Hrm.. that little bit about Glenn and Hesiod I mentioned earlier (in the "objectively pro-" post) appears to stem from this letter from Hesiod to Glenn. It's interesting stuff:

If you do EXACTLY what Osama wants, then you're "objectively pro Osama Bin Laden."

Right?

I don't believe you're pro-Osama, of course.

But...by pushing an unnecessary war against Iraq [see how my perspective colors my interpretation of your arguments], and letting Al Qaeda cause problems everywhere else in the world [including Afghanistan, by the way] then you are only "helping the terra-ists."

Surely, it's unintentional. But...it doesn't have to be intentional to be "objectively" pro-Al Qaeda, right?

That was your point, I believe. Except you accused those who were against a pretextual war with Iraq of being "objectively" Pro-Saddam [even if that wasn't their intent].

The whole argument is offensive, and silly at the same time.

On the whole "offensive and silly" part Hesiod is undoubtedly true, and I'm amazed that Glenn was desperate and tendentious enough to actually try it; it's a half-assed, nasty, deceptive, Stalinist way of getting people to do what you want. What's reeeal interesting, though, is Hesiod's contention about "doing what Osama" wants.

What does Osama want? He wants a clash of civilizations, because he thinks that Islam will win.

How does he plan to get it? Several ways: by bringing Muslims onside by showing his strength and resolve and by scaring the West into declaring war on Islam first. There's a third way, though, a blend of the two: the more the west seems to be at war with Islam, the more likely it is that Muslims will decide that they're in imminent danger and respond. They might not even be "objectively pro-Osama"; it might (and probably would be) simply because they were afraid that they were going to be targets and wanted to preserve themselves before they end up forcibly converted, imprisoned, or even killed. (Keep in mind it doesn't matter whether or not the West is going to do that or not; the point is the perception, and the fear.)

So what does Osama really want? He wants LGF. Specifically, he wants xenophobic, anti-Islamic rhetoric designed to give westerners the impression that all Muslims are bloodthirsty sub-human zealots, so that those who are not become afraid. He wants people to say that the religion is anti-modernity, anti-science, and anti-reason, so that all those Muslims who are all three will become afraid. He wants people to say that "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity" so that those who live in those countries and are devout enough to consider forcible conversion forcible damnation to become afraid. He wants the United States to invade Iraq on the flimsiest of excuses, so that they'll know that the rule of international law is meaningless and therefore everything is fair game. He wants all of them to become afraid, and decide that before the west gets them, they'll get the west.

Glenn, whenever you link to someone who says any of these, according to your own logic, you are "objectively pro-Osama". No if, ands, or buts about it. You are aiding his cause, building his war, and comitting virtual treason.

Unless, of course, your logic is wrong.

Thankfully, it is.

Edit: Hesiod also links to Eugene Volokh and Ted Barlow on the subject of "objectivity".

Yeah, yeah, another quotation post. But what the hell, it's good. From Atrios:

When I first posted on the Lott story I figured it would completely die. Why? Because I figured the usual suspects would make the usual around of apologetic statements. They would argue that what Lott was praising was 'States' Rights' and that was a GOOD thing and it was wrong to read anything into it other than Lott's support for "limited federal government" and what was wrong with that and you're racist for saying otherwise so SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP YOU STUPID BIG GOVERNMENT RACIST JESSE JACKSON AL SHARPTON LOVING LIEBERAL!!! (Emphasis mine, because it needed to be emphasized. -Demos)

Which is what happened the last time Lott stepped into this particular minefield.

What I hope comes out of this is the recognition and understanding that when a politician in the south goes on about "states' rights" they are speaking in code that is well understood by a portion of the electorate -black and white. I don't mean that all supporters of federalism are objectively pro-segregation (Very big of me, no?), just that in certain contexts and from certain people the use of that phrase and related ones is nothing more than a big "FUCK YOU" to the black population. They get it. And, enough of the whites get it too.

In 1860 States' Rights was about maintaining the institution of slavery. In 1948 it meant this In the 50s it meant opposition to any form of desegregation. Moving into the 60s it meant opposition to the nasty federal government's pesky anti-discrimination laws and that horror of horrors, the Voting Rights Act.

Us liberals feel genuine outrage the William Rehnquist was a poll thug. We'd chalk it up to youthful indiscretion if he hadn't lied about it in confirmation hearings -- twice. We feel genuine outrage that a necessary stop in the Republican primary season is Bob Jones University - a slap in the face to minorities and ANY non-Protestants, particularly catholics. We feel outrage that the liberal media tut tuts it a bit every four years, but doesn't make a big deal out of it other than as 'strategery.' We feel genuine outrage that, as Bob Hebert reminds us, Reagan's first major campaign apperance was in Philadelphia, Mississippi,

which just happened to be the place where three civil rights workers — Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney — were murdered in 1964.

Reagan knew the code then too:

During that appearance, Mr. Reagan told his audience, "I believe in states' rights."
Enough said.

And, we feel outrage that this speaking in code is, to us, obvious. It's obvious to anyone who pays attention. It's obvious to african-american civil rights leaders who get smacked down every time they bring it up. I'm tired of such people being accused of some form of "reverse racism" for even daring to bring it up. I'm tired of liberals and democrats being accused of cynical exploitation of race. What could be a more cynical exploitation of race than a fake organization run out of Grover Norquist's office with Lou Sheldon, Gary Bauer, and Sean Hannity on its board? My God what an insult.

Race and racism are still huge issues in this country. The P.C. backlash and its accompanied white male victimology has turned the issue completely on its head in a farcical fashion, and for the most part this is the slant that the 'liberal media' takes on these issues. It's time to stop this bullshit.

I've been writing about this sort of thing for a while now, so none of this really surprises me any more than it did Atrios. I believed then, and believe now, that the entire reason why this got so much play was that the conservative/libertarian bloggers and writers who maintain the real power latched on to this because Atrios and Josh Marshall had their party (and movement) of choice down cold and they didn't want to be a party to it. There is no question here of them actually being racist; I don't believe it, Atrios doesn't believe it, and nobody believes it. The problem, as Brock put it so well in his book, is in the greatest strength: their loyalty to the movement. Defending Republicans, even those nasty-ass segregationist throwbacks, is important- they're important Republicans that win elections- by definition without them the country goes Democratic, and the hated anti-American Lieberal leftists get the reigns. Once Lott proved himself a liability, though, then they were free and clear to jettison the old bastard. So they denounced him, and between them and Krugman they got the media on board. After that, it was over. Lott's gone, party's stronger. How Leninist.

What'll this mean in the future? Well, first, it's probably going to be a temporary reprieve for the Republicans, because they can point at Lott and say "see? We don't accept racists in our ranks." They won't start hacking away at each other: the circular firing squad is a Democratic institution, not Republican. The right-leaning folks in blogdom will no doubt try to use it when they call their ideological opponents racist for some reason, although anybody trying to use it on Atrios would be a bloody moron, considering the events of the past week or so. Left leaning folks in blogdom will continue to butt their heads against the sides of the Echo Chamber, although Atrios and Josh Marshall at least has proven that you can get something to resonate through the walls if you pitch it juuuust right.

Most importantly, though, the "liberal media" idea has suffered a massive hit. This story honestly couldn't have come at a better time, considering the broadsides that people like Jim Cappozola, Scoobie Davis and dozens of others have landed on the idea of the "liberal" media over the last few weeks. It was already taking on water, and now there's little to be done but grab the lifeboats and hope a plane flies by. Trying to say "but the media did report on it" won't help, because it's pretty obvious by now that they weren't going to, and all that anybody needs to do is point out all the cases just like this one that the media has ignored, is ignoring, or will no doubt ignore in the future. This sets a precedent.

(Besides, there's no doubt that Krugman is going to hammer away at this one in the future. I wish the country had more columnists that have better things to do. It seems like they produce the best, most fearless work. "Gamma girls" and all that.)

Anyway, Kudos to Atrios for (as I said on his site) ruining the career of an evil old bastard. In a just world, there'd be ticker tape involved.

while I'm on this, digby:

I hate to trivialize this by getting into a silly blogging prize fight, but this steams me.

It was Atrios back on November 30 who, in a felicitous bit of timing, began talking about "American Renaissance" magazine and the neoconfederate movement before Trent even uttered his most recent racist swill. The issue was pooh-poohed by conservobloggers who said in comments that Atrios was flogging a straw man because the GOP had purged it's Klan members years ago and moved to the "center."

A lively discussion of the GOP's ties to racist organizations was underway on this site, and Atrios was writing some extremely thoughtful commentary on the strange notion that anti-war protestors can be condemned as unAmerican while secessionists are considered patriots when the Lott story broke the issue wide open. And Atrios had it first.

In the media, the Washington Post wrote the only newspaper story on it on Saturday until Howie Kurtz' column on Tuesday. And the first politician to criticize Lott's comments was Al Gore on Monday. (Sisiphus Shrugged has a great post about how Judy Botox on Inside Politics cut some of the toughest comments--- like "If he wants to be the Haider of American Politics I guess he can be "--- and showed them later in the week when the story had some heat.)

