The Week in Blog: Lucky Day?

[Bloggingheads]

[rfrobison]

BJ's lucky day!

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

BJ's 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.

[bjkeefe]

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.

[sp3akthetruth]

Brendan, Looks like you won out. Hehehe

[Joel_Cairo]

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."

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by Joel_Cairo

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."

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.]

[Kandigol]

Originally Posted by Joel_Cairo

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."

Why not like Duthah, in the French way? That's what I would do, reading the name.

[Freddie]

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.

[DenvilleSteve]

Originally Posted by Freddie

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.

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.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve

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.

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

[DenvilleSteve]

Originally Posted by AemJeff

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

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.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve

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.

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

[Steve]

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve

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 degree that is warrants criminalization. In effect, Rush was prosecuted by the government in Florida for the crime of voicing his POV on the radio.

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.

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve

The abuse of painkiller medication by the professional class is bad for the individual, but it does not cause harm to society to the degree that is warrants criminalization.

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.

[DenvilleSteve]

Originally Posted by Steve

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.

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??

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve

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

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.]

[robarin]

Originally Posted by Steve

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?

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

[Eppur Si]

You misunderstand the word hypocrisy. It means professing a belief you don't truly hold, in order to conceal your true belief. It does NOT mean believing people should behave a certain way, and then failing to live up to that standard yourself. Look it up.

In any event, I have listened to Rush for years, and I've never heard him talk much about drug use, and certainly not about harsh penalties for overuse of prescription pain medicine. Tell me, have you ever listened to him? Or do you just project your stereotype of what a conservative must think onto him?

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by Eppur Si

You misunderstand the word hypocrisy. It means professing a belief you don't truly hold, in order to conceal your true belief. It does NOT mean believing people should behave a certain way, and then failing to live up to that standard yourself. Look it up.

My dictionary says "the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense."

[Eppur Si]

My dictionary disagrees:

hy·poc·ri·sy (hĭ-pŏk'rĭ-sē) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. hy·poc·ri·sies

The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
An act or instance of such falseness.

[Middle English ipocrisie, from Old French, from Late Latin hypocrisis, play-acting, pretense, from Greek hupokrisis, from hupokrīnesthai, to play a part, pretend : hupo-, hypo- + krīnesthai, to explain, middle voice of krīnein, to decide, judge; see krei- in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

In any event, if hypocrisy only meant that you sometimes fail to live up to your own standards, everyone is either a hypocrit or has Godawful low standards for themselves. Between those choices, I'll take being a hypocrit.

[mmacklem]

Originally Posted by Freddie

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.

In addition, the entire point Frum was trying to make was not that Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot, it was simply that if you want to present to independents two parties with two leaders, one of whom is Rush Limbaugh and the other Barack Obama, then you have to look at both of them as they would be perceived by people who are _not_ listeners of Limbaugh or already followers of the conservative movement. With that in mind, Limbaugh's past drug abuse is a _major_ political hurdle to overcome, and it does not help conservtives to pretend that it isn't. Frum was not describing Limbaugh using personal attacks in bringing up his past drug abuse and his weight issues, he was describing what your average independent voter would see in Limbaugh if he was presented as the figurehead of the Republican party. That's not a personal attack, it is a description of the tactical landscape of the current political moment.

[sugarkang]

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.

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by sugarkang

Why is Conn hating on David Frum?

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.

[harkin]

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."

[Steve]

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

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

;-)

[Steve]

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*

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by Steve

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*

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

[conncarroll]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

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

I've been doing TWIB for over two years now. I'll let people judge, by the body of my work, how open and curious I am to new ideas and criticism. Whether David Frum is a useless ass is a completely separate question.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by conncarroll

I've been doing TWIB for over two years now. I'll let people judge, by the body of my work, how open and curious I am to new ideas and criticism.

Sure, that's fair.

Whether David Frum is a useless ass is a completely separate question.

