Again, I am burnt out. Sorry, just not feeling the juices the past two days. If I were going to write about anything, it would probably be this Rick Moran piece in which he asserts that torture is wrong but the left is worse (especially those damned Europeans!), but I just don’t feel like picking on someone on the right who can at least acknowledge torture is wrong. That in and of itself is such a rare and delicate flower that I don’t want to kill it in the process of weeding, and Rick has consistently opposed torture, so he gets a pass even though he just can’t pull the trigger and figure out that the torture party is, in fact, worse than “the left.”
At least I am not doing this.
blackfrancis
how can you be burnt out, living so close to the occupied soutern border?
Dug Jay
That’s really great news from Scott Horton. Meadowbrook should provide the kind of peace and contentment that he needs at this delicate period in his life.
Rick Moran
Fact: 20 million people died as a result of torture, murder, starvation and other deprivations by various communist governments in Eastern Europe since 1917.
Fact: The European left supported this butchery by turning a blind eye to what was happening – even going so far as excusing it from time to time.
Fact: The European left opposed every reasonable and common sense measure for the common defense of the continent – even if it didn’t include America.
Fact: The European left has jumped on our violations of international law with an outcry that is as loud as their enabling Communist terror against the captive peoples of Europe was non-existent.
Only someone deliberately out to make a stupid point about me “blaming the left” could get so incredibly wrong John.
The point isn’t to “blame” anyone. It is to point out the towering hypocrisy of a group – the European left – that has no business passing moral judgements on anyone or anything. They don’t have a moral leg to stand on and you know it but chose instead to deliberately misconstrue and mischaracterize what I wrote – as is your usual practice.
John Cole
You just can’t do it, can you Rick? You just simply can not make the following statement:
“The current administration is responsible for torture, it is and was wrong, and it is and was an outrage.”
Instead, you have to include some sort of qualifier in which you assert, somewhere, at sometime, someone was worse. I am thankful you are not an attorney- “Yes, ladies and gentleman of the jury, my client committed murder. But allow me to point out that my client is no Joseph Stalin, and besides, none of you said anything about Stalin anyway and some of you may have even permitted it.”
Good luck with that. Wrong is wrong, you recognize it, but you just can’t come out and say it. Maybe it is to keep the knuckledraggers in the right-wing blogosphere for beating on you too hard. I don’t know. But, as usual, I agree with you that torture is wrong, and you are probably off penning some hasty and angry screed-like update claiming I am “being unfair and dishonest,” and that somehow, even though I have never tortured anyone nor supported the torture of anyone, in your twisted mind I will become the bigger enemy. It is sad, really.
zmulls
Ooops…foolishly put my news on the stale open thread from yesterday when there was a fresh one coming today!
At the risk of repeating myself, I have a follow-up to my songwriting news last week.
Yesterday I was called personally by the Chairperson of the International Songwriting Competition to say that we won the GRAND PRIZE —out of 15,000 entries. (This is on top of winning First Prize in the Rock/Alt division in a different contest).
My picture is pretty prominent on the Winners Page
If any of you had been at the Happy Rooster in Philadelphia last night you would have gotten a free drink…..
Josh E.
By Moran logic, then, the towering hypocrisy of the American Right means it has no business passing judgments on anyone or anything, due to its defense of American torture. So let’s not hear another word from American conservatives about China, Cuba, or whatever else.
Fact: Moran logic means that nobody can complain about anyone else’s abuse of human rights unless their own hands are clean.
Fact: Moran logic is very useful for torturers and thugs.
Dennis - SGMM
How could those nasty European leftists fail to appreciate that Russia was much better off under the Tsars?
Yeah, the way they bailed on that League of Nations thing was reprehensible. Oh, wait, that was us. Never mind.
John Cole
Sure Abu Ghraib was bad, and sure, things going on in Gitmo are bad, but you have to admit it was better than Saddam’s torture chambers!
/facepalm
It is so depressing watching someone with a good heart like Rick just get boxed in by his pathological hatred of “the left.”
Dork
Can I get this in English, please?
“common sense measure for the common defense of the continent”? Can I haz inturpratur?
cleek
using the sins of Europeans from 90 years ago to smear people speaking out against the sins of the current US government isn’t torture, pe se, but it’s certainly tortured logic.
matt
It makes sense to be bugged by the hypocrisy of the “European left”, but given the circumstances, don’t you think it’s kind of beside the point, or at least an after thought?
