So let me tell you something about me. I am entirely blocked out of the comments thread here and at my blog The League of Ordinary Gentlemen during the day due to a site filter. I can only post. I can’t comment. And I have a three week old son and a three year old daughter and an overly worked wife. So I can’t do much at night. It’s a stretch just to take the time to post at all. But I do try to get to the comments and I will keep trying and I do read almost all of them in the evenings but don’t always have time to respond.
Cheers.
P.S. You can email me any time (erik dot kain at gmail dot com) and I promise I will respond to every single email. And you can follow me and ping me on Twitter as well.
Perry Como
Again, welcome aboard. Don’t let the comments get you down. I don’t comment much anymore, but I like your posts. A different point of view is always nice to read.
Wiesman
Wow, the “D” in “E.D.” stands for “Dot”?
Oh wait.
Never mind.
shortstop
This person just cannot be for real. He cannot.
Chris Martinez
What?? You have a life and adult responsibilities outside of reading and writing comments online?? Absurd!
Morbo
Going to go out on a limb here and say this will go over like a lead balloon.
Corner Stone
Tighten your shit up. If you really, truly believe the throw away lines you include then get ready to explain why.
ex. hear on the left regulation solves everything etc.
We’ve all got busy lives. Well, at least some of us. But if I post that The Stonecutters really rule everything I don’t skip the fuck off.
Point being, every post you have had to this point has contained one or more indefensible memes.
If you have a viewpoint that guides and informs your life please define it. Don’t shorthand it with nonsensical RW catchphrases.
“limited govt” and “free markets” do not mean anything
E.D. Kain
I’m pretty sure I’ll just have to get used to lazy comments like shortstop’s. And the whole “why are you posting this here” nonsense. Seriously, have y’all ever heard the term readership capture? Thank goodness this blog’s proprietor is a hard ass.
Konrad2
Excuse me! He made a kind gesture and explained himself, don’t be rude and mutter “that’s not good enough”.
kdaug
@E.D. Kain:
Welcome to the snakepit, mate. Let’s play.
soonergrunt
Well, there’s a viable answer for that aspect.
As for the other one, you need to actually put in links to things like the sources of statistics and such.
You may not be used to this, coming from right-wing top-down blogs, but on liberal blogs you need to show your work if you expect to be treated as credible.
And I forgot to mention that even then you’re going to get hammered, but at least it’s your dumbass conservative “ideas” that will get hammered and not your integrity and honesty.
jeffreyw
Let’s bake bread together.
Mark S.
Hey Erik, I like your posts and even if I don’t always agree, this place could use a different perspective once in a while. I used to be a fire-breathing National Review-subscribing shithead. My breaking point was the Iraq War and I respect that you don’t go in for the neocon warmongering (and torture, I can’t believe how blase the country is about that). I wouldn’t be surprised if you find your breaking point sometime; the GOP is motherfucking crazy these days.
OT- I have a trip coming up and need stuff to read. I would be interested in a good book on Russian history, preferably one I could download to a Nook. Does anyone have suggestions?
freelancer (itouch)
@shortstop:
“I did not hit her! Iz not true. Iz bullshit! I did not hit her. I did noooooooot! Oh hai Mark!”
jeffreyw
Maybe have a little snack, eh?
Stan of the Sawgrass
E.D.– I admire your courage, and I’ve enjoyed your posts, but I have a sinking feeling that a certain gmail account is going to be deleted, and soon… with a three-weeker in the house, I’m betting that Mom will axe the account.
Satanicpanic
I’ve been enjoying your posts, not that I particularly agree, but I give you credit for coming here and trying to discuss. Not that my opinion matters because I rarely comment here myself.
Linda Featheringill
@soonergrunt:
Yes. Put in the links. You might be surprised at the things we check out here. As close to the original source as possible.
Some of us nutty folks have spent a lifetime trying to find out what the truth really is. In our old age [mine anyway] we like to see some evidence.
But I can appreciate the problems caused by having a day job. Bummer isn’t it? :-)
[Or maybe it is not a reply to the vet from Okla but actually a reply to Erik. Oh, well.]
Sentient Puddle
@E.D. Kain: Eh, you’ll learn to ignore it. Just remind yourself that John and a lot of people here have your back, and it’s not worth your effort responding to the dumbassery.
Busta
All I’ve read so far from E.D. are perfectly reasonable arguments, a few of which I disagree with.
As for this “tighten your shit up” and “show your work,” bollocks. Let’s go through every post from the past three years on BJ and see how often everyone’s “shown his/her work.”
Confirmation Bias on parade around here lately. Yeesh.
Corner Stone
@Busta: Fucking clownshoe.
Yutsano
@soonergrunt:
Well…by some of us at least. Personally I had a rather engaging conversation with the good gentleman last night that at least from my perspective was productive. In other words, stop beating up on the new kid just because he talks different. I second your show your work comment though, it drives me nuts when I do that myself.
