Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / A whiff of Clorox in a urinal

A whiff of Clorox in a urinal

by | 71 Comments

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Got to give Andrew Sullivan props for this one:

If you missed it, check out one of the sanest, smartest conservatives today finally getting around to calmly dismembering Mark Levin’s asinine tract, “Liberty or Tyranny.” Jim Manzi, to National Review’s credit, posted this at the Corner. It feels like a whiff of Clorox in a urinal.

This thing is starting to heat up. The great Mark Levin himself replies. Andrew McCarthy writes an anti-Manzi screed with the help of some old coot the Wall Street Journal exhumed. Erick Erickson weighs in too.

Great stuff all the way around, but this is far from over. As much as I admire Manzi for starting this, I’m going to feel cheated if his current source of wingnut welfare (he must have one) isn’t cut off over this.

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  2. 2.

    stickler

    Heads up on the science front: Lars Larson and Michael Savage were both talking about how great DDT is this afternoon. And, of course, how the environmentalists have the deaths of millions from malaria on their hands. Someone somewhere must have turned on the Wingnut Science Batschitlamp. Savage was being particularly ludicrous, going on at length about how harmless DDT was and making fun of Rachel Carson (!) as an ignorant fearmonger.

    No doubt this will somehow become part of the argument that Levin is making about AGW.

  3. 3.

    demkat620

    You know, what are they going to do when they get back in power? Pogroms and purges all the live long day?

    Seriously, this is nothing but a group of children.

  4. 4.

    freelancer

    Comment #1 from RS:

    Manzi’s hit piece – raving, angry, and irrational
    Levin’s reply – concise, reasoned, and rational
    Now, which presentation belongs in a place like NRO, and which doesn’t?
    I hope this was a slip-up by the editors, and not a bellwether of things to come.

    They are SO lost.

  5. 5.

    Warren Terra

    “count off”? You mean “cut off”, perhaps? Or am I just failing to understand something?

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Typo: Last bit should be “cut off over this”.

    That said, the modern conservative movement is becoming more and more similar to Communism. Have they instituted secret police and show trials yet?

    dms

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    One bit from Erick of the House of Erick:

    National Review’s most successful author, Mark Levin.

    Jonah Goldberg is weeping quietly to himself.

    And talk about damning with faint praise.

    dms

  8. 8.

    handy

    Levin:

    Call it the lunacy it is, or even call it “wingnuttery”?

    They real get butt-hurt over that one, don’t they?

    By “that one” I mean the wingnut label

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    Dickface Sullivan deserves credit for what, exactly? For pointing out what every rational person on earth can see for themselves?

    Fuck Sullivan, the racist little bitch.

  12. 12.

    Midnight Marauder

    Mark Levin’s response is just chock full of awesome sauce:

    Here are the facts: There is an enormous amount of fraud and politics involved in global-warming science, some of which I mention in the chapter, much of which I didn’t have room to, and none of which Manzi acknowledges. But the research and evidence are available and extensive. I touch on it as best one can in a book that is not focused exclusively on the subject.

    I mean, come on! Just look at all of those facts right there! Like…politics involved in global warming science! BOOM, BABY! FACTS IN YOUR FACE!

    I would also encourage you to look at the petition Manzi disparages, having, I’m sure, carefully reviewed the qualifications of each and every expert listed, as he dismisses the entire lot of them. He mentions that 20,000 of the signatories don’t have doctorates. But more than 9,000 do.

    OH! SNAP! SON! 9,000+(?) > 20,000. That is just science. Duh.

  13. 13.

    celticdragonchick

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Dickface Sullivan deserves credit for what, exactly? For pointing out what every rational person on earth can see for themselves?
    Fuck Sullivan, the racist little bitch.

    Anger issues?

  14. 14.

    Desert Rat

    Hmm. Looks to me like another recipient of Wingnut Welfare just got cut off from the teat.

  16. 16.

    TooManyJens

    Anybody else notice how Manzi singled out the academies of three African countries for particular scorn? That was really the turd cherry on top of the bullshit sundae.

  19. 19.

    N M

    I am eating this up with a spoon. Better even than last time around with the guest poster guy from AEI or wherever who dared to slander the good name of El Rushbo on NRO when the Villagers were debating who “led” the GOP (he implied he might not be the best person to call a leader).

    I also like the reflexive defense of Levin from idiots like K-Lo. Good stuff.

    Keep it up Righties!!! Maybe we can make a political trade (in the style of Chappelle’s Racial Draft) for this Manzi character — we’ll punt you Geraldine Ferarro?

  20. 20.

    Ann B. Nonymous

    I am loving the right’s repeated violations of Reagan’s eleventh commandment. It’s treyf and haram and transgressive subway frottage all rolled into one quivering Republican mass, all lovingly recorded for your viewing pleasure.

  21. 21.

    celticdragonchick

    @Tonal Crow:

    He preaches to his own particular choir that believes the earth is 6,000 years old, evolution is a communist theory that is used to justify mass murder and peak oil calculations are a myth.

    His ‘hole’ that he keeps digging ought to bottom out sometime around the 200 degree farenheit temperature mark I would think, but he seems very tenacious.

  24. 24.

    Midnight Marauder

    Seriously, if you have not read Levin’s response to Manzi, you are missing out on some world-class LOLs. And cognitive dissonance. But you already knew that:

    Science requires proof. Where’s Manzi’s? Knowledge is something you can acquire. Class, apparently, is not. — Mark Levin, April 22, 2010

    LOLWUT?

    “Let me break this down for you, folks. Barack Hussein Obama has a hate on for Israel. He always did. And he has surrounded himself with anti-semites.” — Mark Levin, April 14, 2010

    “Al Gore is the Jim Jones of the environmental movement.” — Mark Levin, 14, 2009

    LEVIN: Answer me this, are you a married woman? Yes or no?
    __
    CALLER: Yes.
    __
    LEVIN: Well I don’t know why your husband doesn’t put a gun to his temple. Get the hell out of here.

    Yeah, stay class, Mark.

  25. 25.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Dr. I. F. Stone:

    In typical fashion, Sullivan got the facts wrong. Manzi didn’t dismember Levin’s book; he attacked one small section of it having to do with global-warming issues, and offered no comments on the other 90+ percent, and Manzi got most of his facts wrong even on that limited basis.

    In typical Joe Klein fashion, your puerile comments earn you no friends points.

  26. 26.

    Calouste

    @Midnight Marauder:

    There is an enormous amount of fraud and politics involved in global-warming science, some of which I mention in the chapter, much of which I didn’t have room to

    So Levin is going to put up a post somewhere with evidence of this “enormous amount of fraud”? Considering he said he “didn’t have room” to put it in his book, I guess he has all his research still somewhere ready to be unleashed?

    (Rethorical questions of course.)

  27. 27.

    Catsy

    @Dr. I. F. Stone: You’ve been asked–both politely and bluntly–to stop misusing I.F. Stone’s name as a pseudonym by his granddaughter, on this very blog.

    I know this because I’m one of the people who has asked you to stop, and have watched Aimai ask you the same thing.

    Knock it the fuck off already. There are eleventy-bajillion possible names you could use as a pseudonym; using the name of someone’s dead grandfather when you are acutely aware that it bothers them is about as classless as you can get.

    Show some fucking common decency.

    John, Doug, can someone please ban this piece of shit or put the name he’s using on some sort of disallowed list?

  29. 29.

    Uloborus

    Quick iSpud note: They’re not INSANE about DDT. Dear lord, is it harmless. It just takes decades to degrade, so it builds up to the incredible levels needed for it to stop being harmless.

  30. 30.

    Pasquinade

    Erick Erickson quote:

    Trig Palin School of Investigative Journalism

    Is Sarah just going to brush it off as “satire”?

  31. 31.

    mai naem

    Is Mark Levin the guy who sounds like Bradley Schlozmann? I am having a hard time telling apart these conservatives who sound like pre pubescent boys. I was listening to NPR one day and heard Ponnururu talking and didn’t realize it was a guy until the host identified him by name.

  32. 32.

    Francis

    It’s worth noting that Manzi’s solution to climate change is to do nothing. (see The American Scene, here. According to Manzi, the cost of mitigation so grossly outweighs the costs of living with the consequences of climate change that the appropriate course of action is to keep on living the way we do.

    Others disagree. But I find it funny that Manzi is having this huge screaming match over the science with other members of the Right when they all agree on the appropriate remedy — nada.

  33. 33.

    freelancer

    @Catsy:

    Seconded. I’m not one in favor of dropping the banhammer on a lot people, particularly because this place is mostly self-policing. However, the person using the nym of Dr. Stone is a raging hemorrhoid who doesn’t know how to not be a gaping asshole. He should, at the very least, change the name.

  34. 34.

    handy

    @Pasquinade:

    I dunno but he gets called out for it by the very first comment to that post, which as of yet he hasn’t deleted or edited out.

  35. 35.

    John

    Levin: “Science requires proof.”

    What an idiot.

    Science requires evidence. In science, appeals to authority are always fallacious. Levin presents no evidence, and appeals to authorities that Manzi pointed out weren’t authoritative.

    Epistemologically, science explicitly avoids regarding anything as proven.

  36. 36.

    handy

    But I find it funny that Manzi is having this huge screaming match over the science with other members of the Right when they all agree on the appropriate remedy—nada.

    And don’t think Manzi won’t emphasize that enough in his inevitable response backpedal.

  37. 37.

    Tom Hilton

    Holy fucking shit…Robert Stacy Racist Fuckwad McCain’s piece about Mark Levin’s reply is titled Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape–I shit you not. Not only is anyone who challenges the groupthink traitorous scum, but anyone attacked by traitorous scum is transformed into fucking Superman. Jesus.

  39. 39.

    DougJ

    I banned the commenter using the name Dr. I. F. Stone, out of respect for his granddaughter.

  40. 40.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Calouste:

    So Levin is going to put up a post somewhere with evidence of this “enormous amount of fraud”? Considering he said he “didn’t have room” to put it in his book, I guess he has all his research still somewhere ready to be unleashed?
    __
    (Rethorical questions of course.)

    What are you talking about? Did you see the smoking gun sentence in his epic takedown response of Manzi?

    Contrary to another of Manzi’s assertions, I make no references to conspiracies in the book, although, thanks to scores of news reports a few months back, we now know that some very notable global-warming authorities did, in fact, destroy raw data and manipulate other data to advance the global-warming argument — as Manzi might put it if he were intellectually honest, they “colluded across decades and continents to fool gullible” policymakers. Among them is Prof. Phil Jones (who, Manzi will be glad to know, has a doctorate), who had to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Jones now claims that there has been no global warming since 1995. [emphasis mine] What a fickle bunch. Manzi didn’t mention any of this in his post, although he cleverly implies that anyone who isn’t epistemically open to their hoax must be wearing a tin-foil hat and obsessing over the Queen of England and the Trilateral Commission. Very compelling stuff.

    WHAT HAPPENED IN 1995?!

    Also, Levin totally doesn’t need to post all of his “evidence” about fraud and politicization because he wrote this:

    Incidentally, there are two excellent new books out on this and related issues: Chris Horner’s Power Grab and Dr. Roy Spencer’s The Great Global Warming Blunder.

    You see?! Mark Levin doesn’t just carry this heavy burden of being a scientifically knowledgeable class act all by himself! There are other books out there! With facts! Like this other sentence Levin wrote in his awesome, completely factual book:

    “There is no consensus that man has influenced the earth’s temperature or that the earth’s temperature is warmer now than in past periods. And even if there were a consensus, science is not about majority rule.”

    And seriously…what happened in 1995 that put an end to global warming? Of all the conspiracy theories in Wingnutistan, I think that is the most intriguing one I’ve heard in a while.

  41. 41.

    Punchy

    I havent a fucking clue who any of these people are, but I do know the NFL draft is on and KC is about to pick someone overrated and overpaid.

  42. 42.

    calipygian

    @DougJ: Thank you. I’m not a fan of the ban hammer, but this is one of the few times I think it was overdue.

  43. 43.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @DougJ:

    Good for you and thank you very much. I am not a fan of banning either but this person is free to return under another name. Let’s see if he tries a go-around to try and get the same ‘message’ across.

