So Michael Totten, raging right-winger that he is, goes out and contributes to a website called DonkElephant, which is trying to appeal to centrists.
The reward for setting up said website? A giant shit sandwich.
Everyone knows there are known facts, and you are only allowed to subscribe to the ones that come to you via email from the GOP or the ones you pick up at Talking Points Memo. Any deviation from said talking points on either side, and you are a heretic.
I see it here in the comments. There is only one set of ‘known facts’ allowed, and those are determined by your party affiliation. You have your choice between the two constructs:
1.) Karl Rove and Republicans are the devil incarnate, worse than Aids, nuclear war, syphillis, puppy-blending, Richard Nixon, and Charles Manson all wrapped up in one, and he and Republicans most certainly have done everything they have been accused of and more.
2.) Howard Dean and the Democrats are the devil incarnate, less patriotic than Aldrich Ames, the Rosenbergs and Al Gore, and most certainly just saying things because they hate America.
Deviate slightly from the first set of known facts, and you are just parroting GOP talking points. Be warned- you will get swamped with sanctimonious emails and comments claiming that you are a liar and that people are ‘saddened’ that you have ‘sunk to this level,’ merely ‘reciting GOP talking points.’
Deviate slightly from the second set of known facts, and you are an enabler, an adherent to the culture of death, you are unpatriotic, you ‘don’t get it,’ and you hate America.
I am tired of both sets of ‘known facts,’ and I am tired of being nice and being fair to people who are so rigidly dogmatic about their own narrow worldview that nothing other than the party line is acceptable discourse.
*** Update ***
And proving that sanctimony comes at the expense of recognizing irony, P. Lukasiak writes in the comments:
This “both sides are to blame equally” is just more GOP talking points. They simply aren’t — the Bush White House has pursued a strategy of demonizing its enemies, and anyone who is a critic is an enemy.
Once again, John is recycling GOP talking points, and he doesn’t even know it.
Where would the world be without non-partisan straight shooters like Lukasiak? Democrats good. Grunt. Republicans bad. Grunt.
And how deep-rooted are the GOP talking points? So far that they have taken hold with 8 Democratic Senators and poor deluded Bob Somersby at the Daily Howler:
Why did Wilson turn out to be wrong on this matter? Why didn
db
Damn straight!
From now on I am only going to parrot Ballon Juice Talking Points!
Tim F
AIDS is an acronym, unless you mean marital aids. I happen to like those.
Save some spleen for the pedantic!
KC
?
Chris
Amen!
SomeCallMeTim
(NB: I haven’t visited the ref’d cite.)Gimme a break, John. This is precisely the BS “split-the-difference” argument that the press makes when it writes crap stories. It’s like saying (massive hyperbole! alert) the right-right wing wants African Americans to be slaves, the Dems want equal rights for African Americans, and so the centrist position is for segregation. It might be methodologically true, but it’s vacuous as hell.
The central issue splitting the parties is Iraq. Five years ago, you would have said that the GHWB group represented Republican centrists. Guess which side of the pro/anti Iraq war his guys lined up on? Taxes? We didn’t call supply-side economics “voodoo economics.”
The anti-Iraq Dems are the moderate Republicans (see, e.g., Dean’s positions). If we’re distrustful of people to the right of us who claim to be centrists, it’s because our memories extend back further than 10 years.
Look at your site. As you’ve acknowledged the possibility (NOT the actuality) that Dems might have some reasonable points, your site has been flooded with Dem readers. Do you feel like you’re in the Dem camp? Do your commenters in general say things like “U R EVIL”? No.
We’re in the right, here, John, on the vast majority of issues. Why should we pretend different?
The Commissar
Aren’t you deviating from known facts here?
John Cole
Somecallmetim- Bullshit. I like having lots of Democrats reading, but the only time you agree with me is when I am bashing the GOP (which, as of late, given the perfidy of the ruling party, has been frequent). Any time I disagree with the established story that you and Democrats agree to, and I am a liar, full of shit, reciting GOP talking points, etc.
