilty. I found this blog via the whole unpleasantness going on with Protein Wisdom and that nasty Frisch person so I started looking around.
Then I did what I do every time I find a new liberal blog...and why I feel so guilty.
I went to the archives.....back to election day 2004 and I read. And I read. And I cackle. And I howl with laughter. And it's always the same.
At first the euphoria, the complete misread of the polling data, the misunderstood raw data from the exit polls, the cocksure expectations of a Kerry win.
Then....the wailing begins. I feel so badly, but it is so delicious to read. So delectable.
And then I feel guilty for having done it. Again. But, luckily, I don't stop there. I continue to read, entry after entry, post after post.
I read the honest thoughts and feelings of the author and the like-minded commentors and I see the same thing, liberal blog after liberal blog....the utter contempt for people who disagree with liberalism. The haughty insults about people with whom they have nothing in common, nor really know anything about. And then the familiar icy sensation flows into my veins, not a mirror of the white-hot hatred toward them that they feel toward me and those who think like me and vote like me, but the cool comfort of knowing they are the ideological and political losers in this country.
Again and again their stale, limp, ineffective ideas rejected at the ballot box. And their impotent rage on the day after and the delight it inspires.
I know this is a pendulum, and that eventually it will again swing in their direction but for today, and the forseeable future their twisted and malicious ideas and plans gain no foothold here.
If you people could step outside your cocoons and hear what you sound like to those who don't think as you do.....you would go white with shock.
FUCK YOU. I'm sick of your triumphalism, your smug satisfaction in your tiresome backwards opinions, your complete failure to see the real issues. "The Laughing Gnome" is a great single.
Handle: 9.2. A feint, to broadcast and disown one's political intent.
Coherence: A surprisingly high degree of technical difficulty, relatively unmarred by talking points. Unfortunately the cocoon bit has been done better by her superiors. Hard to compare yourself to the greats. One point deduction for an 8.0.
Reading Comprehension. Showed promise with the unprecedented ability to click on archive links, but lacked a strong finish. 5.6. She'll be thinking about that one on the plane ride home.
Dessert: 0.0
Artistic presentation: Overzealous use of the ellipsis weights down an otherwise uninspiring performance. 6.75.
Judges? Ooh, a 5.91. Not going to qualify for Nationals that way.
While I agree, I regret that I must say that if you could get out of your liberal left cocoon, you would see that it is smooth '70's blue-eyed soul with an extra helping of irony, and not much of a rocker at all. Maybe when you wake up and acknowledge this, your side will stop losing elections.
11: Doesn't she get an extra point somewhere for the really very successfully executed Bond-villian tone? I was impressed -- "it is so delicious to read. So delectable." and "familiar icy sensation flows into my veins."
15: I figured you guys would take care of that side of things.
Also: I should have added that if you one reads all of the archives from 2003 to the end of the heavy politics blogging, it should become quite clear that the election posts are not representative.
So you label anyone who doesn't march lockstep with you a troll (I'm going to pretend I'm shocked about this, however this IS a liberal blog and it follows exactly to the liberal blog template) , and that's the best you got? Well, it's a hell of a lot easier than opening your freakin' eyes and stepping outsiiiiiiiide the circle jerk, I guess.
No matter, I'll just come back in 4 months for undoubtedly another dash of wailing and indignation after the mid terms.
Iam is certainly a very talented troll herself. Personally I think the overuse and misuse of ellipses is going to hurt her in the later rounds, but I suppose we'll have to let the audience decide.
Profile: Claims to be an artist first and an athlete second, but the flamboyant use of 'i' has soured some judges. Also, IOTC suspect her of doping, with the frequent complains of icy liquids flowing into her veins.
21: eb, I just went and looked at the posts from that week. Overwrought, but basically right. Is it the overwrought bit that you're talking about? I'd have thought that such was to be expected.
I did think the overwroughtness a bit much. I read those posts in October or November 2005, though; I didn't get here until the first party thread. I also may have been thinking of this, but it turns out it's just a comment.
It's also quite likely I'm less to the left of most of you, you know.
Next you're going to say I have to stop using racial slurs. Fine, yes, standards of politeness apply to the trolls. I hope Iam will accept my apologies.
64 -- nonono, it's "Liberals for Conservatives", not the other way round. You're the one's going to wear the leash, and purr when Glenn scratches you behind the ear.
Hm, 70 is a good question. Cats like hunting, and they can be kind of snotty. They probably are conservatives. Except that they seem awfully fond of living off of others. Dogs, on the other hand, are pretty friendly and generally tend to think the best of people. Probably dogs are fairly centrist, except for the ones that have been abused and are unpredictably cringing/vicious. Those probably write the more frothing right-wing blogs.
My cat is batshit. I think that just makes her a troll on either side of the aisle.
I consider myself a moderate; if some think I'm a leftist, well, 'tain't my fault the conservatives ran so hard to the right they came back the other way without their fiscal restraint.
It's also quite likely I'm less to the left of most of you, you know.
There's a difference between ideological position and level of anger. I'd be astonished (but v. pleased) if you were to the right of me.
Well, it doesn't matter; the point is that folks with feminine pseuds get harassed a lot.
Disagree, I think. Text should moderate his comments out of a sense of duty/deference/whatever to you and other women here--b/c you're offended, or you reasonably worry about total effects down the line. But a duty to SFR? Fuck that.
I just don't want to belie that I'm a pretender to the throne of the educated* if I have to say it. Lots of words used to give me this problem; read a lot, gain a big vocabulary, go to public school, have it never come up in conversation.
Standardly, the accent mark should follow the stressed syllable, but that's clearly not the case in 99. Schwas are almost never stressed, so I suspect it's meant to mean the third syllable.
I can't read those damn symbols, but teh stress is Karamazov is definitely on the "ra". The "mazov" should flow out quickly and smoothly, almost as if it were a single syllable. 91 is wrong.
92: The linked post explicitly recognizes that it's wildly overwrought ("while I'm not being reasonable"). And I'd actually be pretty surprised if ogged (who, AFAIK, still thinks the Iraq war might have been a good idea) is very far to the left by normal measures. I think what drives the anger at Bush is pretty well described by the first half of this post.
And, no, I have no idea why I'm pursuing this. I'll stop now.
Sorry, the stuff after the election was "a bit much"? Break me a fucking give. The American people had just reelected a dribbling dingbat based on his ability to get us stranded in a steadily-worsening foreign policy debacle that had already claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people for no readily apparent purpose while simultaenously encouraging the spread of international terrorism and normalizing torture by the CIA and the United States military. And although we didn't know about the NSA listening in on our phone calls, we damn well knew about John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales and their belief that the president was above the law. The stuff on this blog after the election was a model of absolute restraint.
And that's my random disproportionate frothing for the evening. Everybody can go back to talking about cats.
as a child, I watching Cats while it was touring through the nation. I was frightened. My father told me, "do not be frightened, they are just men and women in cat costumes." But that is what frightened me.
ogged (who, AFAIK, still thinks the Iraq war might have been a good idea) is very far to the left by normal measures
But he likes guns, so he can't be all bad.
And, no, I have no idea why I'm pursuing this. I'll stop now.
This stuff is kind of interesting, because it depends so much on perception, the crowd you're in, etc. On this site I'm a gun nut. But there's a definite segment of the gun crowd that tend to think I'm a commie because I don't acknowledge that the U.N. is secretly out to ban guns in the U.S. Likewise it's interesting how people arrive at similar positions. I bet a fair amount of people here are anti death penalty. But there's different paths to that position. I am anti death penalty not because I object to certain crimes resulting in someone forfeting their life, but rather don't think the system is capable of handing down such a punishment in a fair and consistent manner. But I bet a fair number of people here are anti death penalty because they genuinely think it's a cruel and unusual punishment.
When I was little, we used to bake chocolate chip cookies and watch Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas while eating them fresh from the oven with milk every Christmas.
And just because I think dead horses should be beaten, in 106:
by normal measures
Right, that's why in 21 I said those posts were not representative of the blog overall. And that's why I referred to some of those posts, not to the whole blog in general.
I believe that the Flying Karamazov Brothers pronounce it in the usual American English way, accent on the MA. Who you gonna believe, some professor of Russian langauge and literature, or a group of guys from the West Coast who can juggle chainsaws?
That troll thing doesn't make me think of David Bowie, but Margaret Hamilton: 'what a world, what a world.'
Every time I see Keira Knightley in a film, I think she'd be perfect to play my daughter in the movie version. Totally intereferes with the whole 'I'd do her' thing.
I first started blogging in the wake of the 2004 election. I'm not embarrassed to say I was angry. Most of that blog was about feeling a lot of rage and wanting a safe space to express that rage. But I created my author-function out of rage, not out of reason. I got into a lot of arguments there and said a lot of emotional stuff. That's how I felt.
I found that blog couldn't last because we started winning a few battles of public opinion—too late, but still important ones. When you feel like you're the only person you know who's not blind or apathetic, rage and sincerity are appropriate responses. But when people around you are starting to see what you see, rational conversations have to start. I couldn't start them at my old blog because that persona didn't do rational. All she did was rage.
So I killed her off after about ten months, quit blogging for about four, and began again with a new attitude. Now that most non-crazies are having conversations about what's right and wrong in culture and government, we need safe spaces to hold those conversations.
...which is all to say that I'm damn glad my old blog is gone. Blog texts are ephemeral for the very good reason that some stuff is what you need to say at one time, and then you're ready to talk about something else. I'm glad I don't have to rage all the time anymore, but I'm glad I could then.
"Young Americans" of course is most effective after having sat through the entirety pf Dogville, accompanied by the depression-era stills. An veritable estasy of loathing, an orgasm of spite.
I started blogging during the election and still like one of those posts, but some of my earnestness and generalizations make me cringe. I took my oral exams one week later and gradually stopped blogging for a few months.
143 - well said A White Bear. For me, I'm kind of embarressed about some stuff I've written on my own blog that has now aged by a couple years because life changes us and our perspectives change.
149: I wonder if part of the above commenter's obsession with reading 11/2004 blog posts is because that was the last time this administration's supporters felt like a happy majority. If memory serves me right, when Bush's people first gained power, there was a lot of liberal nostalgia for the Clinton era. Re-triumphing over a dead enemy is the best way to lick hard-to-reach wounds.
If I could use the search function I'd look up baa's comments about political affiliations being like sports affiliations. Reliving the election could be like revisiting some epic win.
I'd search in the morning,
I'd search in the evening,
All over this blog.
I'd search in the archives,
I'd search in the old threads,
I'd search using google and yahoo
All over this blog.
A White Bear, it's not an obsession. As I explained it is something that I like to do when I encounter a new liberal blogsite, even though I know I should not take pleasure in other peoples' misery.
Alas, it's not called "The School of Hard Knocks" for nothin'.
And it isn't the last time I felt like a happy majority, I know my views are still held by the majority regardless if people are happy with the President or not. They STILL won't be voting democrat in November.
Reading the reaction of the 2004 election in a liberal blog I'm not familiar with is just one of the simple pleasures in life.
It makes sense to me, SAHM. If I were to figure out a way to derive pleasure from people whose ethics I find distasteful, it would probably involve probing their pain as well. But I guess it doesn't match my mood or personality to do so.
155 - I respectfully disagree. Alot of the stuff Bush and the republicans promised us turned out to be empty. In fact, they've made things much worse. I'm not sure he intentionally misrepesented himself as standing for middle class just to get elected, twice, but I sure am very embarrassed I voted for him. I miss President Clinton, a centrist, who didn't make a mockery of the budget and respected our constitution.
Well I acknowledged that it's wrong, and quite honestly what I see are the same denials, the same excuses, the same assumptions, the same recriminations and accusations, not to mention the same mischaracterizations and distortions of republicans and Bush supporters.
Initially I read to try to understand the beliefs that are so alien to mine, despite having been born and raised in the same country. But on the rare occasion I tried to engage the locals in substantive discussion, I simply found myself banned from comments.
*shrug* I see the nation at a stalemate. The left is unable to convince the right to see things their way and vice versa. It's simply amazing to me. Utterly confounding. The only conservative that I read who vilifies the left to this degree is Ann Coulter, and I don't quite agree with her verbiage or methods. On the other hand the entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters. Not to mention the vilification the dems heap on me because of my views is loathsome, not to mention politically idiotic.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
I went in exactly the opposite direction. The 11/04 posts strike me as overwrought because they're so painfully earnest. I've come to think of things now as closer to a straight fight, with little expectation of common ground on important issues, and great hopes that I won't need to depend on such common ground during my lifetime. I suspect that is the way it has always been, and that the peace and prosperity of the 90s, or the same during my lifetime, just mezmerized me, allowing me to ignore that greater truth. And I've ended up with empathy if not any sympathy for the people on the other side aisle in the 60's; I find myself quickly reformulating some of the same things they said toward my own ends.
