Tuesday Open Thread
The news: Rice says Iran is the biggest threat in the Middle East.
Chief Justice Roberts is fully recovered after experiencing his second seizure at his vacation home.
A corruption scandal deepens as the FBI and IRS search the home of Sen. Stevens (R-AK).
Corruption runs rampant in the Iraqi government .
Tuesday takes its name from the Old English 'Twisday' which stems from the Nordic god of war, Tyr
. How come we have so many pagan names for our days?
Submitted by Specter on Tue, 2007-07-31 08:15
Tags:
Comments :
Here we go again....
"Rice says Iran is the biggest threat in the Middle East."
Trial balloon, maybe?
Reading between the lines of the neo-con manifestos these past years, you can see that Iran has been the target all along. Iraq was just a stepping-stone, albeit an important one.
Let's just run out the clock on this corrupt, neo-con infested administration before they can do more harm.
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” --- Albert Einstein
Small problem
The US has no allies that care to go to war with Iran, and in spite of all the rhetoric our military IS stretched to the breaking point.
After the last six years, has it dawned on folks that maybe the rest of the world is not that interested in seeing Bush/Cheney Doctrine as the ideology that is held up as the model of the free world. ONly if you like bribes, corruption, living without electricity and governments that don't work.
Be on the look out for the coming propaganda blitz.
Did Iraq leadership just take the money and run?
It is the economy, stupid.
at least...
at least this is nominally factual. Iran physically is a pretty large country and it is hostile to us. It is also large in the sense of being geopolitically powerful and strategically located to interfere with our interests.
But what it does not seem to be is an imminent threat. Nor an intractable one. Nor a monolithic one.
That is to say, they don't seem on the verge of attacking us, nor do they seem determined to attack us regardless of our actions, nor are they unified internally.
We have plenty of options with Iran. Our best, as usual, is simply to disengage from the testoterone show and let their internal pressures to become more moderate win the day for us. We can resolve the problem with Iran without lifting a finger. It just requires us to back off and "chillax."
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
US rhetoric
radicalizes the Iranian citizentry that USED to be more pro-American to be more anti-American.
It is the economy, stupid.
Very true
The best way to reduce internal tensions is to have a belligerent external enemy. There's a reason bush had 90% approval ratings immediately after 9/11. They have nothing to do with his actual performance which was, frankly and unsurprisingly, incompetent. America was attacked from outside and we ralied around the centralized leadership. Same thing happens in Iran when they are threatened by us.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Durbin at redstate
Senator Durbin has posted at Redstate on the topic of government promotion of broadband in America. This is most remarkable because durbin is a democratic senator widely reviled by redstaters.
he says:
thread
It's an impressive experiment. To their credit Redstate is taking some pains to be cordial to the man they routinely vilify. Their comments in the thread are on topic although shortsighted with their usual insitance that marketss which are proven not to work are the only things that can work. Still it's gone better than I would have thought. I hope that the experiment becomes the first of many.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Cool!
Maybe the winds are changing!
It is the economy, stupid.
that is
a pretty cool link. Thanks man. What I find amusing is there is less and less dkos participation by the various Dem reps. The self-destruction being served there by the likes of Mike Stark is not helping.
But yeah, Sen. Durbin's post is a good step in the right direction, even if I don't agree with the thrust of it.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
I've been following the work and comments
of several of Daily Kos's more frothy-at-the-mouth posters. I actually got nauseous last night reading their passionate statements. I'm not kidding....I really did get nauseous.
Mind you, I did next to nothing in the way of posting. I just observed...rolling eyes, rubbing my temples, shaking my head. Sick. Some of these strident folks are so hopelessly misinformed (I'm talking about matters that go beyond opinion....they may as well be arguing that the world really is flat) that even some of their follow kossacks, who I tend to disagree with on many matters, were attacking them with simple level-headed knock-downs. I found myself cheering on the likes of Mia Dolan at times.
The aggregate lunacy and belligerent/TR-happy tone of many of these posters is simply bad news for DKos.
Markos, a pretty reasonable guy in most respects, cannot possibly like what he sees and I hope he sees it.
RS is a bit different. The discomfort I get from there is more along the lines of an image of being in a cold debate room with a bunch of stuffy, stubborn old men in suits who don't give an inch very much on some basic articles of faith.
They have some Nut Jobs and Xenophobes that are thoroughly frustrating to communicate with but it doesn't descend into the infantile, spit-flying red-faced, feet stamping with a baseball bat-ranting that some of the more vocal and thoroughly ignorant posters at Kos have turned into a dark art.
Mind you, I have nothing against Markos and many of the thoughtful contributors at DailyKos. But you are right, the tone of the site is starting to become an embarrassment for the many thoughtful and level-headed people who share the cause.
I read a lot of thoughtful work from the Left and always have...much more than I may lead on. I find a lot of it to be worth reading regularly and considering on the merits even though I don't always agree. But at least it's real, sensible discussion that makes you scratch your chin and you gaze across the room.
My problem with both Dkos and redstate
is just how partisan they are. That is to say they instituionally adhere to a position and not the truth, both sites can and do remove those who post uncomfortable truths.
At redstate this is accomplished by moderators who seem positively gleeful in their bullying. It never seems to occur to say Moe Lane to approach a person with a difference of perspective with anything but utter glee at being able to threaten them. He's famous for "assigning" essays that people have to write to be allowed to post to the site, as if he were the teacher with all the answers in the back of the book. It's an arrogance that is pretty disgusting as well as being self defeating. Redstate has what they refer to as "knownfacts" things commonly believed by the other side to be true when they ar factually false. Some of the things they call KFs they are right about, many they are wrong about. Worse they have a huge number of their own KFs which poison their reasoning but they are so vigorous in their attempts to excommunicate others that these flawed assumptions fester.
