This just cracked me up and pissed me off at the same time:
It must be said, if any of the FrontPage Trollers won’t admit it, that sometimes Principle wins over Pragmatism. DADT was repealed because people were not practical. They were principled. And fuck all of you who chose Being Serious over what was Right.
Ohno! John Cole just made fun of me! He made some crack about Hillary!
Fact is: John Cole is High Broderism for Gen X. It’s ironic. It’s incoherent. But it’s the same shit: Embrace mediocrity. It’s all we can get. Reach for the Middle!
As John and official troll DougJ worry themselves over what is practical and possible in Broder’s world, the rest of you should stand up for what you believe. Because the purpose of Democracy is not for each citizen to do what is practical but to voice what is right, and if John and Doug make fun of you, it’s ok.The DADT repeal occurred because of purity, which they deride, because being Cool is a whole lot easier to their ego than being Right.
If John or Doug were in the Senate, they would have come up with a lot of practical excuses against it. And accused anyone against their decision as Trolls or Firebags or whatever their latest slang is against those who dare to believe that our government should respond to the people it serves.
A couple weeks ago, I was being flamed for being hopeful repeal could still pass and being taunted as an O-bot. Today, I’m the man with the boot to the neck of the starry eyed go-getters. Beyond parody.
I’ll just assume the author was hammered when he wrote it.
JPL
John, Why aren’t you on the Meet the Press panel? Is it time for another rum ball?
alwhite
I assume every poster here is hammered – it saves a lot of offense. You should try it too 8-{D
Michael
I’m confused. If Cole is Broder, does that make ABL MoDo.
joe from Lowell
Oh, look, it’s just like the Iraq War pundits.
What he’s saying, John, is that even though you were right, and he was wrong, you were right for the wrong reasons, while he was wrong for the right reasons.
And so, the fact that you were right just goes to show that nobody should listen to what you have to say; while the very fact that he was wrong, for the right reasons, demonstrates that he’s the sort of person whose opinion is worth our attention.
greennotGreen
Ya gotta have some of both – principles and pragmatism. No matter how “right” something is, if the implementation isn’t practical, then what is “right” won’t work and you’ve just reinforced your opponents’ views.
Michael D.
Hey, I see the US Military is still functioning normally today.
harlana
@Michael D.: But John McCain has a sad.
Baud
You can’t have Balloon Juice without the juice.
freelancer
I’ll admit I was hammered when I rebutted this non-sensible whackamole self-immolating bullshit.
And that goes for the lot of ya! Consider yourselves “on notice”. You don’t even want me to be considering my “Wag of the finger”. (hiccup) I’m off to bed. Goddamnit. Seriously.
I’m not joking.
(hiccup)
Linda Featheringill
Good morning, John.
Awesome day yesterday! I usually avoid CSPAN because watching those folks is so frustrating and so depressing and I just get upset. But I watched a good deal of it yesterday. I even bullied my family into arranging it so I would be available to watch during the pertinent times.
To all of those who said it should have happened a long time ago: You are absolutely right. It should have.
And to those who are disappointed because DREAM rant into problems again: This should have happened a long time ago, too.
Progress is hard to come by. I’m just glad we have a little of it.
Kenneth
Once again, gays can now die in our useless imperialist PermaWars! Yeah! USA! USA!
Meanwhile, Obama is dismantling Social Security and coddling the Bush/Cheney War Criminals. Excuse me for not feeling a tingle up my leg.
matoko_chan
Well i flamed you for linking AND AGREEING WITH Douthat.
euwwwwwwwww
u haz creeper cooties naow.
cheer up
jurassicpork
My Top 10 Heroes of 2010. What’s yours?
matoko_chan
btw wheres
TokenKain?Mike M
I dunno – doesn’t seem anymore incoherent than taunting “the professional left” the nanosecond something positive happens with this administration/Congress. Trust me, if nobody had put pressure on these jackasses to do SOMETHING that resembled what they promised us nobody would have gave a shit about teh gays. And that pressure in no way shape or form came from this crowd. Too busy fluffing your pom poms I guess.
Flame on though.
freelancer
@Kenneth:
on notice!
General Stuck
Getting the Joint Chiefs Chairman and other top brass on board was what gave the relatively reasonable wingers the cover to go against Senator Cranky Pants and his Mean Sumbitchs Traveling Wingnut Circus. This POS law will be decomposing on the compost pile of sordid US history, with all of the other bigoted laws this country has suffered thru. Kudos to all who fought this righteous fight. All of them. No exceptions.
Cat Lady
Can we please just let the purity trolls pleasure themselves uninterrupted and keep shit talking Grampa
SimpsonMcCain instead?kthxbai.
RAM
I think I need a translator. Could somebody please explain what the hell he’s talking about?
Kenneth
Why did Obama pressure Spain not to prosecute the Bush/Cheney War Criminals according to WikiLeaks?
Why is no one talking about that?
cathyx
@RAM: I had to read it a few times and I still don’t get it. I think I’ll just have to sit this one out.
Richard Fox
I hope this strokes your ego, Mr. Cole.
Months ago I got so sick of the Huffington Post for their inane attention grabbing headlines and content free articles that I switched them out as my default web page opener as the first site I see– to Daily Kos.
Weeks ago I got so sick of the complete absence of political acumen and juvenile squawking I saw constantly on display at Daily Kos that again– I switched my default web page opener to– Balloon Juice.
Putting on view brilliant videos of Jack Russell terriers and discussions of rum balls have shown me I have (finally) arrived at the right default web page opener.
All I ask is that you don’t blow it, Mr. Cole.