It’s like bitching about a mosquito bite while being mauled by a bear.
Some perspective is in order.
blackfrancis
of course it was! them terrerists got it great there, there have 3 squares a day & a roof over their heads! plus they get better healthcare than Ammerucans!
/snark
Punchy
Congrats, Z. Nice pic, although I’d have to say I’m gravitating much more to Natalie Howard….
In terms of pure songwriting, I’ve got to say my favorite is Martin Zellar.
ThymeZone
No surprise that you are burnt out, and reading Rick’s Darrell-esque retort only rubs salt into the wounds.
He is so blinded by his ideology that …
Well, running the blog is a lot of damned work and I recommend that you take a few days and let Tim and Michael carry the load for a little while. Rest up.
Zifnab
Yeah. I do like that logic. After two globally devastating world wars, centered in the heartland of Europe and with the USSR’s massive military – the one that just routed the entire German Army from Moscow to Berlin, virtually unassisted – knocking on Western Europe’s doorstep, the assorted countries of France, England, Spain, Western Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Luxenburg, (I’m missed some, I’m sure), had the absolute gale not to poke the 800 lb gorilla with a stick over their civil rights abuses.
Meanwhile, absolutely no one in Europe was involved in ferreting dissidents or ex-pats out from behind the Iron Curtain.
Wow. Just… wow.
And because Communist Party (the one right wingers regularly have pissed their pants and thrown screaming hissy-fits over since the fucking 1910s) was complicit in the imprisonment and murder of millions upon millions of people, America’s involvement in Iraq is just a little bit better… … … by comparison.
“Well, sure. I fucked the kitten. But I didn’t skull fuck the kitten.”
4tehlulz
Obligatory “Get a brain! Morans” reference
AkaDad
Congrats, zmulls
Moran, Get a brain.
Cyrus
I agree with your basic point, but that analogy seems pretty inaccurate. So, just in case some conservative gets incensed by your comparison, let’s say this: “It’s like bitching about five people being mauled by bears 20 years ago while your neighbor is being mauled by a bear now.”
Zifnab
Just tell me the grand prize was a date with that Jen Foster from “Closer to Nowhere”. :-p
Congrats, man.
AkaDad
4tehlulz
Great minds think alike?
mark
Damn hippie relativists.
Dracula
Damn musicians. This song title doesnt even make any sense. Why not “2 girls, 1 cup size” or “Brownian Lotion”? If it’s gunna be nonsensical, why not make it Weird Al-esque funnyah?
Dennis - SGMM
That would be South Texas. Also, “You Can’t Get There from Here.”
over_educated
So, I still don’t get how this makes torture ok. The European left did not do enough to stop communism, fair enough, but:
1. This was like what, almost a century ago? Most of the folk who are on the left now had nothing to do with those policies. Most progressives are concerned with maintaining human rights in every country now, including former soviet block. I doubt those protesters in San Fran grabbing the olympic torch to stick a finger in China’s eye are left-wingers.
2. Even if the left enabled these things, how does it justify us doing it now? Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys? If one party for whatever reason, be it craven political advantage or noble purpose wants to end our government’s torture don’t we have an obligation to support that stance?
3. Being compared favorably on the torture scale to Saddam seems to be setting the bar pretty damn low.
over_educated
edit: I meant to say RIGHT-wingers.
Cain
Yeah, besides.. that tsunami called Pennsylvania is coming. We’ll have plenty to talk about after that’s over.
cain
John Cole
He also seems to think that it is ok for Americans to protest at the torch relay for the olympics, but mentions nothing about the United States being just as bad to native Americans, so how dare we protest China!
Down this road madness lies.
Timb
John, I suggest asking us for money and then quitting. Join a martial arts club and start wrestling or kicking people or something.
I can tell from other sites that retirement and arguing with the D&D crowd really recharges the batteries!
Dug Jay
And it is obvious that you have reached the end of that road, John.