I don't think there was even one blogger, one op-ed writer, one politician or one pundit from the right who said a word about this until it was waved in their face by Atrios and Josh Marshall soon after that the Majority Leader was once again showing his ugly, but heartfelt, racist beliefs.

Now, they want to take credit for the controversy? Bullshit.

Jim Lehrer was clearly puzzled tonight as to why this story took so long to find it's way into the media. Nobody seemed to know. But, I do. It's because this is a political story about "character" that didn't originate from the Mighty Wurlitzer with tidy talking points for a platoon of paid talkers to spew en masse on radio and TV. The press no longer even looks for this stuff on its own. It simply waits for it to come to them.

The Mighty Casio doesn't have a big ampliflier, but over the course of a few days it did push the story enough to find it's way into the mainstream.

Not much more to say here. Except that digby left out the part where Glenn was calling Atrios racist. Merciful gesture, I would guess.

Edit: oops, my apologies to Atrios and Glenn (sort of). It was Max Sawicky that Glenn was calling racist. Although, to be fair, I'm pretty sure that a googling of the site would bring up examples of Glenn calling "the left" racist. Atrios being on "the left".

Edit again: Nevermind! Check this out:

Perhaps Krugman will take on the race-baiting that has marked recent Democratic politicking in his next column.

No citation, no quotation, and I can't find any other links on the page about this supposed race baiting. Looks like we have a winner!

Credit where Credit is due:

what's remarkable in the Lott affair is how much he has gotten away with over the years. How many readers ever heard about the flap, several years ago, over Mr. Lott's association with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens? The scandal was actually worse than his remarks last week — but it just got buried. And without the indefatigable efforts of Mr. Marshall and a few other Internet writers, Mr. Lott's recent celebration of segregation would probably have been buried as well.

I still wonder at what prevents people from mentioning the world "Atrios" (a paranoid fear of anonymous bloggers?) but at least the whole "conservatives broke it while liberals ignored it" thing is nipped in the bud. And it's pretty clear to anybody in the know exactly who "a few other Internet writers" refers to.

While I'm on goofy Glenn stuff:

But regardless of whether members of the anti-war movement subjectively support Saddam (many of them, as David Corn has reported, are more accurately described as anti-American than pro-Saddam, but there are plenty of thoughtful folks like Henley who don't fit that mold) the fact is that their opposition to the war is a key element in his strategy. That doesn't make it necessarily wrong, of course: what's best for Saddam could conceivably also be what's best for America, though that's not much of a slogan. I'd take the misreport of Charlie Wilson's statement about General Motors over that one any day.

But when your movement is the key tool of a nasty dictator, well, it should give you pause, shouldn't it? Jim Henley's response is that he regards war as sufficiently undesirable that "the fate of some tinpot tyrant on the other side of the globe" doesn't matter to him. That's fine, and it's a reasonable argument even if it's one that I disagree with. But don't pretend that such an approach isn't, in fact, beneficial to Saddam, and that while it may not matter to you, it does matter to him and he's basing his strategy on it. What moral obligations flow from that fact -- and I think there are some -- is perhaps another topic, but don't deny the fact itself. Personally, it's not Saddam's fate that concerns me, but ours. I just think that Saddam's fate has a lot to do with our own.

Now, spin doctoring aside, Glenn isn't moving away from his core assertion: those who are against the war are Saddam's tools and are aiding his evil regime. Which remains ridiculous: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic is part of the reason why the United States ended up in this mess in the first place, even reversed into "the friend of my enemy is my enemy". The only way that Glenn's statement is even remotely accurate is if fighting the war turns out to be objectively good and if not fighting the war is objectively bad; otherwise we could be hurting Saddam, helping ourselves, helping the Iraqis, both, neither, or whatever. To claim "we're helping him" is meaningless, because we can't even determine what "helping" is. That begs the bloody question that we're arguing over in the first place! (He does imply that he recognizes that, but then proceeds to ignore it and minimize it with that silly bit about GM. As I said, spin.)

On the other hand, it ain't much surprise when you can also see this:

Here are the not-so-reasonable ones. Hesiod emailed me that by supporting war on Iraq I was "objectively pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Arab," etc. This is just dumb. People who oppose war on Iraq want to cover themselves by setting up a false dichotomy: war on Al Qaeda or war on Iraq. But, since there's no reason that one conflicts with the other, that won't wash. Indeed, I think it's more likely that the two reinforce each other.

Other than the reality of scarce resources and the negative effects of invading Iraq in terms of Al Qaeda membership and support(which are inescapable in the short term, even if the benefits of invasion outweigh them in the long term), this is just silly, because it really is the same argument upside down. The question is the benefit or harm of an action, and Glenn claiming that there is no harm to the invasion because of diverted resources or unintended consequences begs it as much as his implicit claim that invasion is a good thing or that not invading (and using some other solution, like containment) is a bad thing.

"To be against the war is to support Saddam" This, in a nutshell, is McCarthyism reborn. With better spin.

(I won't get into the odd assertion that "What's more, the 'antiwar movement' that they've relied on has been pretty much the same people, using the same slogans, regardless of the actual circumstances involved", tempting as it is.)

Edit: Hesiod collects a bunch of reactions, including a great one from Calpundit:

"Back in the 50s Mom had to sign one of those McCarthy-inspired loyalty oaths before she was trusted to teach our impressionable youths, and I spent my entire childhood growing up in Orange County, ground zero for the John Birch Society. My elementary school principal regularly warned us all about the evils of communists, atheists, socialists and their ilk, and he included in his warnings anyone who was merely insufficiently vigilant against their depradations.

So we know all about over-the-top patriotism here as Casa CalPundit, and it's not a pretty sight. You've had one chance to make the obvious apology — "I was just talking about fringe elements of the antiwar folks" — but instead chose to reaffirm what you said. Care to try again?"

Or, in other words, "why do those anti-war protesters hate America and love Communism/Islamism/Liberalism so much?"

Edit Again: GREAT bit on that "objectively pro-whatever" posted in Hesiod's comments section by "Randy Paul":

The phrase originated in the poisonous political climate of the 1930s as pure Marxist jargon, meant to lend an air of authority to the 'scientific' pronouncements of orthodox Stalinists. In a world of only two possibilities, see, anybody not 100% on Stalin's side with regard to every conceivable issue was 'objectively' on Hitler's, hence a traitor. It was by such logic that the 1938 Moscow 'show trials' so unforgettably satirized in Orwell's 'Animal Farm' proceeded.

Yeesh, I'm definitely not up on my Marxism- I had forgotten about that aspect of "objective" entirely. "If you're not with us, you're against us" is pretty damned Bolshevik, isn't it?

Glenn trots out another guy who swears ForRealThisTime that there is a credible link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. And that Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster.

Ok, not the last one.

Now, other than the fact that this guy doesn't seem to understand exactly why Islamists wouldn't be overly impressed with Saddam Hussein (he claims that "islamic rhetoric" shows that Hussein is somehow Islamic, and places scare quotes around the word "secular" without advancing any real reason why we shouldn't think that Ba'athists are different than Islamists), and the problem that all of his sources for this bombshell are anonymous ("a very senior CIA man", according to this writer), and other than the problem of bringing up Prague yet again when every time it comes up it keeps getting knocked down (and in this case supporting it with a mere bald assertion that "the czechs remained convinced that Atta did meet Al-Ani"), and aside from the fact that these things are probably wide open to interpretation and that we should have no reason to believe somebody whose desire to get Saddam practically jumps off the page, and aside from the problem of trying to connect a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq back in 1992 with any culpability at all for the WTCs(a road down which the Bush administration does NOT want to travel, I'm sure), and other than mistaking these old connections for a casus belli that Iraq has violated the new resolutions, which is, of course, the issue at hand right now, not the old ones...

...this whole thing brings up the same old problem that it always has:

If Bush had it, he'd use it. If the CIA had anything even remotely of the sort, they'd be forced to tell Bush or their jobs would be instantly toast once he found out. They have no legitimate reason not to bring it out, either; despite all his implications, the author never gives a good reason why they'd bother, and it probably won't affect the possibility of Bush getting his war anyway. (Even if the CIA were categorically against it, something that barely passes the laugh test.) All he gives us is the fear that people will think that they've screwed up. Erm, newsflash: that's already happened.

Look, if this evidence exists, then bring it out into the open. For real, not with these half-assed quotations of shadowy sources saying ambiguous things. Take it to the Bush admin, if necessary; I'm sure that Cheney wants to find a connection so bad he can taste it. Until then, this is getting really old.

Dunno if I like this conclusion, but Atrios' quote of Stanley Crouch does show the reinforcement of a meme whose time has apparently come:

The "he," of course, is Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). In late 1998 and early 1999, when I was writing column after column about him and calling for his resignation because of his connection to the Council of Conservative Citizens, there was no response from the media at large, with the noble exceptions of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, both of The New York Times.

That proved to me that all the talk about a liberal media bias was bunk - at least when it comes to race.