I really hate the “Daily Beast” website and believe it to be complete crap, and don’t want to be pushed there as the first thing I see in the morning. That’s all I ask.
cathyx
@Kenneth: Spain didn’t understand that we look forward, not backward.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kenneth: Because we are talking about something else. It has been mentioned here before. If you want to control the agenda of a blog, perhaps you should start one.
Cacti
@Kenneth:
I guess this answers my question of how long will it take before the Firebaggers try and turn this into some variant of…
“Obama just repealed DADT so he could send teh gheys to die!”
Less than 24 hours.
freelancer
@jurassicpork
You’re my number 1 hero you blog-whoring sad sack. You and Dan Choi and Bradley Manning. You’re heroes! Literally, no really, like Joe Biden “Literally”. Seriously. Bradley Manning, everything he did, totally heroic behavior. And Dan Choi! Guy stopped DADT with the power of handcuffing himself to a fence and simultaneously taking himself out of the discussion! It takes so much courage to render yourself irrelevant to the political debate like he did. Damn. I concur. Hey, you mind throwing up another link to your website, I didn’t catch it the first time? People are gonna want to hear about your heroes. That shit’s important.
soonergrunt
“I’ll just assume the author was hammered when he wrote it.”
Or you could just assume as most of us do, that the poster in question is a fucking moron, because one can be moronic all the time like he is, but one cannot be drunk all the time and last for any appreciable length of time.
soonergrunt
@Kenneth: What’s the frequency?
LarsThorwald
I have to say that I am stunned by the reaction to the repeal of DADT by the likes of those on Kos and other sites. This was an historic landmark in the cause of civil rights for homosexuals, an historic day for our nation, and the reaction was “Yeah, well, what have you done for me lately? It was about time, and fuck you,. Obama, for not getting this done sooner.”
I mean, with friends like that…
gnomedad
Sounds like a song title: “Crack Me Up, Piss Me Off”.
Cacti
@LarsThorwald:
It’s part and parcel of being a member of the frustrati/permanent outrage brigade.
freelancer
@LarsThorwald:
That’s cause he’s all talk. Just like Bush.
lacp
Removing legalized discrimination is a good thing, so we should applaud the President and Congress for doing so, particularly somebody like me who isn’t a fan of either. My bitching when they do things I don’t like pretty much loses any credibility if I refuse to recognize it when they do something I agree with.
I have to admit, I sorta wish the wingnut BS that 25% of those currently serving would leave as a result of this legislation were true. Think about it: an opportunity to cut the military budget, insufficient forces to be sent off to conduct imperialist adventures, a load of job-hunting vets that would force the government to get serious about unemployment……What’s not to like?
However, reality won’t be denied, and I doubt that more than a few are actually going to pack it in, and those will probably be the fundies that the military should be trying to lose anyway.
Comrade Jake
I think one could accuse DougJ of being all sorts of things, but “official troll”? You’ve got to be smoking something to come up with that characterization.
I’m just happy they repealed this POS. And I reserve the right to continue to view Lieberman and Burr as complete asshats.
jeffreyw
A “Gulf of Token Resolution” is what I call the pretext a front pager uses to begin a flame war. “Token” because of the historical echo. I now give you: LBJohn Cole.
Anya
Putting aside the Broder putdown, the thrust of his/her argument appears to be that purists won over pragmatism, that’s a bogus argument. It has been the great fault of our purist overlords that they have all wanted the President to use EO to stop lose/to repeal DADT, I don’t know, this argument kept changing depending on the challenge. But pragmatism and strategy won over “why won’t the President use his magic pen to end DADT”. If the President did not painstakingly work with the Military brass and the SOD non of this would have been possible. In order to win the “moderates” and not to have Dem defections, he had to get them cover from the military. Without Pentagon leaders publicly backing repeal and saying unequivocally that gays could serve openly without affecting military effectiveness, McCain’s ramblings would have had more weight. Instead the opponents looked just petty and bigoted. They couldn’t hide behind the Military.
Buck
@Kenneth:
Ken, I think it has something to do with sensitive fee fees. Or something.
(scratches head) I really don’t know any more.
jeffreyw
And those metaphors are not only mixed, the are shaken, stirred, pounded and stomped. Harumph I say.
Cacti
@Anya:
You’re so wrong.
It was repealed because Dan Choi handcuffed himself to a fence.
freelancer
@Cacti:
Wrong. DADT was only repealed because Cindy Sheehan challenged Nancy Pelosi for her seat and kept her honest in the process.
LarsThorwald
@freelancer: Based on the complete ridiculousness of your statement, I am going to conclude that your comment is pure sarcasm, although you can sometimes never tell these days. And I am going to conclude that it is so brilliantly sarcastic that I will continue to believe it is sarcasm no matter how much you beg me to treat it seriously. Think Gene Wilder meeting the monster for the first time in Young Frankenstein.
LarsThorwald
@freelancer: Based on the complete ridiculousness of your statement, I am going to conclude that your comment is pure sarcasm, although you can sometimes never tell these days. And I am going to conclude that it is so brilliantly sarcastic that I will continue to believe it is sarcasm no matter how much you beg me to treat it seriously. Think Gene Wilder meeting the monster for the first time in Young Frankenstein.
LarsThorwald
@freelancer: Based on the complete ridiculousness of your statement, I am going to conclude that your comment is pure sarcasm, although you can sometimes never tell these days. And I am going to conclude that it is so brilliantly sarcastic that I will continue to believe it is sarcasm no matter how much you beg me to treat it seriously. Think Gene Wilder meeting the monster for the first time in Young Frankenstein.
Cacti
@freelancer:
You’re way off.
It happened because Lady Gaga was a fierce advocate for the LGBT community.
amk
But John, tax-cuts for the rich, tax-cuts for the rich, tax-cuts for the rich ?
….
Thought that might cheer you up….No ? ummm…
freelancer
@LarsThorwald:
Dude, click through to the link. There are enough people here right now doing that act. And no, I do not want to go for a “roll in ze hay”, thank you.
jeffreyw
@Buck: “Sensitive fee fees” — a term of art among various professions. It means, for example, the Snit that a doctor goes into when it is noticed that he charges the government twice the going rate for a service.
Anya
@Michael: And would that make DougJ Bobo?
BruceFromOhio
I nominate what is practical and possible in Broder’s world be a new entry in the tagline rotation.
@soonergrunt: Stupid seems to outlast everything else, except perhaps the cockroaches. The booze always runs out first, sadly.
agrippa
If you are not pragmatic, having principles is futile. You will accomplish next to nothing that is useful.
If you are pragmatic, and have no principles, you have no notion of a destination.
You are both.
Not the issue.
The issue is the ability to determine what needs to be done; how it needs to be done. And, the ability to set priorities. That is: triage.
Then, to set about accomplishing your objective. Plan your work; work your plan.
Life is unfair; deserve has nothing to do with it.
jeffreyw
@LarsThorwald:
freelancer
@Cacti:
You know what? Because I’m silly, yet plugged in, I’m willing to give Gaga more credit than both Choi and Sheehan put together. Silly fucking me.
jsfox
@Kenneth:
Are you always this late to a party. Good grief I read enough stupid diaries around the nets on this subject to start a stand alone blog.
The brief answer. No administration and I do mean NONE ( it could be Dennis Kucinich’s) is going to allow a foreign government to try a former President or VP. For the simple reason that we do not recognize their authority to do so.
lacp
@soonergrunt: Dan Rather thanks you.
Kenneth
@jsfox:
Why? Do you think they’re above international law? Above our laws?
Why?
Does the RULE OF LAW matter anymore?
Who dare we try Saddam Hussein and Slobidan Milosevic, but not the war crimes of our own leaders which were equally hienous.
General Stuck
OT
And now back to your regularly scheduled program, as we herald in the new GOP House, pretty much the same as the previous GOP House.
Newly-elected Congressman Under Investigation
Wolverines!! American voter.
dr. bloor
@jurassicpork:
I’ve seen more egregious examples in other quarters, but since you’re convenient, why has it become fashionable to shit on Assange in Manning’s defense?
amk
Breaking News: Lt Choi to tie himself to the WH fence on monday to force Obama to implement DADT repeal on tuesday. More details later.
….
This is for John’s eyes only…. What ? Oh.come on, John.
Anya
@Cacti: I
Don’t forget how his taunts motivated the Majority Leader. Do you think if Choi did not give his ring to Harry Reid and say “Harry Reid is a Pussy Who Bleeds Once a Month”, DADT would be repealed? I must admit I have my doubts.
lawguy
Well, I tend more to the Blind Pig political theory as far as this is concerned. It is simply impossible for Obama and the congressional democrats to screw everything up all the time. As long as the generals want it, it helps us continue our colonial wars, and doesn’t take money away from billionaires, well ok then.
Of course, for the time being if one comes out while serving, one is still kicked out of the military. I will be interested in seeing when DADT really truly ends.
But after saying all that they really did pass a repeal of DADT and I really did think that they never would do that.
Michael D.
Is Meet The Press taped? David Gregory just asked Joe Biden a question about lifting DADT, something to this effect…
“It looks like this is going to be repealed…” etc.
I guess if you count having to get Obama’s signature… but this is repealed. For all intents and purposes, DADT doesn’t exist anymore.
The Grand Panjandrum
@General Stuck: New Hampshire has a newly elected Republican who has been in the news for having a substantial amount of money magically appear in his campaign bank account since BEFORE the election. That post at Blue Hampshire has links to a couple of reports that Frank Guinta is being investigated by the FEC. These guys are going to make Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham and Newt Gingrich look like a bunch of lightweights.
JPL
We can thank John McCain for the repeal of DADT. If he hadn’t gone all crazy on the floor of the Senate, Republicans would have held tight and voted in unison to filibuster.
The Republicans wanted to distance themselves from the old man. What better way than vote with the dems.
Good News for John McCain.
@gnomedad: Where are our resident songwriters?
Anya
@freelancer: Well, at least Lady Gaga focused on the real obstructionists and holdouts. She targeted John McCain and the Princesses from Maine. She had more sense than Dan Choi.
Anya
Why is my comment (59) in moderation? I only quoted someone.
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Grand Panjandrum: And as you can read I haven’t completed my ESL course yet. Sheesh. Moar koffee plz!
Buck
@Anya:
That happened to me the other day. I think some WP spam filter is aggressively (but wrongly) marking posts as spam.
Joey Maloney
@jeffreyw:
Please claim your shiny new internets at the courtesy counter.
El Cid
__
I think that is certainly the aim of the principles of Democracy, however badly approximated by governing systems as yet.
This being a real, extant world, in which people live and in which practical decisions by them or others will have effects upon their lives, it is not possible to separate the two on behalf of the citizenry.
Exclusively pushing for idealized solutions which in no way change the reality of more harmful options certainly sounds more moral in certain ways, but many times differences between even two very similar political programs can have dramatically different effects.
No one has to take my word, but I’m about as far idealized ultraleft anarcho-soshullist etceterist, and it’s not possible for me to separate the two, either. What I know of soshullist movements and anarcho-soshullist etc. movements which have had degrees of success (i.e., making peoples’ lives better and more meaningful in their opinions) did not do so by a disconnected calculation about what was right.
Most of the time, no matter how warring the interests are, principled decisions by governments are also practical ones. Practical in ways which certainly matter to a great deal of people, and to a variety of interests.
And when they are very lucky, politicians who push for principled decisions may be rewarded. Unfortunately, most often when the decisions are more principled than the current political and ideological establishment permits within its tight bounds of normal, they are punished in a variety of ways.
There don’t seem to me to be too many occasions of people being so foresighted that principled immediate decisions (as opposed to long term organizing and argument and groundwork) with short and medium term detrimental or neutral effects end up significantly improving the lives of those intended to benefit, or the system which is meant to be reformed.
No one knows at any given time, no one’s magic, but I don’t find too many such approaches convincing.
Voting is so limited an option coming at such a tiny point in time that it allows, in the real world, a most narrow set of points on which decisions might be calculated to be taken significantly differently than upon other points.
Most of the time I am not convinced by the argument that in a major voting decision (i.e., Presidential election), I’m to exclusively vote for the candidate who bests represents my conscience, because of course, I would be the candidate who best represents my conscience and since neither I nor the alternative candidate involved stand a chance of winning — or by running cause a serious change and improvement in the larger political system (hey, it’s always possible) — I see little actual effect of doing so.
And personally doing so doesn’t make me feel that much better.
Voting for the lesser evil may sound like a horribly immoral and weak thing to have done, but in this country there are neither the institutional or organizational development to make its opposite have any deep immediate or lasting effects.
Millions of people would have been better off, though not all of them and not without being screwed in other ways or facing similar risks later, had Gore been elected over Bush Jr. But it wouldn’t likely have changed the core tendencies and power centers of our political systems and power elite decisionmakers. The invasion of Iraq, and likely the 9/11 attacks, would have not occurred. The collapse of the financial system due to the gambling of our most powerful accumulated capital institutions enabled by malicious deregulation and anti-regulatory agencies and actors, probably would have been allowed to happen, perhaps with a few better but minor controls.
None of which implies that I’m okay with lying about what I think of the situation or some candidate — which is why I would be a rotten and quickly dismissed campaign coordinator.
I don’t see DADT as falling into an exclusive category of either purely principled or purely practical decisions. Those strains of the former were enabled by choices by political leaders to follow practical interests opposed to others’ practical and sometimes less connected ideological interests.
The soshullist liberal leadership of Latin America the past decade (and a half for some nations) have dramatically improved the lives of their citizenry and also of their nation-states relative to the international, imperial global state systems. Yet there certainly are plenty citizens in any of those nations who rightly point out that the degree of change is not only nowhere near significant enough or in line with what they believe is currently possible.
They’re right, and of course we don’t face anything which comes close to an echo of such change, but I’m certainly glad that those practically principled regimes under leaders who prioritized (much of the time) the practical ability to improve lives or indigenous economic development following decent principles, over the only possible alternatives.
Sometimes there may indeed not be enough of a difference to measurably change the situation by choosing between two (or more) candidates. And sometimes there’s no clear way to tell if there is or will be, and very often the ability of most people to even know the slightest damn about the likely real effects of their decisions is minimal.
My several cents’ worth.
bend
I’ll just assume the author was hammered when he wrote it.
This reader was hammered when he read it.
BruceFromOhio
@dr. bloor:
Interesting assessment. One guy dons his whistleblower fire suit, knowing he’s going to take heat for what he does, and lands in unending psychological torture. The other guy gets a laughable legal slap on the wrist and is walking around free.
And noting the delta is “fashionable to shit on” in your convenient assessment?
Fail, doctor, fail.
@jurassicpork: Nice list, well done. You have some of my tops in there, too, that will likely endure beyond just 2010.
Gina
Ah. The old “Stoned or Stupid?” question.
Jennifer
I don’t think any of the trollers are giving Obama enough credit for the 11th-dimensional chess game he was playing on DADT. As I’ve noted here, repeal of DADT renders the new START treaty superfluous.
jeffreyw
@Joey Maloney: Thank you…thank you, I’ll be here all week. Try the meatloaf. And keep your hands off the waitress.
soonergrunt
@lacp: I’m here to serve. I also wondered how long it would be till somebody got the reference.
jsfox
@Kenneth:
Kenneth I am not arguing the right or wrong of it. I am arguing that some feel that this wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for Obama. And that my friend is just absurd. The fact that we do not recognize a foreign governments right to try former Presidents, VP and other high officials is US policy period. It matters not the administration.
Hence the reason we have never ratified the International Criminal Courts treaty and have signed bilateral agreements with other countries which do recognize The Court that they will never turn over soldiers or other US officials to The Court.
AxelFoley
@Kenneth:
LOL, child, please.
Obama keeps another promise, you asses keep moving the goalposts.
Oh, and the rest of your nonsense–again, child please.
Kenneth
@jsfox:
Yes, we don’t recognize them along with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the Sudan.
Will you at least admit the USA is a rogue state, just like them? Even worse, I’d say.
sparky
@lawguy: i’m with you, more or less: once the establishment gets on board, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.
my theory, such as it is, is that it was set up now to give cover to Obama for going along with the R permanent free money for our overlords. but that’s just a theory.
i’m glad DADT is dead, at least in theory.
the reason for the “in theory” bit is pretty simple, so simple that it makes me wonder if anyone has actually read the statute, which provides, in relevant part*
(b) Effective Date- The amendments … shall take effect 60 days after the date on which the last of the following occurs:
(1) The Secretary of Defense has received the report required by the memorandum of the Secretary referred to in subsection (a).
