The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

BJ's lucky day!

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Not to quibble, Bill, but I think you are wrong here.

See, for example, this fairly authoritative Slate item: "How to pronounce Ross Douthat's name."

It sounds closer to "Dow-thut" than "Dow-that."

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Conn, talking about Rush's drug issue is talking about the issues, because Rush's drug history comes in the context of his public record on drugs as a political issue. And he's talked at length about the need for harsh penalties for drug offenders, and taken many Democrats and liberals to task for their own troubles with drugs. Talking about hypocrisy is fair game.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Why is Conn hating on David Frum? I'm pretty sure that Frum said in his article that he and Rush don't disagree much on issues. It's clear that Rush is the symbol for everything that is wrong about the Republican Party. For every listener he picks up, he repels three. Frum's Newsweek article was spot on as well as his interview on Hardball. Republicans are non-existent on college campuses and even if they are, they're social outcasts. Coalition building for the GOP needs to be reset now rather than later. Someone needs to challenge the left. Unchecked power is dangerous no matter whose team is in the driver's seat.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

I have never heard Rush advocate a position on the criminalization of drug use. But the criminalization of drugs and incarceration of offenders has been a response to the harmful affects drug selling and using have had on communities. The crack epidemic in the late 20th century is an obvious example. The abuse of painkiller medication by the professional class is bad for the individual, but it does not cause harm to society to the degreee that is warrants criminalization. In effect, Rush was prosecuted by the government in Florida for the crime of voicing his POV on the radio.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

More of the pathetic distraction from the leader of the new bi-partisanship to fill newsprint and avoid talking about his inability to find a liberal who actually paid taxes to work at Treasury.

Frum's piece on Limbaugh wasn't a 'takedown', it was a shill to be a house republican for the msm, willing to marginalize a voice they disagree with in exchange for greater exposure.

Daniel J Flynn, who is a fan of neither Limbaugh nor Bush, shines a light on Frum's selective memory:

[Frum:]" I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea."

Indeed, he could go on. Frum supported the banker bailout. He wrote last September, "I say 'aye' to the proposed national debt bailout -- and a big shout out to Rep. Barney Frank, one of its early authors, who has been a prescient early voice on the need for a big solution to a big problem."........

.........Frum's premise is one that nobody privately accepts: Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. As Frum notes, this is a useful notion for Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh. It allows the president to hand-select his opposition, with the hand-selected opponent naturally going along with the flattery. It's good for the president's Gallup poll numbers and the talkmeister's Arbitron ratings. Unstated is that the situation also presents an opportunity for a writer to land space in a mass-circulation liberal magazine by trading on his credibility as a "conservative" voice to mouth ideas soothing to the editors at that mass-circulation liberal magazine..........

.......When liberals adopt you as their token conservative, kiss your credibility among conservatives goodbye and say hello to writing gigs at the Atlantic, appearances on Keith Olbermann's program, and lectures at the Kennedy School of Government. David Brooks, who serves as the house conservative to both PBS's News Hour and the New York Times op-ed page, could have told David Frum this. To be the liberals' favorite conservative is usually an indication of just how alienated from conservatism one really is."

Missed Opportunity
 

Conn, with what might have been a perfect title for today's episode:

"The Catholic Church still does allow people to copulate."

;-)

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Yup, Rush Limbaugh prosecuted in a Republican state for stating his views. Steve, you're not even trying.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Correct. And an even more* authoritative source is available.

I thought we had settled this. Did certain diavloggers fall behind on their reading?

;^)

==========
* [Added: oops. Shoulda followed your link before making the "even more" claim. Sorry about that, Joel.]

I am speechless
 

Wow.

Truly an amazing admission.

I am sooo glad I'm not a conservative -- so glad I don't have to live inside a mind like that. *shudders*

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Heh.

I accept your surrender, Conn.

[@harkin: That's one small step for a ban, and one giant leap for bankind!]

;^)

Good luck in the new gig, Conn.

Shorter Conn Carroll
 

My closed mind is your fault.

The essence of conservatism, ladies and gentlemen, combining willful ignorance and the victim's mindset. A master stroke, Conn. You're going places in conservative circles.

I love that. "I wouldn't be so narrow minded if it wasn't for you."

Conn should not concede that conservatives support unions
 

The fact that government empowers unions to prevent individuals from working for a private employer for a mutually agreed rate of pay and other conditions is pretty much of a travesty in terms of individual liberty.