What's rather funny is that it was at least in part conservative/libertarian bloggers who popularized this thing... and they're absolutely adamant in saying that the media is indeed liberal.

(Oh, and in case anybody brings it up, this isn't to say that the echo chamber has all of a sudden crumpled and that the network effects of ideas online have suddenly ceased to be. Liberservative webloggers may be a lot of things, but racist ain't usually one of them. Probably why they got so pissed off about this whole thing: must suck being reminded of that unsavoury element of your chosen party/social movement. Kinda like that Chomsky name-baiting that the left gets so often, except lots worse.)

An email from Mike Huben requested my take on the media and Trent Lott. It's been an interesting affair, so I'll reproduce my reply here:

Three words, Mike:

Cover
Your
Ass.

They probably weren't going to cover this story and just let it slide, but a few people were dogged about it, especially online.

I actually think that blogosphere politics had a hand in this one, although not in the way you'd think. The right side of the blogosphere has been making a lot of noise about how fairminded and forward-thinking they are, especially compared to the humorless and racist and sexist and P.C. left. (Nonsense, but bear with me.) Thing is, in this case, if they had let this go or tried to explain it away when people like Atrios were all over it like the proverbial cheap suit, there is absolutely no way that they could ever claim the moral high ground. So they jumped on it. (To be fair, most aren't that fond of racism anyway; neo-cons are more libertarian than that.)

Once the bloggers got on it, the dual-identity types got on it. (NRO, for example: Jonah Goldberg, among others, bridges the divide between blogging and mainstream media quite well.) After that, and the embarrassment of that Howie piece on WashPo.com, the mainstream media saw what was coming and jumped on board. Now, of course, Republicans are all over it, and so is the media. They don't want to be the guy who was stuck defending or ignoring Lott.

In all honesty, I'm tempted to pull a Glenn here and say "Advantage: Blogosphere!" I would, except I'm still ticked that Atrios never got any credit for his work on the story, even though that ballot bit was gold.

Ah well, at least it puts aside that whole "blogging is meaningless" meme. For a little while.

Anybody else amused that Safire didn't like the term New Economic Policy because it was a name "with baggage", and then said that "space on today's tablet is limited to nine commandments?"

Guess it depends on whose baggage we're talking about.

(You know, the NEP term might be more accurate than Safire is willing to admit. The Republicans have been awfully good at staying on message and keeping in line recently, Lott aside. They're almost, well, Leninist. Pretty successful with it, too; maybe ol' Vladimir had a point, even if that socialism thing never worked out.)

From the same Krugman column, a far more important paragraph I hadn't quite realized was so a few minutes ago:

And yes, there are political implications. In the midterm elections, Democratic candidates carefully avoided doing anything to mobilize the black vote, fearing that this would just encourage turnout by rural whites. But the rural whites turned out anyway, while blacks didn't. In Louisiana, black turnout — the result of a determined get-out-the-vote operation, perhaps helped by Mr. Lott's remarks — was the key to Ms. Landrieu's unexpected victory. Might I suggest that this tells us something?

YES. Yes, I think it does. Word to the wise: the demographic trends favoring the Democrats in the coming years won't help if they don't get out the minority vote. It might lose them white, rural, conservative voters, but Krugman is right... they were lost anyway, and the dirty little secret is that Democrats might not really need them.

If I were leading the Dems, I'd be getting real loud about this. Not just to the faithful, but to minorities. If they get the idea that they can make a real difference, and propel a candidate to office that will respect their interests, the Democrats would be significant players all over the map. The Republicans learned this long ago with the evangelical christians; perhaps its time for the Democrats to learn as well.

Atrios quoting Krugman on the Lott affair:

It's unlikely that Mr. Lott will be forced to explain himself. The "liberal media," which went into a frenzy over political statements at Paul Wellstone's funeral, have largely ignored this story. To take the most spectacular demonstration of priorities, last week CNN's "Inside Politics" found time to cover Matt Drudge's unconfirmed (and untrue) allegations about the price of John Kerry's haircuts. "Just two days after moving closer to a presidential race, John Kerry already is in denial mode," intoned the host. But when the program interviewed Mr. Lott the day after the Thurmond event, his apparent nostalgia for segregation never came up.

From here, though, Mr. Lott's retroactive endorsement of a frankly racist campaign seems more important than Mr. Kerry's hair. The question is, who will make something of it? Not the media, apparently — but maybe it's time for the Democrats to make an issue of Mr. Lott's views.

Ok, it's official; the "liberal media? Nonsense" meme is now out there in the wild, and is likely to become a part of the left-liberal zeitgeist. Writing a column it is one thing; having it be a background point for other articles is quite another, and Paul Krugman is a meme vector of uncommon virulence nowadays. (Y'know, best columnist of the year and all. Speaking of which, anybody else noticed how good a job the Krugman-bashers online aren't doing of affecting his credibility? "Advantage:blogosphere" my proverbial aunt fanny, although "Advantage: Media Horse" might be somewhat more appropriate.)

Oddly enough, this change in the perception of the media is all because, (it would appear), of an interview with Al Gore in the New York Observer. Kinda like that "um, aren't we already in a war?" bit that turned the punditry upside down during the election.

Gotta say one thing: for better or worse, the man is listened to. Good thing he uses his powers for good instead of evil.

Atrios on the liberal media:

The media is not liberal, and therefore the failure of the liberal media to address Lott's comments is not proof that liberals are racists, but rather proof that the liberal media is actually not liberal at all.

A few bloggers pontificating is, as usual, not evidence of anything other than a few bloggers pontificating. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that conservatives care about this more than liberals. While I appreciate the fact that many Righty bloggers have condemned what Lott has said, so of course have all lefty bloggers. No Republican politician has condemned what Lott said as far as I know, while a number of Democratic ones have. Once again, because you haven't heard it is not proof that Democrats don't care, but rather proof that the liberal media isn't bothering to report what they are saying. I've only seen one conservative non-blogger pundit, William Kristol, give a tepid condemnation to what Lott said while he has been defended by Bill Safire and Robert Novak (twice). Every liberal pundit that has been given the opportunity has. And, no, Stephanopolous, Russert, and Matthews do not count, because they, like the rest of the media, are not liberal and in fact to the extent that they *are* liberal they are not, contrary to popular belief, liberal when it comes to minority issues. Coverage of these issues is usually either utterly ignorant or of the "backlash" variety.

The fact that there isn't more buzz about Trent Lott's comments should make all of this clear.

Just in case that wasn't clear enough:

THE LIBERAL MEDIA IS A MYTH.

Period.

Atrios notes that "With Landrieu winning, the Chafee/McCain double-switch fantasy enters the realm of (unlikely) possibility."

Well, first, I'm glad that Ms. Landrieu won; playing the Louisiana rules to try to eke out a win in the runoff by fielding tons of candidates may have been legal, but I'm still not overly fond of it.

Second, if that double-switch happens, a lot of people are no doubt going to be whining and crying about it. Honestly, it's just not that surprising; moderates on both sides are squeezed together due to the burgeoning polarity of the political elites in the United States, and switches like this may become commonplace. Indeed, if party discipline is truly on the rise (and by all accounts, it is) then this makes sense as well. It's a way for moderates or cross-partisans (leftist Republicans and rightist Democrats) to gain notoriety and power within an environment where they aren't going to be powerful in any case, and where (like in the case of Jim Jeffords) they stand the chance of being frozen out almost entirely. It's also a way for senators to leverage the length of their terms; in the house it'd be rougher, as it might provide an "in" by which a challenger could take your seat.

What the real question is is whether the United States will start seeing party discipline on the level of, say, a parliamentary system. It's quite possible, actually, as the individualistic nature of the system gives way to this sort of ideological polarization.

Krugman Weighs In:

This week Al Gore said the obvious. "The media is kind of weird these days on politics," he told The New York Observer, "and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party."

The reaction from most journalists in the "liberal media" was embarrassed silence. I don't quite understand why, but there are some things that you're not supposed to say, precisely because they're so clearly true....

...The "fairness doctrine" forced broadcast media to give comparable representation to opposing points of view. Restrictions on ownership maintained a diversity of voices. And there was a general expectation that major news outlets would stay above the fray, distinguishing clearly between opinion and news reporting. The system didn't always work, but it did set some limits.

Over the past 15 years, however, much of that system has been dismantled. The fairness doctrine was abolished in 1987. Restrictions on ownership have been steadily loosened, and it seems likely that next year the Federal Communications Commission will abolish many of the restrictions that remain — quite possibly even allowing major networks to buy each other. And the informal rule against blatantly partisan reporting has also gone away — at least as long as you are partisan in the right direction. There's more, of course, but that's the jist of it.

You know, it kind of makes me wonder. Gore has that supposed low popularity rating, and everybody in the Echo Chamber (a term he uses!) is quick to dismiss him... yet when he says something, it inevitably becomes pretty damned mainstream pretty quick.

Personally, I'd like to see a detailed breakdown of Gore support by political position and demographic; that 15% might start ratcheting up pretty quickly. Of course, it doesn't pay to tick off the media; as Atrios ably pointed out, however, you're probably screwed thanks to the "fair" left and the partisan right no matter what you do.