(2) The President transmits to the congressional defense committees a written certification, signed by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating each of the following:
(A) That the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the recommendations contained in the report and the report’s proposed plan of action.
(B) That the Department of Defense has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to exercise the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f).
(C) That the implementation of necessary policies and regulations pursuant to the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f) is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.
(emphasis added)
in other words, the repeal does not begin until 60 days after the LAST of the requirements above are completed. AFAIK, only (b) (1) has been completed. so yes, it could take time, quite A LOT of time, before the repeal comes into force, assuming that the named parties do actually perform the required tasks.
*i think this is the most recent (final) language in the Senate. if i am in error please fix it :)
eemom
sheeeyit, talk about rewarding bad behavior. Some drunk firebagger shows up in the middle of the night and trashes the joint…….and he is rewarded with a FRONT PAGE POST.
While the rest of us loyal Cole-bots toil thanklessly all of our lives down here in the cheap seats hoping against hope to earn just ONE personal snarky DIAF from the master himself.
There is no justice in this world.
sw
I don’t understand the original post at all. I seriously don’t. Not even remotely. It’s so full of weird gibberish that I can start off a given sentence understanding the noun and the verb but then an orgasm of what-the-fuck. And I see in comments there seems to be a rational, if not delighted, conversation about a post that I absolutely do not understand, and I am a regular reader.
Now I’m going to go get hammered out of the sheer embarrassment of feeling like I need to go back to Remedial Blogging Reading.
AxelFoley
@Anya:
LOL, I know, right? You would think that having been in the military–West Point grad, at that–that Choi would have learned strategy.
I can’t feel sorry for his dumb ass.
Jennifer
That sounds all noble and shit, until you look at the people who practice politics solely from the standpoint of extremely fucked-up principles, i.e. today’s Republican Party, where the idea that lowering taxes on rich people = a healthier economy and lower deficit is held as an article of faith, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Principle is an ideal, and as all adults know, the ideal is rarely achieved in the real world. We get closest to it when we take reality into account in formulating our strategy to reach that ideal or come as close as we can to it. That’s “practicality” and without it, you will consistently fall far short of the mark.
Not to mention that standing up for what you believe is not at all mutually exclusive with taking what you can get, for now, while continuing to stand up for what you believe and working towards getting closer to it in the future.
Chris
If the senators were motivated by principle, wouldn’t they have passed the bill *before* three-quarters of the public started supporting it?
PS
@soonergrunt: REM thank you too.
NobodySpecial
Why do people not get that Cole, being a responsible bloghost, throws up shit on hooks for both wings of his fanbase?
sparky
@jsfox:
as a factual matter you may well be right. it doesn’t follow that therefore no one should protest or complain about that policy.
i can’t speak for Kenneth, but i can say that IMO that repealing DADT is a good thing, but when juxtaposed against the other practices the US engages in, it’s not really that big a deal. to me, that the fact of all this boo-yah about this change suggests only that Ds have learned to love their crumbs.*
if you want to call my opinion Obama derangement you can, but i think doing so says more about the epithet hurler than the target.
try looking at it this way: how much do you think the surviving relatives of an Afghani wedding party destroyed by a missile care whether the person who pushed the button was gay or straight?
*yes, i know the rejoinder here is “one step at a time” or somesuch. my response is well, that’s fine, then let’s see some action on DOMA–which unlike DADT, affects the entire citizen population of the US.
sparky
@NobodySpecial: we do, but like lemmings, we just can’t keep away from the edge. also, some–though not all–of the pyrotechnics here are amusing.
also, someone might be wrong on the intertubz!
BruceFromOhio
@eemom: ROFL. I will be laughing every time I think about this.
gravie
Not on point as to DADT, but there’s a parallel: My husband, who works for the government and now has his pay frozen for the next two years, believes that Obama put the government pay freeze out there as a preemptive measure to stave off furloughs and layoffs, which were on the table. Sometimes strategies result in unpleasant outcomes, but less unpleasant than the alternative. Real world.
With DADT, the outcome was actually positive. Does it matter so very much WHO gets the credit?
Kenneth
@sparky:
EXACTLY!
Afghanis want us fucking dead because we’re hateful militaristic warmongering rogue state that protects War Criminals and this doesn’t change that.
bemused
For crying out loud, I’m desperately hoping for someone creative (which would not be me) to come up with a substitute for “fee fees”.
Kenneth
We’re torturing PFC Manning as we speak and we’re about to do the same to Assange wants he’s extradicted for
Anti-Soviet ActivitiesConspiracy, and all we can talk about is whether or not gays get to serve openly while dying for the Empire?Kenneth
I’ll say it again THIS COUNTRY IS ENDORSING THE TORTURE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS.
James E Powell
Because the purpose of Democracy is not for each citizen to do what is practical but to voice what is right
The purpose of democracy is to govern. Governing is and ought to be all about what is practical. With a government devoted to ‘right’ or ‘principles,’ the fight over what is right or which principle is the most important usually results in a pile of corpses.
And what is this about ‘voice what is right?’ What good does it do to ‘voice’ things? I am not saying that anyone should be silent, but speaking out is only a part of democracy, right? Isn’t the important part what we do? Isn’t deciding what to do a practical thing?