Oh and dose up on the chicken soup soldier. If necessary I’ll e-mail instructions to BFH for a great and simple way to make it that would do a Jewish grandmother proud. Okay stop snickering, I know that’s impossible. :)
Busta
@Corner Stone: Oh, and “meme?” So 5 years ago. Update your cliche box – I hear “bromide” is coming back.
Zuzu's Petals
Congratulations on the baby!
shortstop
You apparently find that easier than allowing yourself to consider that when a few dozen people accusing you of lazy thinking (with, contrary to your wails, plenty of specifics throughout these threads), you might be thinking lazily.
Four minutes before you posted this unbelievable shit (WTH would you continue to post all day long, over and over, when you can’t read comments between posts? It doesn’t even occur to you how fucked up that is? And you have “no time” to read comments at night and respond publicly to your critics, but you’ll clear your busy familial schedule enough to write private responses to each and every email? Seriously?), you posted this several threads down:
But I have learned that liberals don’t want to read conservative ideas, or be linked to conservative or libertarian publications, or have their views challenged even slightly.
And you apparently did it with a straight face — although I have to say I burst out laughing, picturing Dustin Hoffman doing a Tootsie huff, when I read that.
Look, you can keep alternating between hamhandedly pally attempts to heartily celebrate the most banal points of supposed agreement and tearful rants about how closed-minded we are for not appreciating the quality of your offerings. I don’t think it’s making your case for you, though. Instead of assuming that every single person around you is wrong, why not consider that the critiques of your work might have merit?
scav
Well, it hasn’t exactly been a wildly successful rollout because some of this information could have been told immediately in an introductory post. And as for the whinging about “show your work”, well, yeah Busta. As someone facing down a job interview in the near future, I’m sorta expecting that they’re going to be a little tougher on me right away during the interview and then even for a bit after I (maybe) get the job than they will after year or two when they know I remember to cross my ts and can tell a raster from a vector dataset.
Evolved Deep Southerner
I’m not ready to write you off as a worthless front-pager. Yet. As long as you don’t devolve into “Take it away, Bad Horse’s Filly/Tamara!” with recipes for couscous and chutney or some such shit, I’m willing to read your posts and consider them on their merits. For now.
JGabriel
@Busta:
Busta, I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means: confirmation bias is when we don’t bother to check our own sources for things we agree with, because we believe they’re true / honest, even when they might not be.
When we ask people presenting opposing views to present the sources, that’s “demanding the evidence” or, alternately, forcing them to drop their confirmation bias.
I’m not saying there isn’t confirmation bias on both sides. Obviously there is. I’m just saying you’re using it wrong.
.
Dave C
Frankly, I’m impressed by Eric’s ballsiness so far. I don’t agree with him on some of what he’s written, but I like him.
Dave C +2
Polly
B. J. commenters,
Could we seduce this new fellow with the brilliance of our rational liberal arguments? Could we lead him down a garden path edged with humor and friendliness?
How did John Cole come over from the Dark Side? That was before I discovered B.J. so I truly don’t know.
Deriding a conservative for his idiotic beliefs isn’t likely to help him reevaluate anything. Vinegar is still useless in attracting flies.
Yutsano
@Dave C: This. Hell do you think we could get any other representative of conservative views in this crucible? It makes me wonder how JC talked him into posting here. Or maybe E.D. just enjoys challenges.
Christian Sieber
Looks like it has been quite a day around these parts…
Corner Stone
@Busta: Let’s make this clear douchebag.
For the entire time I have been scrolling through here, if someone puts up a post with stats involved they link to the source. Or say, “I think this is right, can someone fisk this?”
And 99.9% of the time if some says, “Hey friend, that was debunked 2 years ago at XYZ” the poster has universally said, “Damn. Looks like we need to evaluate this now.”
And people can pushback on facts or studies or methodologies or all that factual data. And if it was an opinion post people would blast the fudge out of it and some of the time the poster would eventually be like, “Damn. I get that.” (perfect example is where Cole made fun of people being upset when Obama made a joke out of pot legalization on that conf call. People said what it meant to them and their communities and Cole ended up revising a little bit.)
So fuck off clown. EDK has used damaged goods to enhance his points, and BS facts to make his points.
If you can refute that then please do.
Dave C
@Polly:
Frankly, I think that attitude is sort of insulting to Eric (Erik’s?) intelligence. He’s not a fly to be attracted, nor is he some poor, misguided soul who simply needs to be persuaded to see the light. He’s a guy with opinions. He seems honest enough that we can enjoy engaging him without worrying about whether or not he might swayed to some new particular opinion or another.
Dave C +2
Mark S.
God damn it! I said I wanted suggestions for a book on Russian history. What do I pay you idiots for?
Jules
Welcome.
With a 3 week old and 3 year old and a job I don’t know how you can even function let alone respond to comments.
cincyanon
I read Obsidian Wings near the very beginning too. It certainly changed dramatically over a short period of time.