In a bit of heartening news, it looks like the (somewhat) mainstream left is finally starting to wake up and hearken to the Echo Chamber. Case in point, Signorile:

As you read this, the conservative punditocracy is likely in overdrive, ridiculing Al Gore for telling it straight about the media in an interview in The New York Observer last week. "The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party," Gore said. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh–there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media."

It is conservative pundits’ stock-in-trade to nip such criticism in the bud, pronto–lest the debate shift to them, rather than staying focused on their powerful creation and whipping post, "the liberal media." They and their apologists throw out words like "delusional" and "desperate," maintaining a stranglehold on the discussion until they bludgeon the critic back into silent submission. Oftentimes liberals stand by during one of these clubbings, like scared chickens watching one of their own being dragged off to the slaughterhouse (and, cannibalistically, some join in, hoping to score some points with the slaughterers). Witness how quickly and effortlessly poor, wimpy Tom Daschle was plucked and thrown onto the barbecue after daring to criticize Rush Limbaugh two weeks ago.

Jeez, let’s not let that happen this time around. Even if you think Gore is a lousy candidate it’s hard to disagree with his critique, which he expresses with a lot more clarity–and balls–than most of those in the corporate-owned, supposedly "liberal media" do. (That fact alone should dispel the myth of the "liberal media")...

...True to form, Limbaugh was hooting and howling last week, professing shock that anyone could believe Gore’s claims that the conservative media has such power–yes, the same Rush Limbaugh who spouts Republican Party mantras on nearly 600 radio stations, was a commentator on NBC news on election night and was canonized recently by The Washington Post’s influential Howard Kurtz as a mainstream pundit, though Limbaugh still has the same far-right positions and tactics he’s always had. Actually, Kurtz’s recent defense of Limbaugh (claiming that Limbaugh is "policy-oriented") is a primary example of what Gore is talking about in his Observer interview. The conservative media’s pundits, positions, nonstories and half-truths are often legitimized without critique by producers, editors and reporters in the rest of the media. Why? A lot of these people are conservatives themselves and are quietly pushing an agenda, despite the pap about everyone in the media being a "librul." Others are hungry for ratings and circulation, and seem to believe that being "competitive" means sucking up. Still others appear to easily and pathetically succumb to the right’s charges that they’re suppressing stories because of their alleged liberal bias. This is Gore’s money quote:

"Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, The Washington Times and the others. And then they’ll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they’ll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they’ve pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these R.N.C. talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist."

Gore also points to how, "especially in the cable-TV market, it has become good economics once again to go back to a party-oriented approach to attract a hard-core following that appreciates the predictability of a right-wing point of view, but then to make aggressive and constant efforts to deny that’s what they’re doing in order to avoid offending the broader audience that mass advertisers want."

Ok, that was a good portion of the article, but 'twas a good one. What I'm wondering is where this increased use of the term "echo chamber" stems from. Even Gore is saying it. Is it just a case of great minds thinking alike, or does, say, Atrios have a higher class of readership than previous thought?

Ok, I've got a request.

I'm thinking about changing the subheader for the page from "A liberal response etc. etc. etc." to something else. Suggestions?

(Note: wiseass EC bloggers need not apply. Unless the suggestion is really good.)

While I'm quoting Atrios posters, here's a good bit by "nameless":

I spent some time in the nutty groves of academe (an English department), and I cannot imagine anyone there seriously endorsing radical Islam or believing that America is an evil nation.

The prevailing style seems to be icy skepticism towards everything. To have such beliefs about terrorists or the U.S, would actually require them to take a position, which they are very reluctant to do.

I think that this reflexive skepticism (or distrust) of lefty academics exploited and/or confused as anti-Americanism.

I know that there are some kooks in academia, but their numbers are greatly exaggerated. In my experience, most of the "radical" professors hold relatively uncontroversial opinions in their nonprofessional life. As for their professional lives, holding "controversial" views is a way of distinguishing themselves and advancing their careers. I agree that they are more yuppie than commie.

Considering that the big thing within academe is probably postmodernism (whose entire raison d'etre is criticizing modernist assumptions), this characterization seems to make a lot of sense, and it certainly puts that "anti-American" bit in context.

Great bit by Digby over at Eschaton:

One of the things the right wing media and their cohorts in the RNC have discovered is that the mainstream media need tabloid fare for ratings and are in love with ostensibly trivial, "entertaining" political stories that over time can turn Democratic candidates into clowns and fools. The skewering of Gore was of this character and began with PR stunts orchestrated by the RNC until they took on a life of their own. RNC chairman Jim Nicholson drove up in a horse and buggy to the "fancy" hotel that Gore lived in as a child (when it was a middle class residential hotel.) The point was to show Gore as an elitist and a liar, but it was wisely done with a humorous bitchy flourish that the Dowd worshipping mediaTarts thought was just hilarious. It was only the beginning.

It's very difficult to fight these "silly" stories because the press enjoys them so, and you look like a humorless stiff if you make a big deal out of it. You can laugh them off, which Gore tried to do when he incorporated the internet line into his speeches, but they just keep coming. Soon, the Mean Girls themselves skew the coverage to entertain each other and show fealty to the narrative.

Each story, in itself, is trivial. But over time, they add up to a "character" mosaic in which the candidate has become an exaggerated cartoon figure rather than a real person.

In some ways, the outright viciousness and relentlessness of the attacks on Clinton and the slavering over his sex life (also contrived in part to feed the tabloid beast) were less effective because they humanized him, made him look like a victim of partisan overkill and ultimately people identified with him rather than his zealous accusers.

Gore, on the other hand, was destroyed by the death of a thousand jokes that accumulated until he had a strange, kooky persona that people couldn't relate to.

The Wurlitzer always learns from it's mistakes and it is very, very good.

Not much more to say, really. The Wurlitzer has figured out what the media wants, and feeds it to them. Raises the question, though... can it go the other way?

Ok, I buried this link in the entry below, but it deserves it's own entry. Somebody at the American Prospect, the Nation, or whatever should wake the hell up, buy, and reprint this. How can you argue with eloquence like this?

Some of Kristol’s readers know this, but many do not. And those who do not apparently are happy to wallow in their ignorance, pleased to view one of the Republican National Committee’s most reliable media mouthpieces as a brave and lonely voice against the alleged power, corruption, and nefarious influence of that straw man to end all straw men, the “liberal media.”

After Jim's lonely stand against the foul slavering hate of Little Green Footballs and the onslaught that followed, after his lengthy slandering at the hands of SDB and (through instapundit), the Echo Chamber in all its glory... he still has the stones and guts and wits to write brilliant and inflammatory pieces like this.

Maybe one of those Gamma girls has revealed herself after all.

Edit: a little bit of bad grammar there. Fixed.

Well, this is unsurprising:

The White House has decided that several thousand political appointees across the federal government will be eligible for cash bonuses, abandoning a Clinton-era prohibition that grew out of questionable practices in the first Bush administration....

...which has, of course, been reconstituted in Bush II, making this no surprise...

Administration officials said the policy shift, ordered by the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., earlier this year but never publicly disclosed, seeks to correct the inequity of political appointees' working side by side with civil servants who routinely receive bonuses.

There's inequity for a reason; political appointees aren't the same thing as career civil servants and aren't supposed to be. By the way, why does "never publicly disclosed" not surprise me?

The new policy is being instituted at many federal departments, and a few agencies have already begun distributing awards of several thousand dollars each to political appointees. For example, the Justice Department has given bonuses to political appointees who were deemed to have played important roles in counterterrorism and the Sept. 11 investigation, officials said.

Fortunately, I'm not a cynical person, or I'd mention something about asses being covered. Actually, this is quite probably on the level; the problem is that it needn't be, and probably won't be given time.

An Oct. 8 Justice Department memorandum explaining how the bonuses will be distributed within the department says that awards for political appointees "will be limited to truly outstanding performance that contributes directly to achieving the president's and the attorney general's national goals and objectives."

Again, good thing I'm not cynical.

"Political employees should be judged and rewarded in the same manner as career employees," the memorandum said.

Mr. Bush's aides say the White House policy shift reflects the administration's emphasis on a "results-oriented government," rewarding excellence and productivity by all federal employees.

Ok, enough foolishness. The combination of raw Republican power and what will no doubt be an appointment-happy new department stuffed with Republican appointees makes this sort of thing almost inevitable; I imagine that the Dems would do something similar, were they enjoying this sort of impunity. One of the roles of a political party is to reward loyalty, after all; it goes with the territory, and removing partisanship from the game only means that you have a mass of individualist lawmakers who can't get anything done and whose incumbency advantages doesn't face any sort of organized opposition by which they can be removed from office. (It also means heightened ideology in lawmakers; without partisanship, how else are people going to organize to get laws passed?)