It is a textbook case of what happens when you limit the variety of perspectives you listen to.
Kos by virtue of being so much larger does a little better, but not a whole lot. Their problem is more in the manner of a lord of the flies style group think than an authoritarian police state (RS). In some ways the two sites perfectly exempify the worst aspects of the two parties, RS is the tyranny of the minority, a rigid authoritarian site that controls inputs through the banishment of heretics. Dkos is the tyranny of the majority with mobs of like minded individuals hounding those with unpopular views to try and create conformity through social pressure.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
well put.
Moe Lane is a bully and proud of it. I have directly challenged him on few instances of ban threats. In his response, he's forceful, cold and totally arrogant. I don't push him because I don't want to get into an endless debate with someone who holds a button to the trap door ala Jabba the Hutt and who can never seem to allow for a friendly difference of opinion when it threatens his neo-con POV.
I got so much grief once because I mentionned in passing that I voted for Kerry on the grounds of wanting divided government and some new direction in Iraq....this was all in the context of arguing with them about tax policy and spending. I just left for the day. It got so bad that they couldn't get over my vote which I thought was rather innocuous in light of the crux of the debate.
That said, my disagreements with RSers on matters of immigration, religion, foreign policy and some aspects of fiscal and monetary policy...not to mention an unhealthy hatred of all Democrats is at least met by rank and file posters with debate that is usually stern, a bit heated and annoying but seldom infantile and bratty.
Kos is different in that you can get harrassed and bombarded with sheer, ignorant stupidity that passes for reality. Troll Police are happy to TR people others on matters that do not fall into the FAQ guide lines....yet they stretch its intent in a maniacal and paranoid fashion to intimidate people for being objective. People get TR'd as GOP trolls for stating that they, hypothetically and within a certain, would prefer some GOP candidates to certain Dem ones...usually Hillary. The context is of course that there are solid Dem majorities in both houses. Such ideas get pounced upon and TR'd as promoting of the GOP.
Way too trigger happy for my tastes.
Not sure that's accurate -
Kerry, Slaughter, Harkin, Kennedy, Stark, and Feingold have all posted within the last week or two. There used to be a more robust participation, but that fell off years ago - a couple of politicians (*cough, cough, Obama) didn't take well to criticism there. I can understand if politicians don't think it's their cup of tea, but I think he had unreasonable expectations given the kind of setup there.
And since all the major presidential candidates are going to be at the dkos meetup this week, I think it's a little early to argue that dkos is self-destructing.
But I agree with you on Mike Stark, and I'm happy there's an anti-Mike Stark diary that shot above his on the rec list and has stayed there. The guy's a self-aggrandizing tool.
(update: and Biden posted today, too)
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Good on Senator Durbin
Good showing all things considered by the Redstaters too, I thought. Sad to say that I doubt that Kossacks would have handled themselves with as much class if Trent Lott orLindsey Graham posted on the FP of DK...
Too bad he didn't post on Swords Crossed! Some day, perhaps...
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I have to agree.
Good on RS for (mostly) treating the Senator respectfully. Dkos has a problem with rowdiness, which can be fun at some times, and annoying at others.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
mainly annoying
my deep seeded disagreements with the RSers aside, I find discussion there to be much more civilized than DKos. Not sure if it's because the average poster is older or what.
Eh, I think you'd be surprised.
Average poster age at dkos is in the 40s, if I'm not mistaken. Like all things, the line between "fun rowdiness" and "annoying rowdiness" depends on whether you're in line with it. I've had good times over there, and I've had to back off in others. I'd imagine people at larger conservative sites, like LGF, have the same dynamic going.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
oh yeah and
Murdoch's News Corp clinches the deal for WSJ.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Cool.
The problem with the WSJ has always been that they have the most asinine editorial staff who are given false legitimacy by being associated (in name) with a first rate news staff. Murdoch will change the latter making the former irrelevant.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
It seems that right-wing Republican support for random searching
and seizure on people indiscriminately just because they're suspect in a small way has begun to backfire on the rightwing Republicans. What's interesting is the fact that many, if not most of them, fail to realize that if one can slap another person down, they too, can be slapped down. Moreover, many of these people who support the indiscriminate search and seizure on ordinary citizens are the first to complain...albeit rather bitterly....when it finally falls on the own heads. Rather ironic, but true.
Is there a specific story
this is connected to?
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I would guess this was about Ted Stevens.... n/t
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” --- Albert Einstein
Next installment
of my literature series is up: Carson McCullers
. Low turnout this time around, but that's bound to happen when I'm not covering literary superstars. Still, that's part of my point; I want to mix up the very well known with the lesser read, and hopefully make a few converts to the latter along the way.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Excellent!
You arouse one's desire to read with this series.
Thanks so much.
It is the economy, stupid.
Hey purpleface, if you're lurking, check this out...
"Mystic Rhythms, the Philosophical Vision of Rush"
Paperback, and less than $15.
The average reviewer gave it 3 out of 5 stars.
I give it about 3.5. I disagree with the author in a lot of areas, but even still.. the discussions are thought provoking.
...especially for us 2%-ers.
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” --- Albert Einstein
Thanks for the link
I must add this to my library.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran