I would love to hear Obama had found a way to square the circle on this stuff. Not holding my breath.
Long comprehensive post from FDL's Jeff Kaye starts off with objections from the Human Rights Orgs, ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense etc etc and ends "The United States is only a small step away from some kind of dictatorship." The FDL commenters, gotta love them, are to argue with "small step away."
No, mine is the minority view. Release KSM and the rest, and give each ten million dollars in punitive damages. Torturing needs to be punished and deterred.
Too bad SCOTUS denied cert in three Gitmo cases today.
Minority view? Is there any commenter who agrees with Shearer that it would be a bad idea to try KSM in civiian courts? I mean, I guess a minority of one is still a minority view in the technical, "Robert Halford is the sexiest man alive" sense.
Is there a reason why a civilian trial had to be held in NY? The cost of security did seem like a burden to NYC? Why couldn't they just move the trial to a different district?
4.last: pussies. Everywhere. All and entire congressional delegations: pussies.
In other torturin news, the UK declared Bradley Manning some kind of subject of the Queen or something, and objected strongly to his treatment. 16 comments at FDL, nobody's impressed.
Yap, yap, yap, the lapdog barks.
I mean, Britain has nukes, you know.
I don't think this has been linked here yet, and this is certainly the right thread. Prolonged solitary confinement and borderline-torture US prison conditions as coercion to get a "material support" plea bargain.
Read the whole thing, but if you can't, the good stuff (as in, newish analysis and information) is toward the end. Incredibly depressing, particularly if the contention that other civil liberties orgs were reluctant to get involved in criticizing the US federal prison system since they were busy advocating for it in preference to Guantanamo is true.
And the Obama administration comes out of it stinking to high heaven.
Bah. Time to go write another check, I guess.
I'm in agreement with Bob that KSM should be released, although I think giving him $10 million in punitive damages is a bit much.
3
... Is there any commenter who agrees with Shearer that it would be a bad idea to try KSM in civiian courts? ...
It appears mcmanus and spike are in agreement (at least on the narrow point).
To clarify, I think KSM should be set free after his civilian trial, in which various members of the former administration are forced to take the stand.
8: I dunno, I think having the CIA imprison and interrogate your six- and eight-year-old children is worthy of punitive damages.
This is the kind of stuff I can't think too much about, because the rage and grief is overwhelming. This is the country I love?
9: If you find yourself agreeing with bob, you may wish to reconsider your position.
Once we set up the congressional dorms, KSM can have a permanent spot in Congress (and a vote! better than DC and the territories!) as a resident-terrorist expert. He'll be a resident terrorist who's an expert on being a terrorist. We love consultants.
Like the Catch Me If You Can dude.
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Looks like the a-hole judge in Wisconsin is going to hang on by a few thousand votes. A good try since he had 2:1 margin on the primary. His margin all in the suburb/exurbs.
About 1,600 votes with 3% of the precincts still out. All depends on where those precincts are, I guess.
I think they should try him in a court full of actual kangaroos. Like, a kangaroo judge with a little wig, a pen full of kangaroos as the jury, a gallery full of kangaroos and a kangaroo for his defence attorney, maybe bring Captain Kangaroo out for the prosecution and hire the kangaroo from Kangaroo Jack to act as bailiff. It would be more honest, and more entertaining.
And now Democratic Judge candidate is up again by a few hundred votes, still with a few precincts out. Can't remember when I followed a judicial election this closely.
And, it just switched back again to Republican Judge, by a couple thousand.
And let Sylvester the Puddy Tat catch sight of the court, but when he runs off to fetch a witness, quickly replace it with a court of mice.
20: And, it just switched back again to Republican Judge, by a couple thousand.
And shifted back again. The numbers keep jumping around and now they're just getting into the absentee ballots. No telling 'til tomorrow. And then the recount.
WTF is it with the Old Northwest and recounts?
max
['They seem to have one about every five minutes.']
WTF is it with the Old Northwest and recounts?
They take elections really seriously in WI and MN. And it used to be, until very recently, that Democrats and Republicans in those states got along reasonably well and cared more about good government than about kicking the shit out of each other. Which meant that everyone -- the Swedes, and the Norwegians, and the Finns, and all the rest -- would slowly count the votes, with a kind of Northern European cadence, making sure they got everything right. And then they'd count them all again. It was kind of charming, really. But now it's just Florida north up there, it seems.
The only honest reason I can come up with to try KSM in a military court rather than a civilian one would be that he would be more likely to get a fair trial there, because it would be impossible to empanel a civilian jury which wasn't convinced he was a minion of Satan guilty in advance of the trial. But I don't actually think this flies; can anybody come up with a better one?
That given what has happened to him any fair civilian judge is bound to throw the case out?
18: I think they should try him in a court full of actual kangaroos. Like, a kangaroo judge with a little wig
I think the judge presiding over the proceedings should be Rolf Harris.
24: It was kind of charming, really.
That's the way I always heard it. (I have ancestry from there but that's from century before last.) I guess they've been Americanized.
But now it's just Florida north up there, it seems.
Kloppenburg: 732,489, Prosser: 733,074, 99% reporting. Absentees not apparently counted yet, plus a few remaining precincts, plus the inevitable 'they were black so we put their votes aside' plus 'the older white elderly person surely meant Prosser when she wrote Donald Duck' plus errors, plus the secret underground cell of ACORN, so this one should be settled in about two months. Just in time for a recall election. And the morning will be 'massive triumph for the Tea Party and Sarah Palin' until Prosser goes under. Whee!
25: can anybody come up with a better one?
No.
However, I somehow think a military trial that is only somewhat kangerooish is probably better than letting the guy languish forever untried for any charge. At least he can then appeal the verdict.
max
['Maybe the horse will fly.']
26 is true, of course, assuming a definition of 'any fair civilian judge' which hasn't been hopelessly corrupted by the political discourse ogf the last 10 years. I'd be intrigued to learn Shearer's position, because he's not (usually) just a knee jerk Murdochoid about these things.
They take elections really seriously in WI and MN.
The Farmer's Daughter is a great movie, though perhaps less salacious than the title might suggest.
The problem with this conversation (for me, anyway) is that I don't know what the procedural differences between civilian courts and the proposed military courts are in detail. Not trying him in a civilian court is pointless, as far as I can tell, but depending on the nature of the military court it may not be particularly harmful -- my main reason for being pissed off about it is that if I don't understand exactly what's going on these days, it's a problem.
An argument for relaxed procedural protections for this sort of trial that I would buy if it were made by someone sane who I trusted is that it was necessary to avoid the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule -- that there was reliable evidence that had been acquired through warrantless searches, because the evidence-gathering hadn't happened in a law-enforcement context. But I haven't heard that argument made by anyone suggesting that it's what actually makes trying KSM in a military court necessary, so I don't think it's any kind of valid actual justification.
While we're on the subject of 9/11, can I ask a question that's been bugging me for a while? Was "first responder" in common use before the attacks or was it a new coinage, possibly to make the emergency services sound more heroic? I certainly don't recall hearing it before then.
Was "first responder" in common use before the attacks
Yes
I don't think there's any reasonable question about why the tribunal is being used. This is a response to political pressure, period. Remember, Holder took a crack at getting this done in civilian court in NYC.
18
I think they should try him in a court full of actual kangaroos. Like, a kangaroo judge with a little wig, a pen full of kangaroos as the jury, a gallery full of kangaroos and a kangaroo for his defence attorney, maybe bring Captain Kangaroo out for the prosecution and hire the kangaroo from Kangaroo Jack to act as bailiff. It would be more honest, and more entertaining.
If you think a civilian trial would be a farce then why support holding one?
33: Yes, Holder has been surprisingly vocal (to me) in stating his objections.
"Had this case proceeded in Manhattan or in an alternative venue in the United States, as I seriously explored in the past year, I am confident that our justice system would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years," Holder said in his prepared remarks.
25
... But I don't actually think this flies; can anybody come up with a better one?
That in order to obtain (and uphold) a conviction civilian judges are likely to make rulings which will set unfortunate precedents.
28
... I'd be intrigued to learn Shearer's position ...
My position is linked in the post. Briefly I think what to with KSM is a political decision and should be decided by the political branch of government. If Obama thought KSM should be released he could order it done.
25
The only honest reason I can come up with to try KSM in a military court rather than a civilian one ...
Also what he is accused of looks like a war crime to me and IANAL but aren't war cirmes usually handled outside the civilian court system. We didn't try the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor in the civilian courts (although they violated US civil laws).
I'm am normally a huge fan of Greenwald, but - as with his recent attack on Kevin Drum - I think he's off base here.
Also what he is accused of looks like a war crime
KSM would certainly like to cast himself as a warrior, just as Timothy McVeigh did. I think (if KSM is guilty) he's just a plain old criminal.
And even if I did think that he is properly regarded as a warrior, I think it'd be smarter to treat him as a criminal.
Briefly I think what to with KSM is a political decision and should be decided by the political branch of government.
Yeah, well, here in the U.S., we allegedly have laws governing this sort of thing.
40
Yeah, well, here in the U.S., we allegedly have laws governing this sort of thing.
You believe our laws require KSM be tried by the civilian courts (or be released)?
39
What's wrong with Greenwald's analysis (of the political dynamic not the substantive issue). It seems reasonable to me. Perhaps it ignores the fact that the right wing of the Republican party has a lot more popular support than the left wing of the Democratic party.
the right wing of the Republican party has a lot more popular support than the left wing of the Democratic party
I'll give you "is currently better organized" but "has a lot more popular support"? Neighbor, please.
Obama's record on these issues really pisses me off.
I just de-liked him on facebook! Take that!
I was happy to see a ton of comments on his facebook page bitching about how he is essentially a Republican.
I don't think KSM should be released, assuming there is enough non torture tainted evidence to get a conviction, and I imagine there is. Isn't that the normal approach when the cops beat a confession out of a subject?. BTW, for those getting too down on the US, several years ago a German law student/tutor kidnapped the son of a wealthy banker who he had been teaching. They got him in custody, but weren't able to find the victim, and the evidence against the suspect, while strong in circumstantial terms, was not conclusive. So they threatened him with torture on the authorization of the state head of police, who also authorized them to go through with the threats if necessary. The guy cracked, revealed the hiding place where the body was found. Big scandal, with majority popular support for the pro-torture crowd and plenty of endorsements from senior politicians and judges. The confession was tossed, but the evidence found with the body was admissible since there is no 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine in Germany.
43 Actually, I agree with Shearer. There are a lot more conservative Republicans out there than liberal Democrats.
Also what he is accused of looks like a war crime to me and IANAL but aren't war cirmes usually handled outside the civilian court system. We didn't try the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor in the civilian courts (although they violated US civil laws).
The war was over at the time. And, more to the point, we had won it. One could be forgiven for thinking that, among the Bush administration's motives for the military tribunals, there was a certain desire for Judgment at Nuremberg cosplay.
I have no idea how many divisions has how much popular support the left wing of the Democratic party enjoys, but I've read enough blogs to know to blame it on false consciousness.
looks like a war crime to me
What does "war crime" mean to you in this context? The primary meaning I know for the term refers to violations of the law of war committed by a party to an armed conflict, and the complicated legal issue is that everyone in a war is committing acts that would be crimes by the civil law if they weren't acts of war -- war is treated as a license to kill people and break stuff without being regarded as a criminal. War crimes are primarily (as far as I know) acts of killing people and breaking stuff that, while committed during a war/armed conflict, don't qualify for that license.
I don't see how this mode of analysis applies to someone like KSM at all, given that he has no legal argument I can see to be treated as someone legally fighting a war, and therefore exempt from criminal liability.
We didn't try the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor in the civilian courts (although they violated US civil laws).
There was a war starting. AFAIK offhand, they weren't war criminals -- a sneak attack on a military installation isn't, I think, a violation of the law of war. Also, a minor point, we didn't have them to try. But if we did have them, we would have treated them as prisoners of war, not war criminals.
I have all sorts of horrible and unforgivable gaps in my historical knowledge, but just to confirm: the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor weren't treated as war criminals for that act, as far as I know. Here's the wikipedia article on the guy who led the raid..
You believe our laws require KSM be tried by the civilian courts (or be released)?
No. I think our laws require due process. What you were proposing is much harder than military tribunals to square with due process.
Briefly I think what to with KSM is a political decision and should be decided by the political branch of government.
This is the kind of position where words like tyranny and despotism become literally appropriate. There is no part of the executive's powers that properly authorizes detention and punishment of anyone for political considerations without legal process.