The problem, naturally, is that the Bush administration won't really get called on this by anybody outside the party. There's a reason the media is called the fifth estate: they're supposed to be a check on governmental power that is neither trying to get its own laws passed nor get its own candidates in power. As past events have amply demonstrated, however, that is simply not the case. The media isn't going to call president to the floor on this any more than they have any of the other secretive bullshit that flows from this administration. They're too busy attacking John Kerry because he ain't as purty as Shrub and (as Jim Cappozola brilliantly pointed out with that absolutely brulliant "Alpha girl" piece) because they really want to be part of that popular and sexy neo-con clique.

(And why not? There's so much money and fame and power in it, and they think the public doesn't give a rat's ass anyway. They might even be right... 30something percent turnout is shameful, if unsurprising.)

Then again, perhaps there's some good in this. The more power that parties develop (and this is a definite blow for partisan power), the more likely it is that the Democrats will grow some stones and realize that the only way they're going to regain any part of the Government is if they start finding some liberal partisans that start hammering away *now*; ones who aren't running for office, don't care about fame or being liked by Bush and the neo-cons, and who have the guts, intelligence, and integrity to stand up to the blizzard of hurled bullshit that will no doubt follow. Cappozola identified the problem: the left needs Gammas, and Krugman is doing a yeoman's job but simply ain't enough.

Any volunteers?

Just a quick quote from Atrios right now:

The Washington press corps doesn't much like John Kerry. And, as we learned with Al Gore, that's important.


Actually, it isn't important. The Washington press corps won't like any Democratic candidate. What is important is that said candidate realizes that fact sooner and not later and stops trying to please them.

I'll admit that for a few very brief moments in '92 the press had a bit of a "Clinton Buzz" but that too was overwhelmed by their willingness to report any horseshit dished up to them about him. Dem candidates will always get a bum rap from the Alpha Girls. We can discuss why, but frankly it doesn't really matter unless we can figure out how to change it. Fact is, the Spite Girls will knock whoever the the Dem candidate is. That's the hand we've been dealt and it's time to figure out how to deal with it.

Not too much to add, except that part of the reason this whole thing exists is the good ol' Mighty Wurlitzer... it can be awfully tempting for mainstream media types to go along with the right's spin when it comes from faux-mainstream sources like Fox News, especially when the counter-spin is so relatively weak.

As to how to change it? Not quite sure, except maybe to put together a Democratic version of the living Zaphod Beeblebrox that is the Shrub, one that is as unthreatening and amusing to them.

Eric Tam wrote a great piece that rips apart the statistical foundations of a particularly clueless David Frum article about Canadian vs. American health care. It's yet more proof of the extent to which right-wing types will go to make their point, and the sadistic torturing of innocent statistics which they use to prove it.

Scoobie Davis is a great read and a useful resource in documenting exactly how and why the right wing's media power creates such huge problems with the American national discourse.

Want proof? Go check out his "very brief conversation with Limbaugh... a case in point of how the American right has a huge home field advantage when it comes to information transmission (as well as disinformation transmission)":

LIMBAUGH: Here’s Scoobie in Los Angeles. Hi, Scoobie. Welcome to the EIB Network.

SCOOBIE: Hello, Rush. How are you doing?

LIMBAUGH: Good.

SCOOBIE: Anti-dittos.

LIMBAUGH: Thank you.

SCOOBIE: I agree with Al Gore in the sense that the right-wing media is an uneven playing field that disinforms people.

LIMBAUGH: You know, I have to laugh. I am loving this. You actually—you agree with Al Gore that that there is a right-wing media conspiracy?

SCOOBIE: Absolutely. And you’re really on the forefront of that—along with the Moonie Times, what you call the Washington Times—which is nothing but a Moonie newspaper.

LIMBAUGH: Now, Scoobie. No need to be bitter here--just because it prints news that you don’t see anywhere else.

SCOOBIE: No, disinformation. Let me give you an example—[from this point on, I was muted. I was beginning to explain the Moonie Times smear of Bill Clinton’s 11/01 Georgetown speech (see below)—a smear that Limbaugh broadcast to his listeners as fact. I discovered that Limbaugh was talking but that I couldn’t interject anything into the conversation. When I played the show tape back, it confirmed that I was muted.]

LIMBAUGH [talking to himself because I’m muted. Rush did that the last time I spoke with him]: No, it’s not. Scoobie, it isn’t disinformation. The Washington Times reports factual things. It reports things that you won’t see in other newspapers and sometimes it does. I mean, some of the news is common, but it also—it reports things that happen, say, at a Daschle press conference that the New York Times will ignore. It reports things at an Al Gore press conference or a Clinton press conference that the Washington Post and New York Times will ignore. They just have a different filter with—through which they look at the news—same as I do...

REALITY: Being a talk radio host is a good gig. If you can’t stand the heat, mute the caller.

Aside from showing that Rush is a cowardly shadow of a man, it's a good example of scoobie's willingness to get up-front-and-personal with these people.

Here's an interesting correlation. First, we've got Timothy Noah examining a Wall Street Journal article:

[The] class that the Journal frets is not paying its fair share in taxes isn't the rich. It's the poor. When the poor don't pay sufficient taxes, the difference must be made up by the rich. As of 1999, according to the Journal, Americans whose income put them in the top 1 percent paid 28 percent of all income-tax revenue. By contrast, in 1986, the top 1 percent had paid only 26 percent. That the income tax is 2 percent more progressive than it was 16 years ago would not be deemed news on any other editorial page. To the Journal, it's a crisis.

The editorial's indignation is richly comic. By the sixth paragraph, Gigot and Co. are fulminating that a person earning $12,000 pays a mere 4 percent of his income in federal income tax. (It's doubtful there's a single full-time employee on the Wall Street Journal's payroll whose salary is this low.) Why does the Journal want to whittle down this group's disposable income? Not out of sadism, it turns out, but rather because it wants these people to vote Republican. (Who says the GOP doesn't reach out to low-income communities?) The Journal wants poor folks to hate their government, and that can only happen if they're overtaxed. No pain, no electoral gain.

Now, this is funny. Extremely funny. Gut bustingly funny. But it's also enlightening.

Why? Well, for that we'll go over to the Observer, where Josh Benson looks at Al Gore talking about the media:

"The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party," said Mr. Gore in an interview with The Observer. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole."

The Republican satellites here were quick (and utterly predictable) in claiming that there is absolutely no truth to these allegations. Yet if Noah's characterization of the WSJ editorial is right (and it probably is), we've got one of the most important elite newspapers in the country proving Gore's point!

It's sad, really. I've never really bought the media spin on Al Gore, and have always been of the opinion that the portrayal of Gore has more to do with a general anger at Gore being somewhat intimidatingly smart, intellectual, and wonkish... especially compared to the easier and funnier story of the admittedly more approachable Bush's mangling of the english language. This hostility towards Gore (and kid gloves for Bush) have continued to this day even without the "fifth column" as Gore put it (or "vast right wing conspiracy" as Hillary Clinton referred to it, for they are different manifestations of the same thing). It's up to the point where even the media that isn't a weapon of the GOP is spending more time attacking Gore with old and moronic charges than they ever spend actually, y'know, responding to what he's saying. Is it any wonder that he has such a low personal approval rating? How could he not, considering that the media has crafted a persona for him that the public can't help but pay attention to?

It's too bad, though, because Gore is absolutely right on this, and has demonstrated no small amount of courage in laying it on the line. If it were anybody else, it would be the charge that would get all the play, not the man (at least outside of the GOP sock puppets). Instead, we get idiotic pieces about "Gore changing himself again". As if that meant anything, except as yet more proof of the depths to which the mainstream media has sunk.

Edit: slight edit for clarity.

Ok, I've got a question... what are the names of the organizations that are the possible loopholes in the McCain-Feingold ban on soft money? I know Tapped had something on it a little while back, and I know it was a 403(c) or 501(b) or something, but I honestly can't remember.

Ring any bells?

Great. I leave for a little while, and all of a sudden something like this flares up.

As Hesiod appears to be doing yeoman's work in dealing with SDB's baffling attempt to spin Jim Cappazola's control over his own blogroll into "censorship", I'll simply ask those who are interested to head over there.

(At some point, I will probably return to rebutting SDB's long and often sadly ill-informed essays. But not today.)

Edit: Actually, just in case SDB decides to link to me on this (as he's done in the past to my quick reactions), I will quickly stake out my position on this. Just as Jim has a right not to link to LGF, he also has the right not to link to anyone who links to LGF. Indeed, if he feels so strongly about it, to not engage in such a policy would be somewhat hypocritical, because an extra degree of seperation is almost meaningless when it comes to linking. It is consistency, nothing more.

SDB is also wrong about its relation to Mill's defense of freedom of speech. To do this is in no way a violation of Mill's ideals and arguments, as it is not in any way a violation of Mill's defense of the individual's voice against societal norms. It does not either socially or legally harm LGF's ability to disseminate information, nor is it or could it be an attempt to do so. SDB's assertion that Jim actually believes that he will influence society as a whole is absolutely and utterly ludicrous; a stretch even for the man who baselessly called me a cowardly megalomaniac based on my choice of reading material and pseudonym. Jim has taken a stand on an issue and a site that he finds disturbing and odious, and I respect him for that. That stand is as much an embodiment of freedom of speech as is the existence of LGF itself. In the current political environment in the Blogosphere, that stand is a violation of societal norms. It embodies more individual courage than anything Charles Johnson or his foolish, hateful little followers have ever written, and I respect Jim all the more for it.