In and of itself, I could grant this statement, too. However, I'm fascinated that Frum's books merited space on your bookshelf until the moment he criticized Rush Limbaugh, and I'm equally fascinated by your reaction. I did not throw out my Paul Krugman books when he spent last spring and summer criticizing Obama, for example.

[Steve]

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."

[rfrobison]

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?

[AemJeff]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

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

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.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

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.

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

[rfrobison]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

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

Touché [note the accent mark]. But you, of all people given our drawn out discussion over the New Year, understand my point.

I find the chronic moral and intellectual vanity to which some on the left are susceptible by turns grating and comic. See, for example, Thomas Frank, whose column in The Wall Street Journal is one long and tedious iteration on the mental and moral defects of conservatives, and the utter worthlessness of all their works. If you've read even one of his screeds you really have read them all. Maybe The Journal chose him for just that reason. A witty and trenchant critic on the left would make their right-leaning readership uncomfortable?

But as someone cheering (lackadaisically) for conservatives and bemoaning the asinine sniping on the right over Rush Limbaugh and various other spokesmen and wannabe spokesmen for "the movement," I can only hope that Frank and others of his ilk keep it up. The endless need for such people to talk down to everyone who doesn't share their views and agenda--and a good many who do--may be our last, best chance for survival.

Alas, I'm not really a very good ideo-cultural warrior. More like an unconvinced and bored guerrilla who occasionally shoots from the bushes at the "enemy"--more for target practice than anything else--but who is just as likely to fire over the heads of his own side just for a laugh. Maybe I should turn myself in to the MPs. [SIGH]

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

Touché [note the accent mark]. But you, of all people given our drawn out discussion over the New Year, understand my point.

I find the chronic moral and intellectual vanity to which some on the left are susceptible by turns grating and comic.

Sure. The left ain't perfect. It's got its own tiresome people who are prissy, arrogant, close-minded, whatever. But it does not have anything equivalent to the wingnutosphere or the hate radio crowd or Fox News or the "think" tanks funded by the likes of Scaife and other billionaire disturbos.

See, for example, Thomas Frank, whose column in The Wall Street Journal is one long and tedious iteration on the mental and moral defects of conservatives, and the utter worthlessness of all their works. If you've read even one of his screeds you really have read them all. Maybe The Journal chose him for just that reason. A witty and trenchant critic on the left would make their right-leaning readership uncomfortable?

I dunno why the WSJ hired him, but I don't share your view of him. I haven't read a ton of his stuff, but I've liked at least three of his pieces well enough to recommend them.

But as someone cheering (lackadaisically) for conservatives and bemoaning the asinine sniping on the right over Rush Limbaugh and various other spokesmen and wannabe spokesmen for "the movement," I can only hope that Frank and others of his ilk keep it up. The endless need for such people to talk down to everyone who doesn't share their views and agenda--and a good many who do--may be our last, best chance for survival.

There gets to be a point when the opposition is so insistent upon wallowing in the mud that there is no other way to address them.

Alas, I'm not really a very good ideo-cultural warrior. More like an unconvinced and bored guerrilla who occasionally shoots from the bushes at the "enemy"--more for target practice than anything else--but who is just as likely to fire over the heads of my own side just for a laugh. Maybe I should turn myself in to the MPs. [SIGH]

Or join up with the ones who believe that Republicanism/conservatism need not be the party of the know-nothings. You've got decent people doing that, and I suspect, as with atheists in the Bible Belt, once a few stand up and identify themselves, more will follow.

[rfrobison]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

Or [you should] join up with the ones who believe that Republicanism/conservatism need not be the party of the know-nothings. You've got decent people doing that, and I suspect, as with atheists in the Bible Belt, once a few stand up and identify themselves, more will follow.

Care to name a few? I'm really feeling really disaffected about now...OK, I know it's not YOUR job to help me find fellow travelers! Maybe "disaffected warrior" would be a better "handle" for me on this site than just my initials and last name.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

Care to name a few? I'm really feeling really disaffected about now...OK, I know it's not YOUR job to help me find fellow travelers! Maybe "disaffected warrior" would be a better "handle" for me on this site than just my initials and last name.

Off the top of my head ...

Daniel Larison's a good place to start. James Poulos is another one I quite like to read. Douthat, Drezner, Derbyshire, Daniel Davies (not all begin with D), Frum, Salam, McWhorter, Hitchens, Sullivan, Wilkinson, and Julian Sanchez all have intelligent things to say that I don't agree with, and link to other people, particularly Sully. Some of these aren't what other conservatives would call conservative, but they're definitely to my right on most things.

[rfrobison]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

Off the top of my head ...

Daniel Larison's a good place to start. James Poulos is another one I quite like to read. Douthat, Drezner, Derbyshire, Daniel Davies (not all begin with D), Frum, Salam, McWhorter, Hitchens, Sullivan, Wilkinson, and Julian Sanchez all have intelligent things to say that I don't agree with, and link to other people, particularly Sully. Some of these aren't what other conservatives would call conservative, but they're definitely to my right on most things.

You just couldn't resist the urge to tweak my nose by throwing in a couple of militant atheists in, could you? ;-)

Ah, well. If I want a party or a movement that matches my preferences perfectly I'll likely find myself in a Party of One. Come to think of it, maybe that's the handle I'm looking for. "Disaffected Warrior" is a bit pretentious sounding and I hate pretentious sounding stuff, even when it comes (all too often) from my own mouth. (Sorry, I have a tendency to think out loud in my posts.)

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by rfrobison

You just couldn't resist the urge to tweak my nose by throwing in a couple of militant atheists in, could you? ;-)

Heh. Honestly, I didn't even think about that part. I was thinking economics and foreign policy, mostly.

[...] (Sorry, I have a tendency to think out loud in my posts.)

No prob at all. It's a big part of why I post here, too.

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

Off the top of my head ...

Daniel Larison's a good place to start. James Poulos is another one I quite like to read. Douthat, Drezner, Derbyshire, Daniel Davies (not all begin with D), Frum, Salam, McWhorter, Hitchens, Sullivan, Wilkinson, and Julian Sanchez all have intelligent things to say that I don't agree with, and link to other people, particularly Sully. Some of these aren't what other conservatives would call conservative, but they're definitely to my right on most things.

Oh, Daniel Davies is not a conservative. He's cranky, he makes fun of misguided progressives, but he's definitely not a conservative:

People seem to be faintly drawn to the idea that there might be more political dimensions than just "left" and "right". Bullshit. Being in favour of allowing other people to take drugs, shag each other or read what they want isn't a political position; it's what we call "manners", "civilisation" or "humanity", depending on the calibre of yokel you're trying to educate. The political question of interest splits fair and square down a Left/Right axis: either you think that it is more important to provide a decent life for everyone in the world, or you think it is more important to preserve the rights of people who own property. You can hum and haw as much as you like about whether the two are necessarily incompatible, or whether the one is instrumental to the other, or what constitutes a "decent life" anyway, but when you've finished humming and hawing, I'm still gonna be asking you the question, and your answer to it will determine whether or not we're gonna have an argument.

http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/...thing-has.html

... the single most sensible thing said in political philosophy in the twentieth century was JK Galbraith's aphorism that the quest of conservative thought throughout the ages has been "the search for a higher moral justification for selfishness". Some rightwingers are not hypocrites because they admit that their basic moral principle is "what I have, I keep". Some rightwingers are hypocrites because they pretend that "what I have, I keep" is always and everywhere the best way to express a general unparticularised love for all sentient things. Then there are the tricky cases where the rightwingers happen to be on the right side because we haven't yet discovered a better form of social organisation than private property for solving several important classes of optimisation problem. But at base, the test of someone's politics is simple; if their political aim is to advance all of humanity, they're on our side, while if they have an overriding constraint that the current owners of property must always be satisfied first, they're playing for the opposition. Hypocrisy doesn't really enter into the equation with rightwing politics; you don't (or shouldn't) get any extra points for being sincere about being selfish.

http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/...rtue-what.html

More at Brad DeLong's Davies tribute page:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/0...old-us-so.html