It's weird, and I find it impressive that countries work as well as they do. But, then, I feel the same way about USPS.
Oh yeah, "entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters." Meanwhile SOP for mainstream right wing blogs is publishing people's contact info, eliminationist rhetoric, and regular accusations of treason. But damn those lefties and their rudeness.
IamSAHM says "*shrug* I see the nation at a stalemate. The left is unable to convince the right to see things their way and vice versa"
I think that's how it was for the years 2000-2004, but I think the current administration has done such an attrocious job in so many different areas (look at any poll for the last 3 years) that lots of people (myself included) have realized the "right" is too extreme and don't reflect our middle class values afterall.
Can we please not pull out our cocks on this shit again? I'm with gswift; I think there's no comparison between the kind of rhetoric used, and by the sorts of people using it (as measured by the power those people have). But there's no way to convince SAHM of that, because she sincerely sees exactly the same matchup of quotations and the like and makes precisely the opposite diagnosis. There's an unbridgeable gap there.
163 makes sense too. I suspect you're probably right that there's always been a divide and there's two sides to every coin for whatever issue, but that's why I like a more centrist leader, like we had in the 1990s. I know this isn't something everybody thinks we should strive for and they think it's better to get somebody from "their side", even if extreme, to push this or that issue, rather than finding somebody who is more of a unifier and risk not get anything done for their causes, but I long for that more peaceful time.
No TD, I don't think so. The issue isn't the politicians or parties themselves, I'd be relieved if that were the case. No the issue is that Joe Six-Pack democrat and Joe Six-Pack republican is who is finding it hard to live in the same neighborhood, so to speak.
Much of what was said on this blogsite after the election is true not just of liberals but of conservatives as well. I was feeling what was being expressed but in complete reverse. Yeah, I was so relieved to find that Bush won, but I was still astonished how many people actually voted for Kerry. Incredulous.
I thought I simply disagreed with Clinton and his administration, but no, it's the liberals and their dangerous and unworkable schemes for this nation that I'm vehemently opposed to.
On the other hand the entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters. Not to mention the vilification the dems heap on me because of my views is loathsome, not to mention politically idiotic.
Perhaps this is the problem with the kind of voices that tend to attract large audiences, SAHM. Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are attractive because they are so extremely offensive, as it's clear some of the more radical voices on the left are to you. But just like you don't feel represented by the hate-mongering of the far Right, it seems unfair to assume that people who disagree with you politically are all the hate-mongerers you've (apparently) been reading. No wonder you revel in our pain! It's just that it's the wrong pain to revel in.
At least, I've appreciated the moderating effect that conversations here have had on my discourse. Although my personal politics might be far Left, that's simply not true of most people here. I don't feel guilted out of my personal stances, but I also have learned how to take others' positions more seriously, because now they belong to people I know and (in my way) care about.
That's why I guess I don't "get" why one would get pleasure out of laughing at people expressing hurt. Have party politics really made us not treat others (who are not, after all, that different from us) like human beings? Or is that just the way of the internet, to make some people more real to you while making others seem like symbols or evil robots?
174 - IamSAHM, I'm not sure what the hell I am anymore. All I know is I was slightly right of center in '00 and '04 but now, thanks in large part to Bush, have moved slightly left of center. And I can't imagine right now the democrats could do any worse if they tried because, talk about unworkable schemes for this nation, the republicans are trying to bankrupt us, take away all our liberties, and invade other nations as they see fit without declaring war and without regard to how much it costs (both in terms of money and lost lives of reservists, whom many of are fathers, firefighters, and cops in smalltown USA).
And I've ended up with empathy if not any sympathy for the people on the other side aisle in the 60's; I find myself quickly reformulating some of the same things they said toward my own ends.
This I feel too, though I think I really started picking it up on the way to November 2004 as I read, really for the first time, about post-1945 US history. I believe I mentioned before that until 2002/3 I paid almost no attention to contemporary politics - as distinct from "current events news" - and I take a temporally expansive view of "contemporary". Growing up where I did I was so tired of hearing about the 60s they I did what I could not to learn about the time period.
Listen, I'm not saying I don't have vices, SAHM. I'm as bad as anyone else, I guess, but political schadenfreude would signal to me that I care more about "the other side" not getting what they want than about things taking a turn for the better for all of us. If "my side" won a victory, I'd hope your life improved as much as mine will, because that's a more meaningful political victory than one that only benefits my friends.
Now, personal schadenfreude is a completely different issue. I just can't manage it against the millions of strangers who support a different party.
180 - really? I'm always fascinated about seeing stuff from the 60's because there seems to have been such a competition between the "old world" and the "new world". It's interesting to imagine both sides made valid points, yet so different. Seems like such a fascinating paradox to me.
183 - furthermore, I imagine any joy would only have been short term (like a couple weeks) and not still relishing in other's political misfortunes 2 years later, continuing to revist the scene of the party when everyone has since moved on.
Okay TD, I guess it's the frickin' hyperbole that wears my ass out.
Do you REALLY think the GOP wants to BANKRUPT the country? To what end exactly? How does that benefit them, exactly? Or is it more that they are spending more money than you'd like your government to spend?
DO tell what frickin' "liberties" the GOP has taken from you or anyone else? Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration. And are they taking A liberty away, SOME liberties away or "ALL" our liberties as you state? Huh? I mean, what kind of bullshit IS that, anyway? WHAT has been taken away from you or anyone else, exactly?
What "nations" are in danger of being invaded by the U.S.? And are you unaware that the U.S. Congress voted for BOTH the invasion into Afghanistan AND Iraq? I mean, what is with the frickin' collective amnesia the liberals (or anti-Bushies, whatever) have been hit with since 2003? Tell me please! IF it is as you say, that Bush and his administration have invaded nations willy-nilly, well, that's completely ILL-fucking-LEGAL, pal. We need to lock his ass up, don't we? Why aren't we? Could it be....because he consulted Congress and Congress voted for the military incursions? HUH? Everything Bush has done has been done legally because of his Presidential powers, for the love of God!!
I mean, get a fucking clue.
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
Maybe this is like our conversation about sports, TD. It's one thing to gloat because you succeeded at something and it made you feel good. It's another thing to derive pleasure in the pain of your enemies' failure. They are not two sides of the same coin, or at least those who continue to feel confident rarely feel the need to flip it, and even those who start to doubt shouldn't have to.
Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration.
Padilla. Hamdi, who actually lost his citizenship. That you don't know that, or see it that way, is precisely what makes me think there's an unbridgeable gap.
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
a) It's more like 2/3 these days.
b) Were you expecting to come here and find lots of people automatically nodding along with you? If you want to calmly discuss politics, that can be done, but not if you call TD (the most moderate among us) a psychotic.
This is why people who don't care about people shouldn't get involved in American politics. It's supposed to be a system in which we trust that there is sense to be found in dissenting voices. If you don't want to hear what others have to say, why ask? Why get involved at all, especially if it makes you angry when they speak?
I'm a fucking leftie, and my views are not only unworkable, but dangerous. I actively want to destroy the United States from within. While I'm at it, I want to kill babies and promote the gay agenda. I hate the military and I actively support Islamic fundamentalism. I think everyone who makes over $40k/year should pay 50% of their income in income taxes, and all of that money should be given to lazy people and drug addicts. I think all white men should immediately be fired from their jobs and replaced by unqualified black high school dropouts. The fired white men will be forced to be stay-at-home dads while their wives abandon their responsibilities to become college professors, congresswomen, and abortion providers. I think children should be taught to masturbate in public by strippers funded through tax money, and that as soon as they turn twelve both the children and the strippers should be given free birth control, also at taxpayer expense. I think that if they get pregnant anyway they should be provided free taxpayer-funded abortions unless they choose to collect their $40k annual income directly from the government, which should actively discourage marriage unless it's between gay people or men and dogs. Everyone should be forced to send their children to public school, which should be paid for all the way through the Ph.D. level by taxpayers, although Ph.D.s should only be granted to blacks, Latinos, Indians, and women. Public education should, of course, require all students to memorize Darwin's Origin of Species, the Communist Manifesto and Mao's Little Red Book but absolutely must not teach them Shakespeare or Adam Smith.
This has been very strange. Unfogged is fun largely because it exemplifies a broad idea of conversation, far broader than the partisan sniping I can so easily find elsewhere. (Though many of the individuals are political, and no doubt sometimes partisan.) These recent visitors are alien to the style, but even more oddly, they seem not to think that anything other than partisanship can ever have been the point.
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
Oh, but indeed, this has hardly exhausted the realm of possibilities. They could all be on drugs leftover from the 60s. Or it could be that in a large republic, if half the people in the country agree with you, that makes your position not a fringe and minority one. It takes a special kind of arrogance to insist that if (these days) 70% of the population disagrees with the direction that the country is going, they must be deluded.
Here's another possibility: maybe they just think the country is going the wrong direction.
Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration. And are they taking A liberty away, SOME liberties away or "ALL" our liberties as you state? Huh? I mean, what kind of bullshit IS that, anyway? WHAT has been taken away from you or anyone else, exactly?
Jose Padilla. Yaser Hamdi. Depending on how you construe it, millions of Americans have, given the NSA datamining project. That's also not an exclusively liberal position, by the way. You can read conservatives who disagree, too, right here on these very interwebs. What has been taken away from me? My faith in due process. If you don't understand why that's big, read the Constitution and get back to me.
No the issue is that Joe Six-Pack democrat and Joe Six-Pack republican is who is finding it hard to live in the same neighborhood, so to speak.
This gets it quite wrong. Look, millions voted Democrat in the last election. They don't all live in the same town. Now maybe you only have Republican neighbors and never hear a dissenting voice unless you click on a blog, but this is not a universal experience. Most of us get along with our neighbors just fine. Seriously. Turn off the talk radio.
Wow! It looks like I clocked out 5 minutes too soom last night (this morning) and missed all the really good fireworks! IamSAHM turned from engaging to enraging in 0.5 seconds! Of course everybody did a good job hosing her down (192 was especially amusing), the points made by gswift and AWB that "The President's approval ratings would indicate the days of having 1/2 the country on your side have passed." is so very true.
It is not a matter of dispute that both Padilla and Hamdi present UNUSUAL cases in the matter at hand, which is the primary task set before any POTUS, that being the protection of the nation and it's citizens against those who would do it and them harm, yes?
There are any number of differences between the Padilla and Hamdi cases as well. Hamdi was plucked off the battleground in Afghanistan, along with John Walker Lindh for Pete's sake. Joe Six Pack Citizen doesn't make it a habit to be there does he?
There is also a reason to believe that some american citizens who are part of the global terrorist network and working towards the destruction of this nation HAVE in effect revolked their citizenship BY taking part in such an operation, have they not? It isn't unreasonable to make that finding, is it?
The left operates on the belief that the Bush adminstration has the intent TO deny U.S. citizens their civil rights for no reason whatsoever, or for imagined reasons of a political nature based on NOTHING.
I am all for a rigourous vigilance against tyranny, and I do not want to see the Constitution suspended unless it is for the greater good or by original design, and I certainly do not want to see any U.S. President abuse his or her powers, and since these two, TWO, cases are publically known and have indeed been pled before U.S. courts, it is clear to me that the necessary checks and balances have indeed worked in place. Was everything done as it should have been done? No, I would expect not. Is it ever?
The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties". Be rational for God's sake.
There is also a reason to believe that some american citizens who are part of the global terrorist network and working towards the destruction of this nation HAVE in effect revolked their citizenship BY taking part in such an operation, have they not? It isn't unreasonable to make that finding, is it?
At a minimum, the question is whether the Executive should get to make that finding, and what the minimum set of protections that person should get in that finding process are. That you don't see that, and are evidently not troubled by that, makes you un-American to me. But be happy; you guys are in charge, so my opinion is of little import.
