So I’m going through the comments section, and I see a lot of whinging about Erik. My first instinct is to tell you to STFU and deal, but that is just how I roll.
Because I’ve mellowed in my older age, I’ll just tell you to deal with it. I keep seeing “warmed-over conservatism” and other petty bullshit like that, and all I have to say is that if you want the public debate about policy, you better get some more game. I’ve gone through every post Erik has written, and I have not once seen him attack liberals, dismiss other people’s ideas, or generally be the kind of petulant dipshit a lot of you are being in the comments.
You dislike his argument? Make a counter argument. You guys constantly claim you want to honestly engage thoughtful and decent people who will argue the merits of issues, and now you are presented with one, and your gut instinct is to insult or try to shut him down.
That, to me, is not the sign of a confident movement. You think his ideas are bullshit and warmed over conservatism, explain why. Make the argument. Make the case. What the progressive movement needs is not to emulate the Dan Riehl’s and Michelle Malkins, but to confidently make their case that their ideas are better.
It may be that I am a lot more sensitive to the hive mind than some of you all. If it weren’t for the fact that even when I was at peak wingnut, I was still willing to read and keep on my blogroll folks all over the political spectrum. I’ve been reading the great orange satan and the powder blue satan and Oliver Willis and a whole host of liberal blogs from the beginning. It was because a lot of them (the Poorman and the Sadly’s included) engaged (and mocked) me that I started to rethink shit.
So Erik is here to stay until he doesn’t want to, and I’ll revert to my original position. STFU and deal. Dislike what he says? Argue with him and tell him why he is wrong. But don’t bitch at me in the comments, because I’m enough of a prick that I’ll find some bottom feeder at the Free Republic to start posting here about how evolution is a lie and abortion is murder.
Just. To. Piss. You. Off.
And I’ll bet a bunch of you were joking about Republicans and epistemic closure. Wankers.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
Hear! Here! Erik, I, for one, enjoy having you around.
JWL
I thought you were on vacation.
r€nato
Right on.
r€nato
Thank you JC. That image is my profile pic on FB now.
mcd410x
I for one welcome my warmed-over conservative overlords.
Omnes Omnibus
So the meal wasn’t that great?
mclaren
Seriously. The guy hasn’t spewed any B.S. so far as I’ve seen. Cut him some slack.
You know, we need sane conservatives. They’re the ones who will finally pound the stake into the heart of the monster the Republican party has become.
General Stuck
I agree. But I think some of the frustration is that Erik doesn’t engage in the debate after posting his thread and articulating his position more clearly. So really, there is no real debate he is engaging in. At least not yet.
jeff
I LOVE Erik’s posts. Great addition.
Restrung
Agreed. But Hamsher is still an A$$
ps. you don’t look fat at all.
General Stuck
I think this is an excellent idea, our sewer trout could mate with Freeper sewer trout and produce giant blog eating ones.
kdaug
This fuckin’ place rocks.
tom p
thanx, John. (you too Eric)
Lysana
He isn’t debating and I haven’t seen him say a challenging thing yet. Offensive, yes, but not challenging. Seriously, the “vote on gay rights and everyone will be happy” meme needs to die with a stake through its heart. And E.D. needs to engage, not just post and leave.
lamh32
Wait, BJ’s got a new front pager??? I never noticed.
Seriously, it just seems to me that some people just see/hear GOP/Repub/Conserv and automatically just go on the defensive. Not me, I know too many people who are Conserv, but are still some of my really good acquaintances of mine, even though all their views are wrong…IMHO! I can tolerate them…lol!
General Stuck
LOL
That jeebus photo is so you John Cole.
Nice to see you break from baby shower and gardening bliss to get fired up about something.
bago
My only issue is that he doesn’t play in the comments.
SiubhanDuinne
This is why I’m secretly in love with you, John.
Well, and Tunch.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
‘Scuse me, Mr. Cole, are you equating yourself with Jesus Christ? Jesus hated cats and mojitos, FYI.
T.R. Donoghue
Really glad to have him here.
Omnes Omnibus
I am sure some of it was hazing the new guy. mistermix got pounded a bit when he first showed up. It seemed to me that a lot of people found a repetitive theme in EDK’s posts, that bad regulations are bad and good ones are good. That being a little tautological, people became perturbed. Then, unlike most of the front pagers here, EDK did not wade into the middle of the fracas to either clarify his remarks or engage the people who were trying to engage him. So, both sides do it, yadda yadda, nothing to see here, [insert Broderism], and that is central to my point.
Midnight Marauder
@General Stuck:
I don’t think you read those comments as carefully as you claim, Cole. Your entire point is moot because the new guy a) has a case full of false equivalencies and conservative tropes of “liberal ideas” that do not exist in the real world; and b) spends more time churning out redundant posts than actually engaging the commentariat to which he now belongs.