What's wrong with Greenwald's analysis (of the political dynamic not the substantive issue).
My main objection is his embrace of futility - the idea that there's nothing that can be done, and that we don't know how to influence the political process. In fact, voters do, and have, and can continue to influence politics.
And it's just ludicrous to blame the Democrats for fear-mongering against the Republicans. This is the worst of Obama-ism: We can't talk about the very real vileness of the modern Republican Party, because it's insufficiently uplifting. Greenwald certainly doesn't believe this, regardless of what he says today.
The decision to go after foreign terrorists residing abroad and capture or kill them is a political decision, and one can easily imagine scenarios where governments decide the costs of doing so are not worth it. However, once you have them in your custody you need to put them on trial with all due process rights.
And it's just ludicrous to blame the Democrats for fear-mongering against the Republicans.
The thing you can blame Democrats for is hiding behind Florida 2000 -- don't even think about taking action to move the Democratic party left, because the Republican boogeyman will get you. They're awful, and action to move the Democratic party left should be done thoughtfully so as to minimize the chance that it will turn into putting Republicans in power, but that's not an excuse for letting the Democrats get away with everything.
This is a good time to remember that both citizens and noncitizens in territory over which the US has sovereignty have constitutional rights, including the right to habeas review of their detention.
Also, I love you guys!
The thing you can blame Democrats for is hiding behind Florida 2000 -- don't even think about taking action to move the Democratic party left, because the Republican boogeyman will get you.
Yeah, this is a tricky issue, and I'd be inclined to say Greenwald came down in the wrong place here, but in fact, he didn't really come down anywhere.
The right answer is building institutions that promote decent political values.
The wrong answer is futility. And the idea that Greenwald flirts with - that we should perhaps be indifferent to Democrats vs. Republicans, on the whole - is the counsel of futility.
And what was up with that Kevin Drum thing? As Drum says, Greenwald is guilty of an "appallingly hostile" reading of Drum's words.
As I said, I'm a huge Greenwald fan - Greenwald and Krugman are, to my mind, the two absolutely essential commentators. But Greenwald has had a rough week.
I think very well of Drum, generally. But what he said about trusting Obama's judgment over his own was nuts -- Greenwald's reaction seemed reasonable, and not appallingly hostile at all, if you took what Drum said straight. To read Drum charitably on that one (and I actually think this is probably the right way to read it, but you can't expect this kind of reading from anyone) you have to assume that he didn't mean what he said at all, and that he just screwed up and said something blitheringly stupid without thinking, which we all do sometimes.
56: The right answer is building institutions that promote decent political values.
And which engage in effective action to get those values embodied in legislation. That's where the right wins. They have model legislation sitting on the shelf ready to go with minor modifications as soon as their guys get into power. On the left there are vague ideas which only make it into legislation after a grueling process in which the other side is given every opportunity to water them down.
58: Drum's one erroneous remark - "any doubt at all" - seemed, to me at least, clearly out of line with the rest of the content of that blog post and, of course, out of line with everything else Drum has ever written.
Greenwald couldn't see how Drum could be a political commentator and hold that view - but he also acknowledged that he was familiar with Drum's work, so he knew exactly how Drum is a political commentator.
Sure, there's a lawyer's justification here - the literal text, absent context, supports Greenwald's view. But taking the literal text completely out of all context is, as Drum says, "appallingly hostile." And even out of context, Greenwald wasn't able to support the "Britney" parallel.
Well, Greenwald's kind of a jerk. If I'd been criticizing Drum's post, I'd probably have said something like "This seems so strange from someone with Drum's history of being generally sane that I'm going to hope that he didn't really mean it," and if Drum noticed the criticism, something gentler like that would probably have been more effective in making him back down without creating enmity.
But on this point, Greenwald was right about what Drum said -- there wasn't any strained interpretation going on there, Drum literally said that in any situation short of absolute certainty, he'd trust Obama's judgment over his own. And Drum's a professional writer with a national audience. That doesn't make saying stupid shit occasionally unforgivable, but it does mean that if you say something genuinely stupid and people jump on you for it, you should be able to take the abuse in good part.
59: Yeah, that's just the sort of thing that I'm talking about.
When the question put before you is, "McCain or Obama," then yes, you've already failed. But the way to respond to that failure isn't to throw up your hands and say that there's no difference between the two. You vote Obama, and work for a better next time.
Greenwald, by the way, doesn't explicitly deny this logic - and he embodies this approach in many ways. Today's piece was very mushy, though. The main message is that he isn't aware of any useful thing that can be done. He doesn't like the compromises other people make, but he's got no Plan B.
The funny thing is that, in the particular case of KSM, a trial in a civilian court would effectively be for show -- a show of liberal values and the rule of law. KSM has already confessed to essentially all the charges against him and has offered to plead guilty, and the evidence against him is completely overwhelming. (This doesn't change te fact that he was tortured, of course). Even before a military tribunal, he'll surely get a reasonable amount of "process"; what's lost is a cost-free opportunity for the United States to show that it believes in the rule of law and has an independent judiciary. Oh well.
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Americans seeing "free-market capitalism as the best system for the future" drop to 58%.
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I'm with pf on this one. "Any doubt" was poor wording and there is certainly grounds for an interesting discussion on "trust" in leadership, but Greenwald and LB's opprobrium is disproportionate.
[B]ut Greenwald and LB's opprobrium is disproportionate.
I don't think this applies to LB, but isn't Greenwald's M.O., not to say his raison d'être, to use an elephant gun to correct bad table manners?
I'm sort of thinking of it like smacking a car fender for cutting too close to you. It doesn't have to have been an important or malicious error, but someone says something that screwy you want to make them notice and remember the event so that they think before doing it again.
63: what's lost is a cost-free opportunity for the United States to show that it believes in the rule of law and has an independent judiciary.
The real problem isn't the opportunity lost to show we believe this, the real problem is that apparently the United States doesn't actually believe it any more.
21: Yes! Zigackly!
34: James, I like you, but you really are amazingly thick sometimes.
68.last is unfortunately true for a large swath of the country. Not everybody by a long shot but a large enough chunk that combined with the indifferent and distracted they form a majority.
That doesn't make saying stupid shit occasionally unforgivable, but it does mean that if you say something genuinely stupid and people jump on you for it, you should be able to take the abuse in good part.
Yeah, I guess my issue is that I read Drum's piece before Greenwald's, and when I read Greenwald I said, "That's not what Drum was going for at all."
But in the world of hyper-literality, with no charity for anyone, then Greenwald is still off base. Drum - even given his mis-statement - wasn't saying that we must uncritically follow our leaders, and that's what Greenwald accused him of - invoking Britney, no less.
Well, Greenwald's kind of a jerk.
That's certainly a common view, but I don't share it. Or, to put it another way, I don't mind rudeness about torture, etc., because I think we are plagued by an excess of politeness on the issues that Greenwald focuses on. It isn't quite like libel - where truth is an absolute defense - but I think jerkiness is mitigated substantially by truth and appropriate context.
Greenwald kind of rubs me the wrong way. I reliably agree with him about almost everything, and when there's a flap involving him I tend to think he's either right, or at least righter than the other participants in the flap, but I don't enjoy reading him or find him particularly informative (that's not meant to be a slam, he's just got a knack for hitting stuff I already knew from somewhere else).
I sympathize with 72. I stopped reading Greenwald embarrassingly long ago, because the band's sound just got too mainstream I tired of reading several thousand words of grinding, self-righteous (even when right), humorless jeremiad regularly.
...I don't enjoy reading him or find him particularly informative (that's not meant to be a slam, he's just got a knack for hitting stuff I already knew from somewhere else).
I stopped reading him after a few years, also not because of disagreement, but he beats his points into the ground so hard. Energizing at first, dreary later.
OT: Various remarks upon the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death have reminded me to feel very old.
But anything negative I have to say about him is really a matter of taste. He's saying generally true things on important subjects.
75: I have no idea how long that is. Fifteen years?
Yeah, 73 is basically my response to Greenwald. Hebalso has a tendency towards tendentious overstatement on side issues (e.g., his claims about the "founders" in his attack on Drum aren't exactly right) that bugs me. OTOH I was fun defending him against passive aggressive right wing dweeb Orin Kerr.
27: With all but one precinct counted statewide, Kloppenburg is up by 200 votes.
That was entertaining. And it was kind of cracking me up being the blindly loyal foam-dripping-from-my-rabid-fangs Greenwald defender considering I don't read him.
77: 17, I think. I remember that I was walking by a car halted at a red light and heard the news on its radio, from some Boston-area DJ.
I'm eating Laffy Taffy! It's the best!
72: yeah, I dislike how he immediately concludes that when someone writes one lousy thing, they are not an "actual journalist" without regard to what else they've done.
On KSM: you can make a decent argument that he's guilty of war crimes as well as crimes under U.S. criminal code. So once you've decided to keep military commissions, I get less indignant about this case than, e.g., Omar Khadr or Mohammed Jawad. Though political interference w/ prosecution, scaremongering was lousy of course.
But things like the link in 7 are much more surprising & appalling to me. (Seriously, everyone, please read that one.)
Greenwald is almost never wrong. But he occasionally picks screaming fights with odd people for reasons that seem to go no further than what looks an awful lot like ideological purity -- which he almost always gussies up as deep substance -- and I find that both maddening and quite stupid. It dilutes his core message, which is terribly important.
And then there's his prose: turgid, humorless, voluminous. The defense, I think, is that the style fits the subject. But it means that he loses a lot of readers, and that's too bad.
I like Greenwald and his style. That topics that he addresses almost always deserve someone being a pitbull and obsessively documenting sources, quotes, and contradictions.
I wish we had 50 more Greenwalds pounding on these issues.
We need more outrage and accountability, not less.
I read that Drum post, and thought it was totally reasonable. Of course, I'm not an anal enough person to have actually noticed the phrasing of every sentence, and so an inartful phrasing of a couple words didn't cause me to misread the entire post.
On the one hand, I tend to trust LB's political judgement (perhaps more than my own), but nonetheless on this point I think it's clear that she's wrong.
And then there's his prose: turgid, humorless, voluminous.
Leave Robert Jordan Dean Koontz Tom Clancy Bob Woodward George Pelecanos Charles Doughty Edward Bulwer-Lytton James Patterson alone!
Will just said what I've been thinking. We very much need what Greenwald does.
Yeah, generally I like outrage and obsessiveness in the service of truth and justice -- any issue I have with Greenwald isn't that he's over-the-top in any generically describable way. His writing style specifically just isn't to my taste, and it's enough that I only read him when he's linked somewhere with something I didn't know about.
But he occasionally picks screaming fights with odd people for reasons that seem to go no further than what looks an awful lot like ideological purity -- which he almost always gussies up as deep substance -- and I find that both maddening and quite stupid.
It's possible that I'm a bit of a sucker here, but I mostly buy the "deep substance" pose. Hence my disappointment with the Drum thing.
Put another way, I don't think Greenwald is merely right on the merits most of the time; I think he's right to be pissed off.
86: Backing up to look at Drum's post as a whole, didn't it strike you weird even in context? He lists a whole bunch of upsetting foreign policy decisions Obama's made, that have made Drum unhappy (and reasonably so). Then he says, that he voted for Obama because he trusts his judgment, and then comes the overstated line that Greenwald jumped on. Even if you rewrote the offending line to something more measured, the post would have still left me thinking "What more does Obama have to fuck up to shake your trust in his judgment?"
opprobrium is disproportionate
There is some kind of oxymoron here.
Greenwald is almost never wrong.
Could have stopped right there. The question is not whether smug liberal "x" deserves a dressing-down, but whether she or he...and we...need an internal critique.
Re:the "hard boring slog" theory of social/political change. I just can't accept it on intellectual grounds. Too much ex-ante self-serving explanatory narrative involved. "Yes, it was us, standing outside the building for 45 years and lo the building finally fell down. We did it."
Especially as concerns ideological change in the Democratic Party over the last hundred+ years it looks to me like black swans and exogenous causes deserve at least as much credit as the patient organizers.
90: I mostly buy the deep substance thing, too. In fact, I think the substance Greenwald serves up is way more substantive than can be found almost anywhere else most of the time. But, there are occasions -- and this is one of them -- when he directs his generally-justifiable outrage in a very strange direction, and then, rather than saying, "oops, because the world has gone mad my default setting is outraged, but this time I made a mistake", he digs in and claims that the facts support him unequivocally and that there can be no shades of gray, and that leaves him sitting on the moral high ground, sneering down at the enemy. But if Kevin Drum is the enemy, something has gone wrong. I mean, I find Drum waaaaaaay too far to the center for my tastes, but he's eminently reasonable and smart. And he's more than willing to admit when he's made an error. Which is to say, he's persuadable.