SAHM, aren't you moving the goalposts just a little bit? You originally said,
Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration.
and Cala replied: Padilla and Hamdi. Fair enough: US citizens, appear to have had liberties removed-- we're off and running. Then you say something I don't quite understand:
It is not a matter of dispute that both Padilla and Hamdi present UNUSUAL cases in the matter at hand, which is the primary task set before any POTUS, that being the protection of the nation and it's citizens against those who would do it and them harm, yes?
There are any number of differences between the Padilla and Hamdi cases as well. Hamdi was plucked off the battleground in Afghanistan, along with John Walker Lindh for Pete's sake. Joe Six Pack Citizen doesn't make it a habit to be there does he?
There is also a reason to believe that some american citizens who are part of the global terrorist network and working towards the destruction of this nation HAVE in effect revolked their citizenship BY taking part in such an operation, have they not? It isn't unreasonable to make that finding, is it?
Whether the Hamdi and Padilla cases were unusual wasn't really the question; nor is it relevant that they aren't "average citizens," at least if you're still talking about your original question. On the other hand, you might want to argue that people shouldn't be upset about the Hamdi and Padilla cases because they're isolated cases, because the circumstances are so unusual, and so on. (I think baa took this position a while ago.) But this is a different argument, and it would be helpful if you clarified just what you take your point to be instead of (apparently) changing theses midstream.
Cala, I know millions voted democrat in the last election and you say they don't all live in the same town but have you looked at an election results map? They live in the same regions.
I know how the electoral college works, so a state can be almost evenly split on a Presidential candidate even though the state's votes only go to the one candidate. There is virtually no red or blue state. So in effect those voting democrat and republican live side-by-side in america. That is nothing new.
What is new is getting your car vandalized because you have a Bush sticker on the bumper. What is different this time is having your political signs run over in your front yard. These are just two examples of the manifestation of the red/blue rancor out there. These are things I read about daily in the newspaper and on internet news sites during the last election. And the fences have yet to be mended.
"Turn off the talk radio" Nicely done. Assumption made and delivered! Typical liberal:)
"Depending on how you construe it, millions of Americans have, given the NSA datamining project." The devil is in the construing isn't it? But let's not bother with realities, you guys WANT the NSA program to be illegal and unconstitutional so why not let's just ALWAYS refer to it as such? It just sounds SO good and fits SO perfectly with your evil republican fantasies.
Assuming facts not in evidence. Always. But I'm not allowed to get irritated. heh
208 - The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties". Be rational for God's sake.
But domestic spying on our phone calls and large databases full of our emails and spending habits and subpoening google and yahoo and other search engines for what people are doing is completely fine in the name of national security? Nevermind all this info consolidated in one place or in the wrong hands or pieces of it downloaded to somebody's laptop is a much more credible threat to our freedom and lives than some terrorists from afar. As somebody on the right, I'm surprised you're not outraged at all this intrusiveness by an overbloated federal government!?
As for bankrupting our country, no I don't think the republicans in power are doing it intentionally, I just think they're horribly irresponsible and have no regard for fiscal conservation - which, again, thought used to be one of their strengths. We've spent enough money in IRAQ already equivalent to the amount it would have taken to have paid for 10+ million 4-year scholarships for US college students. Why the fuck is "liberating" another country more valuable to our leadership than educating our own children?!?!
Lastly, the whole "moral values" charade which I bit into hook, line, and sinker, being the father of two young daugthters has been a sham. Instead of doing something to clean up TV, radio, and video games, all they do is continue to press on to make sure deviant gay people will never enjoy equal status as "normal" married couples. Being moral means being tolerant of all, not being judgemental.
Also, since I'm on a roll, this really strains charity:
The left operates on the belief that the Bush adminstration has the intent TO deny U.S. citizens their civil rights for no reason whatsoever, or for imagined reasons of a political nature based on NOTHING.
Very few if any people here actually have that belief. (Maybe Emerson. He's always wrecking my universal quantifier.)* The left-leaning sorts here do believe, I think, that the administration has been far too casual w/r/t civil rights and that this is not warrranted by our situation. You're free to argue, as baa and idealist and others have done here, repeatedly and without being called trolls, that the administration hasn't been that casual, or that the situation requires some degree of fast-and-loose with legal protections, or both, but do cut the crap with this straw left you're on about. Whoever they are, they're not here.
Tim, when was it "american" to get one's panties in a bunch over the health and happiness of people who are trying to kill you? You, or I for that matter, don't get to decide what is "american". You can decide for yourself what you see america to be, and the same goes for me, but if you're looking for the historical america, well, your party shits on that every chance they get.
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
I think we should have a substantive conversation with Iam, nothwithstanding that is obviously not what Iam came here for. It's what we come here for, that and cock jokes.
Iam: are you in favor, as a matter of policy, in the Guantanamo Bay detention centers? Why?
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
And conservatives in power seem more concerned about building up other countries (after they invade them) than our own. I'm sure Bahgdad is a much better place to live now than when Saddam was in charge; probably better than New Orleans today.
FL, I don't mean to be moving goalposts, I do recall my post earlier. I started out with expressing irritation at the hyperbole employed by the anti-Bush folks.
TD claimed that the republicans "are trying to take away all our liberties" and that kind of wild accusation just is so tiresome. So I wanted an example of it. Someone else named Padilla and Hamdi and of course I'm aware of those cases, but I was looking for the millions of people who lost their civil liberties and that just wasn't it.
Padilla and Hamdi seemed questionable but they have been treated through the justice system. Maybe they wouldn't have if someone hadn't raised a stink, and the stink should be raised for that reason. I'm not arguing those cases, but I was expecting an enormous list of names to match the accusation.
IamSAHM said "TD claimed that the republicans "are trying to take away all our liberties" and that kind of wild accusation just is so tiresome. So I wanted an example of it."
Well I'm not going to wait around forever. Apparently Iam didn't want to have a substantive conversation after all. I'll come back when I feel up for some absurdity.
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
What's funny is that you and I are much more in accord than I (probably) am with most of the people who comment here. Our analysis is roughly (possibly v. roughly) the same; we're just on opposite sides of the fence. Which means that it's sort of hard for me to argue with you--we see the same base decisions to be made, and I vote "Yes" while you vote "No." And, because these are base decisions, the reasons I vote "Yes" are as inexplicable to you as the reasons you vote "No" are to me.
SAHM, it seems to me that calling Hamdi or Padilla a vindication of the Administrations' adherence to the rule of law is like calling the 2004 election a vindication of John Kerry's policies and personality.
Yasir Hamdi's citizenship wasn't taken away by the government because of his conduct, he was forced to give it up voluntarily as a condition of getting out of jail. Note that the government made this -- and giving up his monetray claims against the United States for wrongful imprisonment -- the only conditions to allow him to be released, because they did not want to give him the trial the Supreme Court said he deserved. The renunciation of citizenship is probably ineffective, anyway, because it was coerced.
To come back to it, your liberties are restricted by the Hamdi case. There's a law on the books that says that no American citizen can be locked up unless specifically authorized by Congress. The Supreme Court said that a law that allows a war is good enough, even if the law allowing the war doesn't say anything about locking people up. Then, in Padilla, the Fourth Circuit said that these same principles apply to someone picked up in Chicago, on suspicion of preparing to commit a crime. [The government was so unsure that this result would hold up that it dropped its 'enemy combatant' holding of Padilla, and has charged him like an ordinary criminal, unrelated to the Chicago arrest. The judge on the Fourth Circuit who wrote the opinion was so humiliated by having been manipulated by the government that he resigned]. So, for anyone who lives in Maryland, NC, SC, WV, or Virginia, the law is that you can be picked up and held indefinitely without trial, on the basis of an affidavit that neither you nor your lawyer is allowed to see. If you don't think this means that liberties have been impaired, than I don't think you know what 'liberties' means.
These cases, like all Supreme Court cases, aren't just about the particular individuals involved. Miranda, Brown, Bowers -- these define for all of us the extent to which the State may or may not infringe on our personal liberty, or unfairly deny us equality. I was going to paraphrase Justice Jackson's dissent in Korematsu, but I can't improve on it:
Much is said of the danger to liberty from the Army program for deporting and detaining these citizens of Japanese extraction. But a judicial construction of the due process clause that will sustain this order is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes. All who observe the work of courts are familiar with what Judge Cardozo described as "the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic." A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and all that it creates will be in its own image.
if you're looking for the historical america, well, your party shits on that every chance they get.
IamSAHM, look, I have been a Republican for longer than some people commenting here have been alive. I have been a member of the Federalist Society since before it was cool or professionally advantageous to be so. One of the many reasons I left the Democratic Party was the habit of its leaders to talk like you have been talking about their opponents. And a good way to drive me and many people like me back to the Democratic Party (or to no party at all) is to make the way you have been writing the hallmark of the right, not the left. Frankly, you and some of the other folks who came over to comment this weekend have me very depressed. If Republicans are right (as I believe we often have been been) we should be able to explain why in a civil, reasonable way. If you have nothing civil to say, it certainly makes it look like we have nothnig to say at all. So, could you do us a favor and try a different tack?
I have been a member of the Federalist Society since before it was cool or professionally advantageous to be so.
Wait, it's cool to be a member of the Federalist Society? If you have naked pictures from the last event, you have a moral obligation to post them somewhere.
If you have naked pictures from the last event, you have a moral obligation to post them somewhere.
Sorry, SCMT, it was mostly just a bunch of lawyers talking about constitutional theory. Of course, I skipped the banquet where Karl Rove was the speaker, I am sure that was a real swinging event.
"But domestic spying on our phone calls and large databases full of our emails and spending habits and subpoening google and yahoo and other search engines for what people are doing is completely fine in the name of national security?" That?
The NSA program does not begin by targeting any particular, known U.S. Citizen, but instead out of practicality it targets al Qaeda operatives certainly overseas. The NSA acquires enormous amounts of communications traffice outside the U.S. in a rather indiscriminate way and then analyses it using software for importance and for more direct targeting of the terrorist. It is not a "domestic spying" program.
The large mining operations involving emails and cookies and spending habits, do I like those? Well, in order to target me for merchandising reasons? No. As part of the overall effort to find people hiding in my country who are working for a terrorist organization? I understand that if you want the government to do everything in it's power (which assumes legality) to find and remove these people, this is how it's done. Too bad we don't have an entire army of telepaths who could give us the name and address of all the people inside this country working for terrorist organizations. That would be helpful, huh? Otherwise you have to do it with the technology at hand. Some legal minds think the NSA program is illegal, others argue that it is legal.
I'd rather they used that information to protect the country and citizens than to figure out how much I spend on feminine protection products. Regardless it appears the info is being collected by some entity.
No, I was looking for the long list of names of people who actually had their civil liberties taken away.
Idealist, I have made, oh I don't know a dozen posts or so in here. I have been relatively civil in all but a single post. So I really don't get your beef.
CharleyCarp, I appreciate your posts, and I definitely get your point. I have no training in law so it's impossible to comprehend the myriad of ways various court rulings in thousands of cases can and do subtly erode our liberties. But how can you or I stop that? Who is making sure that this doesn't happen? Not too many, eh?
TD, I believe you are quite correct. We are the opposite sides of the same coin. We see things very much the same way but like from alternate universes.
And for the record: I never had my car vandalized during the election because I would put my stickers in the windows but lay them down when I left my car in a parking lot. And our HOA doesn't allow for political signs in the yards so that didn't happen to me personally either. I just read about this kind of stuff from all around the country. Some poor schmuck even got caught on tape stealing Bush signs from someone's front yard. Or was it Kerry signs? Well I suppose that doesn't really matter.
SAHM: The government has so far refused to tell me whether it has monitored any of my communications. I'm going to have to take it to court to find out for sure, and will do so. If you think you know the full factual details of the program(s), you're either in possession of classified information, or naive.
I think many fewer people would argue that the NSA program (assuming facts as have been disclosed to date) is legal now than would have done two weeks ago. This is because much of the support for legality comes from a particular legal theory, one that in my view could not survive Youngstown, but certainly cannot survive Hamdan.
I'd be interested to know Idealist's view on this subject, btw.
You can certainly communicate with your representatives. You know, it's a whole lot more useful than reading people's contemporaneous expressions of anguish and anger over the 2004 election and making fun of them.
Charley, I don't think I know the full factual details of ANYTHING. I do what I can to get them, but nobody on earth knows the full factual details of most things.
I guess you think you do?
If the Bush administration is found to have done something illegal, then that of course should be addressed. But if you want to impeach him and put him in jail over it, it says to me that you (not you personally but the collective you) think he did it for reasons OTHER than in his capacity of POTUS charged with the protection of the nations and it's citizens.