I don’t expect as much to change here beyond more debate. Debate is a good thing.
I applaud and welcome your inclusion.
Joey Maloney
@Polly:
It was during the Schiavo circus. He ran out of Kool-ade and realized that without the flavor enhancements Tom Delay’s dick tasted awful.
Corner Stone
@Polly:
Cole wasn’t seduced. He was repulsed.
The Republican Party pushed him across a bridge too far over Schiavo.
He didn’t find any factual info or heartfelt opinion compelling.
He saw the true dark heart of the R party for what it has been for 40+ years. At long last.
Yutsano
@Jules: A wife who’s a saint who is also sick. So the fact he’s even posting at all shows some fortitude. I don’t agree with E.D. on a lot of points but I do like him.
Corner Stone
@Mark S.: You pay me to sit here and look pretty. And you get every penny’s worth.
Dennis G.
Belated welcome Erik.
It will be good to have you here. I have been enjoying your posts even though I’ve had little time to comment on them.
I can relate to the tightness of your schedule. It reminds me of my own overbooked life.
I look forward to the disagreements we are most certain to have and the hope that minds and positions are open to change.
I am reminded of something one of my brothers always said about folks lock in rigid mental outlooks: “His mind was made up… that is to say that it does not exist”.
Cheers
Mark S.
@Corner Stone:
OK, that is what I pay you for. Everybody else, though!
eemom
Wow. Congrats on the baby and the fine young family.
Gotta say, though, as one who was once the mother of a small child and a three week old infant, I wonder your wife doesn’t kick your ass for spending, like, ANY time arguing with a bunch of invisible lunatics in cyberspace.
General Stuck
I figured you were tied up like you had said earlier from one of your first threads here. That makes it kind of tough, but I think you will do just fine here. The core of your posts make sense, even if I don’t agree with your point of view. I think where a lot of the problem is comes from use of common throw away phrases from a right side perspective that triggers ideological convulsions from our more dogmatic denizens of the left here. Both sides use them reflexively and it’s just a suggestion that maybe you might want to think about that and just state your position .
And don’t mind corner stone due to his being an idiot. He can’t help it, and he isn’t the only one on this blog.
Any ways, good luck and don’t let it get to you. I get called a republican all the time here for taking contrary positions to left wing conventional wisdom, so now you are hogging all that glory.:-)
scav
@eemom: well, it may mean she can sleep longer than 4 hours a night seeing how he’s already up . . .
soonergrunt
@Yutsano: Thanks!
It seems that when the economy goes in the shitter due to unregulated/underregulated financial industry shenanigans, organizations like non-profit aid/relief groups eventually decide to cut back and not hire an IT guy for their danger zone operations, or at least they go halvsies with another aid group from London and keep the Brit because he’s been doing war zone relief IT for 15 years. So you get let go with sincere apologies. Which I get, cause the whole reason for the relief group is to provide relief and if they can keep doing that then great because keeping me on would’ve meant scaling back the actual relief operation and that’s not what I wanted to be part of.
So going back to unemployment, after jumping through all the hoops to get the job is really stressful, and I got sicker than shit. I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t breathe and my temp was 104.6 in July.
I’m on the mend slowly. We have shitty health insurance through the state of Oklahoma, but it’s better than nothing, so I got that going for me.
Come Monday, I start hitting the job trail again. Something will come up. It always does. I also have to do the initial filing for unemployment again, but it shouldn’t be the whole nine yards like last time. I was only employed for three and half weeks so I should still be in the system.
Busta
@JGabriel: Didja read my post? As I noted, commenters are holding EDK to a higher standard of evidence than they do liberal frontpagers because he says things they feel they ought to disagree with. That’s confirmation bias. Okay, it’s reverse confirmation bias. Maybe.
And Corner Stone, I know you must be a little tired and cranky from using all the energy stored in your linguistic cortex to call me a “douchebag” and “clown” (No “fucktard?” No “sugar tits?” No “I’d call you a c#nt but you lack the depth and warmth?”) but every post by EDK is linked. Every one. Your problem is that he links to websites you generally don’t agree with. I generally don’t agree with them either, but a conservative who doesn’t like Bill Kristol and thinks that maybe, maybe regulation isn’t always the answer is somebody I’ll listen to.
DPirate
The people who comment here are just as loony in their own way as any religious fanatic or birther wingnut. I mean, gun control? Come on! Frootloops…
JohnR
And it’s more than ye deserve, ye mutinous dog!
Thanks, I needed that – it’s been a pissy week and I don’t get too many chances to quote from Muppet Treasure Island. I feel much better now. Carry on!
sven
Erik, are you going to vote for a Republican in November?
If so, why?
If not, why aren’t you a liberal?
I know that you don’t like regulating breweries, neither do I and I’m positive that I’m a liberal!
How about this one? What, if anything, should the United States do about widening income inequality?
Corner Stone
@Busta: Yeah sugar tits, linked like he did to the $100K prison guard?