I think the Democrats are right on a number of issues- but not all. And once again, look at your slavery analogy- Your side, all good. Other side, all bad. Not agreeing with everything your side says- just a degree of bad. Rather than disproving my point, you just made it for me.
ppGaz
Well, the “known facts” are just wallpaper. It’s the structure that’s important. One way to sidestep the churn is to focus on underlying and structural issues rather than on the superficial, popular ones.
The press won’t do that, especially the press that relies on MSM for distribution. It’s not conducive to subscriptions and ratings.
What’s the blogosphere’s excuse?
(I ask only in the most loving and nurturing way, of course.)
(Refrain from pointing out to me that “blogosphere” is a gross generality. I know that. Let’s say we focus on the 5-10% of it that has a serious interest in improving the nature of the dialogue).
rreay
Not quite true. I agreed with you when you said Twilight Samurai was a good movie.
Mike S
I am tired of both sets of ‘known facts,’ and I am tired of being nice and being fair to people who are so rigidly dogmatic about their own narrow worldview that nothing other than the party line is acceptable discourse.
I find myself falling into the Democratic side of this far more frequently than I would like. Mostly it’s out of anger at the loudest voices of the GOP, like Hannity/Rush, that continually call me and my party traitors and America haters because I/we oppose this administration. It gets hard to remember that these are just the loudest and not neccessarily indicative of all Republicans. Of course some of the comments I read from people I won’t name just reinforce my anger.
A while back, in a thread at dKos, someone was saying that anybody that was a Republican was just plain evil. I told him not to use such a broad brush because we all know people that are good people in the GOP. That includes for me, my brother, step father and a large number of my close personal friends. He agreed that he had used too large a brush but someone else responded that anyone who remained in the GOP after watching what the Bush admin has done was evil. I again reiterated that he was talking about my family and friends and I didn’t appreciate it. A flame war ensued as he continually called them evil.
I’m really tired of this but I don’t see an end in sight. Until we get prominant people calling out the biggest haters with the biggest megaphones we are doomed to continue this path.
Andrew J. Lazarus
That’s hard to tell, since the last time it happened was in February.
I think Tim makes one good point: neither “truth” nor the wisest policy necessarily lies midway between two extremes—one of the extremes might be correct. And I’ll make another one: it’s impossible, reading blogs like LGF and Red State, not to mention Ann Coulter’s very book titles, to take seriously Michael Totten’s one-sided complaints. The GOP has thrived by making it exciting to ridicule liberals, Democrats, and liberalism. If he isn’t getting mirror-image swill from Republicans, it truly does say something about where is has staked himself.
prob
John Cole, I couldn’t agree with you more. A lot of folks seem to enjoy throwing out baseless accusations and engaging in pointless and nasty name-calling. I am not totally immune to “bashing” others of opposing viewpoints, but I have promised myself to work on that habit. It’s not easy, though…sometimes you try and engage someone is a logical way…perhaps you simply point out an obvious falsehood…and the next thing you know you are being called “A lying Liberal scum-bag”…and the natural instinct is to fire back on that person in kind. I had a “discussion” like that in my first attempt at discussion here and got drawn into that stupid little game a bit…but I think I mostly kept my most extreme anger in check…I tried to answer with logic and tact…but was still called names…so I gave up…I respect your points of view, John, even though some of them differ from my own. Anyway, I thought you might relate to something I wrote and posted on a parody website (yes, I write parodies). I’m posting it here a little reluctantly, since I write my parodies under my real name. But perhaps it is time for people of good-will and reason to climb out from behind their “anonymous” handles and talk TO each other rather than YELLING AT each other. When I started posting on that parody site I decided to use my own name because I figured if I had something to say that I did not wish associated with my name then perhaps I should be re-thinking my remark instead of flinging it out there unattended. So I stand by what I say; sometimes it means I must look back with more than a little embarrassment, but I don’t think anybody ever died directly from that. Occasionally I might have to clarify or retract…humans that we are we must recognize that we can be mistaken on occasion…Uhh…OH…yeah…my piece is a call for unity that, unfortunately, I fear has little chance of being heeded in the current super-charged atmosphere of vitriol and unreasoning anger. Yeah…I can be wordy at times…so sue me…Here’s the link:
hmmm…not sure that worked…well, I will “copy/paste” the link site address here, too…sorry if I am being repetitious by doing that…here’s the site address of my piece:
http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/bobdylan120.shtml
I hope it provokes a some serious thought and maybe even a little soul-searching for some of the folks who post here.