I know there are many people who truly believe that Bush is a danger, he's a dangerous POTUS, and nothing he does has been done before, but I see no realistic evidence of that.
Not at all. But then I'm the one not going around making claims about what is, and what is not, being monitored. Or how the program works.
I don't care whether what the President's done has been done before or not. The second guy to steal my car (hypothetically) doesn't get a free pass. Nor the fourteenth.
I'm not interested in impeachment at this point, or putting him in jail. Stopping with the lawbreaking would be a good start. And if my own communications were monitored in violation of FISA, I'd be content with the civil damages provided under that law.
The President isn't charged with protection of the nation and its citizens -- not explicitly anyway -- but is directly charged with "tak[ing] Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . ."
which is the primary task set before any POTUS, that being the protection of the nation and it's citizens against those who would do it and them harm, yes?
No, actually. Check the oath next inauguration. Something about preserving, upholding, and defending the Constitution of the United States. That's the primary task. Not to decide all Jack-Ryan-style that he gets to do whatever he feels necessary to keep the country safe.
There are any number of differences between the Padilla and Hamdi cases as well. Hamdi was plucked off the battleground in Afghanistan, along with John Walker Lindh for Pete's sake. Joe Six Pack Citizen doesn't make it a habit to be there does he?
That's not actually anywhere near striking distance of the point. Most U.S. citizens aren't thieves, but that doesn't mean that when you're arrested, the government gets to do whatever it wants. You still get a lawyer, full Amendment protections, lots of nifty things. Notice, I didn't mention Lindh; Lindh as far as I know had a reasonably fair trial. Nevertheless, you asked for one, I gave you two.
"Don't do bad things and you won't need those rights" isn't a defense. And the really fucking stupid thing is I'm almost old enough to remember when this would have been a standard conservative position.
Cala, I know millions voted democrat in the last election and you say they don't all live in the same town but have you looked at an election results map? They live in the same regions.
Not really. It's more an urban/rural divide than a state-by-state one. My home state has a Democratic governor, two Republican Senators and a split state Senate and House. It's home to Santorum and Murtha!
The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties".
I've used the word Republican once in order to describe voting patterns. And I'm pretty sure no one says anything near what you're pretending to be quoting.
If you're gonna play on here and be taken seriously, you're going to have to step it up, and address what's being said instead of repeating soundbites that address a fictional liberal instead of any of your interlocutors here.
We were speaking upthread of mispronunciations; I was alerted by radio announcers of two on my drive today. While we passed Scranton, I learned that its sister city, whose name I have always pronounced to rhyme with "feldspar", rhymes actually with "Doonesberry". And! Later on, I learned that "Bonobo" has its accent on "No", not on "Bon".
Speaking of driving through Scranton: The Clownæsthesiologist and his female companions are in Ithica this week. If any Unfogged commenters living in Binghamton, Syracuse, Cooperstown or nearby towns, villages, boroughs or freeholds want to get in touch, we could have a Finger Lakes area meetup. Time is limited, so hurry and e-mail me today at anacreon at gmail dot com, or comment here in this regard. I will be only moderately present at Unfogged so email is probably useful at least as an adjunct to your comment here.
Wow, it's a little commonwealth party in honor of David Bowie. If it makes you feel better, clownae, it took me a very, very long time to learn that bit about Wilkes-Barre.
I think it's cute that IamSAHM enjoys taking sadistic pleasure in the fact that liberals so naively assumed that the exit polls were wrong and that Bush didn't steal the election (when in fact, he did, just as he stole the 2000 election).
Bush is a usurper and a war criminal. He should be rotting in jail right now. I don't care what the NASCAR crowd thinks of him or how much my rhetoric just alienated a precious swing voter -- those are the objective facts.
See, Tia? Labs abuses his main page privileges even when what he's saying is germane to an existing discussion in a comment thread.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 5:16 PM
It is a lesser known fact that while he was recording "Ziggy Stardust" David Bowie threatened to kill no less than seventy-three children. But he only actually killed forty. And he did so in a very humane manner.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 5:17 PM
nobody complained.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 5:23 PM
Awww, Labs. It's sweetness like this that gets my boyfriend into jealous tizzies over whether I'm pursuing an affair with my comment box friends.
Also, I e-mailed you.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 5:28 PM
Hey now I'm jealous too!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 5:43 PM
David Bowie: what a rocker.
"Young Americans" inspired this thought?!? I mean, I like the song, but: how much tequila did you have?
Normally when I see Bowie being discussed, I like to make snarky comments about "The Laughing Gnome", but I don't have the energy tonight. Just consider it done.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:08 PM
a dissenting opinion! now we've got to threaten each other's kittens.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:11 PM
Man I feel so guilty. I found this blog via the whole unpleasantness going on with Protein Wisdom and that nasty Frisch person so I started looking around.
Then I did what I do every time I find a new liberal blog...and why I feel so guilty.
I went to the archives.....back to election day 2004 and I read. And I read. And I cackle. And I howl with laughter. And it's always the same.
At first the euphoria, the complete misread of the polling data, the misunderstood raw data from the exit polls, the cocksure expectations of a Kerry win.
Then....the wailing begins. I feel so badly, but it is so delicious to read. So delectable.
And then I feel guilty for having done it. Again. But, luckily, I don't stop there. I continue to read, entry after entry, post after post.
I read the honest thoughts and feelings of the author and the like-minded commentors and I see the same thing, liberal blog after liberal blog....the utter contempt for people who disagree with liberalism. The haughty insults about people with whom they have nothing in common, nor really know anything about. And then the familiar icy sensation flows into my veins, not a mirror of the white-hot hatred toward them that they feel toward me and those who think like me and vote like me, but the cool comfort of knowing they are the ideological and political losers in this country.
Again and again their stale, limp, ineffective ideas rejected at the ballot box. And their impotent rage on the day after and the delight it inspires.
I know this is a pendulum, and that eventually it will again swing in their direction but for today, and the forseeable future their twisted and malicious ideas and plans gain no foothold here.
If you people could step outside your cocoons and hear what you sound like to those who don't think as you do.....you would go white with shock.
But you never will do that so....
THANKS FOR THE SHOW ANYWAY!!!
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:23 PM
FUCK YOU. I'm sick of your triumphalism, your smug satisfaction in your tiresome backwards opinions, your complete failure to see the real issues. "The Laughing Gnome" is a great single.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:30 PM
I like "Young Americans." I hate America, of course, but Bowie's not American, so that song gets a pass.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:34 PM
Olympic Troll Judging:
Handle: 9.2. A feint, to broadcast and disown one's political intent.
Coherence: A surprisingly high degree of technical difficulty, relatively unmarred by talking points. Unfortunately the cocoon bit has been done better by her superiors. Hard to compare yourself to the greats. One point deduction for an 8.0.
Reading Comprehension. Showed promise with the unprecedented ability to click on archive links, but lacked a strong finish. 5.6. She'll be thinking about that one on the plane ride home.
Dessert: 0.0
Artistic presentation: Overzealous use of the ellipsis weights down an otherwise uninspiring performance. 6.75.
Judges? Ooh, a 5.91. Not going to qualify for Nationals that way.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:35 PM
Also, JL: a lot of tequila. But seriously, what an awesome song. Maybe I only relate because of the part about lousy sex.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:37 PM
In fairness, some of those election posts were a bit much.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:39 PM
Cala, shouldn't you deduct a tenth of a point or so for the all-caps tagline?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:40 PM
13: Maybe, but being smug about them two years later?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:43 PM
Oh, right. There goes the Wheaties box.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:43 PM
But seriously, what an awesome song.
While I agree, I regret that I must say that if you could get out of your liberal left cocoon, you would see that it is smooth '70's blue-eyed soul with an extra helping of irony, and not much of a rocker at all. Maybe when you wake up and acknowledge this, your side will stop losing elections.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:43 PM
Iam, the troll competiton is in the thread labeled "Relapse." You show some good stuff, but I'm afraid your competitors are very talented.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:44 PM
In fairness, some of those election posts were a bit much.
Smile when you say that, Red.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:46 PM
11: Doesn't she get an extra point somewhere for the really very successfully executed Bond-villian tone? I was impressed -- "it is so delicious to read. So delectable." and "familiar icy sensation flows into my veins."
Really, I think this one is high-class trolling.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:46 PM
15: I figured you guys would take care of that side of things.
Also: I should have added that if
youone reads all of the archives from 2003 to the end of the heavy politics blogging, it should become quite clear that the election posts are not representative.Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:47 PM
20 has a point! Plus, the smug username has to count for something.
I realize that my own username kind of disqualifies me from saying that, but I'm not doing the judging, just commenting from the sidelines.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:49 PM
And enjoying delicious pink grocery-store cake! With decaf.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:50 PM
So you label anyone who doesn't march lockstep with you a troll (I'm going to pretend I'm shocked about this, however this IS a liberal blog and it follows exactly to the liberal blog template) , and that's the best you got? Well, it's a hell of a lot easier than opening your freakin' eyes and stepping outsiiiiiiiide the circle jerk, I guess.
No matter, I'll just come back in 4 months for undoubtedly another dash of wailing and indignation after the mid terms.
No skin off my nose.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:50 PM
Iam is certainly a very talented troll herself. Personally I think the overuse and misuse of ellipses is going to hurt her in the later rounds, but I suppose we'll have to let the audience decide.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:51 PM
Shit, there's a template? Why don't you fuckers ever tell me this shit?
I bet there are Cliff's notes, too. Assholes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:52 PM
We'll be glad to see you back if you can keep up this level of quality.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:55 PM
wordpress calls them themes.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:55 PM
Profile: Claims to be an artist first and an athlete second, but the flamboyant use of 'i' has soured some judges. Also, IOTC suspect her of doping, with the frequent complains of icy liquids flowing into her veins.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:55 PM
All the cool kids use Sparknotes, B.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:57 PM
Shit. And here I bothered studying. I hate you all.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:58 PM
21: eb, I just went and looked at the posts from that week. Overwrought, but basically right. Is it the overwrought bit that you're talking about? I'd have thought that such was to be expected.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 6:58 PM
I hope IamSAHM didn't take his/her handle from the late Doug Sahm of Sir Douglas/Texas Tornadoes. I'd hate to see him resurrected as a wingnut troll.
Posted by LA Confidential Pantload | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:00 PM
I think it's I am Stay At Home Mom. Which sounds sorta like a superhero.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:02 PM
33: I think "SAHM" is "stay at home mom."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:02 PM
Well which is it, Iam? The meaning of the acronym will affect your score.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:06 PM
I must admit that you guys are the gift that keeps on giving. You are entertainment of the highest order and not for the reasons you'd imagine.
Keep it coming.
bitchphd, I've encountered your, em, blog before. I enjoyed your post-election posts as well. You guys never let me down. It's just beautiful.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:07 PM
This is quite impressive. Can I imagine you reading 37 out loud in some sort of slinky teddy or negligee?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:09 PM
I wasn't aware that there was some doubt as to whether BitchPhD kept a blog.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:10 PM
It's hard to do a circle jerk in a cocoon. Hard, hard work. I prefer the echo chamber.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:10 PM
Well, it doesn't follow the template! Because you people kept me out of the loop.
I'm going to sue.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:11 PM
if Iam wants to be our troll I'm afraid she will have to wear a slinky teddy or negligee when she comments.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:13 PM
Not to mention the difficulty of doing a circle jerk while marching in lockstep.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:13 PM
No, no, text, you don't get to sexually harass the trolls.
Anyway, Tia and Silvana and I aren't going to share the attention whoring with some interloper.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:15 PM
Now girls -- there's plenty Clown to go around.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:18 PM
#43,
Yeah, the lock-step circle jerk does sound both difficult and disagreeable. Might work better in the Time Cube universe.
Posted by LA Confidential Pantload | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:19 PM
These are like the World Cup metaphor competitions!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:21 PM
it's only harassment if she doesn't secretly like it.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:21 PM
No, seriously, dude, chicks get too much of that crap online as it is. Don't contribute to the non-consensual grossness.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:22 PM
I did think the overwroughtness a bit much. I read those posts in October or November 2005, though; I didn't get here until the first party thread. I also may have been thinking of this, but it turns out it's just a comment.