And if you consider “linking” to Heritage Foundation or McArdle to be something of consideration…
I mean, I’m sure someone could link you to LaRouche pages as backup for their posts too.
EDK didn’t make the point that “regulation isn’t always the answer”.
Give me a minute while I dig up some Area 51 conspiracy pages to link to in order to make my point about inflation.
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
Who thinks you’re a Republican? You love Obama more than Michelle does.
Corner Stone
@JohnR:
How many chances do you actually get?
General Stuck
@Mark S.: The people who think Obama is really a republican.
MNPundit
If you have a 3 week old son and a 3 year old daughter and your wife is over worked why the fuck are you even blogging at all? Don’t take on something you can’t do right now.
Now I have not really read your posts so I have no idea if you’re just shoveling conservative bullshit like Sully does about 40% of the time so consider this friendly advice.
Corner Stone
@Mark S.:
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
Touche.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Perry Como:
You sucked as a singer.
am
i’m a lurker. i like your posts even though i don’t always agree. but don’t waste a bunch of time on argumentative adult strangers when you have young kids. you won’t look back at the end of your life and think, ‘if only i spent more time replying to comments on balloon juice’.
Midnight Marauder
@Busta:
No, it really isn’t. Although his efforts to pimp the Heritage Foundation earlier were quite hilarious.
hitchhiker
All I can say is, I liked it when I realized that you were one of those pro-choice people claiming to be pro-life.
Pro-choice is the position that abortion ought not to be outlawed; i.e., that the people directly involved get to make their own decisions without referring to a government edict.
Also, too, I once had a newborn and a 2 year old. Interesting days. Get some rest.
Steeplejack
@Mark S.:
Not available for Nook yet, alas, but James Billington’s The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture is excellent. Originally published in the late ’60s; don’t know if it has been revised since then. Really gives you the feeling (possibly false, but I mean that in the best way) that you understand the Russians.
eemom
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Not the Christmas album! That was a classic.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Okay, that’s funny. LOL funny.
shortstop
Nothing wrong with that view, but it only goes halfway to where it needs to go. The rest of it: If you can’t/won’t engage with readers and defend your statements, don’t blog. Or blog only as much as you actually have time to follow up on, given your other commitments.
Anne Laurie
@Evolved Deep Southerner: To use your local idiom: Your momma must be soooo proud!
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
You’ll be in my… positive thoughts. Hope that both the illness and the unemployment resolve with epic speed.
Batocchio
Uh, don’t kill yourself. Really. This is a great blog, but it’s just a blog, and you’ve got a new kid. Speaking for myself, I disagree with some of what you’ve written and have tried to explain why, and responding substantively to major objections in comments is great, but let’s keep things in perspective. Blogging is supposed to be fun, after all…
Here’s a few suggestions. Maybe emphasize quality over quantity a bit more. I think some of your stuff has been fine or even good, FWIW, but consider your audience and realize you’re going to get fact-checked and scrutinized, perhaps more than other front pagers (although there’s a boisterous commentariat here regardless), and especially if you’re sloppy. (False equivalencies tend to play poorly, for instance.)
Perhaps pick out the most relevant criticisms of your posts when you actually do have time to read the threads and respond in the threads, or address them in a later post. But you probably can’t respond to everything.
Link previous posts on your old sites where relevant to give context and further explanation of your views. You did some of this in your introductory post, but personally, I’m interested in why you’re a conservative, your general world view and overall stance on some issues. You’ve probably covered some of that already elsewhere. But, for instance, if you write about Paul Ryan’s budget plan, or Boehner’s budget proposals, it might help to know your underlying principles and premises (Eisenhower Republican or Goldwater guy or Saint Ronnie acolyte, etc. – if you start screaming “Wolverines! Supply-side tax cuts!” earnestly I’ll be concerned.) Anyway, welcome once again, and enjoy your family and your weekend.
Mark S.
@Steeplejack:
Thanks, that sounds really interesting.
Chuck Butcher
EDK, then maybe you should put your time to better use because you’ll get not spit for slack for posting more horseshit. I recognize your game from long experience in politics and I don’t like liars by omission any more than commission. You’re going to keep getting caught out and the nice words you’ve heard will evaporate when you get recognized as just another shill.
LesGS
@am: Eric, am is soooo right about this, looking back through the larger side of the telescope at my life 18 years ago with a newborn and a three year old.
If you are gonna keep posting, my suggestion: post ONCE a day on a topic you feel is most important, and engage in the comments which follow. Be ready to provide links when your facts are challenged.
(I’m mostly a lurker, but I hit BJ first and the most every day. I’m actually quite eager to read someone John considers a sane conservative.)
Awktalk
damn you people are brutal in here
Chuck Butcher
@soonergrunt:
my best to you, that is a gracious attitude to take and says a lot about you.
Chuck Butcher
@Awktalk:
Back the train up a bit if you want to talk about brutal and give some consideration to the results of this guy’s brand.