Dennis - SGMM
Isn’t there something surreal and obscene in the wingers discussion of torture? Here they are, defining methods; “short of organ failure,” “the president can authorize the pouring of caustics and acids on to the skin of detainees,” or the amount of it; “We torture less than Saddam did.” There’s no questioning of the grotesque fact that torture has become acceptable, that in embracing it to any degree whatsoever we have lowered ourselves to the same moral plain occupied by those whom we assert we despise.
“The bayoneting of babies is authorized but raising them into the air to watch them writhe is strictly forbidden.”
John Cole
Yeah, but Stalin did worse and the European left didn’t do enough to stop him.
Krista
FACT: Most of the European left who were in a position to act (or not act) in the early 20th century are now either dead or doddering. Please enlighten us as to what the hell they have to do with the fact that your country now tortures people.
FACT: Stating that the current European left should shut the fuck up, due to political positions held by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, is utterly nonsensical. Today’s Europeans are no more responsible for the actions of the Europeans in 1917 than you are responsible for the internment of the Japanese in WWII. Should you not be allowed to state your opinion on racial profiling, due to the fact that Americans in 1942 stood by and let the internment happen?
FACT: Every country has ugliness in its history. Are the worlds’ citizens completely forbidden from speaking up against an injustice that another country is perpetuating, if their own country has every been guilty of a similar injustice? In other words, if the people of Germany had spoken up to try to help the people of Rwanda during the genocide there, would you have told them that they had absolutely no right to speak, because of what Hitler did?
Krista
Ugh…..”ever been guilty”, not “every been guilty”. I can see why you don’t have an edit feature, John, but sometimes it’s a royal pain in the hole.
Jen
I don’t think the right has a Glennzilla, i.e. someone who has his ideology, but a significant part of that ideology consists of defending the principles the United States is supposed to stand for, even for people we disagree with. Find me the righty blogger equivalent of this and I’ll take it back.
BTW, Krista, got your message about the cumin. I have about 4 jars of cumin because for some reason someone in our beach group buys it at the beach every year and I always end up cleaning up and getting all the spices, toilet paper, and paper towels. ANYWAY, I found some “veggie chili mix” that had the veggie protein and a buncha spices in it in the clearance section for $1. Score!
JWeidner
Here I had typed out a pithy little rejoinder about how Rick must also be a supporter of reparations payments to African American citizens as apologies for our ancestors’ acceptance of slavery.
Then I realized, this is just stupid. Nothing is going to change his mind.
Jen
Okay, belaboring the point, note that Greenwald makes his point about so-called hate speech laws, then says:
He does not say, “sure, it’s bad that Canadian wingnuts are getting prosecuted for their opinions, but it’s not NEARLY as bad as what they want to do to lefties!” (or, it’s not NEARLY as bad as what they did to lefties 87 years ago!)
It’s not really that hard. There are principles about human rights which should be inviolate, and it is our responsibility to object to those violations without jockeying for political position on the Evil Scale at the same time.
rawshark
Communists were left wing authoritarians, not liberals so it’s not a problem for liberals to oppose torture. Just as it’s not a problem for most right wingers to stand up and say that although the administration is right wing, they torture and therefore are not representative of the american right. The problem is that the right wing in america right now is a cult. You can’t speak out about anything they do without being branded as an outcast and Rick’s clearly just not as secure as JC is because Rick can’t speak without qualifying his remarks. Don’t want those whispers started do ya, Rick?
Wilfred
That sums up the entire thread, as well as blogging in general.
Bedlam
Hear Hear to Zifnab & Krista.
My Missus is from Lithuania, a country only released from Russia in 1990. She lived under Communist rule, so I have very close understanding of the damage of Communism on a personal level.
This mans bile is disgusting, and the fact that he managed to scrape enough humanity to condemn torture is merely a pass for him to claim a place in society. Barely.
rawshark
It doesn’t. It makes the argument go away. It’s two wrongs make a right. You can’t talk because you’re side does it too. Arguing with a right winger is like arguing with a frightening well educated five year old girl. Its avoidance. And the whole time the avoidance is going on the torture or whatever action they are taking (US attorney firings) keep on keeping on.