BruceFromOhio
@Kenneth: FREE MUMIA
Kenneth
@BruceFromOhio:
Keep punching those hippies!
sparky
@El Cid: of course, i can’t wholly agree with you as a matter of principle. ;)
i did want to toss this one back your way, though:
agreed. that’s why people like me complain. it may not be much to bang a pot from time to time, but it seems to me it’s still better to do that than accept the status quo. and though it seems rather unlikely that anything will arise until the next economic catastrophe (which is probably coming fairly soon) there’s nothing wrong in being ummm prepared, so to speak.
for me, i think the problem is that in the USA the rabid individualistic materialism of the place routinely collapses the “ought” into the “is”. there is no thinking about policy at all, only returns on investment in the public and private sphere. as a result there isn’t any thinking about outcomes, not because everyone is incapable, but because there’s no “profit” of any kind in it.
mclaren
Cole does exhibit a schizoid pattern in his posts. One day he’ll be slamming anyone who suggests primarying Obama because “the black vote will go away” (right, like that’s actually going to happen, Cole, yeah, all those black folks out there will suddenly decide to vote Republican because that’s a viable option for them to get their agenda through congress)… The next day, Cole is hammering away at Obama for allowing all sorts of outrageous torture and brutality and kidnapping and assassination and blah blah blah.
So which is it? Is Obama a good guy doing the best he can? Or is he the head thug of Thug Nation?
Depends on the day of the week, I guess, when you listen to Cole.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
…and thus, the acts of a few threaten to derail a thread on an important piece of civil rights.
Y’know, I’m not Gay. I’m an African-American. And if someone was in my house while we were talking about an important piece of Civil Rights for me back in, say, ’64, and pissing in the wind about, say, JFK in Vietnam till they sucked all the oxygen out of the room, I suspect I’d be pretty pissed.
Esp. when the backhanded compliments of “this is great, BUT…” started. Or with quotes like “it just means more people for the Industrial big business mill”. Or with something like this direct quote:
To paraphrase a quote from BLAZING SADDLES: “As honorary chairman of the welcoming committee, it’s my privilege to present a laurel and hearty FUCK YOU to our new…”
mclaren
@Kenneth:
Notice, incidentally, the progression.
This is exactly what I’ve been warning everyone about.
First, the people in power in our society try out their brutalities and depredations on the weakest and least popular people…then they move on up the chain, until eventually, they’re brutalizing your neighbor and your wife and your children. Each step along the way, you say, “But they’re not kidnapping me and throwing me into a dungeon forever without trial. They’re not torturing my wife. They’re not assassinating my kid. So it’s okay, then.”
They start out by torturing scary-looking swarthy brown people who dress strangely. Ooooohhh, you people say, look, that guy looks really odd. Must be sometihng wrong with him. He doesn’t even speak my language. So go torture him, fine, big deal.
Then they start torturing a white guy, but he’s a private in the army, so, sure, he’s white, and he looks like me, and he dresses like me, but, see, Manning took an oath and he violated the law and blah blah blah, so go torture Manning, fine, big deal.
And then the next step is to find some really scary evil-looking white guy who’s an ordinary citizen, maybe some meth-dealing biker, or some kiddy raper, and pretty soon they’ll be torturing him. And you people say, Meh, okay, sure, he’s just a citizen like me and he speaks the same language and wears the same kind of clothes and goes to the same supermarkets I do, but still, he’s a kiddy raper. Or a meth-dealing biker. So go torture him to death, fine, big deal.
And then we get to your neighbor. And your neighbor goes to church, and wears a three-piece suit, and he’s got a respectable job, but, see, he said something critical about president Palin. And now there are five goons torturing him to death in a dungeon, and they’re torturing his kids and his wife along with him. To make an example of him, see?
And by this time, you people realize…wow, there’s something wrong here.
But…see…by that time, it’s too late.
Elisabeth
@Kenneth:
Jesus fucking Christ, dude, we can do both. And screw you because I served and was booted for having the fucking nerve to have the wrong feelings for a woman.
So, yes, to some of us this is a big fucking deal and we will celebrate it today and likely tomorrow. And I will watch proudly when the President signs it. And I will watch anxiously when for the full implementation to take place.
While you, sir, can go fuck yourself.
Kenneth
@Elisabeth:
Tell it to the dead Afghans. @mclaren:
Tell it to the victims of our rogue state military massacre machine, many of whom ARE PEOPLE OF COLOR.
Kenneth
Barack Obama is an Uncle Tom for the American-Israeli Military Industrial Complex and a house slave for Wall St. corporations, NOT a real friend of People of Color.
JordanRules
As Rachel admittinged, this was a difficult promise to keep and he was only fighting against 17 years of it being codified.
Those who proclaim the great fight of making us an anti-imperialist beacon of light who properly checks corporate interests want him to win what? The right to re-do the entire damn country? He’d be fighting a losing battle with centuries of codification.
And ironically enough, I think he’ll make a few dents in that foundation without releasing the hounds of opposition against him…because they would win every time. Make those dents quietly sir.
We can scream about it though but don’t shout down the difficult progress that was made in the meantime.
Elisabeth
@Kenneth:
Thanks for taking my civil rights so lightly. Nice to know you and the Republicans apparently feel DADT should have waited until we were no longer in Iraq and Afghanistan because, you know, we cannot do one thing while we doing something else.
Again, screw you. Now I’m going to go wash the dishes because that will at least be productive.
Gwangung
I’m punching to my right and some wusses keep complaining. What’s up with that?
JordanRules
You guys are slipping. I don’t think Kenneth received the level of snarky responses he was hoping for sooooo he raised you one Uncle Tom and one house slave.
If Obama could do the things Kenneth suggests he really would be magic.