Plus, as noted above, Greenwald's prose isn't my cup of tea.
Could have stopped right there. The question is not whether smug liberal "x" deserves a dressing-down, but whether she or he...and we...need an internal critique.
Well, I've started out by disagreeing with Greenwald and disputing LB, so I guess my reputation is shot and I've got nothing to lose by agreeing with bob. I think bob is exactly right here.
Thus, the trouble with us. We debate Greenwald instead of express outrage over the stuff linked in 7 or about the stuff Greenwald writes about.
We get tangled in nuance, instead expressing simple outrage.
I wish we had 50 more Greenwalds pounding on these issues.
Agreed.
I don't even find his prose bothersome! It is, I suppose, somewhat clotted sometimes, but that's to be expected if you're writing in outrage (and if I were Greenwald, if I weren't outraged all the time I'd collapse in a despairing heap and be thenceforth forever immovable).
I think it's a bit surprising that his trust hasn't been totally shaken, but I think it's in keeping with Drum's personality that it takes more to shake his trust than it would mine. I don't think it's so unreasonable. Especially because Obama so often plays a long game, I'm a little apprehensive to be so sure he's doing things wrong. Like Drum I'm against the intervention in Libya, but like Drum that's mostly based on a prediction about how it will turn out. But it's relatively easy to imagine it turning out in a way that would convince me I was wrong.
This isn't "judgement" in the sense of "judging right and wrong" it's "judgement" in the sense of having a good feeling for what's possible and how the future will unfold.
Actually, will, I'm perfectly capable of being outraged about abuses of civil liberties and misguided American foreign policies while simultaneously debating whether Glenn Greenwald's prose style turns off potential readers and obscures his deeper message.
C.mon folks, what was Drum really saying here, or wanting to say, especially considering his other recent post about being "radicalized."
There aren't many alternatives to "trusting the judgment" of our President and the leader of our party. When that trust is lost, the guy has to go. Now. Parliamentary systems know how legitimacy works.
Chances that this thread won't now turn into a discussion of "the circular firing squad": near 0.
93: I don't see your point. As regards the Drum thing, he seems to have handled the back-and-forth with Drum perfectly fine and done nothing remotely like what you describe. His latest update indicates that he agrees with the POV Drum describes in his clarification.
As for Drum: the world is full of faux-reasonable "centrist" douchebags whose main concern is to appear Very Serious, but have a tendency to climb off the fence well after their doing so would have actually had an impact on anyone or anything. Drum isn't nearly as odious an example of this species as Yglesias, but he has very oftentimes struck me as an example. (At least he used to be. I stopped reading him regularly back when he was making his name as an Iraq War "even the liberal." My periodic exposures to him since haven't improved this impression.)
We get tangled in nuance, instead expressing simple outrage.
The Internet hardly suffers from a shortage of simple outrage.
Especially because Obama so often plays a long game
A game so long that it seems we have to take it on faith that he's playing it in the first place.
Bob-like thought: perhaps Obama is heightening the contradictions. That's a long game.
100: it's not too late for it to turn instead into a discussion of the likelihood that we'll discuss circular firing squads.
Von Wafer:
You cannot even keep your name straight. How can I trust you to multitask!?!?
Drum isn't nearly as odious an example of this species as Yglesias....
I've always wanted to know where Drum went to high school. Or college.
His latest update indicates that he agrees with the POV Drum describes in his clarification.
You and I read that latest update very differently, Brother DS. As for Drum, like I said, he's too far to the center for me on every issue that I can think of, but he gets points for being persuadable. All of that said, it's time for me to admit, again, that I haven't read blogs (other than this one and TPM and the occasional linked post) for going on a year now, so I should probably shut up.
101.1: That's about my take on the interaction, too.
101.2: Drum's nowhere near perfect, but I find him generally sensible on domestic stuff. And he straightened himself out on the Iraq War before it started, which I think he gets some credit for.
Actually, will, I'm perfectly capable of being outraged about abuses of civil liberties and misguided American foreign policies while simultaneously debating whether Glenn Greenwald's prose style turns off potential readers and obscures his deeper message.
Republicans dont seem to debate their tone. They seem to respond to criticism about poor word choice or nasty tone with "All we care about it the big picture."
On the other hand, the moment that any progressive is criticized about something they wrote, the progressives seem to turn on ourselves agreeing that the tone could have been better.
On this topic, a Bob approach is best: Mother F'ers, this is UNACCEPTABLE!!!"
Actually, will, you've got it exactly backwards.
Previous generations used a multitasking model that relied on a shared identity, which required the different tasks running in the same identity to implement complicated locking and mutual exclusion strategies to prevent them from attempting to read or mutate the same resource at the same time. These strategies were difficult to implement, difficult to debug, and difficult to understand.
Von Wafer, however, is moving toward a shared-nothing multitasking architecture in which multitasking is accomplished through the use of multiple identities with distinct resources. Because the worldly layout as seen by one identity is independent of that as seen by the other, tasks can be implemented within a single identity simply and straightforwardly. If two tasks need to be coordinated, this can be accomplished by having one identity pass messages (for instance by writing on a sticky note) to the other and, potentially, wait for a reply. While we still have the potential for deadlocks, the whole process becomes much simpler and more streamlined, as well as more efficient in execution.
Admittedly, it's not easy to see in this case what the different tasks Von Wafer and ari are pursuing are, but I trust that he knows what he's doing and that in the long run it will become apparent us as well.
109 would have been perfect if it was written by neb.
One advantage of the shared-nothing multitasking architecture is that if the police bring you in for questioning in relation to a task you carried out under one identity while you're currently running a different identity, you can quite sincerely and convincingly deny knowing anything about it.
110: The Internet is the only setting in which I am not routinely scourged for the sin of sarcasm.
105: Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, CA. Two years at Cal Tech, then he transferred to Cal State-Long Beach.
Drum went to Cal State Long Beach, I believe.
Thinking about it, part of my disinclination to read Greenwald is that I don't quite trust him as a lawyer, even though he relies on his position as a lawyer to confer authority on his writing. This is going to be a lame critique since I can't recall any specific examples, but I have an overall sense reading him that whenever I read the underlying documents/cases/looked in detail, it shows that Greenwald's position on any legal question is, at best, tendentious. That may or may not be a good reason to stop reading his overall arguments, but in a narrow technical sense I just don't trust the guy.
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As I've probably mentioned, I'm a contractor deep in a regulatory agency. It's technically part of DHS, but the vast majority of what my office does involves safety standards for industry and the public and stuff. Well, our office has had several e-mails recently about the potential government shutdown. The most recent one, from the highest-up contractor in my division, ended in the line "Thanks and remember to vote in 2012."
I just found that sort-of-subtle-but-not-really line funny.
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I have now actually read the whole Greenwald post and I don't really see what's so objectionable about it.
(Though I suppose that prior to the updates the whole may have given a different impression.)
106: I wonder if we read different updates. Greenwald's statements to the effect that "if that's what he's saying, I agree with him" seem pretty unequivocal.
107.2: YMMV. I don't see much to admire about changing one's mind almost literally on the eve of the invasion. Again, though, better than Yglesias a couple of years later effectively saying "whoops, guess I should have paid a bit more attention."
As far as "What is to Be Done" when the trust in Obama is lost and policy becomes reprehensible, this isn't hard either. Look at Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin. Hard boring, organizing, primaries, all that stuff is important.
But first comes opposition to the man. Relentless opposition to the center of legitimacy. You grab the legitimacy from him, probably in the streets. You commit to opposition, not veering off into wonkish discussions of policy and strategy and consequences. Will removing Mubarek, outside of normal channels, change everything? Yes, because it delegitimizes the previous and existing processes.
But best of all, it can be just honest, intuitive, emotional, uncalculated, sincere, authentic. It's easy.
This was what Drum was walking back from with his judgment post. He is radicalized, but not yet revolutionary.
115: The best way to judge his political arguments would be as political arguments, surely? Narrow technical legal expertise is of tenuous relevance to the ability to make good arguments or reason well in the wider world. We have an endless procession of wingnut lawbloggers to prove that.
Greenwald's statements to the effect that "if that's what he's saying, I agree with him" seem pretty unequivocal.
Except he explicitly says that he agrees with him about the general point regarding trust in someone's judgment, not the specific point about Obama. So he doesn't unequivocally agree with Drum tout court. But the update is (in general) pretty conciliatory, I thought; he reiterates that he finds Drum's writing worthwhile, for instance.
Americans seeing "free-market capitalism as the best system for the future" drop to 58%.
The other 42% favour living in a cave and scavenging what's left behind by the bears and vulyures.
And 120 is where Wisconsin has gone wrong. They started with the de-legitimization of Scott Walker, but have stopped too soon, and fallen back into electoral politics. Walker and the Fitzgeralds still have their rights and privileges by law, they still have the consensus right to govern.
That can be taken away, often non-violently. But you have to know what you are going after.
Narrow technical legal expertise is of tenuous relevance to the ability to make good arguments or reason well in the wider world. We have an endless procession of wingnut lawbloggers to prove that.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with that, but unfortnuately my mind personally has been trained to stumble over legal nitpickery.
I'm reminded yet again that my understanding of everything (or at least everything about these debates) would be totally different had I read blogs in the months leading to the invasion of Iraq. The idea that Drum or Yglesias (or ogged, as I think about it) ever supported the war seems almost impossible to me.
Yglesias not only supported the war, but engaged in pretty open hippie-bashing. Admittedly he was like 19 at the time, and doing something more productive than getting blackout drunk and hitting on sorority girls.
123: Somehow reminds me of Wally Ballou reporting on the paperclip factory.
126: You forgot Poland Josh Marshall.
Josh supported the war? Seriously? On what fucking grounds?
126: That weirdness is where a lot of the energy in the liberal blogs came from, originally -- that population of basically reasonable, well-meaning people who were worth arguing with but were horrendously wrong on the central political issue of the time. You can't really argue with someone who disagrees with you about everything, but you get someone like Ogged who's pro-war, you can get a good argument going.
130: Well, Yglesias, Drum and Ogged couldn't all be wrong.
126: If I'm remembering correctly, Drum actually withdrew his support just before the war actually started.
And, contrastingly, am I remembering correctly that years later Ogged continued to say that he thought that the war was a good idea, that was poorly implemented, not a bad thing in itself?
Somehow reminds me of Wally Ballou
This made me smile. Who else in the blogosphere ever references Bob & Ray?
but you get someone like Ogged who's pro-war [among other things], you can get a good argument going.
Didn't S. Tweety's former or possibly current co-blogger also support the Iraq War for a while?
That moment in 2002-2003 also explains why I still occasionally check in on Atrios; he felt (to me) like a lone voice of sanity in the wilderness back then.
136: I believe there's an argument to be made that Atrios, much like heebie, has never gotten anything wrong. Again, though, I didn't read him often enough to know for sure. But I used to check in periodically -- randomized sample! -- and he was certainly always right about everything.
131: yup, that's what I meant. And having missed all that, it's very hard to catch up.
130: He did have misgivings, but ultimately it came down to "[g]etting rid of Saddam really is necessary."
There really was an insane amount of pressure to support the war. Remembering how cringing and defensive I was about opposing it is embarrassing now.
127: Harvard doesn't have sororities.
Harvard students often date outside their university.
I also think part of the reason so many (ostensibly) liberal bloggers supported the war was that in 2002/2003, blogging was this shiny new medium that was going to (if not replace, then at least) compete with the traditional media. And one of the prerequisites of being taken seriously as a political commentator was (and to a large degree still is) a willingness to support the mass murder of civilians via bomber runs.
Harvard students often date outside their university.
There was an outside?
Right. 9-11 was a moment that really jumpstarted political blogs, which meant that the blogs that took off were frontloaded toward the 'scary islamofascists are coming to kill us all' crowd. And a number of those people were interpersonally pleasant and networky with liberals, at least initially -- I think Ogged had some helpful contacts with Instapundit back in the day.
The war wasnt going to be about civilians. Just quickly kickly a VERY bad guy's ass, and then being greeted by cheering civilians.
Stop the slaughter of innocent people and protect the homeland. All in a few short, bloodless weeks!
There really was an insane amount of pressure to support the war.