Thanks,
PRobinson
SomeCallMeTim
John:
1. You’ve got to group likes with likes. If you disagree with us over a fundamental issue (e.g., equal rights for African Americans), of course we’re going to think you’re a nutbar for disagreeing with us. It’s called core principles. If you disagree with us over non-core issues (e.g., Karl Rove is Satan) we’re apt to try and change your mind or even see your point. (E.g., I’ve said elsewhere that I hope Karl gets hammered, but to date I haven’t seen anything that makes me think it would be a great tragedy if he didn’t – contextually, it just wasn’t that bad.)
2. Do you have examples of when we’ve gone bat-shit crazy of late in response to you? (Honest question, not snark.)
3. Is this WordPress?
metalgrid
This is precisely the BS “split-the-difference” argument that the press makes when it writes crap stories. It’s like saying (massive hyperbole! alert) the right-right wing wants African Americans to be slaves, the Dems want equal rights for African Americans, and so the centrist position is for segregation. It might be methodologically true, but it’s vacuous as hell.
Can one not be a centrist with extreme views? If one supports equal rights (score 50 points with dems and score -50 points with republicans), but at the same time doesn’t support wealth redistribution in the name of equality (score -50 points with dems and score 50 points with republicans), the end result would be landing them smack dab in the center since the score evens out.
The GOP has thrived by making it exciting to ridicule liberals, Democrats, and liberalism. If he isn’t getting mirror-image swill from Republicans, it truly does say something about where is has staked himself.
Or it could just support his hypothesis that Republicans are just more inclusive without requiring absolute purity.
neil
Meh. Totten’s post is proof that you can be a centrist and still be shrill and ideological. Not everybody has to like his stupid website, and the fact that two left-wing political humor sites make fun of it does not indict the left wing of American politics on unseriousness.
I seem to recall that during the Iraq war, Totten drank the koolaid and was saying that anyone who didn’t support Bush was probably a pro-Saddam apologist. Small wonder that the left side of the blogosphere isn’t cutting him any slack.
Mr Furious
I didn’t know WordPress came with such a strawman-building upgrade, John.
I have disagreed with you vigorously at times without ever calling you a liar, full of shit or anything else (that stuff is reserved for Darrell towards me and everyone on my side…). I’ve agreed with you much more than not, and at the times when I think you position is wrong, I’ve let you know. But I also realize you’re reasonable, and that i can usually understand where you are coming from. Hopefully the reverse is true.
Certainly the commenters here have gotten into it here, especially of late. But, ironically, you have been more on the side of the Democrats lately than perhaps you and your more rightie cohorts are comfortable with (hence them raising the tenor of their comments to DefCon 2).
I don’t think I (or ppGaz and others) fall in to category 1. And I don’t think you and most of the righties here fall in to category 2. If you did, I never would have been linked over here from Kos (or wherever it was), and I certainly never would have stuck around or elevated this site to must/first-read status.
Go back and read some of the crazy-ass threads over the last week, and honestly evaluate the differing opinions and get back to me whether it’s fair to call it two sides of the same coin.
Mr Furious
Go back and read some of the crazy-ass threads over the last week
That is of course, a rhetorical suggestion. Actually doing that would be akin to gouging out your own eyeballs…
ppGaz
Purity is not it. Parties are about coalitions. Purity is out by definition.