It's also quite likely I'm less to the left of most of you, you know.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:24 PM
Do we even know that Iam is female? I was thinking probably not. Either way, by all means, I won't mention the secret troll requirement again.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:25 PM
50 is to 32. I curse you, Tim, for making me go back and skim those posts and threads.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:26 PM
Yeah, it's not nice, text. Plus, 47-year-old balding men look like hell in lace.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:27 PM
Well, it doesn't matter; the point is that folks with feminine pseuds get harassed a lot. You're probably right, but even so.
Sorry to be all humorless, but you know, it's my hangup. Plus it's totally unfair to make me defend SAHM trolls.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:28 PM
I don't understand the last sentence of 50.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:30 PM
eb thinks we're all commies.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:32 PM
So you label anyone who doesn't march lockstep with you a troll
Oh, please.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:35 PM
Next you're going to say I have to stop using racial slurs. Fine, yes, standards of politeness apply to the trolls. I hope Iam will accept my apologies.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:35 PM
I'm going to found a new organization: liberals for conservatives.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:36 PM
liberals for conservatives.
That would be very nice.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:37 PM
Damn. I was all excited that there were 60 comments extolling the awesomeness of David Bowie.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:37 PM
What, like pets?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:38 PM
Ground control to major Becks....
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:38 PM
Can I can I have my own conservative to put on a leash? Pweease?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:40 PM
Last sentence of 50 is actually pretty incomprehensible. I kinda like it that way.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:40 PM
64 -- nonono, it's "Liberals for Conservatives", not the other way round. You're the one's going to wear the leash, and purr when Glenn scratches you behind the ear.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:42 PM
I thought it was the liberals who were to be the pets.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:42 PM
66: Cats don't generally wear leashes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:43 PM
Heh.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:43 PM
But would they still be liberals?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:44 PM
Yeah, I mixed my metaphors -- I meant, Cala is going to jiggle her leg back and forth when Glenn rubs her tummy.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:44 PM
I think eb's organization would be better titled "Liberals for Bush" or some such.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:47 PM
's been done.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:49 PM
Hm, 70 is a good question. Cats like hunting, and they can be kind of snotty. They probably are conservatives. Except that they seem awfully fond of living off of others. Dogs, on the other hand, are pretty friendly and generally tend to think the best of people. Probably dogs are fairly centrist, except for the ones that have been abused and are unpredictably cringing/vicious. Those probably write the more frothing right-wing blogs.
I'm not sure about the mice.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:49 PM
Eh, it doesn't matter. I seem to be more moderate than conservative, and anyway am still left of center to most people.
You know, I didn't vote for Kerry: I requested my absentee ballot too late and disfranchised myself. Not that it mattered in my district.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:51 PM
Okay, seriously, did no one else get 59?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:52 PM
76 - It was a Jews for Jesus joke, right?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:53 PM
My cat is batshit. I think that just makes her a troll on either side of the aisle.
I consider myself a moderate; if some think I'm a leftist, well, 'tain't my fault the conservatives ran so hard to the right they came back the other way without their fiscal restraint.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:54 PM
sigh
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:54 PM
I didn't get it. But I'm stupid like that sometimes.
75: That's it, eb. You're outta the club.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:56 PM
And I suspect, from comments here, that my views are probably pretty close to Cala's, and that I share the sentiment FL expresses in the main post.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:56 PM
I voted absentee for Kerry and my ballot got shredded!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 7:58 PM
I share the sentiment FL expresses in the main post.
Regarding Bowie, or Cala?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:02 PM
I also voted for Kerry absentee, and my vote counted for way more than any of yours (but still not enough).
And 81 describes me as well.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:02 PM
my cat's a libertarian. she thinks Nature put all that catfood in the cupboard.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:03 PM
81 describes me as well.
Then... 83 applies to you as well.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:04 PM
Can someone tell me where the stress in Karamazov lies?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:04 PM
It's also quite likely I'm less to the left of most of you, you know.
There's a difference between ideological position and level of anger. I'd be astonished (but v. pleased) if you were to the right of me.
Well, it doesn't matter; the point is that folks with feminine pseuds get harassed a lot.
Disagree, I think. Text should moderate his comments out of a sense of duty/deference/whatever to you and other women here--b/c you're offended, or you reasonably worry about total effects down the line. But a duty to SFR? Fuck that.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:06 PM
Fine. We're all a bunch of moderates. Way to puncture my cocoon, teo. Next thing you know all this echoing I hear will stop.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:06 PM
There's always Emerson.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:08 PM
87: I've always stressed it on the /ma/.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:09 PM
And Tim, I think I was thinking of this, from the week after the week of the election.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:09 PM
Fucking Russian.
There's got to be a word for words which one can use deftly in writing, but cannot pronounce.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:11 PM
I've never been able to figure out the stress on most Russian names without hearing a Russian say them.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:14 PM
Note that I don't know any Russian before taking my advice. If only there were someone here who did know Russian...
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:14 PM
I've also read something like zero Russian lit.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:15 PM
I'm sure with all the commies around here, somebody's got to.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:16 PM
I just don't want to belie that I'm a pretender to the throne of the educated* if I have to say it. Lots of words used to give me this problem; read a lot, gain a big vocabulary, go to public school, have it never come up in conversation.
*Probably porcelain.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:18 PM
I think it's on the second syllable. teo, you read linguistic symbols, right?
/'brat?j? kar?'maz?v?/)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:20 PM
I pronounce it like Teofilo in 91 but believe it is more properly pronounced the way Cala is talkin bout in 99.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:23 PM
That looks right (assuming the accent mark is before the stressed syllable), but that's the third syllable.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:23 PM
If the second syllable is a schwa, it's probably not stressed.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:24 PM
That's from wikipedia. I don't read symbols. So the accent mark precedes the stressed syllable?
(I am feeling like Eliza Doolittle here.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:25 PM
Standardly, the accent mark should follow the stressed syllable, but that's clearly not the case in 99. Schwas are almost never stressed, so I suspect it's meant to mean the third syllable.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:27 PM
I can't read those damn symbols, but teh stress is Karamazov is definitely on the "ra". The "mazov" should flow out quickly and smoothly, almost as if it were a single syllable. 91 is wrong.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:39 PM
92: The linked post explicitly recognizes that it's wildly overwrought ("while I'm not being reasonable"). And I'd actually be pretty surprised if ogged (who, AFAIK, still thinks the Iraq war might have been a good idea) is very far to the left by normal measures. I think what drives the anger at Bush is pretty well described by the first half of this post.
And, no, I have no idea why I'm pursuing this. I'll stop now.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:46 PM
Urple sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Listen to him rather than me.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 8:53 PM
Skimming this thread, post-Bowie:
Sorry, the stuff after the election was "a bit much"? Break me a fucking give. The American people had just reelected a dribbling dingbat based on his ability to get us stranded in a steadily-worsening foreign policy debacle that had already claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people for no readily apparent purpose while simultaenously encouraging the spread of international terrorism and normalizing torture by the CIA and the United States military. And although we didn't know about the NSA listening in on our phone calls, we damn well knew about John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales and their belief that the president was above the law. The stuff on this blog after the election was a model of absolute restraint.
And that's my random disproportionate frothing for the evening. Everybody can go back to talking about cats.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:08 PM
I like cats.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:11 PM
cats are soft
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:14 PM
Also, the video for "Dancing in the Street" filled me with a terrible and righteous indignation. I'm sorry, but I had to get that off my chest.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:14 PM
as a child, I watching Cats while it was touring through the nation. I was frightened. My father told me, "do not be frightened, they are just men and women in cat costumes." But that is what frightened me.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:16 PM
ogged (who, AFAIK, still thinks the Iraq war might have been a good idea) is very far to the left by normal measures
But he likes guns, so he can't be all bad.
And, no, I have no idea why I'm pursuing this. I'll stop now.
This stuff is kind of interesting, because it depends so much on perception, the crowd you're in, etc. On this site I'm a gun nut. But there's a definite segment of the gun crowd that tend to think I'm a commie because I don't acknowledge that the U.N. is secretly out to ban guns in the U.S. Likewise it's interesting how people arrive at similar positions. I bet a fair amount of people here are anti death penalty. But there's different paths to that position. I am anti death penalty not because I object to certain crimes resulting in someone forfeting their life, but rather don't think the system is capable of handing down such a punishment in a fair and consistent manner. But I bet a fair number of people here are anti death penalty because they genuinely think it's a cruel and unusual punishment.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:25 PM
There used to be a funny show "Dr. Katz something-or-other other". Medicine woman.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:26 PM
That second "other" should be "otter". It was a show about otters.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:27 PM
but rather don't think the system is capable of handing down such a punishment in a fair and consistent manner
Same.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:28 PM
Me too.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:30 PM
me too (re: the otters)
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:35 PM
108 is a bit much.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:38 PM
Fascist.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:39 PM
I bet you support the death penalty for cats too.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:39 PM
If you look to the good side / Falling down's a free ride.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:43 PM
The wavy lines represent electrocution.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:45 PM
Jim Henson adapted Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas from a book by Russell Hoban. Jim Henson, Russell Hoban. It is the Christmas special of the gods.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:49 PM
Which gods?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:51 PM
Teo may have been right.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:55 PM
Which gods?
You otter know.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:57 PM
When I was little, we used to bake chocolate chip cookies and watch Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas while eating them fresh from the oven with milk every Christmas.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:58 PM
Also, wanna know what's cool about being home? My parents actually have food in their refrigerator. I should really try that someday.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 9:59 PM
Otter theory revolutionized marine biology.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:00 PM
Did you ever catch Dr. Katz, Medicine Woman Otter?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:01 PM
And just because I think dead horses should be beaten, in 106:
by normal measures
Right, that's why in 21 I said those posts were not representative of the blog overall. And that's why I referred to some of those posts, not to the whole blog in general.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:05 PM
And I'll stop now, too.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:05 PM
131 - No, but I saw the prequel about furry lobsters.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:06 PM
Otters make fine marinates.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:06 PM
No, but I saw the prequel about furry lobsters.
Pwned!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:08 PM
Hey hidey ho.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:10 PM
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona was based on an otter he knew as a child.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:11 PM
I believe that the Flying Karamazov Brothers pronounce it in the usual American English way, accent on the MA. Who you gonna believe, some professor of Russian langauge and literature, or a group of guys from the West Coast who can juggle chainsaws?
That troll thing doesn't make me think of David Bowie, but Margaret Hamilton: 'what a world, what a world.'
Every time I see Keira Knightley in a film, I think she'd be perfect to play my daughter in the movie version. Totally intereferes with the whole 'I'd do her' thing.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:12 PM
Six in one, half dozen in the otter.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:12 PM
Was she a female otter who practiced medicine?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:12 PM
Who you gonna believe, some professor of Russian langauge and literature, or a group of guys from the West Coast who can juggle chainsaws?
My pronunciation is taken from the chainsaw-juggling guys. I have neither read the book nor discussed it with anyone who has.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:14 PM
I first started blogging in the wake of the 2004 election. I'm not embarrassed to say I was angry. Most of that blog was about feeling a lot of rage and wanting a safe space to express that rage. But I created my author-function out of rage, not out of reason. I got into a lot of arguments there and said a lot of emotional stuff. That's how I felt.
I found that blog couldn't last because we started winning a few battles of public opinion—too late, but still important ones. When you feel like you're the only person you know who's not blind or apathetic, rage and sincerity are appropriate responses. But when people around you are starting to see what you see, rational conversations have to start. I couldn't start them at my old blog because that persona didn't do rational. All she did was rage.
So I killed her off after about ten months, quit blogging for about four, and began again with a new attitude. Now that most non-crazies are having conversations about what's right and wrong in culture and government, we need safe spaces to hold those conversations.
...which is all to say that I'm damn glad my old blog is gone. Blog texts are ephemeral for the very good reason that some stuff is what you need to say at one time, and then you're ready to talk about something else. I'm glad I don't have to rage all the time anymore, but I'm glad I could then.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:14 PM
There is no "post-Bowie".
"Young Americans" of course is most effective after having sat through the entirety pf Dogville, accompanied by the depression-era stills. An veritable estasy of loathing, an orgasm of spite.
17 times for me.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:16 PM
I'm afraid of Americans.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:17 PM
I'm afraid of the world.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:20 PM
Ner-neet.