Rick Taylor
Honestly, maybe we should be focusing more on where we agree than disagree? Where the hell do we go next? I honestly have no idea. If bringing up left wing hypocrisy helps Rick Moran deal with the issue, I can live with that. Especially since he’s running a highly conservative blog, and dealing with the thankless job of trying to explain to other conservatives why administration law breaking is bad; maybe doing that makes the bitter pill going down easier. Yes it’s better when facing into what one has done to avoid indulging in, well so and so did something bad too, but this is what it takes for conservatives to face into the issue, I can live with it. We need all the people we can for this.
4tehlulz
Fixed. You know it’s true.
cleek
so he’s the Mary Poppins of the right.
A spoonful of non-sequitur
helps the medicine go down
the sad truth go down
the sad truth go down
Oh a spoonful of non-sequitur
helps the medicine go down
in the most delightful way
Punchy
Not sure Canada does. Dudley Dooright? Perhaps. Bob & Doug MacKenzie? Maybe. Walleye? Certainly not.
Ice Road Truckers? DING DING DING!
cleek
Adam Yoshida
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
There. Fixed.
Jen
Possibly of interest to cleek, RSA, pb —
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
FACT: The American right has been the prime supporter of the first fascist organization in the world– the KKK.
FACT: The American right has been a long time apologist for a regime responsible for genocide– the Confederate States of America.
FACT: Moran is just another weazel-dicked little right-wing shit-for-brains who can only spout his sycophantic bullshit because he cannot let himself be reminded that HIS ideological antecedents were responsible for more death and bloodshed in America than the “European left” could have conceived.
Fuck him.
Dennis - SGMM
Well, there was the French and Indian War.
[Shakes fist at Quebec]
cleek
Sunday, April 27 ?
crap!
that’s the last day of MerleFest. i will be schlepping my hungover self back to the triangle that day.
4tehlulz
Don’t say that the indigenous peoples up there. You will get a beatdown.
Rick Taylor
Meanwhile, there’s good news. I’m just reading about Bilal Hussein, a Pulitzer prize winning photographer for the AP our military has imprisoned since April 2006 without charge (we’re not looking very different that the despotic regimes we’re denouncing here). It looks like an Iraqi court has ordered his release under an amnesty law. It’s certainly ironic that the Iraqi are directing Americans respect an AP photographer’s right. It will be interesting to see if we comply. So far we’re saying there’s a UN directive that allows us to keep him in custody if we believe he’s a security risk; so much for respecting Iraqi sovereignty. Glenn Greenwald has more background.
Zifnab
Right. Except we all know where Moran will be in a week. He’ll be whining and bitching about how horrible Barack Obama would be as President and how Reverend Wright would kill a bunch of white people just as fast as we killed a bunch of brown people and how liberals kill 40 million babies every year with abortion, so conservatives should get to kill as many people as they want to balance it all out.
And then Rick will run off and vote for Vitter and Boehner and McCain in ’08, because it’s the moral thing to do.
It’s like listening to some 1940s German explain why he won’t be voting for the Weimer Candidate in next year’s election.
Jon H
John,
Any comment on this decidedly non-political story from WV?
I’m guessing social security fraud.
Jen
I’ll be at Merlefest, too, Fri – Sun. but the debate’s at 8. North Wilkesboro’s what, about 3 – 31/2 hours from here? You can do it.
Maybe you’ll see me, I’m taking my pink Obama t-shirt. N.B. to anyone ordering these, they run a hair small.
libarbarian
FACT:
Rick Moran is just another right winger who gets his panties in a bunch if you blame him for his biological ancestors participation in slavery and the conquest of America from the Native, but has no problem blaming leftists born in the 60s and 70s for what leftists, not even related by blood, did in the 20s and 30s.
What a DOUCHE!
Rick Taylor
How come my last comment that begins “Meanwhile there’s good news” is marked “Your comment is awaiting moderation”? Have I developed a reputation as an infamous trouble-maker? :) Or is this just something that happens at random to everyone? Or maybe it flags anything with too many links? And how does it even know I’m me, seeing as there doesn’t seem to be a login procedure of any sort?
cleek
i guess i’ll wait and see if there’s any chance at all of getting in (only 2000 seats). then i’ll worry about making it back in time…
rawshark
The dead walk the earth…..and rummage through your closets.
Jen
If I get in, cleek, I’ll “livecomment” it to BJ. :)
John Cole
Don’t get your panties in a bunch. All comments with multiple hyperlinks automatically go to the spam filter. While you think your links are important, the spam filter thinks they are to penis enlargement or viagra sites. I have to go along and manually moderate multiple link comments out of the spam filter when I can.