There's an interesting story here, one that might well be overlooked:

President Vladimir Putin backed a proposal yesterday to reinstate the Communist-era red star on the Russian army flag, the latest in a series of measures to restore symbols linked to the Soviet Union.

"As far as symbols are concerned, I naturally support that proposal," Putin was shown on television telling officers. He said he hoped parliament's leaders would persuade lawmakers to back Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov's initiative.

Once the most recognized icon of the Soviet Union after the hammer and sickle, the five-point star never vanished but was phased out after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Putin's plan — if backed by parliament, as expected — would return the star officially to the military's enormous parade banners. Military caps and belt buckles would likely be next.

The question of what's going to happen with Russia over the next few years or even the next decade is in some respects an extraordinarily important one, but one that's rarely asked. Usually discussions of Russia revolve around its role on the U.N. or in regards to its position on Iraq, but I don't think that that's the whole story. Most of the stories I've seen in the media have either argued or implied that there's a very strong affinity to the past in Russia, especially to the days of the Empire or to the Union. Russian (and Chechan) nationalism is key to explaining the Chechnian conflict without resorting to anti-Islamic reductionism, and the desire for a strong leadership was a big reason why Putin was able to acquire and retain the level of power he enjoys.

While the Russian Military's adoption of elements of the old flag doesn't mean that Russians are going to embrace communism again, it does reinforce this idea that they aren't quite willing to give up the legacy of the Union. Not surprising, considering the lot that they've had to endure after the Union was unceremoniously thrown out the window by Boris Yeltsin. Considering the trend towards economic and political integration at work in the world today, however, it does raise the question about whether the Union, or something along that line, could return in the future. I wonder whether or not we might see a "Union of Sovereign Republics" in the future, sans the "Socialist" and "Soviet" names. It'd be one hell of a historical reversal: a vindication of Gorbachev's vision of a new Union, and a repudiation of Yeltsin's entrenchment of Russian independence.

In any case, it shows that there are stories out there that stretch beyond the confines of the Middle East and the question of Islam.

Found on BuzzMachine about that blog conference a little while ago:

Glenn says that weblogs solve the "problem" posed by Republic.com, the book: that the Internet creates conversation only among people who agree with each other.
Weblogs point joyously to those with whom they disagree.

You have got to be kidding, Glenn. They aren't the refutation or the solution of the problem posed by Republic.com...

they're the embodiment of it.

He suggests a need for a study to see whether webloggers link more often to those with whom they agree or disagree.

I'd actually agree with this, provided that the nature of the link is taken into account, and if this were on a larger scale than simply a few large weblogs. After all, the point is the community as a whole, not a few big or convenient sites.

On the other hand, I do agree with this:

Reynolds says that games are going to have more impact on political life than weblogs. Games like Civilization make assumptions (e.g., appeasement doesn't work) that become rules of life for their players.

I do agree with this, although one of the ways that a good gamer is differentiated from a bad one is recognition of these rules and how to exploit them, and especially how to recognize when the rules have changed from one situation to another. A Tekken player who tries to use his abilities in Virtua Fighter is going to get savagely beaten, because he'll be trying to apply the wrong rules to the wrong situation. Indeed, a situation might arise where a player will think that the rules that apply to one game (a Tekken match) are universally applicable, and will therefore get beaten badly when playing any other fighting game. So it is with, say, trying to say that appeasement's failure during WWII is necessarily applicable to all other situations. There was an empirical study done a little while ago that suggests that appeasement is actually quite effective and that WWII was a historically-specific aberration. (Can't give out a citation; I'll see if I can hunt it down.)

Edit: The problems surrounding diplomacy in "Civilization" is actually one of the big critiques that has been levelled against the game. It is the increasing complexity of the modelling of interconnection- both economic and political- between civilizations that constitutes the biggest improvement in the game from Civ to Civ 2 to Civ 3 and presumably beyond.)

Mayhaps Glenn needs to play some different games.

Another Edit: After rereading and editing this entry, I am damned tempted to explore the political significance of various games. Maybe I'll ask Brad DeLong if I can borrow that precocious kid of his.

So, at what point do the libertarians figure out that tax cuts aren't worth this?

[A] farm worker here who was shot five times after a brief encounter with police... While the farm worker lay gravely wounded, a police supervisor pressed him to talk, to explain his version of the events. He survived, paralyzed and blinded, and sued the police for, among other things, coercive interrogation.

But Oxnard police assert that the Miranda ruling does not include a "constitutional right to be free of coercive interrogation," but only a right not to have forced confessions used at trial.

Bush administration lawyers have sided with the police in the case. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Dec. 4.
Police can hold people in custody and force them to talk, so long as their incriminating statements are not used to prosecute them, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Theodore B. Olson and Michael Chertoff, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, say in their brief to the court.

If I could, I'd show the picture of the guy. Instead, I'll invite readers to click on the link and look for themselves. Regardless, it looks more and more likely that the self-serving mouthing of the language of rights by conservatives (like Ted Olson) is about to get tossed out the window.

I can't wait to see the gyrations of the echo chamber as it tries to spin this one. Unless, of course, they just clam up about it and pretend it didn't happen.

(Courtesy of Atrios)

This...

Is written by this guy...

and (I hadn't realized this) illustrated by this guy.

Brunching Shuttlecocks and Bob the Angry Flower. Two great tastes that taste great together. Now I'm tempted to set up an amazon link thing just so I can hype the book on this site.

Well, more so.

(Edit: Link Fixed.)

While I'm on Instapundit's (and others') favorite canards, the term "anti-idiotarian" is still the dumbest thing I've heard in a long while. (Ironically enough.) The blend of American nationalism, mild xenophobia and middling conservatism/libertarianism that defines most warbloggers does not a coherent political ideology make, and that name only makes it even more meaningless. Nice propaganda tool in the Mo Rocca's Magic Saddam Heads vein, but I would have thought that a college prof would know better. I mean, Lileks is one thing, but...

(I'm starting to think that Steven Cobert's "Dragon Slayers" idea wasn't as absurd as I had thought. Why not? Dragons eat people. Dragons actually eat fair maidens, which means children! You aren't in favour of dragons eating children, are you? Of course not. So you'll publicly support us, then.)

(Slight edit.)

Hesiod on the Burk matter:

It doesn't MATTER whether Burk's article was satirical or earnest! It's been a deliberate, ad hominem distraction from the beginning. An effort to discredit her, without having to address the merits of the Augusta National issue.

This is a common propganda technique of the right: When they can't win an argument on the merits, they create a controversy about some irrelevant side issue in order to distract everyone from the original problem.

Refuse to play the game on their terms.

To be honest, I disagree. As Doug Turnbull pointed out on this very site, Augusta is in many respects simply a sideshow. The real issue here is the very same tactic that Hesiod is referring to: the attempts to lie, prevaricate, obfuscate, or distract that characterize the right's attempts to win arguments.

Case in point:

There are other writings by academic feminists calling for the elimination of men and similar absurdities in dead earnest, though at nearly midnight I'm not going to run them down. But as a guy who once edited Catharine MacKinnon, I know a bit about this stuff.

That was Instapundit, and if you get up close to the post and take a sniff, you can probably identify the region from whence he pulled out this bald-faced assertion. The "Perfessor" has been arguing for months now that a double standard exists where the left can say things that the right can't, and has provided precious little reason to believe him outside of a few choice anecdotes ("the plural of anecdote is not data") blown wildly out of proportion and endless applications of the Big Lie technique. After all, if you repeat assertions like this:

a conscious or unconscious effort to dodge the real issue, a double standard about speech that everyone knows exists, but that the left dare not admit -- because its whole existence depends on both the double standard, and not admitting it.

..over and over and over again, assertions that most of your audience really, really wants to believe anyway, it can work wonders for redefining reality in their minds. After that, cognitive dissonance sets in, and trying to dissuade them from a notion that they've invested so much of themselves in is an exercise in futility. (Witness Dittoheads.)

Maybe that's the problem with the left in the U.S. nowadays. They just examine post-modernism. The right actually applies it.

Cripes, Finally.

In the wake of historic Republican victories on Election Day that many Democrats blame on their party’s lack of a clear message, Democratic lawmakers and consultants are calling for stronger liberal think tanks.

They say the party must find a counterweight to what they call the vast and well-funded infrastructure of conservative ideology.

No arguments here, although I've gotta wonder where the halls of academe are on this. The whole reason that conservative think tanks got off the ground is that they were getting all piss-and-moanish about how academia is too leftist, so why aren't the Dems taking advantage of what's there? They can't get that tight integration between think tanks and party that the Republicans get and will therefore still need to build up "movement conscious" think tanks, but they do have an advantage there.

Then again, maybe this is the big question:

Party allies even entertained the possibility of a liberal television network to offset Fox News, which they view as an adjunct of the Republican Party.