Nee-nert.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:24 PM
I started blogging during the election and still like one of those posts, but some of my earnestness and generalizations make me cringe. I took my oral exams one week later and gradually stopped blogging for a few months.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:28 PM
143 - well said A White Bear. For me, I'm kind of embarressed about some stuff I've written on my own blog that has now aged by a couple years because life changes us and our perspectives change.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:31 PM
149: I wonder if part of the above commenter's obsession with reading 11/2004 blog posts is because that was the last time this administration's supporters felt like a happy majority. If memory serves me right, when Bush's people first gained power, there was a lot of liberal nostalgia for the Clinton era. Re-triumphing over a dead enemy is the best way to lick hard-to-reach wounds.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:38 PM
150: "dead enemy" should be "undead enemy"? What are these fucking parties if not amnesiatic zombies with weapons?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:41 PM
If I could use the search function I'd look up baa's comments about political affiliations being like sports affiliations. Reliving the election could be like revisiting some epic win.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:42 PM
If I could use the search function
(If I could use the search function)
I'd look up a post by Unf
(But not a real Unf post, that's cruel)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:45 PM
I'd search in the morning,
I'd search in the evening,
All over this blog.
I'd search in the archives,
I'd search in the old threads,
I'd search using google and yahoo
All over this blog.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:51 PM
A White Bear, it's not an obsession. As I explained it is something that I like to do when I encounter a new liberal blogsite, even though I know I should not take pleasure in other peoples' misery.
Alas, it's not called "The School of Hard Knocks" for nothin'.
And it isn't the last time I felt like a happy majority, I know my views are still held by the majority regardless if people are happy with the President or not. They STILL won't be voting democrat in November.
Reading the reaction of the 2004 election in a liberal blog I'm not familiar with is just one of the simple pleasures in life.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:52 PM
We wouldn't have to make new cock jokes.
But we would make new cock jokes.
Of course we would, we'd just make more.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:53 PM
Yahoo search works, you hosers. You're probably just misremembering the search terms.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:54 PM
you hosers
I have to search so bad, I can taste it.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:56 PM
It makes sense to me, SAHM. If I were to figure out a way to derive pleasure from people whose ethics I find distasteful, it would probably involve probing their pain as well. But I guess it doesn't match my mood or personality to do so.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:57 PM
I'm waiting for the Lecksus-Becksus search engine.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 10:58 PM
155 - I respectfully disagree. Alot of the stuff Bush and the republicans promised us turned out to be empty. In fact, they've made things much worse. I'm not sure he intentionally misrepesented himself as standing for middle class just to get elected, twice, but I sure am very embarrassed I voted for him. I miss President Clinton, a centrist, who didn't make a mockery of the budget and respected our constitution.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:09 PM
Well I acknowledged that it's wrong, and quite honestly what I see are the same denials, the same excuses, the same assumptions, the same recriminations and accusations, not to mention the same mischaracterizations and distortions of republicans and Bush supporters.
Initially I read to try to understand the beliefs that are so alien to mine, despite having been born and raised in the same country. But on the rare occasion I tried to engage the locals in substantive discussion, I simply found myself banned from comments.
*shrug* I see the nation at a stalemate. The left is unable to convince the right to see things their way and vice versa. It's simply amazing to me. Utterly confounding. The only conservative that I read who vilifies the left to this degree is Ann Coulter, and I don't quite agree with her verbiage or methods. On the other hand the entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters. Not to mention the vilification the dems heap on me because of my views is loathsome, not to mention politically idiotic.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:13 PM
143, 149, and I suspect eb:
I went in exactly the opposite direction. The 11/04 posts strike me as overwrought because they're so painfully earnest. I've come to think of things now as closer to a straight fight, with little expectation of common ground on important issues, and great hopes that I won't need to depend on such common ground during my lifetime. I suspect that is the way it has always been, and that the peace and prosperity of the 90s, or the same during my lifetime, just mezmerized me, allowing me to ignore that greater truth. And I've ended up with empathy if not any sympathy for the people on the other side aisle in the 60's; I find myself quickly reformulating some of the same things they said toward my own ends.
It's weird, and I find it impressive that countries work as well as they do. But, then, I feel the same way about USPS.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:22 PM
Oh yeah, "entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters." Meanwhile SOP for mainstream right wing blogs is publishing people's contact info, eliminationist rhetoric, and regular accusations of treason. But damn those lefties and their rudeness.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:24 PM
Or #162, from the directly opposite side.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:24 PM
IamSAHM says "*shrug* I see the nation at a stalemate. The left is unable to convince the right to see things their way and vice versa"
I think that's how it was for the years 2000-2004, but I think the current administration has done such an attrocious job in so many different areas (look at any poll for the last 3 years) that lots of people (myself included) have realized the "right" is too extreme and don't reflect our middle class values afterall.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:26 PM
gfswift, you don't really want to go there, do ya?
I doubt that.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:26 PM
bring it
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:27 PM
Can we please not pull out our cocks on this shit again? I'm with gswift; I think there's no comparison between the kind of rhetoric used, and by the sorts of people using it (as measured by the power those people have). But there's no way to convince SAHM of that, because she sincerely sees exactly the same matchup of quotations and the like and makes precisely the opposite diagnosis. There's an unbridgeable gap there.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:32 PM
163 makes sense too. I suspect you're probably right that there's always been a divide and there's two sides to every coin for whatever issue, but that's why I like a more centrist leader, like we had in the 1990s. I know this isn't something everybody thinks we should strive for and they think it's better to get somebody from "their side", even if extreme, to push this or that issue, rather than finding somebody who is more of a unifier and risk not get anything done for their causes, but I long for that more peaceful time.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:34 PM
No TD, I don't think so. The issue isn't the politicians or parties themselves, I'd be relieved if that were the case. No the issue is that Joe Six-Pack democrat and Joe Six-Pack republican is who is finding it hard to live in the same neighborhood, so to speak.
Much of what was said on this blogsite after the election is true not just of liberals but of conservatives as well. I was feeling what was being expressed but in complete reverse. Yeah, I was so relieved to find that Bush won, but I was still astonished how many people actually voted for Kerry. Incredulous.
I thought I simply disagreed with Clinton and his administration, but no, it's the liberals and their dangerous and unworkable schemes for this nation that I'm vehemently opposed to.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:34 PM
On the other hand the entire left blogosphere seems to be composed entirely of lefty Ann Coulters. Not to mention the vilification the dems heap on me because of my views is loathsome, not to mention politically idiotic.
Perhaps this is the problem with the kind of voices that tend to attract large audiences, SAHM. Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are attractive because they are so extremely offensive, as it's clear some of the more radical voices on the left are to you. But just like you don't feel represented by the hate-mongering of the far Right, it seems unfair to assume that people who disagree with you politically are all the hate-mongerers you've (apparently) been reading. No wonder you revel in our pain! It's just that it's the wrong pain to revel in.
At least, I've appreciated the moderating effect that conversations here have had on my discourse. Although my personal politics might be far Left, that's simply not true of most people here. I don't feel guilted out of my personal stances, but I also have learned how to take others' positions more seriously, because now they belong to people I know and (in my way) care about.
That's why I guess I don't "get" why one would get pleasure out of laughing at people expressing hurt. Have party politics really made us not treat others (who are not, after all, that different from us) like human beings? Or is that just the way of the internet, to make some people more real to you while making others seem like symbols or evil robots?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:35 PM
Tim, I have no penis so I won't be bringing it out.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:37 PM
#169
Very true. Engagement isn't going to get us anywhere. Perhaps I'll just be content with telling her she's fucking delusional.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:39 PM
174 - IamSAHM, I'm not sure what the hell I am anymore. All I know is I was slightly right of center in '00 and '04 but now, thanks in large part to Bush, have moved slightly left of center. And I can't imagine right now the democrats could do any worse if they tried because, talk about unworkable schemes for this nation, the republicans are trying to bankrupt us, take away all our liberties, and invade other nations as they see fit without declaring war and without regard to how much it costs (both in terms of money and lost lives of reservists, whom many of are fathers, firefighters, and cops in smalltown USA).
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:41 PM
TD you commie, don't you know that the terrorists WANT you to think this way?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:42 PM
A White Bear, I find it hard to believe you've never partaken in schadenfreude of any form. I've never heard of such a person.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:44 PM
gswift's language is the liberalese I hear 95% of the time.
Just sayin'.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:46 PM
TD you commie, don't you know that the terrorists WANT you to think this way?
You mean there's some left? Even after Bin Laden is supposedly no longer in charge?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:47 PM
And I've ended up with empathy if not any sympathy for the people on the other side aisle in the 60's; I find myself quickly reformulating some of the same things they said toward my own ends.
This I feel too, though I think I really started picking it up on the way to November 2004 as I read, really for the first time, about post-1945 US history. I believe I mentioned before that until 2002/3 I paid almost no attention to contemporary politics - as distinct from "current events news" - and I take a temporally expansive view of "contemporary". Growing up where I did I was so tired of hearing about the 60s they I did what I could not to learn about the time period.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:49 PM
gswift's language is the liberalese I hear 95% of the time.
Cause the word "fuck" makes the baby Jesus cry.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:50 PM
that
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:50 PM
Listen, I'm not saying I don't have vices, SAHM. I'm as bad as anyone else, I guess, but political schadenfreude would signal to me that I care more about "the other side" not getting what they want than about things taking a turn for the better for all of us. If "my side" won a victory, I'd hope your life improved as much as mine will, because that's a more meaningful political victory than one that only benefits my friends.
Now, personal schadenfreude is a completely different issue. I just can't manage it against the millions of strangers who support a different party.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:52 PM
You mean there's some left? Even after Bin Laden is supposedly no longer in charge?
They're EVERYWHERE. They're flooding across the Mexican border as we speak.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:53 PM
180 - really? I'm always fascinated about seeing stuff from the 60's because there seems to have been such a competition between the "old world" and the "new world". It's interesting to imagine both sides made valid points, yet so different. Seems like such a fascinating paradox to me.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:53 PM
183 - furthermore, I imagine any joy would only have been short term (like a couple weeks) and not still relishing in other's political misfortunes 2 years later, continuing to revist the scene of the party when everyone has since moved on.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 8-06 11:57 PM
Okay TD, I guess it's the frickin' hyperbole that wears my ass out.
Do you REALLY think the GOP wants to BANKRUPT the country? To what end exactly? How does that benefit them, exactly? Or is it more that they are spending more money than you'd like your government to spend?
DO tell what frickin' "liberties" the GOP has taken from you or anyone else? Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration. And are they taking A liberty away, SOME liberties away or "ALL" our liberties as you state? Huh? I mean, what kind of bullshit IS that, anyway? WHAT has been taken away from you or anyone else, exactly?
What "nations" are in danger of being invaded by the U.S.? And are you unaware that the U.S. Congress voted for BOTH the invasion into Afghanistan AND Iraq? I mean, what is with the frickin' collective amnesia the liberals (or anti-Bushies, whatever) have been hit with since 2003? Tell me please! IF it is as you say, that Bush and his administration have invaded nations willy-nilly, well, that's completely ILL-fucking-LEGAL, pal. We need to lock his ass up, don't we? Why aren't we? Could it be....because he consulted Congress and Congress voted for the military incursions? HUH? Everything Bush has done has been done legally because of his Presidential powers, for the love of God!!
I mean, get a fucking clue.
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
Pardon my french but Grrrrrrrrr
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:01 AM
Maybe this is like our conversation about sports, TD. It's one thing to gloat because you succeeded at something and it made you feel good. It's another thing to derive pleasure in the pain of your enemies' failure. They are not two sides of the same coin, or at least those who continue to feel confident rarely feel the need to flip it, and even those who start to doubt shouldn't have to.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:06 AM
Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration.
Padilla. Hamdi, who actually lost his citizenship. That you don't know that, or see it that way, is precisely what makes me think there's an unbridgeable gap.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:12 AM
Everything Bush has done has been done legally because of his Presidential powers, for the love of God!!
Yeah, TD, don't you realize the President's powers are unlimited, and therefore nothing he does is illegal?
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
The Presidnt's approval ratings would indicate the days of having 1/2 the country on your side have passed.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:13 AM
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
a) It's more like 2/3 these days.
b) Were you expecting to come here and find lots of people automatically nodding along with you? If you want to calmly discuss politics, that can be done, but not if you call TD (the most moderate among us) a psychotic.