Granted, the horror of someone being free to outbid another individual for employment would pretty much eliminate private sector worker unions as we know them. But then, if you consider the harm that unions have caused in the form of decimated industries and factories that likely did not have to close if they could have replaced certain higher priced and inflexible employees, then arguably communities would gain just as much from the end of collective bargaining as the harm from losing it.

In regard to Sarah Palin and her support for the Alaska pipeline workers union, a case can be made that the oil pipelines in Alaska are public property and as such, the pipeline workers are an interest group with legal standing. Those workers can bargain with the state as a group and set the employment terms for all pipeline workers.

Re: Conn should not concede that conservatives support unions
 

Not at all. Workers are either going to go to work subjecting themselves to the authority of the corporation, under which they have no voice, no power, and no say in any management decisions. (Corporations are pure tyrannies.) Or they can go to work within a union, an organization within which they do have some voice, some influence, and some power, as in all democratic social arrangements.

It's clear which of these models for social organization conservatives prefer. And it's clear why they prefer it. And it's not because of their love for the workingman or their deep investment in his well being.

Re: I am speechless
 

You beat me to it. Indeed, a fairly amazing statement of intolerance for even the smallest amount of criticism.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Have you heard that old saying, a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged?

I got one: A liberal is a fanboy whose fat hero got busted with 80,000 pills of oxycontin.

Did you know Rush Limbaugh destroyed his own inner ears, and is now virtually deaf, due to his chronic snorting of crushed up oxycontin pills?

And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the state of Florida had the nerve to prosecute him for his crimes. Er, I mean, political opinions.



How would that work, exactly? If you make a certain income, you're exempt from laws against the use of Oxycontin? If you're a member of the professional class, you can break the law and get away with it?

What a ballsy suggestion.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Because the Borg dictates that that's the MOTM. (Message of the moment.) Watch the Right blogosphere - when Ace et al, stop dumping on Frum, you can be sure that a new memo has been sent out.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

if that is the best defense you can mount to the assertion that he was prosecuted for his political speech, then I will take it as concession. I recall a Bush/Gore vote count issue where the democrat Florida supreme court far exceeded the law and ruled in favor of Gore, the democrat.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Man, you're still not trying, are you?

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Maybe, maybe not. Working class white kids should be prosecuted for abusing speed because otherwise they hurt themselves. Professionals and middle aged people dont seem at such risk to that drug that warrants the government prosecuting them.

This is the boring, nuanced position that sensible people agree with. Rush was prosecuted by democrats in Florida, with a lot of support from national democrats, because they did not want his voice to be heard.

Regarding speech our polical overlords dont want heard, whatever happened to Rick Santelli??

Re: Conn should not concede that conservatives support unions
 

How is it that that vast majority of employees in the private sector without union representation?

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

It takes true paranoia to think "our political overlords" had anything to do with no one caring about Santelli anymore. The truth is twofold:

1. New shiny objects came along (Meghan McCain, Jim Cramer, that creepy little kid at CPAC, etc.),* which distracted the media, and

2. The tea-bagger parties have been an abject failure. Despite the hollow trumpeting of Malkin and Reynolds, they've amounted to nothing but an endless source of mockery for the leftosphere.

==========
* [Added: And Limbaugh, of course. And Steele. Too many clowns, not enough car.]

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

I should add that this was a good TWiB to go out on. I thought the discussion of Ross's hiring was a perfect example of reporting on the state of the blogosphere, and I liked most of the discussion of the EFCA/card check.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

I didn't. And, well, I still don't.
________
Masturbation dildo
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prettyLANA

Woe unto you, Union organizers
 

This kind of thinking, which I hear from Conn all the time, just leaves me aghast. When have Conservatives ever confronted corporations and their officers for their unbridled greed?

I love to quote the Bible to Republicans, so here goes, Conn: In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus said: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! . . . You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!"

This is what he was talking about.

Re: Shorter Conn Carroll
 

Yeah, right. Like lefties never have internecine struggles. Ever hear of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks? Or the bloodletting between the various factions in post-revolutionary China? The silly Japanese leftists of the '70s who liked to beat each other over the head with steel pipes to show who were the "true" socialists?

OK, so my commie allusions aren't really a fair comparison. But I'm sure that that liberals engaged in a fair amount of squabbling after Carter and Mondale were drubbed in their presidential runs.