Again, my experience of that period seems to be at odds with that of most people here. Almost everyone I knew ranged from deeply skeptical of the whole thing -- part of the dreaded, "It's very likely a bad idea, but Saddam is a monster and has to go" camp that I guess Josh M occupied -- to making papier mache puppets and marching in the streets. Whinging procedural liberal that I am, I recall that I spent my time gnashing my teeth and politely cursing the president and his lying sack of shit advisers.
Yes, I just noticed that this very blog still maintains a link to "Instapundit" on its "Blogroll." It's like a statue memorializing a long-forgotten general in the middle of a park; a memorial of a time long since passed.
Oh god, the nostalgia. Remember when people were saying that "Lileks" was a good writer? Or my personal favorite the Cruz Bustamante is a member of a irredentist Chicano organization that wants to move California back into Mexico.
129, 130, 133: Josh Marshall pulled back from support before before the war started too.
148: Oh, Andrew Sullivan. For years I felt like the only heterosexual in America who thought him a poisonous limey midget wait, how tall is he, anyway? pernicious charlatan.
Were you cocooned in liberal academia? I was in a hard-right law firm at the time, and hanging around on an internet forum where Ace of Spades (remember him? I wonder if he still has a blog) got his start,
132:Well, if you dig deep enough into Yggles 2002 non-existent archives, you can find Bob the liberal interventionist. But I was very firm with the 5 million drafted troop thing, because I thought an invasion of Iraq would not be sufficient to bring democracy the ME, and the US needed to occupy every country from Morocco to Iraq, and Syria to Somalia for at least ten years. I said so publicly and without embarrassment. I had a lot of reasons and arguments.
And for the next few years I argued for the draft and millions of troops, but realized the New Imperium had already failed.
Up to you to decide how serious I was. Rorschachy.
...
Atkins April 1st. Exhaling acetone real good. Down 7 lbs in 6 days, who cares if it is water, my clothes fit better and my back don't hurt. Yeah.
Dallas April weather dogs parks gone.
PS:Reading about Chingo kokka. Have fun.
a VERY bad guy's ass
That's how every new foreign adventure gets sold. If I were to run down the list of SCARY NEW HITLER GUYS we've cycled through the national ADD filter just during my adulthood, it would be a very, very long list and would probably contain several "oh right, I forgot about that guy" entries (eg, Manuel Noriega).
If we killed Qaddafi tomorrow, we'd have a new nemesis threatening to destroy the world order within 3 months.
155: It's been much performance art the whole time, right, bob?
But I can't judge. I remember thinking that I might as well just see how it turns out then decide what my stand on the war was.
As it turns out, I was against it.
And they're all so crazy irrational they can't be negotiated with. I have fond memories of arguing about that one: "Well, Saddam's managed to hold on to power for decades, through a war with the US. Do you really think that he's actually insane to the point of being unable to identify his own self-interest?"
Didn't S. Tweety's former or possibly current co-blogger also support the Iraq War for a while?
For a bit, yep.
Were you cocooned in liberal academia?
I wasn't, but 150 pretty much matches my experience. (OTOH I don't talk politics with a lot of people IRL, and I live in one of the most liberal places in the entire country.)
I was vehemently and unswervingly opposed to the Iraq War (both times!) but, you know, stopped clocks.
SCARY NEW HITLER GUYS
One of my favorite lines (from 1992):
Saddam Hussein, I believe, is the most evil man - what did the President say? - since Adolf Hitler. Before that, it was Noriega. He was the most evil man since Fu Manchu.
Man, Bob Roberts. You have to wonder if someone didn't watch that movie, look at W, and think, hey, I wonder if he can sing?
161: I honestly can't recreate that moment faithfully (even in my own mind). But I know for certain that I opposed the whole thing on the grounds that the principal player was evil and vile and couldn't be trusted (and Saddam wasn't too great, either) and also that there were plenty of other terrible people in the world, and based on this new precedent what was going to stop us from sending troops off to kill them next. That said, I have some dim recollection that there was a moment when President Bush wouldn't wait for French inspectors to do something about something, and his lack of patience was a complete tell for me that the whole thing was a huge lie. But like I said, I could be making that part up.
Still and all, Libya: you must be fucking kidding me.
also that there were plenty of other terrible people in the world, and based on this new precedent what was going to stop us from sending troops off to kill them next.
What's ever stopped us before?
I was never in doubt about opposing the war, but I am ashamed in retrospect about not having been more aggressively forthright about it.
The run up to the Iraq war was the first time I fully realized that even the liberal NPR was completely uninterested in voices from the left, no matter how ridiculous the mainstream arguments were.
I was vehemently and unswervingly opposed to the Iraq war from the moment I realized it was inevitable, which I think was August 2002 or so (whenever the NYT had that article about how it was a certainty). I knew otherwise sane people that supported it, which confused the hell out of me. My co-blogger had shaken off whatever powerful psychedelics were involved in his support by the time I started posting there.
165: true. But I had the sense that the doctrine of preemption would make it even easier to send troops hither and yon to kill this or that bad guy. More accurately, it seemed that the burden was shifting, such that there wouldn't have to be much of an affirmative argument on the side of intervention or the use of force. And "Why not? There are bad people who have to get got!" does seem to be good enough any more.
Again, I say, Libya: you've got to be fucking kidding me.
Josh Marshall was one of those who started out firmly supporting the war, and then as the Administration made its case, got more and more uncertain until on the very eve of the thing he was opposing it. A somewhat slower version of Juan Cole. In both cases you could call it the before the fact incompetency dodge - people who felt that it would be a very good thing to remove Saddam, but not with this team and these tactics. See also D-Squared for a variant on this theme.
Well, maybe not the first time. But it was so obvious.
One of my family members wins the "I tried to stop it, I really did" game; said family member is personally acquainted with a powerful (dem) senator with strong national security credentials; running into that senator in an airport shortly before the vote on the resolution to authorize force, my relation exhorted the senator to vote no, for god's sake, vote no. Said senator vigorously thanked my relative for offering that opinion, and voted for the resolution anyhow.
That's how every new foreign adventure gets sold.
Yes. I agree. See also terrorist threats.
I guess that, even having not read blogs at the time, I share with many people here the experience of realizing that the furthest left conspiracy theorists, not to mention the papier-mache-puppet-toting protesters, were obviously much closer to the mark than the mainstream pundits and politicians, who, despite being wrong in every conceivable way, were going to spend all of their time brutally mocking people who were in the right rather than reconsidering their wrongheaded support of something so clearly heinous. That pose, and the fact that our culture tolerated it and didn't begin burning shit down, was probably the most upsetting political time of my life. In retrospect, it should have come as no surprise to me that Kerry got Swiftboated or that the nation mostly stood by as New Orleans drowned. And were I a historian of any worth, I'd probably go back to the 2000 election, and mark that as the moment when it became obvious that the rot ran so deep that it was no longer clear that we could be redeemed. Ah, good times!
170: Yes, a common theme for liberals that supported the war was that they were concerned that Bush would cut and run -- that we needed to make a commitment to staying long enough in Iraq to establish a functioning democracy. Then a little while after the invasion they all did a 180 and said we needed to withdraw asap. Nothing about this ever made any sense to me.
the 2000 election
That was when I started panicking. I stopped for a week or two in 2008, but restarted fairly quickly.
174 is what I would have written in 167, were I able to write.
And were I a historian of any worth, I'd probably go back to the 2000 election, and mark that as the moment when it became obvious that the rot ran so deep that it was no longer clear that we could be redeemed.
We can't plebiscite our way to the Second Coming.
That was when I started panicking. I stopped for a week or two in 2008, but restarted fairly quickly.
I remember wondering, after the results of the 2004 election came through, if there was even any point in going into work.
I'd probably go back to the 2000 election, and mark that as the moment when it became obvious that the rot ran so deep that it was no longer clear that we could be redeemed
I'd set that to 1984, personally. But I was only 16 at the time and still filled with the irrepressible optimism of adolescence.
175: It was still misguided, but not really that bad. The dumbass liberal hawk hope was that we were going to do a nice surgical decapitation of the Baathist regime, go in with enough troops to keep everything peaceful and maintain order until a cheerful happy democracy was firmly in place. Once it was clear that that wasn't an even remotely accurate description of how the occupation was going, flipflopping to "Let's just get out and let the situation stabilize however it does" wasn't crazy.
(I was actually all over the place on withdrawal for a long time, for similar reasons about being unsure what would cause the least violence.)
not to mention the papier-mache-puppet-toting protesters
Is there a place for those of us who, while largely agreeing with them substantively (at least with regard to the war), still think those folks are idiots? I mean, I remember riding into SF on the day we started bombing Iraq and being pissed at the folks blockading the end of the Fremont Street offramp; the only thing they were accomplishing was to annoy people who already agreed with them.
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All the precincts are in and Kloppenburg is ahead by 204 votes. Get ready for the ugliest recount battle in the history of judicial elections.
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180: Did you think Mondale was going to win? I think I realized he was going to lose by election day, but I remember after the 2nd debate being certain that there was no way we would re-elect that crazy senile old man.
I'd set that to 1984, personally. But I was only 16 at the time and still filled with the irrepressible optimism of adolescence.
Fuck, I was only 10 at the time, and I remember being deeply distressed watching the returns come in.
182: All you have to do is reserve your opprobrium for those actually being irritating, rather than for anyone who reminds you of them. Someone's holding a papier mache puppet in a good cause and they're not counterproductively blocking traffic, they're on your side.
I was never in doubt about opposing the war, but I am ashamed in retrospect about not having been more aggressively forthright about it.
That was pretty much me. The whole thing seemed obviously stupid at a gut level but I remember hemming and hawing a bunch in conversations about it. Although I do remember having thoughts along the lines of "Saddam really must have something like viable nuclear weapons that are about to be ready, or else there's no way the US military would go along with this." Ahh, so naive.
What if it's a really ugly puppet? Say, a notional Donald Rumsfeld that instead resembles a melted Pablo Neruda?
I thought Dukakis was going to win in 88. I was a freshman in college, and Dukakis had been in pretty good shape through August, and then I lost track. I was kind of shocked in November.
179: by the eve of the election, I wasn't even a bit surprised. It was the run-up to the vote that caught me off guard. "Wait, they're calling Kerry, who volunteered and served with honor, a coward and Bush, who rich-boyed his way out of danger, a hero? That...can't be right. Surely someone will remark on this farce!" And then I swore off cable news and haven't looked back since.
But I do recall the time in the wake of the 2000 election as one in which I only went into the office to teach my classes. Otherwise, I stayed at home, glued to CNN and MSNBC, for however many days it took for the Supreme Court to subvert the rule of law. And then, when it was over, I became depressed enough that I should have done something about it other than riding my mountain bike for stretches of six and seven hours at a time, though that did provide enough therapy that I made it through a dark time.
Someone's holding a papier mache puppet in a good cause and they're not counterproductively blocking traffic, they're on your side.
Oh, sure, I realize they're on my side, but I still think they're dumbasses. The puppets don't add anything and offend my aesthetic sensibilities.
Is there a place for those of us who, while largely agreeing with them substantively (at least with regard to the war), still think those folks are idiots?
Yes, there is a place. The revolutionaries have prepared it especially for you and your kind. Up against the wall!
No, it was pretty clear that he was going to get waxed. But the fact that he was going to get waxed by a guy who was plainly an evil, bloodthirsty psychopath (and so soon after Nixon!) should have been my clue that this country was beyond redemption. I held out hope, but it has been almost nothing but rear-guard actions ever since.
187: I'm even lamer than that. I was hedging and hemming because I thought Iraq probably had some bullshit chemical weapons stockpiled, which I absolutely knew made no sense as a reason to go to war, but I was envisioning being embarrassed by post-war conversations where war supporters would be able to tell me "See, see! He did too have WMDs!" And then they didn't, and I regretted not having been more aggressive about it.
and offend my aesthetic sensibilities.
So, you're saying the puppets need to be better? Cooler, more exciting? We're on it!
193 to 184.
My favorite comment about 2004 was left at Digby's: "Since the November elections, I feel like the woman whose husband refused to listen when she told him not to sell the family cow for magic beans. She's still forced to consider his welfare, but it's neurochemically impossible to be more angry. And she can see that, irresponsible as he was to do it, as soon as it dawns on him that he's been rooked, he won't repent or apologize -- he'll blame her."
194: To this day, I'm amazed that they weren't able to concoct some kind of WMDs in Iraq that the press would buy. I guess that is proof of how incompetent the Bush people really were.