    I am loving the wingnut on wingnut train wreck. If this was an accident scene that I was driving by I would turn around and park to watch the disaster unfold.

    Purity ain’t pretty.

  45. 45.

    Mike in NC

    They real get butt-hurt over that one, don’t they? By “that one” I mean the wingnut label

    Chris Matthews was chatting with Michael Steele one time and tried to work the term ‘wingnut’ into the conversation. Steele winced and reacted as if Tweety had just called his mother a filthy whore. Yeah, they really hate that word.

  46. 46.

    burnspbesq

    @DougJ:

    Thanks, Doug. Chris Stone was the best teacher I ever had, at any level, and it disturbed me to see his father’s memory being desecrated by a third-rate troll.

  48. 48.

    matoko_chan

    ekshually Dr. Manzi has his own company and looks almost exactly like Vin Diesel as Riddick in Pitch Black.
    :)
    He is a very decent guy that has been trying to behave honorably….by his standards….. by representing the losing side in an intellectual debate that has been going on since Pythagoras and Kylon.
    I just think he just had enough.
    He has devoted himself to a true intellectual conservative position on climate change, arguing that we need to make small changes because we can’t afford the large ones.
    He has exhaustively researched and analysed the cost-viability/risk-threat matrix and presented empirical data.
    He has a tonne of work on this.
    I think the chapter of raw dishonest denialism in Levin’s book just blew up his belief matrix.
    I can only hope he joins Cole and me on the Darkside.
    :)

  50. 50.

    matoko_chan

    Can i ax….how it happened for Cole?
    For me it was Bush lying on terebi about aSCR and eSCR.
    He rubbed my nose in it….he forced me to see he was lying.
    Then my belief matrix collapsed and I could see he was lying about a lot of things….torture, Iraq, etc.
    I heard it was over schiavo.
    Is there a link?

  52. 52.

    kid bitzer

    yeah but something about sully sniffing clorox in a urinal….

    just, ew, somehow. maybe even ewwww.

  53. 53.

    Mumphrey

    @dmsilev:

    For people who scream and rant about “statism”, “stalinism” and “communism” as much as they do, they really are reamrkably Stalinist. Grover Norquist himself some while back said something about how the conservatives in the U.S. were so successful because they used Mao’s methods or Lenin’s methods, though I forget which it was.

    There was something that happened about 4 or 5 years ago, when Bush was in office. He was talking to a buch of aids about something, and insisted something was true that was factually untrue. I mean it wasn’t as glaring as saying that there was no such country as Sweden or anything like that, but it was something that was as easily disproved. So somebody tried to tell him, no, that isn’t true, so and so is true. And Bush got pissed that anyone would question him, and he said again that whatever-it-was-that-wasn’t-true was true, and everbody kind of got embarrassed and shut up about it.

    Well, I bring that up, because in a biography of Stalin I read a few years ago, he was sitting with a bunch of his bootlickers, and the subject of “BeNeLux” came up, and he insisted that Holland wasn’t part of BeNeLux. Somebody tried to tell him it was, and he shouted him down. The likeness of the 2 situations struck me. And the weird thing about “conservatism” today is the personality cult thing they have going: if it isn’t Bush, it’s some other lesser god like Limbaugh, or even a cut-rate Limbaugh like Hannity or Levin. They’ll crawl naked through a trough full of broken glass to defend whichever of their cult figures is getting what they think is a raw deal.

  54. 54.

    D. Aristophanes

    @Mumphrey:

    They’ll crawl naked through a trough full of broken glass to defend whichever of their cult figures is getting what they think is a raw deal.

    They certainly will, but not before gushing, ‘X doesn’t need widdle old me to defend him, and I’m sure that any moment now he will be whipping out his massive Authoritarian cock to slap the enemy in the face … but let me say something really stupid in X’s defense anyway!’

  56. 56.

    frankdawg

    Funny, every time I read Sully I think URINAL and after I am done I wish for bleach.

    Maybe thats not fair but usually he deserves it.