CNN certainly doesn't fit the bill, so maybe its time to mirror Faux. Sad in some respects, but perhaps inevitable.

This posting is actually one good reason why I'm quite happy to have my name beside The Rittenhouse Review. I'll simply reproduce it:

I can no longer in good conscience include on the Rittenhouse Review’s blogroll any weblog that has provided a permanent blogroll link of its own to the site known as “Little Green Footballs” or “LGF.”

It is with great regret and considerable lament that I have adopted this position -- or been forced to adopt this position -- as I am normally a passionate advocate of an author’s right to choose his associates and to establish and maintain her own chosen associations.

However, it has become painfully clear, to the extent it wasn’t already, that the hosts of LGF, while preciously coy about their own political persuasions, all too willingly and not without satisfaction have allowed their site to become a vile cesspool of racism, bigotry, prejudice, ignorance, and hate.

Little Green Footballs, its readers, and what can in fairness only be described as its many contributors, have long since moved beyond the realm of civilized discourse. And so I am determined to distance myself in every possible way from their endeavor and those who support it.

I fully expect to be raked over the coals for this decision, to be called all sorts of names, and to be disparaged with merciless unfairness and obloquy.

Too bad. There are times when enough is enough, and this is one such time.

I don't link to LGF, have never (perma)linked to LGF, and have nothing but scorn for that site. Thing is, I'm not even sure it's the worst, judging by some of the other winners that have graced my monitor recently. (Not naming any names or linking any links, of course.) I'm somewhat glad that a real left blogosphere has arisen to deal with these guys, but the extremity of the views is only growing. Considering how bad it is already, where it could be going is very scary, indeed.

I'm a little behind on this, but it's still worth noting that Letter from Gotham has ended. While I didn't agree with Diane on rather a lot of issues, it was well-written, and the page on which the "ending post" resides is quite interesting. Especially in light of this posting about warbloggers, which was both interesting and unexpected.

(One question, though: what on earth is wrong with "having [her] name near The Rittenhouse Review"? Agree with him or not, Cappozola is hardly extremist.)

Now THIS is refutation. Ampersand has gone to the time and effort of completely destroying another argument; not by the immature and ultimately pathetic process of namecalling and obfuscation that is "fisking", but the proper way... research, organization, refutation and with an objective and evenhanded approach to the subject. Hell, it includes a bibliography, which means there's no question about sources, either.

Is it blog material? I'm not sure; blogs are usually a quicker format, and are heavily influenced by the freeform rhetorical style of Usenet. Since blogs are web pages, however, it might be a good idea to remember that occasionally there needs to be more to a critical blog entry than linking to friendly sources and heavy extrapolation from barely relevant fields and experiences.

Ok, I definitely like this Spencer guy. For Example:

But, hey, welcome to the blogosphere, where the righties "fisk" things they don't agree with. This "fisking" process is a fascinating thing in which the righties miss the forest for the trees -- they spend their time harping on minute details and supposed flaws in logic while usually ignoring the larger (and often quite plausible) argument advanced by the writer. And, a lot of the time, they actually have the gall to call that "analysis." Amazingly enough, their supposedly "objective analysis" always supports their pre-conceived political notions. Imagine that. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, right?

Word up, dawg. And the rest of this piece is good as well... and apparently from October, so I have had no excuse not to be reading this blog. A problem to be rectified shortly.

I'm not sure if it's because the site popped up when I was on my little hiatus or whether I had just missed it, but Prof. Thomas Spencer's History News Network is an interesting read. Check out this piece on neo-McCarthyism (linked above):

I just taught about McCarthyism last week in my survey course and it was amazing -- and a bit disquieting -- the amount of plausible connections I could draw to the present. In 1952, Republicans used McCarthyist scare tactics to sweep to power despite the fact that there were no major economic problems at the time....

...Like their counterparts in the 1950s, Republicans today have also shown that, despite what they say about protecting America and securing freedom, they are not very serious about this at all. As in the 1950s, the policies they pursue actually threaten the freedom that you and I currently have instead of protecting it.

Republicans apparently haven't learned the most important historical lesson of the 1950s. While McCarthyism allowed Republicans to achieve certain political ends, the central historical lesson of the era is that the U.S. government actually curtailed freedom in the name of protecting it. The Bush administration's policies threaten to repeat that major mistake.

If the administration's policies continue to go down the path of curtailing the basic freedoms of Americans, W and the boys should be prepared for the rather harsh verdict of history that is surely to come.

And that's one thing I am certain about -- historians won't let this one get by them at all.

While Prof. Spencer does acknowledge that there isn't a 1-1 comparison between McCarthy and the current Republicans (like there ever is), the basic point is sound. Franklin's dictum about freedom and security weighs heavily here, and I don't know whether it's more tragic that these sorts of things are happening or that they're happening under the watch of the party that was at one point (theoretically) all about individual civil rights.

Come to think of it, if the Democrats jumped on this issue and if it became a serious one, I wonder if we could see another realignment? Tie together economic rights and civil rights and you've got a somewhat classically left-liberal rights based party in the Democrats, whereas the emphasis on security (and inevitable reemergence of the religious right) would suit a Republican party that returns to a somewhat more traditional conservatism.

The key, I suppose, is where small "l" libertarians will come down on this if this becomes a hallmark of the Republican party. While I'm sure they like those Republican tax cuts, the prospect of an agency whose members are politically appointed, socially conservative and damned near omniscient has got to be somewhat alarming.

Then again, the Dems might not want to touch this issue, and might have good reasons. Still, they need new ideas, and the first step towards rehabilitating the term "liberal" (besides a real, unapologetically liberal media outlet to match Faux or the radio ranters) is to connect the rights that Americans take for granted with the liberal tradition that gave them to them.

Brad DeLong wrote about the best summary of that whole stupid Lopez/Burk business out there, noting that "The result, of course is that Lopez, Reynolds, and Porphyrogenitus are so busy slinging mud that none of them need to bother addressing the merits of Burk's case"... which was the entirely laudable goal of allowing women into Augusta National.

What killed me about all of this was Glenn Reynold's entirely unsubstantiated assertion that if a conservative tried to write parody or satire like this they'd get... well, he never really says, but it'd be something bad. I realize one of the raisons d'etre of Instapundit is to take cheap shots at the left by either taking things out of context, deliberately misinterpreting them or simply pulling the "I didn't say it, but somebody else might" gambit, but that doesn't mean it's not worth pointing out on occasion.

(Whatever happened to Instapunditwatch? There's been one entry in the past three months. Was the job of trying to fact-check IP simply too much work to handle?)

Edit: apparently, he's basing his assertion of general media trends on what he considers to be an overreaction to, um, a frat prank. I think that's even sadder than if he had just made the assertion and let it stand. Good discussion of this issue over in Brad's comments section, BTW.

Another Edit: Brad just said he was merely quoting Kevin Drum. Okay then, kudos to Kevin. Commentary thread over on Brad's site is still good regardless.

While we're discussing disasters...

The bill also provides greater legal protections for Internet providers, such as AOL or Microsoft Network, to turn over information about their subscribers to government officials during computer emergencies. If companies believe "in good faith" that there is risk of death or injury to any person, they can turn over details about customers — even their e-mails — without a warrant.

The problem here is the same as the problem with any sort of legislation like this... mission creep and the slippery slope. Right now it's just being applied to terrorism, but it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine that the "injury" aspect could be defined any which way. Indeed, depending on the definition of terrorism here- and the one being used right now is pretty expansive- this could include not just real terrorist groups but NGOs, protest groups, and even (in the nightmare scenario) enemies and critics of whichever regime happens to be running the show right now, whether left or right.

Another part of the Homeland Security bill gives U.S. authorities new power to trace e-mails and other Internet traffic during cyber-attacks without first obtaining even perfunctory court approval. That could only happen during "an immediate threat to national security," or during an attack against a "protected computer." Prosecutors would need to obtain a judge's approval within 48 hours.
Experts have noted that U.S. law considers as "protected" nearly any computer logged onto the Internet

Again, the problem is definition of what is a "protected computer" or "a threat to national security". That latter category has been used as a blanket to cover up all sorts of awfulness all around the world, including in the U.S... who's to say that an unscrupulous prosecutor and a pliant judge couldn't get at all the email they wish?

PGP is starting to look real good right about now.

Uh oh.

A damaged tanker carrying about 75 million litres of oil broke in two off the northwestern coast of Spain and began to sink Tuesday, threatening an environmental disaster.
If the Bahamas-flagged Prestige loses its entire cargo as it goes down in stormy weather about 150 nautical miles off the coast, the spill would be nearly twice the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.

Even though it's probably not possible, my "can't we do something about this?" knee is jerking pretty hard right now. Wonder if they can clone up a couple zillion of those oil-eating bacteria?

That being said, this still qualifies as somewhat of a positive bit of news:

Thousands of Iranian students demanding political reform have clashed with hardline militia groups in the capital, Tehran.
Witnesses said about 5,000 students gathered at the Sharif Technical University campus to protest against the death sentence passed down to pro-reform academic Hashem Aghajari earlier this month.