Loyalty is the issue.
What you see, in the parties, today, is what used to be called the Thin Blue Line in the police world. Police are loyal to police (in that worldview).
Same with the parties. You are either for us, or against us. Sound familiar? The whys and the wherefors don’t matter. Truth is political. Politics is all of the truth.
That’s the structural problem. It does little good to sit out here and waaahhh about it like babies. Either put your arms around this reality, or change it.
Steve
There should be an Immutable Internet Law that any time you cite blog commenters to support an argument, you automatically lose. With apologies to Judge Leventhal, it is like looking into a crowd and picking out your enemies.
LaurenceB
There is no good reason why nearly every person who favors abortion rights should also support publically-funded television. Yet they do. There is no underlying core value that causes every person who favors a strong defense to oppose a national health system. Yet they do.
The best explanation I can give for the phenomenon whereby the majority of people so neatly align themselves to the entire set of policies of either one party or the other, is simply that these people have ceased to think for themselves. That is the most logical explanation.
Christie S.
Hey John, have a glass of iced tea on me and take a walk on the calmer side of the street for a while. Buddy, you need a break.
Drop in to a couple of my favorite places: Charging Rino and The Yellow Line
You’ll find a bit more moderate Centrist dialogue there. Quite a bit quieter than your site, but the bloggers are good writers.
srv
Look, the major tipping point of our time is whether the majority of the people in the ME will stand up and be heard against the radical fundamentalists in their midst.
Stop looking over there, and start looking over here.
Moderates have lost control and influence over both parties, and it’s not going to be coming back anytime soon. Stop flailing away at a lost cause and start building a third party for those 14 Senators.
Then you can b***ch slap the parties all you want.
Mike S
Moderates have lost control and influence over both parties,
Not neccessarily true. As much as the Talk Radio wing of the GOP would like to deny it Harry Reid is a centrist. The fact that the Senate Dems elected a pro life dem as their leader shows that they are not controlled by the far left.
vnjagvet
I have picked out this site as one I read regularly and comment on now and then.
I am a 65 year old Vietnam veteran who has worked for the Democratic National Committee, the White House Conferences on Small Business under Presidents Carter and Reagan, the Committee to reelect Wyche Fowler (D. GA). the Committee to reelect Sam Nunn (D. GA). I grew up in Pennsylvania as a pro civil rights Republican. I graduated from a liberal Ivy League Law School.
I am a lawyer(business trials and disputes in private practice). I have worked for large, established law firms, co-founded and built my own firm from 2 to 50 lawyers in four states over 20 years, was a partner in several large lawfirms, and recently “retired” to found a public interest law firm.
I am “conservative” on some issues, like national security, education and business regulation, “liberal” on some issues, like equal opportunity for all and equal access to justice and health care (I believe in safety nets), and “libertarian” on still others.
Frankly, nowadays, both political parties have significant parts of their leaderships that I cannot stomach. Therefore, party loyalty is a thing of the past for me.
As far as philosophy is concerned, my political heroes are Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.
Zell Miller, probably closer then anyone else, captures where I come out on most issues.
What do you guys do with someone like me?
P.S. My cohort probably made a major difference in the last election.
ppGaz
There is nothing I can find to like about the third party idea.
First of all, during the transition, you get goofy, destructive things happening, such as Arnold Schwarzeneger and Tyrone the Terrible, or whatever his name was, up there in Minnesota.
Second, you get a direct hit on the electoral system. This opens the door to more goofiness. An electoral college split three ways? I am getting the vapors already.
Third, the parties of Roosevelt and Goldwater turned into the shit factories we have today. What stops the new party from going in the same direction, once it gets in there?
Fourth, what is the draw? “New ideas?” Politics in this country on the national level is about safety and ponderous change, until something really lousy happens, like Nixon. Or like this president we have now.
When these thugs are out, and Dems return, it will just be a matter of time before they become the new shitheads, and you have to start all over again.