Awktalk
I mainly lurk, but I’m smart enough to see John is playing 11-dimensional chess with you people
freelancer (itouch)
@Anne Laurie:
Co-signed.
Steeplejack
@Mark S.:
Also maybe Philip Longworth’s Russia: The Once and Future Empire from Pre-History to Putin for “straight” history. Couldn’t remember the title/author for this until I did a little searching. (Also sadly not available for Nook.)
. . . On reflection, I would say go with The Icon and the Axe and dip into Wikipedia as needed for “just the facts, ma’am” historical background.
Awktalk
Hell, John and EDK could be the same person. Does anyone have a picture of them together?
Anne Laurie
@Awktalk: I believe both John and EDK would be offended by that suggestion. Goddess knows I am, because if Cole had nothing but a mouthful of pap and a long list of CW talking points I’d never have started hanging around here!
Awktalk
Hell, I’m not even sure at this point that he isn’t Assange. Wisconsin? lawlz
YellowJournalism
@Awktalk: All we get are pictures of Tunch, Lily, and Rosie, which means John is probably Tunch, DougJ is really Lily, and Eric must be Rosie since she’s the newest one.
Awktalk
@YellowJournalism: Yeah, cuz otherwise we would have this to play with
Keith G
Then why do this now? You owe blogging nothing and your family everything.
That said, the rowdy bunch of assholes here do expect a certain level of care and feeding. Will you be able to produce?
Really now? Well you are off to a roaring start.
asiangrrlMN
@soonergrunt: Oh, fuck. Sorry to hear that things are shitty right now. Massive vibes that things will turn around soon.
Erik, do what you can. My biggest issue is that your stats don’t always jibe. That’s easily remedied. Good luck.
Chuck Butcher
@asiangrrlMN:
No, it’s not – that’s when their shit starts to fall apart because it doesn’t have that luxury. That’s why they do it. It isn’t complicated, it isn’t a fucking accident – it is how they have to do it. It isn’t that lying is easier, it’s damned difficult – it is required.
Batocchio
@Mark S.:
I’ll have to check out those other suggestions you got. Are you going to Russia, or just traveling somewhere else?
It’s not a history, but I’d also recommend this translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel, The Master and Margarita. We discussed it a bit here in an earlier thread, but it’s very entertaining, satirizes many aspects of life under Stalin, and some of its expressions have made it into everyday usage in Russia. If you know Bulgakov’s tragic life story (there’s a one page description in the back), the book becomes more remarkable. But many Russians, in my experience over there,
share the satirical and often dark sense of humor the novel captures.
For specific histories, Orlando Figes has a huge, good book on the Russian Revolution (A People’s Tragedy) and Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror covers the Stalin era. It sounds like The Icon and The Axe might be the best choice for you, though (I need to check it out myself).
Batocchio
@soonergrunt:
Ouch. Good luck!
E.D. Kain
All: thanks. First of all – you’re right absolutely that more linkage and more stats and more to back all of that up is in order. Forgive my laziness on this front. No excuses. Here’s one little piece on correctional officers making six figures.
I appreciate everything – including the criticism – though I know I’ve gotten a bit cranky in a couple of my comments. My apologies. Like I said, I’ll try to engage more in the combox when I can – and will take the ‘quality-not-quantity’ argument to heart.
Thanks again.
Oh – and I don’t know whether I’ll vote GOP or Dem come the next elections or 2012. Just depends on who gets nominated. I can quite confidently say that I will not vote Republican in Arizona this year. Hayworth is a lunatic and a charlatan and McCain, sadly, has either grown senile or has lost whatever integrity he once had. Either way I won’t vote for him.
Why am I not a liberal? I’m not really sure what I am to be quite honest. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to my faith in institutions. I prefer decentralized power structures whenever possible. Etc. etc. I realize that some of you think I’m just spewing right-wing talking points when I go down this path, but I’m not trying to. I’ll have a post up on politics and language and what I think must get lost in translation when people from different sides of the aisle begin speaking with different sets of assumptions.
Cheers!
E.D. Kain
All: thanks. First of all – you’re right absolutely that more linkage and more stats and more to back all of that up is in order. Forgive my laziness on this front. No excuses. Here’s one little piece on correctional officers making six figures.
I appreciate everything – including the criticism – though I know I’ve gotten a bit cranky in a couple of my comments. My apologies. Like I said, I’ll try to engage more in the combox when I can – and will take the ‘quality-not-quantity’ argument to heart.
Thanks again.
Oh – and I don’t know whether I’ll vote GOP or Dem come the next elections or 2012. Just depends on who gets nominated. I can quite confidently say that I will not vote Republican in Arizona this year. Hayworth is a lunatic and a charlatan and McCain, sadly, has either grown senile or has lost whatever integrity he once had. Either way I won’t vote for him.