Davis X. Machina
Sometimes incoherence has a coherence all its own…
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid:
There’s the second half of Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, in a paragraph. Well done. sir.
morzer
And emo-troll Cole starts rubbing his alco-balls in the faces of the people.. again! Next he’ll start gibbering about the Steelers. Sadly, the fact that they are playing the New York Sideline Stinkers means that today I have to join forces with him, nose firmly held.
Seriously, people, everyone knows that Cole ain’t Broder, just as Matoko The Maniac Mouse ain’t Lara Croft. Tunch would rip off Broder’s tiny little non-rum balls for breakfast.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Kenneth: Bitter impotent troll is bitter and impotent.
Ronbo
Sorry John. The post is more accurate than you could ever imagine. You see, you must have the imagination first.
Time after time, you allow your “go along to git along” attitude drive your thoughts. Unfortunately, your “type” attitude leads to unfortunate things like Japanese encampments, zapping Americans with radiation that is more dangerous than terorism and a whole host of unsavory torture. I know you aren’t “for” these things; but, your attitude allows them to become reality. Go along to git along isn’t good for men and women of principle. Not that you don’t have principles – it just the same ones that once led to concentration camps.
I know you aren’t my enemy – but you are clearly being used. “Let’s wait a few decades and see if those fags still want their rights!” Fail.
General Stuck
@Kenneth:
The Shitass River has left it’s banks today.
Shade Tail
@mclaren #99:
You think? Personally, I have absolutely no trouble making sense of his points. It’s really not that difficult.
Sounds like the kind of black-and-white question you’d hear from Faux “News”. How about: “Obama is a flawed person who does very good things and also does excruciatingly bad things, just like pretty much every other human being on the planet.” It’s called “nuance”. Mr. Cole and all the rest of us are not obligated to be permanent cheerleaders or permanent haters. There is a middle ground where we can be happy about the good and furious about the bad.
Is that really such an alien concept to you that you feel obligated to call it “a schizoid pattern”?
Oh, and your “black people will never vote republican” point? Even if you’re correct (and you’re further off than you realize), there’s a reason why blacks have such low voting turn-out. I’m white, but I can still get that. Why can’t you?
4tehlulz
inb4 Kenneth complains about the race card
chopper
@Kenneth:
i can see the jewish mother crowd is in full bloom today.
4tehlulz
JEWS DID DADT
chopper
@mclaren:
jesus, that’s some wicked fail right there.
MK
Just brush it off your shoulder. Alas this is how the barbiturate left reacts. It’s why that group of frustrati will always be a marginalized powerless group. They don’t have a clue how to organize and they don’t understand movement-building. It’s sad really. We owe them our sympathies.
Lit3Bolt
Yes, it depends if Tunch has shit on his pillow or not that day.
No, I’m serious.
chopper
@Lit3Bolt:
yeah, blunted affect and self-imposed isolation just describe cole to a T, amirite?
AxelFoley
@Kenneth:
Ok, you can officially go fuck yourself, asswipe.
AxelFoley
@Kenneth:
Keep lining those fuckers up, and we’ll keep punching. And kicking.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Much as the lefty blogosphere is enjoying a victory lap right now. DADT repeal was just about the easiest get on the wish list. Most of the country was for it, most politicians were for it, most of the military was either for it or didn’t care, and most important of all, there was no natural business constituency against it. Social conservatives were the only thing standing in the way, so if your only hurdle is a minority of rank bigots and you can’t get legislation past them you can’t do anything at all.
So the 111th was bookended with the resolution of two basic fairness issues, Lilly Ledbetter at the front and DADT at the end. Fortunately there was plenty of stupidity in the middle to keep us interested.
dogwood
Yesterday DADT died with a whimper instead of a bang. And this is what frustrates the movement progressives. They make heroes out of people who chain themselves to the White House fence or hold court in Crawford, Texas. That’s OK. But the law died because millions of courageous citizens came out to their families, friends, neighbors and co-workers over the last 20 years. They changed hearts and minds. The law died because serious people in the White House and Pentagon provided a framework that allowed Congress to do the right thing without unnecessary blowback. To all those people I say – Thanks. Ya done good.
lol
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
So easy to pass that it failed the first two times it came up for a vote and everyone had declared it dead just a few days ago.
Buck
@dogwood:
Yes.
4jkb4ia
DADT isn’t a simple thing of principle over pragmatism. DADT was both principle and pragmatism because clearly the country would accept gays serving in the military and you had to get the moderate Republicans to understand that this was where the country was. And the content was simple enough that you couldn’t lie about it. (My husband for some reason was confused that voting against DADT meant going back to the old days of witch hunts. NO, honey, Andrew Sullivan doesn’t believe that, and he should know.) But something like the health care bill people didn’t understand enough to accept and a semi-moderate Republican like Scott Brown was elected running against.
Did that commenter actually read the highly righteous post that John wrote about Bradley Manning yesterday? This was a classic of John’s style. Very great eloquence and destroying folly in very simple words.
4jkb4ia
Yes, 125. What he said.
That Other Mike
@Kenneth: Wow, Kenneth. You’re a really swell guy, aren’t you?
4jkb4ia
“Politics is the art of the possible” is a very honorable position and not incoherent. Joan Didion even used it to smack around Newt, I believe. Even Jane believes that politics is the art of the possible. Otherwise she would have been crusading for single-payer to start with. The argument is over how much you stretch the possible and understand the people you are dealing with.