The people would be well off to work within their parties to change them and make them responsive to the realities of a new world.
On one side, you have the Sopranos, Texas Style, and on the other side, Clueless. But the middles of these parties do not have to sit back and let the idiots run the show. Throw them out. It’s a fine old American tradition.
Halffasthero
I had an opinion about this once but I forgot what it was.
Neither party is always right or wrong but, to tell the truth, the cirrent Republican office holders never admit to mistakes and, I believe, will run the country into the ground rather than admit any mistake. Currently, they are on a massivce losing streak where mistakes are concerned. To hear some people here tell it though, they are still walking on water. My closest friends are conservative Republicans and I don’t consider them evil and I am certainly to the left of them. Not to the left of most Democrats but to them, just to be clear.
Mr Furious
Nice point, Mike S. If Reid hadn’t proven to be such an effective leader, I might have written it off as a pure pander. But he has excelled in the role and I attribute his success to a good strategy coupled with a Party open-minded enough to elevate him to the task even though he is against a key platform plank.
Kimmitt
John — this will continue until the media stops rewarding it. The great discovery on the Left in 2004 is that the media has a terrible immune system; if one stamps one’s foot and shouts the same thing, over and over, loud enough, it gets reported as fact. Or at least as he-said she-said. Reporters are aware of this and consider it, for some reason, their duty to be straightforwardly manipulated.
p.lukasiak
John, the fact is that you have drunk the Kool-Aid. You seem to think that the whole “outing of Valerie Plame” thing has something to do with the question of Wilson’s credibility. It doesn’t. Period. Its not about Rove vs Wilson — its about a respected diplomat who has worked for both Republican and Democratic Presidents questioning the administration’s use of intelligence, and the all of effort by the White House to discredit that diplomat to keep his questions from gaining any traction.
So, whenever you criticize or question Wilson and his motives, you are simply repeating GOP talking points designed to distract attention from the fact that “senior administration officials”, in an effort to discredit Wilson, wound up outing not merely Valerie Plame, but everyone from the CIA whose NOC cover included Brewster-Jennings. How that happened is the ONLY issue.
So, drop the “I have doubts about Wilson’s credibility” talking points.
Christie S.
We convince YOU and others like you to run for election to let others hear YOUR ideas. It’s my personal opinion, FWIW, that there are more Americans who gravitate towards your beliefs than there are extremists from either end of the political spectrum.
jmh
To those who keep asking if John has moved to world press. Look at the urls in all the links. If they look something like the following:
…/movabletype/mt-comments.cgi…
then, he is probably still using movabletype.
Jim Dandy
I’m calling bullshit on Sully’s “The right looks for converts” crap. NEITHER side is looking for converts, otherwise they would BOTH tone down the goddamn hysterics and start being reasonable. Both of them are looking for heretics to purge, to prove that they’re “Better XXXs” (be it Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Aetheists, Liberals or Conservatives) than the other side. That’s why I enjoy coming here. Because even when I disagree with the conclusions drawn, I can still understand and appreciate the logical progression that leads to the conclusion, and has never included (to the best of my knowledge) “because I want to fuck Democrats in their ass.”
Sorry about the profanity, but all this damn screaming is giving me a headache.
jim dandy
And the fact that this has devolved into a “Wilson was a liar” “No he wasn’t” “Who cares” thread proves my point. There’s a time and a place…
dagon
um, mr. dandy?
no offense, but when exactly would that time be and where would be the place other than on a thread about partisan demonization on a right leaning political blog?
what i will agree to is enough of this right vs. left crap. i think it’s more of a sanity vs. insanity thing (you can each decide where you fall within that spectrum), but the FACT is that some of us were on top of this plame story since the beginning while others were content to say that it was no big deal, ‘moving on…nothing to see here’, while the media generally agreed.
many would love to use that tactic right now but are unable to as the story clearly has traction. hence, all of these recent calls for reason and a cessession of outrage and vitriol.
sadly, some of us have not earned the right to make such calls.
peace
Bernard Yomtov
There is no underlying core value that causes every person who favors a strong defense to oppose a national health system.