Why am I not a liberal? I’m not really sure what I am to be quite honest. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to my faith in institutions. I prefer decentralized power structures whenever possible. Etc. etc. I realize that some of you think I’m just spewing right-wing talking points when I go down this path, but I’m not trying to. I’ll have a post up on politics and language and what I think must get lost in translation when people from different sides of the aisle begin speaking with different sets of assumptions.
Cheers!
Cacti
@E.D. Kain:
Well, after perusing your piece…
Far from being an issue of overpaid Prison Guards, it sounds a lot more like an issue of the logical consequences of the United States being the world’s largest jailor, and California being keen on locking lots of people up.
Mark S.
@Batocchio:
No, I’m not going anywhere exciting. I recently read a book about Napoleon and realized I didn’t really know shit about Russian history, at least the pre-Communist era.
The Napoleon book was The Age of Napoleon by J Christopher Herold, and I highly recommend it.
E.D. Kain
@Cacti: Sure but the prison lobby lobbies for tough on crime policies. They’d be facing serious lay offs if we ever ended the war on drugs.
Tim in SF
Erik,
I’m disappointed in your lack of engagement after dropping this turd of a post on us a couple days ago. Your one response was totally inadequate and ignored most of what people were saying.
I mean… I am sorry things are chaotic in your life and all, and that may prevent you from adequately stating what you want to say, but to be blunt, I’m disinclined to read more of your postings unless I have quite a lot of time to kill. I, also, have priorities and constraints.
BR
@E.D. Kain:
There are folks who I think of as more liberal than myself and far smarter too – Al Giordano comes to mind – who believe in decentralized power.
(Al himself advocates Ana.rcho-syndicalism which isn’t a statist form of left / progressive thought.)
I generally agree with Left libertarianism, which also isn’t statist.
Cacti
@E.D. Kain:
Without even touching the War on drugs, California could go a long way toward fixing the problem by repealing their ridiculous Three Strikes Law
Batocchio
@Mark S.:
Thanks! Writing it down.
LesGS
@E.D. Kain: Cool. I think most of us are not looking to be dazzled by your width (we, as a nation, get far too much shallow scatter-shot from our current conservative commentators (and maybe folks trying to engage from the right feel the same way about left-ish commentators)), but to engage with your depths.
You’re clearly smart and an excellent writer. We could all learn a lot from one another. IF we were all using the same language, which is not commonly the case these days. I mean, take your taking on the “pro-life” label. It doesn’t mean what lots of other “pro-lifers” mean.
In my own family, my daughters, while they have informed me they would never vote to remove another woman’s opportunity to make her own choices, tell me that they themselves would never seek an abortion should they become pregnant by accident. This means that they are “pro-choice,” despite their willingness to bring an accidental pregnancy to term.
Maybe this is because they know that their dads (OMG! both their parents are men, how will they ever learn to be Real Women!?) would not find that pregnancy shameful (stupid, maybe, depending on the circumstances, but not shameful) and would support them, and in fact, take joy in the grandchildren given to us, whatever our daughters’ marital status was. How many “pro-life” parents can say the same?
Rangerking
@Awktalk: I mainly lurk, but what do you mean “you people”?
mclaren
Let me say that so far I have not read one thing by E. D. Kain that would lead any reasonable person to conclude that he has anything in common with a movement conservative.
Usually I agree with Corner Stone, but, dude, I gotta tell ya, I think you’re wrong about E. D. A lot of people piled on about the post on pensions…but pensions are a problem. E.D. did not suggest cutting benefits for workers to fund more tax cuts for the rich or to further engorge the surveillance-military-industrial complex. Those would have been the standard positions of today’s Republican.
E. D. simply pointed out that current public employee retirement benefit levels in states like California are unsustainable. That’s a documented fact. It’s not even arguable. You can run the numbers and do the actuarials and you can see for yourself that current levels of pension outlays do not work. Something has to be done.
Attacks on Kain for posting about the pension issue seem misconceived at best, spiteful and based on deliberate misunderstanding of what he’s saying at worst. It’s an issue. America has to deal with it. And guess what? We’re not. Kain is bringing it up, and nobody in the Democratic party seems to want to. Good for him.
DecidedFenceSitter
Geesh, this brings be back to when I first started reading Balloon Juice (back when the Daou Report linked to it for a Conservative blog talking about Schiavo) so 04 or 05? Back during the days of Stormy, some D name that was overly interested in people’s sex lives, Surber, etc. And of course, our wonderful host, Mr. Cole.
And you know what? We ripped into him and each other just as we’re doing now.
How he hasn’t killed us or shut down the blog I don’t know.
Agatha
@Mark S.:
I’m so sorry, here it is:
The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia’s Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 by Edward Crankshaw.
And since you’ll be up to WW I by that time, Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden and Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger.
SRW1
With a tree week old baby you should be happy to get enough sleep at night. But if you have a three year old daughter you probably know that already.
Congratulations on your new family member.
John S.