Not something I would have predicted. I wonder if those advertiser-targeting campaigns played a role, or if it's more about ratings.
197 is right. Though, I'd also suggest that were Bush Obama, there would be people wondering about the long game that he and his minders are still playing.
No, it was pretty clear that he was going to get waxed.
This was the first election I have any memory of. I learned from my parents that we are Republicans (we = something between my family and my entire community) and remember being quite comforted in seeing the map with almost all the states colored for us: yes, this is right, this is as it should be.
My earliest political memory is of being sad about Perot losing. I was 10 in 1992. I don't think I knew much about him at the time and I'm not even sure if he's who my parents voted for. Obviously, not as traumatic as Mondale or anything, but still.
In 1976, my babysitter told me that everyone should vote for Ford, because he was the president and so it would be disloyal to vote for the other guy. At five years old, this was persuasive.
My first political memory is seeing a teacher's assistant reading an article about Clinton in the primaries, and saying she supported Jerry Brown; my first political memory with any emotional color to it is predicting civilizational collapse if Ross Perot won (I was 8 in 1992), so I must have picked up a lot from my parents up to that point without perceiving or remembering it.
Boy, this thread, and the memories of the last twenty years of political involvement it's brought back, have somehow sucked every vestige of hope out of me. We're all going to die, slowly, aren't we? And nothing good will ever happen again. Possibly when the oceans rise and kill us all, something more sensible will evolve after a few million years.
I should crochet something. Or bake.
I made banana bread last night.
During the 2000 DNC, Jessica Abel interviewed me for a daily comic she was writing on the convention. I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt and talking about the unknowability of the impact of giant puppets.
204: Allow me to be the first to mention the Singularity.
And, contrastingly, am I remembering correctly that years later Ogged continued to say that he thought that the war was a good idea, that was poorly implemented, not a bad thing in itself?
This, by the way, is the exact sort of centrist wankerism that Drum is guilty of in the post that Greenwald criticizes. Drum wants to say, on the one hand, that he opposes the war; but he's also in favor of the war because Obama is in favor. He gets to have it both ways.
DS captures this in 101:
As for Drum: the world is full of faux-reasonable "centrist" douchebags whose main concern is to appear Very Serious
The only problem is, that wasn't Greenwald's gripe.
The first Presidential election I remember of the 1972 election. I remember watching the returns and confidently predicting that Nixon would certainly win Washington DC, since he lived there. My track record as a political prognosticator was established.
When I was 12 or 13 I really liked Christina Hoff Sommers's book about the horrors of the matriarchy and how men have no rights to see their own children and women always get hired for important jobs instead of men, and yet the male victims of systematic oppression still get their remaining scraps of salary stolen by the state and given to their lawyer and doctor ex-wives. This fit nicely with the typical worldview of my teachers and camp counselors that girls were better behaved, smarter and more reliable in leadership positions than boys. But soon, it turned out that CHS's claims did not reflect reality.
I'd set that to 1984, personally.
1980 was worse, youngster. Ronald Reagan, before then, was a crazy rightwinger. And some really good senators bit the dust in 1980. It was awful.
papier mache puppet
The wielders of papier mache puppets are the SWPL version of dirty fucking hippies.
To this day, I'm amazed that they weren't able to concoct some kind of WMDs in Iraq that the press would buy.
As with Viet Nam, the U.S. military's future training literature will take this into account. Future armies will always carry a throw-down nuke.
211: Oh, I remember 1980. But one could plausibly excuse it as a horrible lapse in judgment, exacerbated by the Iran hostage crisis and the oil-shocked economy. To have it repeated in 1984 by an entirely more lopsided margin, when it was clear exactly what Reagan was, well.
My first political memory is watching Carter's concession speech in 1980 with my parents. I remember asking why folks were clapping for Carter since he lost.
Shortly thereafter, my Mom told me (I was 6) that I was smarter than Ronald Reagan. Wow! I'm smarter than the new president!
To have it repeated in 1984 by an entirely more lopsided margin, when it was clear exactly what Reagan was, well.
Plus, there hasn't been a better Democratic nominee since Mondale.
216: He said he was going to raise taxes! What a crazy move! I guess he knew he was going to lose, so he figured he might as well try being honest.
In 1980, the Senate lost Frank Church(Idaho); Birch Bayh (Indiana); and George McGovern (South Dakota).
Mo Udall actually lasted until 1991 - I thought he was also one of the 1980 losers.
Bayh lost to Dan Quayle, and 1980 was also Al D'Amato's first election.
While 2000 was the most disastrous election in modern U.S. history, at the time it didn't seem like the end of the world the way that 1980 did to me.
The wielders of papier mache puppets are the SWPL version of dirty fucking hippies.
Some of us find both the puppet-wielders and the DFHs annoying, TYVM.
176: I suppose the 2000 election is when I went from having inherited leftish positions on the usual issues to something a little more committed/outraged/terrified. At some point I sent a bunch of emails to friends and family saying "look, you get how awful this Bush guy is, right?" (I felt like I had some special insight, having lived under him briefly as governor, though I've never been as politically sophisticated as I'd like to be...I don't enter many of the political conversations here because it's like the moment Franklin Pierce Adams or whoever got off the plane in Paris and realized nobody spoke intermediate French) and a few people wrote back and said "when did you get all political?"
The Internet is the only setting in which I am not routinely scourged for the sin of sarcasm.
And thus was written the story of how we all ended up here.
He said he was going to raise taxes! What a crazy move!
At the time I thought it was brilliant! (I still remember the day after his declaration at the convention, he was up two points in the polls.)
His logic seemed impeccable. Reagan was going to have to back down and admit that it was time to put the fiscal house in order. Reagan was a Republican for Chrissakes, and while the young people don't remember this now, back then, Republicans opposed willy-nilly deficit spending. The Reagan Revolution changed all that ...
My first political memory I guess is 1980. It must have been 1980. We walked up the block to vote and some guy said to me, to be cute, "who are you voting for?" (I was 7) and my folks said in a half-jokey tone "you don't have to tell people that!" I asked later and found out we were Carter people and didn't think about it in any way until about six years later, when I had to write a position paper. I chose capital punishment. I asked my folks again how we felt about this and I thought about it for a moment and said "I guess I'm against it." And then I found five rubles.
(205.1.1 I am making another scarf. It is addictive, though I'm not that inclined to try difficult things like sweaters. Instead I started using soft, shreddy yarn and a less hypnotically easy pattern than the last one.)
I remember wondering, after the results of the 2004 election came through, if there was even any point in going into work.
Yep. Six months of depression, then I moved to NYC to find some carnal pleasures and such.
204: pretty much. I have totally checked out of domestic politics lately & started obsessing about Middle Eastern revolutions. Which have their own depressing features--atrocities aplenty--but also very appealing good guys.
Though, if those guys were American they'd probably be organizing US Uncut or marching on the Capitol about proposed Medicare/Medicaid cuts or whatnot, rather than vicariously following other people's revolutions.
If only there was a mouseover text that summed up this thread.
I'm really curious why the alt-text no longer seems to pop up when one mouseovers (mouses over?) the banner image.
It comes up just fine in the image properties.
The hopeless and defeated thank you for your efforts.
I mean, hopeless and defeated, sure, but not without manners.
"Since the November elections, I feel like the woman whose husband refused to listen when she told him not to sell the family cow for magic beans. She's still forced to consider his welfare, but it's neurochemically impossible to be more angry. And she can see that, irresponsible as he was to do it, as soon as it dawns on him that he's been rooked, he won't repent or apologize -- he'll blame her."
This is the rightest thing that's ever been written. Now let's all go stab our brains out.
Let me be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
You guys read some depressing fairy tales growing up.
Let me be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
HCN is a first-rate salt.
Oh, wait, is that even a salt at all? I don't really know anything about chemistry. NaCN.
D.C. will apparently lose garbage collection during a gov't shutdown. Fun! I live near Capitol Hill in case anyone wants to deliver mine to GOP Congressmen.
I remember voting for Ford in the Weekly Reader election. Because he was bald like my dad and I was suspicious of southern accents.
I remember voting for Dukakis in my middle school election. He won.
242: was that before or after the filmstrip with the man ejaculating onto his stomach?
243 - Man, first the goofy photo op in the tank, then that. Mike couldn't catch a break.
My first political memory was seeing Reagan on TV and learning he was the President, whatever that meant. My parents' politics were totally inscrutable until I learned, as an adult, that they reliably cancel out each other's vote.
244: Yes, but it made him a hero to middle-schoolers.
243: Now that I think about it, very nearly simultaneous.
con't: and then tasting the ejaculate! Don't forget the most affirmative part.
I had already blocked that part from my memory. Our upbringings were very different w/r/t that sort of thing.
You could tell Dukakis was a serious man, what with his helmet and goggles.
Well, at least our family dinners were.
The geebies were very messy eaters.
The wielders of papier mache puppets are the SWPL version of dirty fucking hippies.
I really wish people would stop using giant puppets as a metonym for whatever hippie-ish political theater they don't like.
1. The people who started the big-puppet deal are deeply committed to radical politics and community building.
2. They have a long history of doing beautiful theater, and their museum is a wonderful place.
3. They're on your side. And if they're not, you're probably wrong.
4. Expressions of distaste for their kind of DFH political theater are among the ways in which the left internalizes the attitudes and rhetoric of the people who attack them, and end up behaving like whipped dogs. Show some fucking love and solidarity, people.
254 is spot-on. The shouty sign-wavers do a hell of a lot more to bring issues to people's attention than people bitching in blog comments. I'm of the latter group myself, but I respect the former.
It was shouty sign-wavers who pretty much hijacked the GOP this last election cycle. Say what you will about the Tea Party, they did manage to make a big fucking difference.
183: I'm curious how a recount will work logistically in a "non-partisan" election. Will they just have to drop the pretense and have the two parties organize the observers? If not, where do the money and the lawyers come from?
Back from 7 miles in the green greeny greener greeeeen parks, and whew, are we three tired.
Gee whiz, my first political memory? Umm, Eisenhower and Gary Power? My "feeling" for politics? 1968. That's the real.
It's been much performance art the whole time, right, bob?
Assume away layers of irony can make for a chintzy cream pie, LB.
For instance, I know (and love) the many times large mobilizations and/or big expensive wars have led to revolutions or lefty ascendancy, and the times rally- round-the-bullshit can create a more oppressive security state. I knew all along that Bush Cheney et al were much smarter than most of the people I was reading.
I am not why to this day I don't have the heart to say "I opp...se the w*r" but I just didn't, and don't. It feel like a combination of opposing the tsunami ("wrong tsunami, wrong"), opposing television, and opposing kitten killing. It felt ridiculous, so I got ridiculous. There were many things in 2002 that felt like hell for someone that went thru the 60s, and Yglesias, Klein, and Marshall et al were way fucking up on the list.
I mean fuck, young Matt Yglesias, son of Raphael, grandson of a hero, supports George fucking Bush's psycho war and I am supposed to be serious?
Madness and acting out, feigned or real, and if you try hard enough you can forget which it is yourself, seemed the only sane response, and remains so.
And shit, it was a ton of fun to have Josh Tre/vino and Moe Lane say:"You know, that McManus has some interesting things to say." It was a hoot.
257: The Tea Party isn't "shouty sign-wavers." It's professional conservative politics (esp. "Americans for Prosperity") and big money using "populist" suckers as a smoke-screen.
I do love the puppeteers, I truly do, but there's genuinely a huge problem with them: they manifest a tendency among far too many on the left, especially the "radical" left, to think that politics amounts primarily to going out to demonstrations and staging street theatre. The conservatives have a much deeper understanding of what political organization is: when something like the Tea Party turns up and starts waving placards, it's a tactic that's part of a broader strategy. With too much of the left, waving the placards is the whole strategy.
I agree with DS in 261 completely. The only caveat is that the Tea Party could be part of a broader strategy because the Tea Party was simply the organized Repubilcan base, in a way that the "left" is not the Democratic base.
Qualification of 261.2: "to think that politics amount primarily to" is not quite right. Radicals in particular will invest great energy into politicizing other aspects of their lives, sometimes almost every aspect. It's just that their political activity where "personal politics" intersects with "electoral politics" tends to manifest mostly as street theatre.
254 I think is right and nicely said. And gave me a tiny thrill, as I sang in a Georgian choir with the daughter of the founder of the thing linked.
With too much of the left, waving the placards is the whole strategy.
And that is pretty much how I felt, and feel, about people saying they opposed (or the comfy liberals who supported it, for that matter) the Iraq war, or all wars.