This is why people who don't care about people shouldn't get involved in American politics. It's supposed to be a system in which we trust that there is sense to be found in dissenting voices. If you don't want to hear what others have to say, why ask? Why get involved at all, especially if it makes you angry when they speak?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:13 AM
I'm a fucking leftie, and my views are not only unworkable, but dangerous. I actively want to destroy the United States from within. While I'm at it, I want to kill babies and promote the gay agenda. I hate the military and I actively support Islamic fundamentalism. I think everyone who makes over $40k/year should pay 50% of their income in income taxes, and all of that money should be given to lazy people and drug addicts. I think all white men should immediately be fired from their jobs and replaced by unqualified black high school dropouts. The fired white men will be forced to be stay-at-home dads while their wives abandon their responsibilities to become college professors, congresswomen, and abortion providers. I think children should be taught to masturbate in public by strippers funded through tax money, and that as soon as they turn twelve both the children and the strippers should be given free birth control, also at taxpayer expense. I think that if they get pregnant anyway they should be provided free taxpayer-funded abortions unless they choose to collect their $40k annual income directly from the government, which should actively discourage marriage unless it's between gay people or men and dogs. Everyone should be forced to send their children to public school, which should be paid for all the way through the Ph.D. level by taxpayers, although Ph.D.s should only be granted to blacks, Latinos, Indians, and women. Public education should, of course, require all students to memorize Darwin's Origin of Species, the Communist Manifesto and Mao's Little Red Book but absolutely must not teach them Shakespeare or Adam Smith.
I also hate apple pie and puppies.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:41 AM
Oh, and trolls.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:43 AM
192: Nope, no hyperbole here. Just a big Leftgasm.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:49 AM
bitchphd's language is the liberalese I hear 95% of the time
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:49 AM
189: Also that guy in Oregon who was arrested (because of a case of mistaken identity) and held without access to a lawyer for a while.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:55 AM
Well, you do live in Utah.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:56 AM
197 to 195
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:57 AM
My God it's late. Good night, all.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:58 AM
187 seems to be expressing, dare I say, utter contempt, haughty insults, and impotent rage.
Also aren't we on the left supposed to have the lock on "spending more than [people] want their government to spend"?
Crap, I'm so confused now. Ever since the NSA started illegally tapping my phone calls, the tinfoil hat seems to be less and less effective.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:00 AM
Buenas noches, Teo.
AWB, why don't you log in and keep me company for a bit? If you're up anyway.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:01 AM
This has been very strange. Unfogged is fun largely because it exemplifies a broad idea of conversation, far broader than the partisan sniping I can so easily find elsewhere. (Though many of the individuals are political, and no doubt sometimes partisan.) These recent visitors are alien to the style, but even more oddly, they seem not to think that anything other than partisanship can ever have been the point.
Posted by Vance Maverick | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:30 AM
"Is a bit much"/"Goes a bit far"/"Sounds overwrought to me" is the new "gets it exactly right". If there's any justice in the world.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 4:36 AM
1/2 the people in this country appear to me to be either 1) ignorant and/or willfully misinformed or 2) psychotic! Which is it?!
Oh, but indeed, this has hardly exhausted the realm of possibilities. They could all be on drugs leftover from the 60s. Or it could be that in a large republic, if half the people in the country agree with you, that makes your position not a fringe and minority one. It takes a special kind of arrogance to insist that if (these days) 70% of the population disagrees with the direction that the country is going, they must be deluded.
Here's another possibility: maybe they just think the country is going the wrong direction.
Name me one US citizen who's had "liberties" removed by the current administration. And are they taking A liberty away, SOME liberties away or "ALL" our liberties as you state? Huh? I mean, what kind of bullshit IS that, anyway? WHAT has been taken away from you or anyone else, exactly?
Jose Padilla. Yaser Hamdi. Depending on how you construe it, millions of Americans have, given the NSA datamining project. That's also not an exclusively liberal position, by the way. You can read conservatives who disagree, too, right here on these very interwebs. What has been taken away from me? My faith in due process. If you don't understand why that's big, read the Constitution and get back to me.
No the issue is that Joe Six-Pack democrat and Joe Six-Pack republican is who is finding it hard to live in the same neighborhood, so to speak.
This gets it quite wrong. Look, millions voted Democrat in the last election. They don't all live in the same town. Now maybe you only have Republican neighbors and never hear a dissenting voice unless you click on a blog, but this is not a universal experience. Most of us get along with our neighbors just fine. Seriously. Turn off the talk radio.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 6:07 AM
203 gets it exactly right.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 7:48 AM
Most of us get along with our neighbors just fine.
Ah, I remember when that was the standard line from Shi'a and Sunni alike.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 8:46 AM
Wow! It looks like I clocked out 5 minutes too soom last night (this morning) and missed all the really good fireworks! IamSAHM turned from engaging to enraging in 0.5 seconds! Of course everybody did a good job hosing her down (192 was especially amusing), the points made by gswift and AWB that "The President's approval ratings would indicate the days of having 1/2 the country on your side have passed." is so very true.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 9:48 AM
It is not a matter of dispute that both Padilla and Hamdi present UNUSUAL cases in the matter at hand, which is the primary task set before any POTUS, that being the protection of the nation and it's citizens against those who would do it and them harm, yes?
There are any number of differences between the Padilla and Hamdi cases as well. Hamdi was plucked off the battleground in Afghanistan, along with John Walker Lindh for Pete's sake. Joe Six Pack Citizen doesn't make it a habit to be there does he?
There is also a reason to believe that some american citizens who are part of the global terrorist network and working towards the destruction of this nation HAVE in effect revolked their citizenship BY taking part in such an operation, have they not? It isn't unreasonable to make that finding, is it?
The left operates on the belief that the Bush adminstration has the intent TO deny U.S. citizens their civil rights for no reason whatsoever, or for imagined reasons of a political nature based on NOTHING.
I am all for a rigourous vigilance against tyranny, and I do not want to see the Constitution suspended unless it is for the greater good or by original design, and I certainly do not want to see any U.S. President abuse his or her powers, and since these two, TWO, cases are publically known and have indeed been pled before U.S. courts, it is clear to me that the necessary checks and balances have indeed worked in place. Was everything done as it should have been done? No, I would expect not. Is it ever?
The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties". Be rational for God's sake.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:11 AM
I don't need hosing down, but I do lose my temper now and then.
Sue me.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:16 AM
There is also a reason to believe that some american citizens who are part of the global terrorist network and working towards the destruction of this nation HAVE in effect revolked their citizenship BY taking part in such an operation, have they not? It isn't unreasonable to make that finding, is it?
At a minimum, the question is whether the Executive should get to make that finding, and what the minimum set of protections that person should get in that finding process are. That you don't see that, and are evidently not troubled by that, makes you un-American to me. But be happy; you guys are in charge, so my opinion is of little import.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:22 AM
SAHM, aren't you moving the goalposts just a little bit? You originally said,
and Cala replied: Padilla and Hamdi. Fair enough: US citizens, appear to have had liberties removed-- we're off and running. Then you say something I don't quite understand:
Whether the Hamdi and Padilla cases were unusual wasn't really the question; nor is it relevant that they aren't "average citizens," at least if you're still talking about your original question. On the other hand, you might want to argue that people shouldn't be upset about the Hamdi and Padilla cases because they're isolated cases, because the circumstances are so unusual, and so on. (I think baa took this position a while ago.) But this is a different argument, and it would be helpful if you clarified just what you take your point to be instead of (apparently) changing theses midstream.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:29 AM
Cala, I know millions voted democrat in the last election and you say they don't all live in the same town but have you looked at an election results map? They live in the same regions.
I know how the electoral college works, so a state can be almost evenly split on a Presidential candidate even though the state's votes only go to the one candidate. There is virtually no red or blue state. So in effect those voting democrat and republican live side-by-side in america. That is nothing new.
What is new is getting your car vandalized because you have a Bush sticker on the bumper. What is different this time is having your political signs run over in your front yard. These are just two examples of the manifestation of the red/blue rancor out there. These are things I read about daily in the newspaper and on internet news sites during the last election. And the fences have yet to be mended.
"Turn off the talk radio" Nicely done. Assumption made and delivered! Typical liberal:)
"Depending on how you construe it, millions of Americans have, given the NSA datamining project." The devil is in the construing isn't it? But let's not bother with realities, you guys WANT the NSA program to be illegal and unconstitutional so why not let's just ALWAYS refer to it as such? It just sounds SO good and fits SO perfectly with your evil republican fantasies.
Assuming facts not in evidence. Always. But I'm not allowed to get irritated. heh
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:33 AM
208 - The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties". Be rational for God's sake.
But domestic spying on our phone calls and large databases full of our emails and spending habits and subpoening google and yahoo and other search engines for what people are doing is completely fine in the name of national security? Nevermind all this info consolidated in one place or in the wrong hands or pieces of it downloaded to somebody's laptop is a much more credible threat to our freedom and lives than some terrorists from afar. As somebody on the right, I'm surprised you're not outraged at all this intrusiveness by an overbloated federal government!?
As for bankrupting our country, no I don't think the republicans in power are doing it intentionally, I just think they're horribly irresponsible and have no regard for fiscal conservation - which, again, thought used to be one of their strengths. We've spent enough money in IRAQ already equivalent to the amount it would have taken to have paid for 10+ million 4-year scholarships for US college students. Why the fuck is "liberating" another country more valuable to our leadership than educating our own children?!?!
Lastly, the whole "moral values" charade which I bit into hook, line, and sinker, being the father of two young daugthters has been a sham. Instead of doing something to clean up TV, radio, and video games, all they do is continue to press on to make sure deviant gay people will never enjoy equal status as "normal" married couples. Being moral means being tolerant of all, not being judgemental.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:33 AM
What is new is getting your car vandalized because you have a Bush sticker on the bumper.
See, this is your fault. I peeled ours off in shame 18 months ago!
What is different this time is having your political signs run over in your front yard
Would this be as likely happen if Bush's approval rating was 70% instead of 30%?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:36 AM
Also, since I'm on a roll, this really strains charity:
Very few if any people here actually have that belief. (Maybe Emerson. He's always wrecking my universal quantifier.)* The left-leaning sorts here do believe, I think, that the administration has been far too casual w/r/t civil rights and that this is not warrranted by our situation. You're free to argue, as baa and idealist and others have done here, repeatedly and without being called trolls, that the administration hasn't been that casual, or that the situation requires some degree of fast-and-loose with legal protections, or both, but do cut the crap with this straw left you're on about. Whoever they are, they're not here.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:38 AM
Tim, when was it "american" to get one's panties in a bunch over the health and happiness of people who are trying to kill you? You, or I for that matter, don't get to decide what is "american". You can decide for yourself what you see america to be, and the same goes for me, but if you're looking for the historical america, well, your party shits on that every chance they get.
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:40 AM
I think we should have a substantive conversation with Iam, nothwithstanding that is obviously not what Iam came here for. It's what we come here for, that and cock jokes.
Iam: are you in favor, as a matter of policy, in the Guantanamo Bay detention centers? Why?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:44 AM
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
And conservatives in power seem more concerned about building up other countries (after they invade them) than our own. I'm sure Bahgdad is a much better place to live now than when Saddam was in charge; probably better than New Orleans today.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:44 AM
Let's lay aside all this bullshit about what it is to be liberal and conservative and talk about things, not words.
Sincerely sorry if you were offended when we called you a troll, etc., though I doubt you were.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:46 AM
I should add: "or if not, why not?" Don't mean to presume anything.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:47 AM
You, or I for that matter, don't get to decide what is "american".
Does the U.S. Constitution?
No person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Hmmm.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:48 AM
FL, I don't mean to be moving goalposts, I do recall my post earlier. I started out with expressing irritation at the hyperbole employed by the anti-Bush folks.
TD claimed that the republicans "are trying to take away all our liberties" and that kind of wild accusation just is so tiresome. So I wanted an example of it. Someone else named Padilla and Hamdi and of course I'm aware of those cases, but I was looking for the millions of people who lost their civil liberties and that just wasn't it.
Padilla and Hamdi seemed questionable but they have been treated through the justice system. Maybe they wouldn't have if someone hadn't raised a stink, and the stink should be raised for that reason. I'm not arguing those cases, but I was expecting an enormous list of names to match the accusation.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:49 AM
I'm sure Bahgdad is a much better place to live now than when Saddam was in charge
Really? I don't remember headlines like this on CNN nearly as often when Saddam was in charge.
And no chance in hell Bahgdad is a nicer place to live than NO -- were you kidding?
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:49 AM
IamSAHM said "TD claimed that the republicans "are trying to take away all our liberties" and that kind of wild accusation just is so tiresome. So I wanted an example of it."