While I take your point, LaurenceB, and think it has merit, this strikes me as a poor example. I favor both a strong defense and a national health system, with both those terms broadly defined. I suspect many others do also.
Of course it’s possible to disagree as to what “strong” means, what policies will produce a strong defense, what resources to devote to the military and how best to use those resources, but taking one side or the other of these disputes does not imply that one prefers a weak defense.
This is related to the problem John discusses. It becomes impossible to discuss the question, “Is military program X a good idea?” in any sensible way. The discussion quickly moves from costs, purposes, usefulness, etc. to political arguments and accusations.
adk46er
Regardless of the topic its impossible to disagree with some one in any blog comment area with-out being called a moron. Partisans aren’t interested in hearing what someone else has to say – they’re convinced they are right and they don’t want to hear other opinions.
jcricket
To be fair, I participated in many a USENET thread way-back-when (pre-internets), and this whole “my way or the highway” attitude was just as prevalent then. It’s Macs vs. PCs, EMACS vs. VI, etc.
I know John’s trying to make a larger point (about political discourse as a whole), but I don’t think blogs (or message boards) are going to escape the hyperbole that’s always existed in online message communities.
They don’t call it Godwin’s Law for nothing.
Back on topic, as others have pointed out, you can be extreme, but correct. Any depiction of Bush as a baby-eating megalomaniac bent on nothing but world-domination is over the top :-) But it’s still quite possible that his administration is guilty of misleading the American public with bad evidence before the war, guilty of outing a NOC, guilty of playing political games with all sorts of science (EPA reports, FDA approvals, etc.), etc.
I don’t think it’s extreme or narrow-minded to assert that the Bush administration is playing fast and loose with science. Call it “rigidly dogmatic”, but how is it a bad thing to I state that scientific reports shouldn’t be altered or watered-down because their outcomes are politically unfavorable?
My ‘known facts’ and ‘narrow worldview’ on that issue are, simply put, reality. The other side’s worldview is, on the other hand, total bullshit. So I reserve the right to consider bullshit and pseudo-science completely unacceptable discourse.
John, please note that although I likely disagree with you about the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson issue, I haven’t called you a traitor, liar, idiot, moron, etc. I haven’t said that your opinion, or summarization of the facts (even when different than mine) are unacceptable, beyond the pale, or even ridiculous.
Jake S.
Couldn’t agree with you more, John. Even as a Democrat, this is why I’ve stopped reading dkos entirely, and now simply skim Atrios on Fridays for the occasional catblogging. And in their places on my daily blogroll have come yourself and the lads over at In The Agora, the two Republican-leaning sites I tend to think of as being in the Sensible Party. (Apologies and credit to Monty Python.)
But Talking Points Memo being the epitome of the Demo political meme? Doubtful. dKos is the liberal equivalent of Micelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and Bill O’Reilly combined. Josh Marshall isn’t even close to as shrill as the Kossacks.
Oh, and yes. I do use an expired email address to keep my in-box from getting flame-bombed. And guess where I started that habit? Kos.
docG
The extreme left vs. the extreme right is a very lucrative cottage industry, and that fact drives much of the current posturing on both sides. Talk radio would consist of Jim Rome and a handful of local jock sniffers without it. The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is constently populated with left wing/right wing screeds. How many millionaire “talking heads” are there in the mainstream media w/o a point of view? The surest way for bloggers to make an impact appears to be pick a right or left position, advocate for it without exception and mercilessly taunt anyone who disagrees. Politics and news are simply commodities subject to promotional manipulation (marketing).
The marketing that works currently is “my side is right and if you don’t agree you are ‘insert vile name here'”. Humiliate the opponent! The Lee Atwater/James Carville/Karl Rove school of politics. Any attempt to see gray instead of black or white is met with severe negativity. Just look at the scat hurricane visited on the U.S. Senators who sought a compromise to the process of getting federal judges through confirmation. Our blog host has dipped his toe into attempts to see strengths and weaknesses on both sides – judge for yourself the consequences.