Opposing a war is nothing. Stopping a war looks like 68, 69, 70 maybe times ten. There was a ton of silliness around in 2002, and lack of seriousness on all sides.
But I was already disgusted at liberals after 2000 in Florida. You don't let anybody steal an election and then believe you can slow them down anywhere else. Let em steal an election, it's fucking over.
265.1: To say that one "opposed the Iraq war" is to say one recognized the painfully obvious: which was some sort of dubious distinction when so many didn't, but otherwise isn't worth much of itself. The satisfaction of having been Right on the Issues is only meaningful if it leads to something more.
Wait, so if the puppets don't work we need a backup plan?
What exactly is the larger strategy of the Tea Party? Rebrand Republicans, promote right wing propaganda, and primary people from the right?
(I mean, "opposing the war" meant something more concrete for those of us outside the States, in that in many cases it kept our countries' troops out of combat. But even that is relatively minimal in the greater scheme of what's happening.)
The Canadian military just stayed home because they were preparing for the upcoming war with Denmark over Hans Island.
one recognized the painfully obvious
Like I said, stopped clocks. The painfully obvious starting point should be that civilized people don't attack countries that haven't threatened them. That America keeps doing it regardless of who is in charge of the government is an unpleasant indication of what we are and what we are not.
I'm disgusted with the useless fools opposed the Iraq War. The real heroes were calling for nukes.
I appreciate the history of Bread and Puppet theater, but I can't help but think that groups like the Yes Men are a lot better at getting their point across these days.
239.---D.C. will apparently lose garbage collection during a gov't shutdown.
I suddenly feel a lot more optimistic. There's nothing like twelve-foot-high stinking drifts of garbage to bring home a point.
||
Hey, essear: lay some science on us.
|>
274: Wow, what a ridiculous media frenzy. It was even on Gawker, of all places. With a random old photo of an experimentalist who had nothing to do with this analysis. Weirdness.
I've been a little grumpy lately about the kind of academic culture that rewards people for writing bullshit papers trying to sell things as new physics instead of first checking carefully all the mundane explanations. When it all turns out to have been nothing, at least all those people who wrote these papers and cited each other have nicely padded their CVs with highly-cited papers on hot topics, while people who don't want to play the game look slow and apathetic.
Some of the expressions of skepticism in the NYTimes article were pretty accurate. The experimental work seems pretty solid, but that doesn't mean the signal is real.
I probably shouldn't say any more right now.
275: I liked the way the NYT article talked about "three sigma singals" and how they "come and go" without mentioning what the hell that meant. "Oh," thought I, "can it really be something as stupid as '3 standard deviations from the mean', and the times reporter didn't get that?" Yes! Yes it can!
258: Will they just have to drop the pretense and have the two parties organize the observers? If not, where do the money and the lawyers come from?
Kloppenburg now up by 796 votes. Now they do the canvassing and then on to the recount. Recounts in WI are granted if requested within three days and if the requestor claims that there were serious errors in the counting. If the election margin is less than half of one percent the state covers the cost of the recount.
They're already breaking out the vote fraud claims, so a recount is basically a given. The nonpartisaniship of it comes from the fact that the campaigns organizations themselves are claimed to be non-partisan orgs.
max
['They just fail to slap a letter after whatever organization supports the recount.']
261: With too much of the left, waving the placards is the whole strategy.
Street theater in conjunction with demonstrations (preferably large) is just one tactic among many. They are part of the approach, and while there may be some who think that's all that needs to be done, there are numerous others who take up the work in other dimensions.
Expanding, you say:
there's genuinely a huge problem with them: they manifest a tendency among far too many on the left, especially the "radical" left, to think that politics amounts primarily to going out to demonstrations and staging street theatre.
They "manifest." Sure. They do indeed make an easy target -- a manifestation! -- for those dissatisfied with the (lack of) progress liberal progressives have made; but I see no reason to dump the whole of the blame on them, or to make them a symptom of an ill.
We are much better off attending to institution-building and so on, per 59 and other comments, than we are mocking our allies; and I really don't think Bread and Puppet et al. is doing damage. Might as well disavow the bagpiping firefighters protesting in the streets in Madison, Wisconsin recently.
142: They had one when I was there. It was kind of a weird group, and it was new.
Expressions of distaste for their kind of DFH political theater are among the ways in which the left internalizes the attitudes and rhetoric of the people who attack them, and end up behaving like whipped dogs.
Quickly, please: the other ways?
I hadn't realized what a disaster the Wisconsin Supreme Court is, aside from the Scott Walker issues. In addition to Republican candidate Judge Prosser calling the court's liberal Chief Justice a "bitch" in public, there is this amazing federal district court opinion which considers a challenge to a Wisconsin law providing public financing for judicial elections, and uses it as an opportunity to explain just how corrupt and politicized that Court has become.
I also can't recall a judicial election where the election was literally a battle over a specific, politically charged case that was pending or about to be pending before a court. Voting out judges for the way they voted in significant cases (Rose Bird, Iowa justices who found a right to gay marriage), sure, but not an election between two well known candidates over the outcome in a single, upcoming case.
Obviously it's not like there was any point in unilateral disarmament from the left, so the correct thing for anyone in Wisconsin to do was to vote for Kloppenburg, campaign for her, and to hope she prevails in the recount, but it's really a pretty incredible politicization of the judiciary, and I'm pretty cynical about how politicized the judiciary already is.
There's a nice book on the absurdist street theater opposition tactics in mid and late eighties Poland called A Carnival of Revolution. What is a good commie cop to do with a bunch of hippies chanting 'we love the Soviet Union' while dressed up as smurfs?
What is a good commie cop to do with a bunch of hippies chanting 'we love the Soviet Union' while dressed up as smurfs?
If a lawman like Clancy Wiggum can't help us, I don't know who can:
Wiggum: "My God, it's nothing but carrots and peyote!"
Eddie: "Damn longhairs never learn, Chief."
Wiggum: "It's time for a good old-fashioned hippie ass-whomping."
I assume that 280 doesn't pose a serious question.
I read once about Polish pseudo-hippies frolicking in fields of poppies and dousing their effluent with acetic anhydride. Probably different hippies, though.
It seems like 261 should come with some recommendations.
Anyone else find some parallels between the situation of the liberal base today and that of the right wing one from the mid fifties to the mid seventies? Back then you had a fair number of fairly liberal Repubs who made up a substantial part of the party's leadership and were perfectly willing to work with liberal Dems on a case by case basis. Much of the middle of the Repub party had only contempt for the hard right, being political opportunists who believed that that was the way to go. And much of the 'serious people' class believed in an economically interventionist state which aimed to keep inequality down. Or perhaps I should say, anybody else read Perlstein's 'Before the Storm'?
287: was there as much craziness on the left then as there is on the right now. the only thing i can think of would be the odd stalinist.
So we need something analogous to the Southern Strategy? Or maybe its opposite?
I've been a little grumpy lately about the kind of academic culture that rewards people for writing bullshit papers trying to sell things as new physics instead of first checking carefully all the mundane explanations.
Would it make you feel any better to hear that such practices aren't specific to any one discipline?
Or perhaps I should say, anybody else read Perlstein's 'Before the Storm'?
No. I take it it's recommended.
I was one of those hapless and ineffectual liberals who opposed the Iraq war/invasion from the get-go, but who nevertheless failed to prevent the inevitable clusterfuck that ensued. I should have tried harder, of course, but I was nursing an infant at the time and, you know, there are only so many hours in a day.
Re: Greenwald: I find him annoying as hell, even though I almost always agree with him (on civil liberties, executive power, and so on). It doesn't really bother me, though, that he argues his position like a geeky (supersmart, but clueless about social context) high-school debate team champion in pursuit of yet another ribbon or trophy. I wish we had more, and different (as in, for example, differently-situated) voices willing to ask some of the questions that he asks, and to take up some his trademark themes.
48
I don't see how this mode of analysis applies to someone like KSM at all, given that he has no legal argument I can see to be treated as someone legally fighting a war, and therefore exempt from criminal liability.
He is illegally fighting a war and therefore basically has no rights at all. He isn't exempt from civil law but he isn't entitled to it either.
50
No. I think our laws require due process. What you were proposing is much harder than military tribunals to square with due process.
I don't think our laws do (or should) provide KSM with due process rights (or maybe just some minimal right to a ruling that he has no rights).
51
This is the kind of position where words like tyranny and despotism become literally appropriate. There is no part of the executive's powers that properly authorizes detention and punishment of anyone for political considerations without legal process.
I don't agree. This has nothing to do with the rights of American citizens. If the President can order Hiroshima nuked without civilian court review I don't see why he shouldn't be able to order KSM detained. Subject to the normal checks and balances of the political process.
52
And it's just ludicrous to blame the Democrats for fear-mongering against the Republicans. This is the worst of Obama-ism: We can't talk about the very real vileness of the modern Republican Party, because it's insufficiently uplifting. Greenwald certainly doesn't believe this, regardless of what he says today.
His point was that better than the Republicans is a convenient standard for the Democrats and perhaps they should be held to a higher one.
53
The decision to go after foreign terrorists residing abroad and capture or kill them is a political decision, and one can easily imagine scenarios where governments decide the costs of doing so are not worth it. However, once you have them in your custody you need to put them on trial with all due process rights.
I don't agree and as a practical matter this just encourages assassinations.
James, once he has been given a ruling that he no longer has rights, do you see any legal limits to what the government can do to him?
what is the most sane and persuasive argument/write up that terrorism is both outside criminal law, because its like war, and outside law of war, since its not for a flag?
298
James, once he has been given a ruling that he no longer has rights, do you see any legal limits to what the government can do to him?
Only such legal limits that the government has imposed on itself. Congress could certainly pass laws establishing limits. IANAL so I don't know what laws might currently apply. Incidentally whatever happened to the law against assassinations?
I like how James doesn't think congeress has passes laws governing the treatment Of prisoners taken both in and out of wars.
I think that the dynamic in the early liberal blogosphere was that (at least in the US) the left discredited itself over 9/11 and Afghanistan, and for a while there the prominent right-wing blogs, like Instapundit, simulated reasonableness. In the wake of 9/11, I remember reading left-wing analyses along the lines of "they attacked us because we wouldn't sign the Kyoto treaty," etc., a view someone characterized as "Apparently on September 11th we were attacked by European diplomats." At the same time it took a while for the right-wing blogs to forget about Osama bin Laden, and remember that their true enemy was American liberals.
301
I like how James doesn't think congeress has passes laws governing the treatment Of prisoners taken both in and out of wars.
I didn't say that.
I remember the Reagan elections, but for me, this administration is more discouraging than every previous one combined. Before, I could tell myself that whatever limitations the Democrats had, that they were a result of difficult political circumstances. Now it's clear they are in thrall to ideas that have been completely discredited by events.
302 I don't remember that being anything more than the rantings of the usual suspects who also view the liberal wing of the Democratic party as center-right, i.e. a fringe phenomenon invisible except on certain college campuses. Among the humanities grad students I knew, the majority supported the Afghan war and those who didn't based their reasoning on pragmatic grounds. And if history grad students were representative of the US political spectrum, Pelosi would indeed be a moderate right winger.
Sign me up as another who wasn't reading hawkish left-wing blogs at the time, for which I guess I'm thankful.
305: Interesting. At the time, literally every left-wing person I knew was opposed to Afghanistan, and their reactions about 9/11 ranged from indifference to thinking we had it coming anyway.
276 275: I liked the way the NYT article talked about "three sigma singals" and how they "come and go" without mentioning what the hell that meant. "Oh," thought I, "can it really be something as stupid as '3 standard deviations from the mean', and the times reporter didn't get that?" Yes! Yes it can!
Yeah, it's supposed to be a measure of how unlikely the background is to fluctuate into this apparent signal, based purely on counting statistics. I think. Actually, I'm confused by whether certain systematic uncertainties are involved in how they tried to quantify this or not. Ultimately, it doesn't matter much, though; either more data will confirm it or it will go away.
In fact, I think it's quite likely that other existing data already rules out almost any possible sensible explanation of this as a signal, but it's unclear enough that two solid days of work and the four Skype conversations I've been juggling all night haven't decisively settled the issue. (It's almost as if sometimes doing something properly takes time!) Four new papers on arxiv tonight by people jumping the gun and trying to build models of new physics to explain it, though. Sigh. (To be fair, one of them is making a more general point that's interesting.)