Ok, but check this out:

Hashem Aghajari belongs to a left-wing reformist political group, the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahidin Organisation.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not about to make the whole "these guys are obviously all the same" argument based on the name of his movement. Far from it... it seems to be an indication that relying too much on labels and generalizations is quite dangerous. It's also a worthy reminder that despite the claims of some, Islam (like any other religion) has reformists to go with its fundamentalists, even ones with names that don't resonate well in western ears.

More importantly, the protests show that young Muslims aren't necessarily the murderous thugs that they're often portrayed as. Important thing to remember nowadays. After all, it was Al Qaeda, not the Muslim world as a whole, that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and is perhaps planning for more. Al Qaeda does not represent Islam, as much as they'd no doubt like to. Perhaps these kinds of protests are proof that the Muslim world doesn't think Al Qaeda represents them, either.

Damn.It looks like Osama made it out of Tora Bora after all.

American intelligence analysts said today that they had concluded that the voice on an audiotape that emerged last week was indeed Osama bin Laden's, and that the tape was made quite recently.

The authentication of the tape, while not unexpected, is quite significant in that it represents an official determination after almost a year of doubt that the terrorist leader is still alive.

Like most, I was under the impression that if Osama hadn't popped up by this point, he was probably a smear of organic matter somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan. Hell, when and if they actually catch the guy, I'd be rather grateful if they kept him alive long enough to ask him how the hell he got out in the first place... best guess I have is that he was gone before the Americans even moved in, but maybe he sneaked past.

Odds are he's somewhere in Pakistan, but if he were as much the supervillian as claimed, wouldn't he know that we were expecting him to be there and hang out, oh, at the French riviera recovering from his extensive cosmetic surgery? Disturbing thoughts.

More disturbing, actually, because it means that since the tape is genuine, and since it claims that there will be repercussions not just in the U.S. but around a good part of the western world as well, and since the credibility of his threats are pretty much hanging by a thread at this point, all signs would seem to point to some sort of coordinated attack on economic centers in about six different countries. Which would be hell to organize, but most of the countries in question don't have security as tight as the U.S. does at this point. I also wonder about those other two incidents in Moscow and Bali, although trying to boil down the Chechan conflict to radical Islam is a simplification that I don't support (nationalism has never exactly gone away, 9/11 notwithstanding) and it's dangerous to try to boil down every incident to one organization.

Looks like the United States military's famous ability to fight two simultaneous wars might well be tested after all.

Ok, I think I'll get back into the swing of things with a topic that I've been dealing with a lot recently: Iraq and weapons inspectors.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 — Iraq said very reluctantly today that it would "deal with" a Security Council resolution obliging it to disarm and allow United Nations weapons inspectors to begin work, but it also denied that it possessed any prohibited weapons.

Most Security Council nations welcomed Baghdad's statement, which came two days before a deadline set in the resolution that the council unanimously approved last week. Iraq's response came in a nine-page letter that its United Nations ambassador, Muhammad al-Douri, delivered today to the office of Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Not overly surprising; Iraq knows that if they don't agree, they'll be giving carte blanche to the Americans to come in with guns blazing. I had thought that perhaps the parliament rejecting the resolution would mean something, but apparently not. Not surprising, if the NY Times is correct in calling it "vintage Hussein stagecraft".

The only trick here is, of course, their denial that they have any weapons. I think that if there is going to be a dealbreaker (or, more cynically, an opening for the U.S. to get their war), it's going to be this. The Iraqis probably aren't going to say that they have weapons, because it'd go against their line for the past few years and possibly have negative reprecussions within Iraq itself. They'll allow the inspectors in, and they probably won't block them from doing their work, but I doubt that they'll give an itemized list of what weapons they might have, either.

Oh, and one cute comment in the latter story:

In Washington, President Bush dismissed the Parliament's action, saying the only opinion that counts in Iraq is Mr. Hussein's. "The Iraqi Parliament is nothing but a rubber stamp for Saddam Hussein," Mr. Bush said. "This guy's a dictator, so we'll have to wait and see what he says."

Considering the cohesion of the Republican party and their newfound control of Congress (and their obligation to Bush for leveraging his popularity in getting it for them), that "rubber stamp" remark pretty accurately describes what the U.S. is in for, too.

Unless, of course, the Bush administration is dumb enough to set one Republican faction against another. Therein lies the question, doesn't it?

Well, I'm back. I finally got the computer fixed. Had a new motherboard and CPU put in, and it's now up and running. I'm not quite sure if I'm happy with the particular motherboard and CPU combination in question, but it was inexpensive and will serve my purposes for now. (For the record, it was an ECS K7SEM with what the startup identifies as an Athlon XP 1200 but which I have been led to understand is actually a Duron of some sort.)

So, in other words, I'm back. I'm still busy so updating might still be infrequent compared to, say, August... but at least I have access at this point.

I've got one word to describe everything that's gone on recently....

Yeep.

Personal yeep: it wasn't just the power supply. Actually, what the other problem was was in doubt for a while... originally it was supposedly a problem with the head on the hard drive, and then the installation of a new hard drive and replication of the same problem on the new drive showed that it was actually a problem with the motherboard, specifically the drive controller. Best guess is that the power supply decided to take the motherboard with it. Thanks to the age of the motherboard, it's almost impossible to find, which means that I'm kind of upgrading against my will. Ah well, mobos and CPUs aren't actually that expensive nowadays compared to how it was, say, five years ago. Not as much drive to upgrade nowadays, either, but when you need to replace it anyway...

As for the election: Yeep. No, I wasn't expecting that... I don't think anyone was, not really. I personally lean towards the "the Bush campaigning drive pushed them over the top" and "the DLC tactics were dismal failures" schools of thought on this one, as well as the theory that the Democratic base stayed home because the Dems hadn't adequately distinguished themselves. In some respects, though, I think this will be a good thing for the party in the long run, because (just like the Republicans when Gingrich took the reigns) they'll have to take a long, hard look at themselves, their party, how they're seen by the public and the media, and what distinguishes them from the Republicans. Does this mean that they have to move hard left? Not necessarily... what they might need to do is redefine exactly what "left" is, and find a common issue to coalesce around, just like the right did with the tax issue.

Also, I'm expecting the divisions in the Republican party to start showing more than they had before. The Republicans were united around two ideas: to gain power, and to lower taxes. Outside of those two issues, though, there are divisions in the party same as always, and there's definitely going to be conflict over exactly whose agenda is going to be prioritized and how conflicts between agendas will be resolved. The social conservatives are going to look at this as their opportunity to push through their agenda, and the fiscal conservatives/quasi-libertarians may go along with that for a while, but will eventually balk when the religious conservatives start hemming in their cherished freedoms. The neo-conservatives will likely have a reckoning to deal with as well, because their single-minded focus on fighting the left and gaining power isn't going to mean anything when the left is out in the wilderness and the power is theirs. Especially if things start going wrong and they have nobody to blame but themselves.

And, yes, I expect that to be the case.

So, I should be up and running on tuesday. I'll start updating more then. Oh, and before I forget, in case I didn't mention it before: I've noticed by my tracking page that Tapped has linked to me and that a fair number of people are following that link. So I'll just thank Tapped for looking past their loathing of the template and seeing fit to linking to my site, and assure these new readers that this is not the normal update schedule. (Plus, I've been getting weird errors with Blogger, but I won't worry about those right now.)

Well, I'm back... for another quick post, at least. The computer problems that have been plaguing me should be solved pretty soon, and that'll be quite welcome... although it looks like it'll be after the election, which means that any plans I might have had for commenting on the election on this site are scuttled. Ah well.

Well, except maybe for commenting on the whole Wellstone funereal fiasco. Personally, I wasn't overly surprised by it, nor was I especially shocked or appalled by it either, although I can see why some people might (and don't really blame the fiercely independent Ventura for not being happy about it, either). Thing is, it's pretty damned obvious that all the manufactured outrage over this issue had precious little to do with the actual event and everything to do with which party the progeny in question were stumping for, so it can be reasonably put aside, I think. My personal take on that race is that Mondale will take it, BTW... the media reports I've read about it seem to imply that the Democrats are doing a good job of managing the switchover, and although I do question whether the debate on Monday will really be that useful for the Mondale campaign it's honestly running too late in the election to make a big difference.

Personally, the race I'm watching is McBride/Bush, with an eye on how the Haitian refugee issue is going to affect Haitian expatriate turnout. That could be a big boost for McBride, and the timing for that boost is huge. If McBride gets this seat, it'll be a big black mark on the Bush administration itself, and open up a lot of possibilities for the Democrats in Florida, which will likely be as important in 2004 as it was in 2000.

Anyway, thanks again to all of those who have sent their support. When I get things back to normal, rest assured the posting volume will go up to match. I might even take a crack at SDB's "mistakes don't matter" bit from around a month back, considering that I (to my very great surprise) found my personal correspondence ending up on his site. Yeah, it's an older piece, but it's an important point, one I want to address.

So until then, get out and vote on Tuesday, dammit.