My solution: I don’t purchase left or right products. I don’t listen to Rush or Air America. I vote for centrist candidates, knowing I probably won’t agree with all their decisions. I recognize the attempts to ‘market’ on both sides. When I make a choice that turns out to be wrong, I acknowledge it and move to more useful position. Wouldn’t kid myself that this will make any real difference in the greater scheme of things, but it is what I can do.
Sojourner
But what do you do when the president of the United States encourages the polarization in this country? There’s absolutely no doubt of the disdain he holds for those who aren’t willing to believe everything he says. I’ve never seen a president so openly disdainful of the people he’s supposed to be leading.
So why anybody is surprised at the result is beyond me.
Kimmitt
Okay, hold on a darn minute. That’s like comparing the guy who stole my bike tires to Ken Lay. I mean, yeah, they engaged in the same basic activity — larceny — but there are orders of magnitude involved here.
Kimmitt
Also, Totten gets made fun of because he’s self-important and not terribly insightful. Kind of the same reason Andrew Sullivan gets made fun of, except that Sully’s figured out how to make a lot more money at it.
If Totten were to fake a coming-out, he’d be on the A list, I’m pretty sure.
vnjagvet
DocG
By Jove, I think you’ve got it. At least for me.
Jess
John,
I think we all share your exasperation to some degree, but it sounds like you’re expecting us to agree with everything you say–is this really the point of a site like this? I’ve gotten increasingly hooked on this site because it’s where the most interesting and evenly balanced conversations are. We need to be able to argue issues from all sides so that we can figure out which ideas are the useful ones. Of course people get silly and uncivil sometimes, but better here than in the street with baseball bats. And really, it’s not so bad here. I’m continually impressed by how often the regular contributers can get past their anger and focus on the issues.
About partisan loyalty; there are those on both sides that choose their reality based on their party loyalty, but there are also many who choose their party (or a particular candidate) based on their best guess as to what reality is. It’s not sensible or fair for you or anyone here to lump the two groups together. In fact, I would guess that most of the regulars here put reality first, and party second. But of course, since we only each of us see a tiny slice of reality, we each have our own take on what reality or truth is. Hence the lively and illuminating debates–more power to them!
So, John dear, have a cold beer and a nice nap and remind yourself why sites like this are so important.
p.lukasiak
This “both sides are to blame equally” is just more GOP talking points. They simply aren’t — the Bush White House has pursued a strategy of demonizing its enemies, and anyone who is a critic is an enemy.
Before having the guts to publicly question Bush’s handling of intelligence, Joseph Wilson’s biggest claim to fame was standing up to Saddam Hussein on behalf of a Republican president. Today this American hero is vilified as a “lying sack of shit” by Bush supporters, and the efforts to discredit Wilson have emanated directly from the White House.
The fact is that Rove has to demonize Bush’s critics, because Bush supporters can’t win an argument based on the facts.
The right is far worse than the left, because it draws equivalences between people no one has ever heard of (like Ward Churchill) and the equally radical people like Limbaugh and Coulter who have extremely high public profiles. (Of course, right wingers always demand that Democratic leaders denounce anyone who goes “too far”, but when was the last time a Republican leader had denounced Limbaugh or Coulter?)
Once again, John is recycling GOP talking points, and he doesn’t even know it.
jim dandy
The time and the place would be in a thread ABOUT Plame/Wilson. I firmly believe Piggly-Wiggly is guilty and should be going to prison, but this thread is about partisan hysterics in general, and to actually try and turn this into “Wilson is a liar”/”No he’s not, Rove’s guilty” proves the point that some people can’t just shut up for a couple of minutes.
And Lukasak–they’re both as bad, but the Republicans are in power now, so they’re just louder.
Don
And people wonder why I get annoyed when I have to correct them to identify myself as an independent.