Rick Taylor
John, the smiley face is supposed to be a signal not to take what I’m saying too seriously. I was just curious.
Jen
I have also learned that sockpuppeting “Larry Craig” just to make a cheap and obvious joke sends you to the spam filter as well. Just not worth it.
Dennis - SGMM
You filter out links to penis enlargement and viagra sites? So, penis enlargement + viagra + hot Russian teens is dead out then. Oh, the humanity!
Dug Jay
Ivan Ivanovich Renko – TenguPhule’s dumber brother, I assume?
les
Problem is, “this is what it takes” for conservatives to magic the issue away. “Somebody somewhere sometime did something worse, so there is no issue!!! USA, USA!!
binzinerator
Moran’s “But Johnny did it too!” argument is a foolish and disgusting attempt to excuse the torture committed by the Bush government. He attempts to provide a defense for the indefensible, a rationalization for what must not be rationalized away.
By doing this Moran seeks to weaken the moral and humanitarian objections to these war crimes. It is a strategy to decriminalize torture.
Moran is an enabler of torture. He is helping to shield from accountability those who have committed war crimes, and by doing so he is helping to make it possible for those war crimes to continue.
This man knows torture is wrong, and it is that knowledge that makes such enablers as culpable or perhaps even more so than the torturers themselves.
The man is a fool and worse.
cleek
i’ll keep an eye out.
maybe you’ll see me: i’ll be the drunk one.
Rick Taylor
I’ll just second Thymezone’s comment, John. Take a break if you need to for the sake of your sanity, John. It’s been intense the last few weeks. We’ll survive, somehow.
Jen
I’ll be the white one.
Krista
Hey, you could always get one of us to guest-blog for you for a few days. (And no, I’m not nominating myself, as I’m just not familiar enough with U.S. politics and would only open myself up to great ridicule. If you want a ton of BSG posts, though, I’m your girl.)
John Cole
I just don’t have anything I want to talk about, really.
Xenos
Scott Horton just shut down the No Comment blog.
He put an immense amount of work into it, though… it is enough to discuss poetry on occasion, but untranslated German and Greek?
Xenos
D’oh! should have checked the last link.
Don’t ask me to blog, I still can’t manage commenting on occasion without making a fool of myself.
Paul L.
Why no outrage from the “reproductive rights”/choice crowd?
Embattled Man in Texas Frozen Embryo Case Is Finally Free of Ex’s Legal Harassment
Oh right, men do not have “reproductive rights”.
rawshark
Penguins. Crosby, Sidney.
Punchy
Is the logical inference here that penis enlargement is not important? Perhaps the reason John is currently sans easy hoo-hah is because of this very spam filter.
Krista
Last time I checked, John doesn’t really blog about gender issues. Thus the lack of outrage. Besides, shouldn’t you be over trolling at Broadsheet?
brendancalling
I understand blog burn-out. I’ve been burnt for months.
I find photoblogs help keep things going, especially when I’m working in the garden or having time with my kid.
Also, non-political blogging can be refreshing.
Calouste
Btw, Mr. Moran, please define “European left” for us.
rawshark
The defintion is that they are two words that cause an uncomfortable feeling in the minds of real americans.
Don
Why do you hate America’s penises?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
No, just the negro with the really big dick in yo mama’s mouth.
Beyotch.
Tax Analyst
Black Penis Envy Syndrome (BPES), the scourge of White America.
Theory: Obama could win the nomination & the Presidency in a landslide if he can convince Americans that his penis is not abnormally large – without actually publicly displaying it.
So now the question dangles before us: How to hammer this point home?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
OBAMA– He’s half white, so his dick ain’t that big!
Tax Analyst
Well, there you go! A helluva a campaign slogan, too, don’tcha think?
How’s that for your “3am” scenario.
HyperIon
Moran wrote something better about this last week.
I actually complimented him on it.
He never fell into his “but liberals are worse” BS.
Most of his commenters seem happy to try and justify torture. They fail because they are pretty dim bulbs IMO.
I wish Moran would learn to write shorter posts. He has what my mom used to call diarrhea of the mouth (pen?).
TenguPhule