Even immediately after I read Ian Welsh’s post telling everyone to leave the country, I didn’t think John was incoherent. I could only say that this blog is paying attention to a lot of shiny objects. (Then Ezra linked to the Anonymous HFM, who thinks that the US could survive a big oil shock, and I cheered up. Slightly.)
xian
@mclaren: the black vote doesn’t have to go to the Republicans to go away.
Elie
@agrippa:
Wise words that seem to just be lost on way too many people on the left and right. From my everyday life at work, I KNOW that a surprising number of folks have no idea how to get things done — especially big, important things. It requires apparently, an unusual combination of knowledge, skill, maturity and the ability to see through complexity without undue emotion. These attributes appear to be largely missing from a whole lot of people in the leftie blogs and the right wing and Republicans. Unfortunately, these skills do not appear to be easily learned, either.
Peter
@dr. bloor: Something to do with Manning not receiving a cent of the ten thousand or so dollars Wikileaks raised supposedly for his legal defense, last I checked.
Elie
@Kenneth:
Kenneth. YOU.ARE.A.BIGOT
Now shoo! Go away!
You are just here to push buttons and be annoying. You havent commented anything that should be taken seriously. I read your comments and have to reach for my hemmorhoid creme..
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@lol:
No, it failed as an attachment to the Defense Authorization Bill.
Peter
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): That’s even more insane. The Republicans filibustered the military’s money because it would mean gay people could serve.
Michael
@Kenneth
Can we retire this meme? I respect hippies, but despise the too serious, too fucking lazy, top down implementing progressive activists.
If we could curb stomp Jane Hamsher and every bike riding, skinny, balding, vegan bicycling she-male EmoProg activist blogger and hold the event on pay-per-view, we might actually come up with enough money to engage in grassroots activism.
This would be important, as the EmoProg blogger activists are incapable of engaging in grassroots activism.
So what is your Kos username, anyway, Kenneth? Are you on the rec list daily, or just weekly?
soonergrunt
@Peter: They raised a hell of a lot more than that off of Manning, and they pledged $50,000 to defend him. But now, Assange, whom Manning claimed was handling him, claims that he never heard of Bradley Manning–this after several speeches and interviews where he specifically mentioned Manning.
This is the classic example of that worn out phrase “thrown under the bus.”
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Peter:
This isn’t that difficult.
The Defense Authorization with DADT repeal attached did not pass.
DADT repeal as standalone passed quickly and easily.
The Defense Authorization without DADT repeal still has not passed. It might yet pass, but other changes beside the DADT repeal are being made.
Not difficult at all.
Gus
@Elie: Don’t act like he believes anything he posts. He’s an archetypal troll, just flinging feces to see what sticks.
Peter
@soonergrunt: I had a feeling I was lowballing the amount.
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): That it did. That doesn’t mean that the defense spending bill died for reasons not DADT.
D-Chance.
I think all should offer an obligatory congratulations to the homosexual community for their huge advancement in civil rights. Yes, now gays and lesbians can openly gun down journalists from black helicopters and send drones out to massacre dozens of innocent Arab women and children just like their straight counterparts.
You boys and girls must be so proud, today…
El Cid
@Michael: I think most people who use it now are more likely just generalizing any time that sensible, rational, but ostensibly too ‘liberal’ policies or arguments are dismissed as being too far out, too fringe out of the mainstream, etc.
I don’t think most people using the term are specifically referencing some particular sets of groups like FDL or whoever. A whole lot of people who use this phrase have picked it up in general and may not have any clear idea who FDL is/are, etc.
At least that’s not how I feel like it has been used in general.
Whether or not the phrase is too played out is a different question in my view.
El Cid
@D-Chance.: They were there already anyway, they just don’t have to lie about their sexual orientation. Whether or not military members could or should defy such murderous policies has little to do with the sexual orientation or gender identification of a particular servicemember. I don’t think. I also don’t see any likelihood that significantly more numbers of gay and lesbian people are likely to sign up for military service than were likely to anyway.
agrippa
@Elie:
Quite true Elie. I agree with all that you wrote.
I think that it helps to understand that governing and politics are two different things. In fact, they may be in conflict.
Governing has to do with rational problem solving.
Politics has to do with getting power and keeping it; it has to do with rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. The fable of the scorpion and the frog applies to politics.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Peter:
Um, it quite obviously means exactly that. Otherwise you should be able to explain why eight Republicans voted for the standalone without even a fuss.
It’s blindingly obvious that what the GOP really wanted was to slow down the process on the Authorization Bill, either to get one just like they want or to delay the whole thing until January. It’s also possible, incredible as it sounds, that when some of them said they didn’t object to DADT repeal per se but to its attachment to an authorization bill they were telling the truth. Otherwise you’re going to have to explain why eight of them voted for the standalone without making a fuss.
licensed to kill time
Kenneth on Dec. 18th at 1:32am said:
Just markin’ his words.
AxelFoley
Heh, is this Kenneth guy a new troll?
dogwood
@agrippa:
You’ve got it exactly right. Governing is a grind; politics is blood sport. It’s not surprising that the firebaggers or whatever we call them are not impressed by this victory. Other than John McCain, few on the other side seem very exercised about repeal; therefore it doesn’t feel like much of a victory. These are people who don’t care if their ideas are validated; they want their feelings validated. I voted for President Obama and donated money. I’ll do the same in 2012. I’m a Democrat. I hope he can continue to move the ball down the field or at least stop really bad things from happening. I don’t have a personal relationship with him; therefore he can’t hurt my feelings or insult me personally. I really don’t understand these people, but they have as much right to try to bring down a president as the teabaggers have. Arguing with them is pointless.
Kobie
That’s not a big stretch around here.