I thought I gave plenty of examples in 213?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 11:53 AM
Well I'm not going to wait around forever. Apparently Iam didn't want to have a substantive conversation after all. I'll come back when I feel up for some absurdity.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:01 PM
SAHM:
When I read how liberals view america and what they think america should be, which I do from multiple sources, I'm pretty sure we don't want to live in the same country.
What's funny is that you and I are much more in accord than I (probably) am with most of the people who comment here. Our analysis is roughly (possibly v. roughly) the same; we're just on opposite sides of the fence. Which means that it's sort of hard for me to argue with you--we see the same base decisions to be made, and I vote "Yes" while you vote "No." And, because these are base decisions, the reasons I vote "Yes" are as inexplicable to you as the reasons you vote "No" are to me.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:02 PM
SAHM, it seems to me that calling Hamdi or Padilla a vindication of the Administrations' adherence to the rule of law is like calling the 2004 election a vindication of John Kerry's policies and personality.
Yasir Hamdi's citizenship wasn't taken away by the government because of his conduct, he was forced to give it up voluntarily as a condition of getting out of jail. Note that the government made this -- and giving up his monetray claims against the United States for wrongful imprisonment -- the only conditions to allow him to be released, because they did not want to give him the trial the Supreme Court said he deserved. The renunciation of citizenship is probably ineffective, anyway, because it was coerced.
To come back to it, your liberties are restricted by the Hamdi case. There's a law on the books that says that no American citizen can be locked up unless specifically authorized by Congress. The Supreme Court said that a law that allows a war is good enough, even if the law allowing the war doesn't say anything about locking people up. Then, in Padilla, the Fourth Circuit said that these same principles apply to someone picked up in Chicago, on suspicion of preparing to commit a crime. [The government was so unsure that this result would hold up that it dropped its 'enemy combatant' holding of Padilla, and has charged him like an ordinary criminal, unrelated to the Chicago arrest. The judge on the Fourth Circuit who wrote the opinion was so humiliated by having been manipulated by the government that he resigned]. So, for anyone who lives in Maryland, NC, SC, WV, or Virginia, the law is that you can be picked up and held indefinitely without trial, on the basis of an affidavit that neither you nor your lawyer is allowed to see. If you don't think this means that liberties have been impaired, than I don't think you know what 'liberties' means.
These cases, like all Supreme Court cases, aren't just about the particular individuals involved. Miranda, Brown, Bowers -- these define for all of us the extent to which the State may or may not infringe on our personal liberty, or unfairly deny us equality. I was going to paraphrase Justice Jackson's dissent in Korematsu, but I can't improve on it:
Much is said of the danger to liberty from the Army program for deporting and detaining these citizens of Japanese extraction. But a judicial construction of the due process clause that will sustain this order is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes. All who observe the work of courts are familiar with what Judge Cardozo described as "the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic." A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and all that it creates will be in its own image.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:04 PM
Tim, when was it "american" to get one's panties in a bunch over the health and happiness of people who are trying to kill you?
You might review Gen. Washington's correspondence on this subject.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:07 PM
if you're looking for the historical america, well, your party shits on that every chance they get.
IamSAHM, look, I have been a Republican for longer than some people commenting here have been alive. I have been a member of the Federalist Society since before it was cool or professionally advantageous to be so. One of the many reasons I left the Democratic Party was the habit of its leaders to talk like you have been talking about their opponents. And a good way to drive me and many people like me back to the Democratic Party (or to no party at all) is to make the way you have been writing the hallmark of the right, not the left. Frankly, you and some of the other folks who came over to comment this weekend have me very depressed. If Republicans are right (as I believe we often have been been) we should be able to explain why in a civil, reasonable way. If you have nothing civil to say, it certainly makes it look like we have nothnig to say at all. So, could you do us a favor and try a different tack?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:09 PM
The judge on the Fourth Circuit who wrote the opinion was so humiliated by having been manipulated by the government that he resigned.
That's a charitable reading of Luttig's actions, and one that probably speaks well of you.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:10 PM
I have been a member of the Federalist Society since before it was cool or professionally advantageous to be so.
Wait, it's cool to be a member of the Federalist Society? If you have naked pictures from the last event, you have a moral obligation to post them somewhere.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:15 PM
Goddamnit, I've been listening to "Young Americans" all day and can't stop. It's the sound of the Ford years.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:18 PM
If you have naked pictures from the last event, you have a moral obligation to post them somewhere.
Sorry, SCMT, it was mostly just a bunch of lawyers talking about constitutional theory. Of course, I skipped the banquet where Karl Rove was the speaker, I am sure that was a real swinging event.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:19 PM
"But domestic spying on our phone calls and large databases full of our emails and spending habits and subpoening google and yahoo and other search engines for what people are doing is completely fine in the name of national security?" That?
The NSA program does not begin by targeting any particular, known U.S. Citizen, but instead out of practicality it targets al Qaeda operatives certainly overseas. The NSA acquires enormous amounts of communications traffice outside the U.S. in a rather indiscriminate way and then analyses it using software for importance and for more direct targeting of the terrorist. It is not a "domestic spying" program.
The large mining operations involving emails and cookies and spending habits, do I like those? Well, in order to target me for merchandising reasons? No. As part of the overall effort to find people hiding in my country who are working for a terrorist organization? I understand that if you want the government to do everything in it's power (which assumes legality) to find and remove these people, this is how it's done. Too bad we don't have an entire army of telepaths who could give us the name and address of all the people inside this country working for terrorist organizations. That would be helpful, huh? Otherwise you have to do it with the technology at hand. Some legal minds think the NSA program is illegal, others argue that it is legal.
I'd rather they used that information to protect the country and citizens than to figure out how much I spend on feminine protection products. Regardless it appears the info is being collected by some entity.
No, I was looking for the long list of names of people who actually had their civil liberties taken away.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:19 PM
Idealist, I have made, oh I don't know a dozen posts or so in here. I have been relatively civil in all but a single post. So I really don't get your beef.
CharleyCarp, I appreciate your posts, and I definitely get your point. I have no training in law so it's impossible to comprehend the myriad of ways various court rulings in thousands of cases can and do subtly erode our liberties. But how can you or I stop that? Who is making sure that this doesn't happen? Not too many, eh?
TD, I believe you are quite correct. We are the opposite sides of the same coin. We see things very much the same way but like from alternate universes.
And for the record: I never had my car vandalized during the election because I would put my stickers in the windows but lay them down when I left my car in a parking lot. And our HOA doesn't allow for political signs in the yards so that didn't happen to me personally either. I just read about this kind of stuff from all around the country. Some poor schmuck even got caught on tape stealing Bush signs from someone's front yard. Or was it Kerry signs? Well I suppose that doesn't really matter.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:36 PM
SAHM: The government has so far refused to tell me whether it has monitored any of my communications. I'm going to have to take it to court to find out for sure, and will do so. If you think you know the full factual details of the program(s), you're either in possession of classified information, or naive.
I think many fewer people would argue that the NSA program (assuming facts as have been disclosed to date) is legal now than would have done two weeks ago. This is because much of the support for legality comes from a particular legal theory, one that in my view could not survive Youngstown, but certainly cannot survive Hamdan.
I'd be interested to know Idealist's view on this subject, btw.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:41 PM
But how can you or I stop that?
You can certainly communicate with your representatives. You know, it's a whole lot more useful than reading people's contemporaneous expressions of anguish and anger over the 2004 election and making fun of them.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:48 PM
Charley, I don't think I know the full factual details of ANYTHING. I do what I can to get them, but nobody on earth knows the full factual details of most things.
I guess you think you do?
If the Bush administration is found to have done something illegal, then that of course should be addressed. But if you want to impeach him and put him in jail over it, it says to me that you (not you personally but the collective you) think he did it for reasons OTHER than in his capacity of POTUS charged with the protection of the nations and it's citizens.
I know there are many people who truly believe that Bush is a danger, he's a dangerous POTUS, and nothing he does has been done before, but I see no realistic evidence of that.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:48 PM
I NEVER said stumbled across this blog was useful.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:49 PM
Read that as "I NEVER said stumbling across this blog was useful."
It's a shame you can't edit these comments.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:51 PM
I guess you think you do?
Not at all. But then I'm the one not going around making claims about what is, and what is not, being monitored. Or how the program works.
I don't care whether what the President's done has been done before or not. The second guy to steal my car (hypothetically) doesn't get a free pass. Nor the fourteenth.
I'm not interested in impeachment at this point, or putting him in jail. Stopping with the lawbreaking would be a good start. And if my own communications were monitored in violation of FISA, I'd be content with the civil damages provided under that law.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:55 PM
The President isn't charged with protection of the nation and its citizens -- not explicitly anyway -- but is directly charged with "tak[ing] Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . ."
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 12:59 PM
You go for it Charly. I'm behind you 100%.
Posted by IamSAHM | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:03 PM
237: I think before "contact your representatives" we need to start with "stop being an apologist for it."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:08 PM
I'm not sure why I'm bothering.
which is the primary task set before any POTUS, that being the protection of the nation and it's citizens against those who would do it and them harm, yes?
No, actually. Check the oath next inauguration. Something about preserving, upholding, and defending the Constitution of the United States. That's the primary task. Not to decide all Jack-Ryan-style that he gets to do whatever he feels necessary to keep the country safe.
There are any number of differences between the Padilla and Hamdi cases as well. Hamdi was plucked off the battleground in Afghanistan, along with John Walker Lindh for Pete's sake. Joe Six Pack Citizen doesn't make it a habit to be there does he?
That's not actually anywhere near striking distance of the point. Most U.S. citizens aren't thieves, but that doesn't mean that when you're arrested, the government gets to do whatever it wants. You still get a lawyer, full Amendment protections, lots of nifty things. Notice, I didn't mention Lindh; Lindh as far as I know had a reasonably fair trial. Nevertheless, you asked for one, I gave you two.
"Don't do bad things and you won't need those rights" isn't a defense. And the really fucking stupid thing is I'm almost old enough to remember when this would have been a standard conservative position.
Cala, I know millions voted democrat in the last election and you say they don't all live in the same town but have you looked at an election results map? They live in the same regions.
Not really. It's more an urban/rural divide than a state-by-state one. My home state has a Democratic governor, two Republican Senators and a split state Senate and House. It's home to Santorum and Murtha!
The Padilla and Hamdi case are hardly a cause to conclude that the "republicans want to take away all our liberties".
I've used the word Republican once in order to describe voting patterns. And I'm pretty sure no one says anything near what you're pretending to be quoting.
If you're gonna play on here and be taken seriously, you're going to have to step it up, and address what's being said instead of repeating soundbites that address a fictional liberal instead of any of your interlocutors here.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:19 PM
Ooh, fuck. Runaway italics.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:20 PM
We were speaking upthread of mispronunciations; I was alerted by radio announcers of two on my drive today. While we passed Scranton, I learned that its sister city, whose name I have always pronounced to rhyme with "feldspar", rhymes actually with "Doonesberry". And! Later on, I learned that "Bonobo" has its accent on "No", not on "Bon".
Speaking of driving through Scranton: The Clownæsthesiologist and his female companions are in Ithica this week. If any Unfogged commenters living in Binghamton, Syracuse, Cooperstown or nearby towns, villages, boroughs or freeholds want to get in touch, we could have a Finger Lakes area meetup. Time is limited, so hurry and e-mail me today at anacreon at gmail dot com, or comment here in this regard. I will be only moderately present at Unfogged so email is probably useful at least as an adjunct to your comment here.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:29 PM
UB40
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:33 PM
Wow, it's a little commonwealth party in honor of David Bowie. If it makes you feel better, clownae, it took me a very, very long time to learn that bit about Wilkes-Barre.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:33 PM
Lindh as far as I know had a reasonably fair trial.
To the best of my knowledge, he did a deal, and there never was a trial.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:45 PM
More like "Doonesberreh," actually. And it's Ithaca.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:45 PM
I think it's cute that IamSAHM enjoys taking sadistic pleasure in the fact that liberals so naively assumed that the exit polls were wrong and that Bush didn't steal the election (when in fact, he did, just as he stole the 2000 election).
Bush is a usurper and a war criminal. He should be rotting in jail right now. I don't care what the NASCAR crowd thinks of him or how much my rhetoric just alienated a precious swing voter -- those are the objective facts.
As for IamSAHM, off to the gulag with her!
Civility be damned!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 07- 9-06 1:46 PM
(I'm trying to kill the thread in order to save it.)
Posted by