Conservatives are down and they're going to be engaged in a bout of mutual recrimination over who got them into their current predicament for a while. That's normal and can even be healthy.

Speaking for myself, I think its idiotic to toss out books written by people with whom one disagrees on some unrelated "style-type" issue, particularly if one has pretensions to being a "public intellectual." But please don't glibly assert that closemindedness is an exclusively conservative failing.

What about how Joe Leiberman was treated all for his heresy on Iraq?

Re: Shorter Conn Carroll
 

Joe's problem isn't heresy. It's that he's an opportunistic hypocrite who cloaks his cynicism in sanctimony. How much press attention would he have received, compared to what he did get, had he not been been "bravely" standing against his party, or standing on a stage with John McCain? I think the answer to that might be apparent if you consider how much coverage of him there's been since the election.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

I think Conn is being far too kind to Frum and misrepresenting Jonah Goldberg's position on Frum/ Limbaugh. Goldberg hired Frum for NRO in 2002. And Goldberg has applauded Frum's trashing any number of conservatives. The worst case, was his 2003 attack on Bob Novak. Frum called him "unpatriotic" and and accused him of hating his country and Israel. Frum's nasty attack on Limbaugh for being a "big, fat, idiot" has simply been S.O.P.

In the current controversy, Goldberg has compared Limbaugh to Kieth Olbermann. Its hard to think a bigger insult to a conservative. So even if Goldberg thinks Frum "went too Far" -he still considers Frum a friend, while Limbaugh and his 20 million listeners are beyond the pale. Levin nailed it when he called Frum a selfish self-seeking "Frat Boy."

I hope Conn and every other conservative stops buying Frum's books and reacting to his attacks. He'll no doubt be joining David Brock at "Media Matters" in the near future.

Added: I'm not accusing Conn of deliberately misrepresenting anything, I just think his comments make Goldberg out to be anti-Frum, which he really isn't.

Re: Shorter Conn Carroll
 

No, no. If you want to compare today's Republicans and movement conservatives to these groups, please, by all means.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

(crunch, crunch, crunch) Mmmm. Any more of that melted butter left?

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

The split between Frum (and a few others) vs Rush and his fans flabbergasts me. Frum seems to think that the GOP platform needs to be substantively altered to keep up with the times, but he spends his energy attacking a symbol. Rush, (I think) Carroll, and other conservatives claim that the only problem with conservatism is a bad image, but when Frum tries to excise the worst part of their image they go absolutely rabid.

For the record ...
 

... in Conn's post, linked to in the sidebar, one of the sources he relies upon to back up his claim that "unions are job-killers" is one Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar. His reference:

You may be interested in some background on Layne-Farrar and her "study," from Jane Hamsher.

(h/t: John Cole)

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Ha! So BJK, do you lefties want Frum? He's looking for a new home. Parker's coming over to your side too - be careful though, she's high maintenance.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

It's going to be a long cold winter for the right. Go ahead: cling to Rush and Sarah Palin, and attack everybody who suggests otherwise. Weak, angry, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

In the words of the Wonderwoman of Wasilla, "Thaaayeenks, but no thaaayeenks."

What I would like is a Republican Party/conservative movement that isn't dominated by people who are proud of their own ignorance, reflexively against policies based on which memorized slogans they seem to match, and dominated by Bronze Age superstitions. I don't hold any brief for Frum (or Parker, for that matter), but at least they seem to be able to stand on their hind legs and have the guts to call dumb things dumb. So, if they're part of the nucleus that forms a 21st century alternative to the Democrats, I can think of worse.

Failing that, of course, the deeper the schism on the Right, the better for everybody, I say.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

If the Dean of Faber College is now resorting to sock-puppetry, standards really have plummeted.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

Ding Ding! For successfully decoding that reference, you get a fabulous moratorium on non-punctilious punctuation. A guaranteed twenty-four hour period without an apostrophe catastrophe!

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

In other words, you want this country to have 2 parties - a left-wing Democrat party and a slightly lesser left-wing Republican party. You aren't alone - Frum and even Goldberg (on most issues) echo your beliefs.

Myself, I'd rather have a real alternative to leftism & not a country where the only choice is between Stalin or Trotsky.

Re: The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?
 

If GOP primaries result in unelectable fringe candidates then you're guaranteeing that all the political choice occurs in the Democratic primary. You and other hardliners are opting for a choice between two left wing candidates instead of a left wing and a centrist or even, inshallah, center-right candidate.