I think I've previously said that I was almost completely ignoring politics up to the start of the Iraq War (II). To the extent that I expressed an opinion, I was more or less in favor of going into Afghanistan for the specific purpose of capturing Bin Laden and others involved in the 9/11 attacks for the specific purpose of then trying them in court, with the qualification that if extradition were possible, that would be the preferable route. I was, clearly, living in some imaginary world of law.
Invading Iraq, on the other hand, I thought so unbelievably stupid that I never believed we were going to do it pretty much until we did. I genuinely thought the aim was to get more concessions for inspection, etc. So my first response to the war was WTF? And then I started paying attention to politics closely enough that it really messed with my work.
278: We are much better off attending to institution-building and so on, per 59 and other comments, than we are mocking our allies; and I really don't think Bread and Puppet et al. is doing damage. Might as well disavow the bagpiping firefighters protesting in the streets in Madison, Wisconsin recently.
I like the bagpipes. Whereas, when watching the rally/parade with the puppets involved, it tends to go: angry people with placards, more angry people with placards, guy dressed as death, more angry people with placards, some strangely dressed people with a banner, more angry people with signs.... puppets. I never know what the puppets are meant to represent, why they're there, what they're saying, I just know the fucking puppets are attention-getting in a 'what the fuck is that about' kind of way. The puppets are annoying because they are completely distracting. I don't care how much of a theatre geek you are, the fucking puppets don't work. If they took the puppets to the Macy's parade, even if they had to just stand by the side of the road, that would work, since you'd be spending all day looking at puppets anyways, and a puppet with a political point might work.
I didn't see any puppets in Wisconsin (maybe because the networks didn't do so much video) and I say good for the demonstrators in Wisconsin.
295: If the President can order Hiroshima nuked without civilian court review I don't see why he shouldn't be able to order KSM detained.
1) That's not an argument for indefinitely detaining people without trial, that's an argument for requiring civilian review of the use of nuclear weapons.
2) Using a nuclear weapon is an act of war; once someone has been caught or captured they are no longer a combatant (including regular civilian criminals) and the ability to use acts of war does not apply. Unless you wish to say that the President could up and decide to nuke a POW camp or a regular prison on US soil just because he feels like it.
3) It verges on the circular: the President can do what he wants because he can do what he wants. I don't see where the global authorization to do anything he wants at any time occurs.
4) If we're adopting the President can do what he wants anytime he wants model, then we live in a ancient Greek-style tyranny. I don't see how we got there legally, since I am pretty sure 'the President is a Greek tyrant' is not written down, and such a concept was mooted from the get go, if you wanna get originalist about it.
5) Blah. Also: bah.
max
['Gah.']
.He is illegally fighting a war and therefore basically has no rights at all. He isn't exempt from civil law but he isn't entitled to it either.
There's no legal basis at all for this position as far as I know. It's what would have to be true for our treatment of War On Stuff detainees to be reasonable -- if you were trying to make deductions about the state of the law based on what you'd seen the US government get away with over the last decade, you'd come up with a rule like that, but there's no history or authority behind it.
If the President can order Hiroshima nuked without civilian court review I don't see why he shouldn't be able to order KSM detained. Subject to the normal checks and balances of the political process.
I like how Shearer starts with the premise that of course someone who happens to have gotten more votes than the other guy, or to have been the running mate of the one who did, ought to be able during wartime to order hundreds of thousands of civilians at a time murderd without any sort of institutional safeguards beyond the threat of the next election &c.
I doubt Shearer's open to persuasion about this, and actually debating it depresses the shit out of me, so I'm not going to, but I just needed to note that.
Too bad SCOTUS denied cert in three Gitmo cases today.
Well, let's not be too hard on the judges, they're doubtless suffering from "Gitmo fatigue." After all, as L Green/house says here, "The court was there when we needed it, for which, as a citizen, I am grateful. If it now has nothing constructive to say, it has earned its rest."
I wonder who else might be suffering from 'Gitmo fatigue.'
I have more sympathy with Bob's position in 259 than is probably healthy.
He is illegally fighting a war and therefore basically has no rights at all.
If you are not legally fighting a war but are nevertheless killing a lot of folk with heavy weapons, you are not "illegally fighting a war", you are committing mass murder, and when you're caught you should be charged with as many counts as the prosecution feels like and brought before a criminal court.
If you are after all deemed to be fighting a war, you are putatively a war criminal; there are people in the Hague for that.
If you are after all deemed to be fighting a war, you are putatively a war criminal; there are people in the Hague for that.
Yes, although not the people who ought to be. Viz, one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, and one George W. Bush.
Which is an issue with Hiroshima as well. War crimes are exactly the sort of thing where you can't safely look at some conduct, notice that it went unpunished, and decide that it therefore wasn't a war crime. No one was going to be punishing the US for war crimes after WW II, obviously.
Saddam Hussein isn't in the hague, either!
It's why a lot of the rhetoric from the US and UK and war crimes over the past decade has been a sick joke. Who are the world's biggest war criminals? You could make a pretty solid case that _we_ are.
311
There's no legal basis at all for this position as far as I know ...
319: Doesn't come close to saying that spies and saboteurs have no rights at all.
320
Doesn't come close to saying that spies and saboteurs have no rights at all.
No rights to a trial in civilian court. Read "no rights at all" as "no rights at all in terms of the normal civilian court process". Although as I said he perhaps has the minimal right to a ruling excluding him from the normal process and I guess the Supreme Court is still the court of last review. He does not have any right to be tried in federal court in NYC.
re: 319
He's neither a spy, nor a saboteur, ffs. He is, if guilty, a criminal, guilty of murder, or conspiracy to murder, or some other offense of that type.
323
322
He's neither a spy, nor a saboteur, ffs. He is, if guilty, a criminal, guilty of murder, or conspiracy to murder, or some other offense of that type
From the decision:
... Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. ...
and:
... or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.
Of course KSM didn't personally come here out of uniform but presumeably organizing and supporting such operations is also unlawful.
re: 323
He is alleged to have planned a major terrorist attack on US soil. He's not an unlawful combatant -- he's a criminal. There's no similarity at all with the German saboteurs in Quirin. None.
Things being unlawful is what we have a criminal system for. Inventing new and spurious categories in order to get around people's duly constituted legal rights under national and international laws is neither here nor there. However, even if we grant the 'unlawful combatant' legal designation -- covering, for example, people captured not in uniform but fighting during war-time (e.g. during one of our massively illegal/immoral occupations of some other people's country) -- then still, KSM isn't that.
No rights to a trial in civilian court.
This is different from saying that he has no rights at all (beyond a determination in court that he has no rights), which was your previous position.
325
This is different from saying that he has no rights at all (beyond a determination in court that he has no rights), which was your previous position.
I sometimes overstate or misstate my position.
Yes, as ttaM says, the German saboteurs in Quirin were acting on behalf of a recognised state which had declared war on the United States. KSM was acting on behalf of no legally recognised body whatsoever. To the limited extent that AQ exists, it is as a private association, which is almost certainly not registered or incorporated anywhere; therefore for practical purposes he was a private individual with a few mates who were blowing people up because they felt like it. Murder. Conspiracy. Lots of technical explosive offensives. Nothing to do with war.
This is the problem with the Bush and now the Obama administrations talking about the War on Some Abstract Noun, or the War on a Powerful Emotion. It's a metaphor. But people, including apparently James, have started to believe it has a real existence. What has a real existence is a series of NATO police actions which may well be illegal in themselves. But KSM isn't even particularly being accused of being illegally involved in resisting those, he's accused of arranging to kill a lot of people, which is a crime.
Look, the IRA was a far more tangible and identifiable organisation than AQ ever was, but during the 30 years of the Troubles, while the British army did plenty of stuff they shouldn't have, and politicians of all parties too, they never suggested trying Martin McGuinness in a military court. Learn, guys.
I sometimes overstate or misstate my position.
Shearer, I appreciate statements like this one. I wish more people would say those simple words.
What ttaM said in 324.
Quirin applies to a situation where there's an ordinary war going on, which everyone agrees gives 'lawful combatants' the right to kill people and break stuff without being treated as criminals. When combatants break the law of war, they no longer have the rights of soldiers, and so are treated as criminals. Starting from that position, Quirin then holds that "unlawful combatants" -- people participating in this perfectly ordinary war that generally gives combatants therein the rights of soldiers, but who have forfeited those rights by breaking the law of war, may be tried as criminals in a military tribunal rather than a civilian court -- they've lost their right to a civilian trial (not all their rights, which is a significant distinction) only because they're participating in a normal war, but doing so in an illegal fashion.
This is not the same situation we've got in the Global War on Misbehavior. There, the government is arguing that there's this not-really-a-war-when-we-don't-like-the-implications-but-totally-a-war-when-we-do. It's not a war that grants anyone the rights applicable to lawful soldiers -- any behavior that we can characterize as participation in the 'war', whether or not it's criminal in itself, is 'unlawful', in a manner that strips participants of the rights of a civilian defendant. Quirin doesn't address this sort of situation at all.
Shearer, I appreciate statements like this one. I wish more people would say those simple words.
But this happens all the time. I can't think of a single commenter who hasn't openly acknowledged that James got something wrong.
(In this case, though, I wrote 325 without having read 321, where James had already clarified his position on the issue at hand.)
The weirdness of the US government's legal position really shows up when we start talking about people who haven't themselves done anything in violation of the law of war, like Osama bin Laden's driver. If there's a normal war on, he's not a soldier, because he's not in uniform and so on, but he's not a criminal because being someone's driver is not a violation of any law of war. If there's not a normal war on, you could maybe make a conspiracy case against him in a civilian court under the argument that he's a participant in bin Laden's criminal conspiracy. But the mix-and-match position we're taking is nuts.
But the mix-and-match position we're taking is nuts.
Deliberately nuts, too. I don't think anyone involved in the drafting or promotion of these legal position believes it to be anything other than nuts.
I don't know about that. I'd believe that someone like Shearer, for example, buys the US government's legal theory, if you can call it that, and honestly thinks that we're all couching ideological disagreement with the US government's goals in legalistic language. And that there's a fair amount of people in that position.
I think the legal theory started out as conscious bullshit, but it's taken on a life of its own by now.
I think the legal theory started out as conscious bullshit, but it's taken on a life of its own by now.
Well, yes, but again, I think that's part of the point.
"Guys, I'm sure we can come up with some shit that will let us do what we want."
"Fuck, yeah, let's just invent some shit to make it OK."
"Cool, 'unlawful combatant', I kind of like it, but who is going to believe us?"
"Idiots."
"Fuck, you are a genius."
The sheer stupidity of it is also a bonus. It's another way of saying, 'You fuckers are powerless, we can get away with whatever we want. Look at this transparent irrational naked bullshit, and we are giving it to you to your face. If you had an ounce of self-respect you'd fucking shoot us, but you won't, so suck it up, assholes.'
The sheer stupidity of it is also a bonus.
In this way, it functions a bit like an authoritarian cult-of-personality, or those regimes that insist citizens regularly perform demeaning rituals or profess falsehoods. Serves both to demoralize opposition and provide information to the regime about loyalties. (Some remarks here.)
re: 337
Yes, and that Schmittian thing: '"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." '
261: I do love the puppeteers, I truly do, but there's genuinely a huge problem with them: they manifest a tendency among far too many on the left, especially the "radical" left, to think that politics amounts primarily to going out to demonstrations and staging street theatre.
That would be unfortunate, if it were true. But it is not true. Demonstrations are a valid and historically important element of leftwing organizing, but they are hardly the only element. How much time does the average "radical" leftist spend at demonstrations, or on planning them, in a year? 40 hours? 80? Not a huge amount, in any case.
Meanwhile, most people I know on the far left, and from what I read about the scene in other states and internationally, most of the people I don't know, spend huge amounts of time on a whole host of other projects -- Indymedia, free food, community bike repair spaces, collective businesses, radical bookstores, anarchist book fairs, cohousing schemes, community gardens, free universities, legal aid, union drives, all kinds of artistic expression -- that have little or nothing to do with demonstrations. But the corporate media never reports on that stuff as "serious political activity" because it doesn't involve chants or placards or breaking a bank window. To judge by what the corporate media shows you, everyone on the radical left is a 20 year-old in a black mask hurling a tear-gas canister at a line of police.
In truth, this represents the 1% of demonstrators who like to do that sort of thing, and in turn those demonstrators comprise only the 10% of people on the left who are not burned out on demos. Even those black bloc kids spend the vast majority of their political time on projects like the ones I've mentioned above. "White Riot" is hardly the theme for most people on the far left that you imagine it to be.