I have a three week old daughter and a three year old son and an overly worked wife. What the fuck are you doing blogging in the first place? I barely have enough time to skim blogs and leave the occasional brief rejoinder.
Blog less, help your wife out more.
John S.
Darrell. TallDave was a real hoot, too, and you can still find him all over the place posting nonsense. DefenseGuy was another interesting character, as was myiq1/2xu. We have had so many!
The place has changed a lot since I first started coming here in 2003, but in a way, it hasn’t changed at all.
Riggsveda
You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You post. That’s your argument. You want to expand on it, or respond to counter-arguments in comments? You write another post.
That was easy.
Frank
So far I enjoy your posts. I wish there were more Republicans like you. (I know, you don’t consider yourself a Republican. But if I had a penny for every Republican who said that I would be a rich man). I really don’t know why you don’t join the democrats. Your party has been taken over by religious zealots and the FoxNews sponsored tea bagger whack jobs.
El Tiburon
Shorter E.D.: get a life, people.
I still suggest you post a mini-manifesto or something explaining what it means to be a “sensible conservative”.
Otherwise we are left to assume…
matoko_chan
dont see why we should engage with you if you don’t engage wth us.
explain why fetus=slave and why the teabaggers aren’t relly racists, or retract.
you cant spew bullshytt on other blogs and expect the commentariat here not to notice.
jinxtigr
I, too, get a shallowness vibe that is not the same as what I get from Tunch, I mean Cole ;)
Here’s the thing. It’s not that John Cole bitches about things, or that he has a cat and two dogs, or started out as a Republican and swerved to avoid a nasty accident.
The sense I get is that if he’s posting about a subject, he will go deep into, NOT piles of links and references, but into his own attitudes and opinions on it.
Not “Unions may once have had use, and many misguided people have resorted to them, but here’s 1000 links about how they suck, and I’m not listening…”
But “Unions suck, dude. I dare you to explain how they don’t. I used to think Bush was awesome, so let’s see if THIS core belief turns out to be bullshit as well- I bet you I’m keeping it, but let’s go over the ground once more, okay?”
Do you see the difference? There’s a reason we love us some crotchety ol’ John Cole. When people are asking you for links it’s just a symptom. It sounds like they’re saying ‘show your work to document that you’re really right’. But it’s really saying, THINK about your arguments- if you look at the reactions the links get, you’ll see that Balloon Juice posters will actually read them, think about them, and point out incongruities and points where their own experience and expertise clashes with the given data.
The plain fact is, the world is now far too big and complicated for individual people to have mastery over all parts of it. We are all (one hopes) brilliant at our little domains, and foolish in many others. I’ve put some thought into socialist anarchism (left anarchy) and the extent to which it can scale to social groupings outside the usual ‘tribe’ limits where people all know each other. I’ve also picked up a really wide variety of little disconnected facts and realities, but some of them are cohesive and some are more isolated.
As a result, there’s some subjects that I think I know about, but if someone got into it, I might find that my knowledge was shallow and my ‘axioms’ weren’t really axioms at all. I won’t know which ones those are without testing. There’s other subjects where I go deeper- for instance, get me onto climate change and I’ll really hammer on the implications of feeding more energy into a large-scale chaotic system (weather) because you do NOT get predictable results, you get more violent behavior and more extreme outliers as a direct consequence of the added energy. On that stuff, I’ve done the homework and can engage from a deeper level beyond just factoids and links. It doesn’t mean I know everything about, say, regulating truckers’ available routes…
E.D. Kain can post all he wants (probably be best if he didn’t post ALL he wants- it only LOOKS like everybody posts any damn thing that comes into their heads, there’s a selectivity going on) but what’s needed is for him to engage from a position of, these are my axioms, these my beliefs. Some stand on foundations that are hard to shift (for instance, my climate/chaos link: that gets very fundamental, but doesn’t automatically presume climate violence is bad…). Some might be weaker (E.D’s ‘regulations that produce obviously wasteful outcomes are mistakes’- easy to conclude, but I’d want more information on what conditions are being averted by the wasteful regulation).
But if he cannot engage the readership from the position that they have things to teach him in turn, he’ll fail here. This is a pretty sharp crowd, just as Slacktivist’s crowd is a pretty spiritual, thoughtful crowd… it’s not so much being engaged in debate as it is being engaged in dialectic. That is significant.
Look up dialectic, rhetoric and positivism on wikipedia… rhetoric is your ‘post links’ thing, where the poster is either right or wrong and supplies evidence and doesn’t listen. Dialectic is where the poster is neither right nor wrong, and is seeking to expand their sphere of comprehension- and positivism is that Western thing where if you can make axioms, everything follows. We use it not just for stuff like ‘gravity means things fall DOWN’, but ‘human life begins at conception’ and so on- and positivism is the one thing that will not fly at Balloon Juice.