  57. 57.

    calipygian

    @Chris:

    Is this the I.F. Stone that the troll had appropriated as a namesake?

    It’s worse than that. I.F. Stone (the actually one) has blood relatives that comment here.

  58. 58.

    Church Lady

    I’m a little shocked that you’ve banned someone for the name they choose to post under. Given the insults hurled on this blog on a daily basis, I guess censorship is ok, as long as what you are censoring is something you don’t like, or offends you. Is that how it works? In what way does this make you any different than someone on the right banning someone for using a nom de plume they didn’t like? Heck, for that matter, how do you know that Dr. I. F. Stone isn’t his real name?

  59. 59.

    Grace Nearing

    A comment at RedState:

    How do these freaks sneak into what should be conservative bastions? These pseudo-conservatives need to be properly purged.

    Now, is this legit? Or did a freak sneak into what should be the conservative bastion of RedState and has not yet been properly purged?

  60. 60.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Church Lady:

    They weren’t banned, the use of the name was and they are free to return under another name. You’re calling it censorship?

    Well isn’t that special.

  61. 61.

    Liberty60(Veteran, Great war of Yankee Aggression)

    @demkat620:
    Comment #9 from RS:

    These pseudo-conservatives need to be properly purged.

    I wonder what would the 50’s Cold Warrior types would think of a publication entitled “RedState” calling for “purges” of the unfaithful?

  62. 62.

    Church Lady

    @DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Yes. DougJ is censoring the name used by the poster. Has that ever been done here before? I don’t remember it happening is the four or so years I’ve been reading this blog. The only banning I can remember is BOB a few times, on a temporary basis, and I think that PaulL guy has been banned on occassion, but I could be mistaken on that. I just don’t remember anyone ever being told that they couldn’t post comments under the name they chose, because if offended another commenter. Commenters here offend other commenters day in and day out.

  63. 63.

    Liberty60(Veteran, Great war of Yankee Aggression)

    @matoko_chan:
    You asked how John Cole had his conversion moment, but that might be a good thread topic all of its own- how and why so many former conservatives are now raging liberals.

    There must be millions of us, who held the Birchers and NeoConfederates at arm’s length and pushed them to the fringes- and now that we are gone, they have claimed center stage.

    I wonder if Manzi is secretly trying to engineer his own honorable exile from such a party.

  64. 64.

    TooManyJens

    @Church Lady:

    Has that ever been done here before?

    Well, I don’t think anyone else has ever used their handle to piss all over the memory of a regular commenter’s family member, so probably not.

  65. 65.

    handy

    The blog proprietors have a right to run it any way they see fit. Why do people have a hard time grasping that?

  66. 66.

    Calming Influence

    A point that is almost always overlooked: scientists who are climate change deniers aren’t the ones going out in the field and taking measurements, or the ones trying to develop computer models to interpret those measurements; their association with actual climate science is often one or more steps removed. Their M.O. is to read a peer-reviewed paper and then shit all over it without offering their own data. Don’t just try to knock down someone else’s research; show me the mountains of climate data measurements that contradict the mountains of climate data supporting global climate change.

    One very satisfying moment of my graduate career was a journal club meeting when the presenter wasn’t aware that first author of the paper he was presenting was sitting in, and proceeded to demonstrate how “brilliant” he was by shitting all over the research. The author was gentle, probably remembering his own graduate career, but it was still an epic take-down.

    The point is that it’s easy to sound knowledgeable pointing out “flaws” in someone else’s research; the devil is in offering data to support your alternative hypothesis.

  67. 67.

    Brutus et tu

    I thoroughly disheartened that the AGW Denialist damn near completely ignore the fraud and deceit from AGW Denialist. It’s like it doesn’t exist to them

  68. 68.

    Val

    @matoko_chan:

    Why the “Dr.” Jim is a smart and rigorous guy, who I most often disagree with, but he does not have a PHD.

    And yes he does not need wingnut welfare. He has a life and considerable income from his main non political work.

  69. 69.

    Phil

    @Calming Influence

    I don’t think the scientific method requires you advance an alternative hypothesis before you can poke holes in someone else’s work if they have made errors. Unless they’ve changed it recently.

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