339: Reading stuff like this makes me dislike myself. I would like to think that I am fairly liberal, egalitarian, opposed to the Bush administration's egregious overextensions of executive power, etc., etc., and I think I credit the value of mass demonstrations and all that sort of thing appropriately, but I hate parties fun gatherings helping people inconveniencing myself even slightly collective action and the subordination of self, emotionally and physically, that I associate with them. Phrases like "union drive" make me look around for a way to escape the demanding claws of strident, self-righteous, unattractive people.
And now I feel guilty.
341: This is my life. I'm a rotten lousy volunteer -- every time I've tried to get involved in something political/community organizy I've gotten frustrated, confused, and bored almost instantly and have drifted away. (Although I really wouldn't characterize the people I know who do seem to do more than I do as strident, etc. Even the frustrating organizations I've tried to get involved with have been frustrating more through vagueness and ineffectuality, not so much through stridency and self-righteousness.) And really, when I say I've 'tried to get involved', I've hardly done that since law school, barring a bit of community gardening, and not much of that.
I do love the puppeteers blog commenters, I truly do, but there's genuinely a huge problem with them: they manifest a tendency among far too many on the left, especially the "radical" left, to think that politics amounts primarily to going out to demonstrations and staging street theatre commenting on blogs.
I'm a lousy volunteer, too, and I'd rather roll naked in broken glass than ever canvass again. But my point was about the use of "giant puppets" as shorthand for a certain kind of involvement: You keep using that symbol. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Or, what Natilo said.
I kind of liked canvassing. It felt practical. A better person than I am would find a way of identifying good candidates and canvassing for them in primaries, but I have not done this.
Look, the IRA was a far more tangible and identifiable organisation than AQ ever was, but during the 30 years of the Troubles, while the British army did plenty of stuff they shouldn't have, and politicians of all parties too, they never suggested trying Martin McGuinness in a military court. Learn, guys.
You're saying that the IRA functioned as the Irish Republic's intelligence and special forces arm, fought as an branch of the Irish military, and openly had bases all over the Irish Republic? My guess is that if Ireland's relationship with the IRA was that of the Afghan government's with Al Qaeda, the Brits would have given very serious consideration to invading Ireland. And while there were no military trials, there were detention camps and death squads. I also read that along with the NKVD and North Koreans, the other major sources for America's 'enhanced' interrogation were Israel... and the UK.
You keep talking about this death squad shit. There was almost certainly, across several years, a few dozen people were (allegedly)* extra-judicially shot by serving British military or police personnel, and there was certainly collusion with the protestant paramilitaries. That's nasty illegal stuff which no-one should condone, but it wasn't fucking El Salvador and continually using hyperbolic language to describe it doesn't help.
* I wouldn't doubt it, although other people do.
340: And now I feel guilty.
Don't feel guilty about failing to be involved in community organizing in all its manifestations. Do feel guilty about characterizing those who engage in it as strident, self-righteous, unattractive people. (a) You may well be wrong in that characterization, and (b) Have some respect.
From what I can tell, those who disdain puppet theater either find the seeming lack of power displayed by its agents -- and by those who also engage in the list of activities Natilo details in 339 -- to be embarrassing because they believe that power comes in only one form, which is monetarily backed and displayed; or they don't give a shit about much but their own comfort, so that civil disobedience is an annoying inconvenience; or they're prissy, harboring class-related standards that, frankly, put them in the enemy's camp.
345. You have to remember that the Provos enjoyed far more support in Boston than in Dublin, so the narrative is probably a little one sided.
The simple take is this, to the extent that the UK government failed to treat actual or suspected terrorists as entitled to full rights and protection under law, they were wrong to do so. To the extent that the US and/or the UK continues to do this they are still wrong to do so. It's not complicated.
"Gitmo fatigue"? Yuck.
The Supreme Court rate of cert denial pisses me off, as do the repeated things I read while drafting a cert petition that the court is not in the business of "error correction." If the error is obvious and does great harm to someone, why NOT correct it, you lazybones?
And how can Judge Randolph not be pissing them off?
It is maddening. They've been surprisingly good on detainee issues throughout, but that's no excuse for slacking now.
Missed most of this politically depressing thread, but unfortunately let me add to it, In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold is set to release new vote totals giving 7,500 votes in the state Supreme Court race back toward Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor. Apparently the results of whole sizable suburb (Brookfield) were not reported in the county results and it went 70% for Prosser.
Too depressing to recall all the depressing election nights I've had, but I think 2004 was the worst. In part because I had come home from canvassing for a late lunch at about exactly the time when the exit polls were looking so good. Then back home just in time to see it all collapse. Sigh.
352 truly depresses me
||
But trolling, on the moment of just having finished, for the 1st time Schrader's Mishima
Roger Ebert:
Schrader has throughout his life as a screenwriter and director been fascinated by the starting-point of a "man in a room," as he describes it: a man dressing and preparing himself to go out and do battle for his goals. In his screenplays for Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull," great emphasis is placed on Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta preparing for conflict, Bickle with his elaborate gun mounts and verbal rehearsals, LaMotta in his dressing room. In Schrader's own "American Gigolo," his hero trains and dresses himself to seem attractive to women, and in his latest film, "The Walker," he shows a man carefully preparing to be a presentable companion for older women.
Interesting
|>
352: Apparently the results of whole sizable suburb (Brookfield) were not reported in the county results and it went 70% for Prosser.
{sniff} {sniff} They're trying to cook it. 7583 votes is enough to shift the margin to Prosser enough to avoid a recount.
Here:
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus apologized this evening for human error that she blamed for failing to include the city of Brookfield's vote totals in the tally she reported to the media Election Night.[...]
The wild swing in Prosser's favor immediately raised concerns among Dems, who pointed out Nickolaus is a former staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus who was granted immunity in the investigation into allegations of illegal campaign activities on state time.
max
['This is now going to get very very very ugly.']
This is now going to get very very very ugly
I fucking wish, but I seriously doubt it.
351
... but that's no excuse for slacking now.
There may not be an excuse but I think there is an explanation, the liberal justices have no interest in making Obama's life difficult.
355: Don't know, so far the internal evidence looks like they just screwed up (Nate Silver had some tweets on it), but clearly the vote-counting process in that county leaves a lot to be desired*. The degree to which partisan players make such key decisions in our elections is simply dreadful and one more thing eroding everyone;s confidence in election results. Katharine Harris and Ken Blackwell serving as Secretaries of State and managing the Bush campaign in their states? Come on.
Because I can't let it go, I recently listened to a quite interesting talk on Florida 2000 that Akhil Amar gave for the Florida Law Review in 2009. Actually learned some new stuff and he specifically addressed the right-wing "it was rightly decided" critiques.
*That counties votes came in very oddly on election night and as it was the county that gave Prosser his biggest margin it made it hard to predict the results.
358:See what I mean? Democrats are so fucking easy. Organize these folks? Into what, mousse?
It was either electoral fraud or we can't tell and will never know for sure because she handled the results on her personal computer, and the votes of her entire county must be ineligible. Throw Waukesha out.
358.2:For fuck's sake
I am so fucking glad "rightly decided" was specifically and I suspect brilliantly addressed after 8 years of madness in the white house. I feel vindicated and shit.
Politicians sit yourselves down
There's nothing for you here
Won't you please come to Waukesha for a ride
Don't ask Jack to help you
'Cause he'll turn the other ear
Won't you please come to Waukesha or else join the other side
We can change the world
Rearrange the world
See ya' in Waukesha, bob. Have fun storming the castle courthouse.
358: 355: Don't know, so far the internal evidence looks like they just screwed up (Nate Silver had some tweets on it), but clearly the vote-counting process in that county leaves a lot to be desired*. *That counties votes came in very oddly on election night and as it was the county that gave Prosser his biggest margin it made it hard to predict the results.
Well, I was looking for the timing of when (if) they decided to do it, so I wrote it out. But skip it. The D's have to pay for a recount if the the margin is larger than about 7400 votes, and voila, they got the margin. It might be an error, but it's a highly peculiar, very goddamn suspicious one. Makes me think of Box 48 and the 1960 election.
The degree to which partisan players make such key decisions in our elections is simply dreadful and one more thing eroding everyone;s confidence in election results. Katharine Harris and Ken Blackwell serving as Secretaries of State and managing the Bush campaign in their states? Come on.
Well, concerning that and the county coming in oddly:
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.I read that as her refusing to update the software and instead shifting to a system in which she has sole control. There is no check on errors, and she can basically do anything she wants to the spreadsheet that supposedly had the error. She can't lose votes, but there's no immediate way to check her. And if the townships are cheating, how is that supposed to be caught by someone on the outside, even in a recount?
Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons.
"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.
Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county's information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus' claim that the system is secure from failure.
"How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There's no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election."[...]
Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.
Nickolaus' election system, however, depended on the old platform, so technicians restored a lone Novell server for her use, without a backup.
Biagioli said a major upgrade to the election system was recommended, but Nickolaus has said it's unnecessary.
In March, Nickolaus said, she moved the data off that server and into her own stand-alone system. She has a backup on a second computer, she said. In addition, she said, as she programs for elections, she does frequent backups during the day.
Nickolaus said she was a programmer for 15 years before becoming county clerk. And she said her staff knows how to operate the system, so "if I get hit by a bus, this election is going to run just fine."
Several years ago, Nickolaus discontinued reporting election results on her county website for individual municipalities, as was done under the prior clerk. She said that change had nothing to do with the problems with the county servers or with her taking her system off the network.
Kloppenburg:
"Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg for Justice Campaign deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire City were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the County. We are confident that election officials in Waukesha County will fulfill these requests as quickly as possible so that both our campaign and the people of Wisconsin can fully understand what happened and why. Just as Assistant Attorney General Kloppenburg has run to restore confidence in the court, Wisconsin residents also deserve to have full confidence in election results."Uh, yeah. They're going to have to do forensics and whatnot if they have cooked it. Of course, the R's control the state government so investigation options are limited to say the least.
Do not like. Do not want.
max
['Something is really wrong here.']
362: The Brookfield votes themselves were previously reported and published and match what was added; the question is whether they got into the county results. It was a good-sized chunk (~10%) of the total votes in the county so a basic sanity check should be possible from the individual community counts.
I suspect the fraud is elsewhere than Brookfield.The con works this way:
Fix the votes in another place (or places) and withhold the Brookfield votes out of the tally (don't want to overdo the fraud, it's too obvious; all you need is that GOP magical 51%). If you "win", you are done. If the amount of fixing doesn't quite do it (I've always thought 15% is the max without being obvious), you pull out the "missed" votes to sure up the win.Now everyone is up in arms about the potential fraud in Brookfield, but there isn't any! By the time the Brookfield thing is found to be real, anyone continuing to question the outcome must be a nutcase.
I've seen this done in many scenarios. Stage Magicians and con artists use it all the time. It's a form of misdirection.
364: With this analysis I agree. The whole county needs to be examined very closely.
360: Ah yes, I forgot that you so scrupulously limit yourself to revolutionary writings "in the moment" to exhort us sluggards to action, and future bob mcmanus's worthy of the name will do so as well.
More News from FDL on Waukesha. Commenters
As, oldfatguy first surmised, I can assure you that this is a distraction to keep Milwaukee County from being scrutinized. Kloppenburg GROSSLY underperformed in Milwaukee County to the tune of 10,000 to 15,000 votes. These votes in Waukesha County were intentionally withheld to keep all eyes there.What's in store for the Rethugs if they steal this one and then start back in with their overreaching with a corrupt Supreme Court? I can guarantee you that there will be riots, statewide public sector strikes, and various other guerilla acts of UNcivil disobedience. And it won't just be Dane County either.
How is it we are this far into the thread and no one has mentioned that the election results for Waukesha Co were stored on Nickolaus's personal laptop, and only on that laptop?Not to mention that Nickolaus predicted a 10% voter turnout, many precincts ordered ballots based on that prediction and so many locations ran out of paper ballots and people were forced to use electronic touch-screen machines that haven't been used since 2006?Nickolaus was grilled on her decision to hold the results on her laptop, but refused to change this highly unusual technique.
366:You don't get it, and probably never will. I am not interested in the facts, truth, process, or fairness to Repubs. I want Kloppenburg to take the oath (I won't even say "elected") and Republicans destroyed. Democrats being seen as crooked or coercive in doing so is a major net plus. It shows we give a fuck.
367: So you're saying that the methods of procedural liberalism may not be entirely effective. Interesting.
339 to please read 263. We've been through this before.