Largely because the originator of the blog used to DO positivism, broke with his axioms over the Terri Schiavo thing, and has been engaging in dialectics ever since, EVEN when he’s been offered an enticing new set of hippie axioms he could switch to. Things get too hippie, he drags in a E.D. Kain. It is not because he wants people to agree with you, Eric. He wants people to stop so reflexively agreeing with each other. You are the grit in the oyster. He doesn’t want a forum full of matching grit, and you’d be a fool to think so. He wants the pearl…
Libby
I’m just another lowly lurker who reads nearly every post here but rarely has time to comment and I’m appreciating your posts. I also don’t agree with everything you say, but I like that you’re challenging my thinking. Especially appreciated the Carter/dereg posts. Glad that John brought you on board.
matoko_chan
and im against Cole giving you welfare epics because you are the BJ token conservatve.
earn your gear like ever one else.
am
@shortstop:
sorry, lack of eloquence is why I’m a lurker instead of a commenter. please assume that what I really wanted to say was somewhere between Batocchio in #68 and Riggsveda in #105.
… and perhaps what I really meant to advise was not to engage with commenters that approached his posts assuming they were written in bad faith.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
That prison guard link is pretty weak sauce.
Prison guards aren’t PAID over 100,000/year salary, But due to short staffing and increased overtime, 10% of them end up there. Working 11 hours a day, minimum, for a whole year.
This is such a disingenuous “statistic” that I wonder why you grabbed onto it at all.
You look at the numbers like a shitty manager who screams about “what we’re paying these people”, with no real understanding on the extra amount of work these guys are doing to keep your damn prison running smoothly.
sneezy
@Mark S.:
I thought “Russia and the Russians” was pretty good reading, but I have no idea if it’s available in any format other than a printed, bound book.
Corner Stone
@mclaren:
I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t have anything to say about the pension post by EDK, IIRC.
My critique has been consistent, if assholish, which would also be consistent for me.
I am asking EDK to post backup for his stats, and that the backup not be pre-discredited sources like Heritage Foundation or McArdle. It’s understood why Heritage Foundation exists. They aren’t going to produce material that will survive peer review. That’s not their purpose.
I am also asking EDK to consider dropping throw away lines that serve no purpose to his post. There was zero reason to say something like, “you hear on the left that regulation solves everything” (that’s a summary, not verbatim). Why would he do that unless a)he believes it to be true or b) he wants to rile the audience up. Because it’s not going to go unchallenged.
I am also asking EDK to stop using empty talking points as key goals when they can not be defined. He may or may not realize it, coming from his perspective, that these empty phrases (to him since he won’t define them) have a long pernicious history of dog whistling. But we here do realize this. “Limiting government” means no social safety net for the poor, and “free market” means deregulating or privatizing key systems for private profit.
So, IMO I have not piled on to anything but rather asked the same thing when I have seen it displayed. I react the same way to every FP, and commenter, here.
Now, EDK was invited to blog here by Cole so we all understand EDK does not have to satisfy my requests in any way, shape or form.
But it seems really disingenuous to not acknowledge these are issues others have as well, and just blame it on the crowd for being intolerant.
matoko_chan
wallah, CS…..Kain is a token.
he does not have to meet your standards.
bi la kayfah
David Brooks (not that one)
@mclaren: All true, but public sector defined benefit pensions isn’t the only unsustainable fiscal crisis we are facing. The pension issue has conveniently come front and center as a talking point around election time, so that the right can bash the municipal unions. And so it becomes the only important fiscal issue in the echo chamber.
Although I generally support ED’s appearance here, I think his choice of crisis may be a victim of hanging around RW talking points.
Dave S.
@jinxtigr: I have been reading BJ since before Schiavo and this comment sums up its evolution beautifully. My sense is that the commentariat mostly is criticizing the way in which E.D. makes his case, not necessarily the case itself.
Bottom line: Don’t bring strawmen and half-inflated trial balloons into a room full of people armed with torches and pitchforks.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@General Stuck:
And you can always have someone show you how to get his opinion on pies. I know that it’s information that I’m happy to have.
LiberalTarian
@Polly: Actually, vinegar, being a fermented liquid, draws flies rather well. Especially the little gnatty ones.
I have a kombucha mother for you if you want to test the attraction. Kombucha is made by using a SCOBY–symbiotic consortium of bacteria and yeast–to ferment a black tea/sugar solution. Similarly, a SCOBY red wine mother is used to produce red wine vinegar. :)
Corner Stone
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): You should be you little bitch. You ain’t got what it takes to stiffen up.
Corner Stone
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): Fucking pathetic clown who was too scared to talk to a waitress at Chili’s, and thereafter decided to amend your screen name to include the word “stalker”.
I shutter at the thought you could possibly be employed in governmental services and have free reign over info there.
Spooky.
Jim Pharo
Oh, it’s a life you have, eh?
I’m sure some appreciate the info, but there’s really no need. We all have commitments and do what we can — and you do plenty.
For those who don’t like your schedule, may I suggest they apply to the management for a full refund?