I get you want to defend your decision, but you’re pretty fucking off base with your analysis here. Just enjoy your vacation and let the fucking minions do their thing.
It’s funny. The title of this post is pretty much what a lot of people have been hounding Mr. Kain to do during his short tenure here. Funny that.
+4
Restrung
@SiubhanDuinne:
Did you say that out loud?
Turgidson
Nice Friday news dump you have here. Tee hee.
Josh James
“You think his ideas are bullshit and warmed over conservatism, explain why. Make the argument. Make the case.”
Some of your folks are doing this, John … it seems there’s radio silence once his premise goes out, but some are making the argument … Certainly it’s what I tried on his “pensions-are-killing-public-jobs” post, as did significant number of other comments, John … but he did not reply, and I found his premise to be pretty obviously ridiculous, and stated why, as did others.
I’d prefer he defend his premise, bullshit or otherwise, as a reader. If he’s not gonna do that, I guess you’d have to expect your many readers to howl at ya, right? IMHO … of course.
I will cop to sarcasm on his deregulation rulz-beers post, sure … but I do that with everyone, liberals and conservatives alike.
sashal
this has potential to become the best blog of all times….
I totally agree with John, and if the sane cons are welcome here and the SANE dialog will develop here , we will beat any echo chamberish outfits in the whole blogosphere, hands down.
John, bring more sane cons here, but if there are some nutcases pretends in the Paterico, Goldstein(nutjob) style who will post on your esteemed blog , they will get a hearty kick ass as well, my smart and honest friend
AhabTRuler
@Midnight Marauder: Fuck it. Co-sign, as I haven’t been able to come up with anything better than that, and I am +0.
ETA: False dichotomies, fallacious framing, and imaginary opponents: it’s the standard wingnut toolkit, and it’s boring.
Chuck Butcher & Oregon vs. self-serve-gas & the world was more informative and interesting.
The Dangerman
Been reading a whole host of liberal blogs from the beginning, too. Of course, that’s because I’m a lefty. Only one I really miss was one that was brilliant – something about the Whiskey Bar. Fuck if I can recall his name tonight (and I see he posts on the GOS occasionally, but not enough for my tastes).
Joel
@Lysana: I think this is the right line of thinking, although the approach needs to be changed a bit.
Instead of bashing people outright, you need to show them the error of their ways (e.g. Civil rights shouldn’t be subject to a vote, citing obvious examples, encouraging discourse).
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dangerman: Bilmon?
Chuck Butcher
Well let’s see, John – he’s been caught out on utter and complete bullshit and opposed for it directly and that’s not some closed circle argument of personal idiotology. If that pleases you then that’s fine because this is your Blog but it isn’t true that he’s getting jacked just for his idiotology.
He plays the outside curveball game, starts with sweet reason and then sends it well outside the strike zone with bullshit and somehow still looks – uh – reasonable. It’s a shit game they’ve played for a long time and I’m happy to beat him over the head with it. But he’s way too big a pu**y to defend his crap and that’s different than the other posters.
I sure won’t tell you to get rid of him, but also it seems a bit odd to ask to not whack him for lying – or misrepresenting, or whatever the polite name is for telling something other than the truth.
Turgidson
@Midnight Marauder:
And yes. This is what is getting people upset, more than anything. One of Kain’s posts said:
That’s complete and utter bullshit and only righties who have preconceived notions of what liberals believe would say something like that – and it shows that the person hasn’t made any real attempt to figure out for themselves if liberals actually believe such a thing.
Those seemingly innocuous throwaway comments are kind of annoying.
Sarcastro
Do not smell that finger. You just know it smells like Peter’s butt.
CorgiFan
So a lot of center-left / left-of-center bloggers engaged / mocked you when you were peak wingnut. Now that you’ve
seen the lightswitched sides, John, what bloggers on the opposite side are engaging you or even mocking you? I haven’t seen any actually even quote you or link to you, let alone engage you, except Sully, and I don’t think he counts as being on the opposite side.I’m not sure if there’s even a point to this…I just find it kind of curious…
The Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you; yes, Bilmon. His writing fucking rocked when he ran his own place. Read him for quite a while at the Whiskey Bar as I recall.
But it’s Friday, kinda late, my brain is baked (and so soon shall I be).
freelancer
erm, Yawp. and Yawp.
Uhm, he accepts completely and isn’t skeptical of mainstream framing at all, he links to McArdle (in all her wrongful glory to make his point. He is an eminently polite guy, but that whole bullshit that is viral in the media with “balance” being the paragon of journalistic virtues, well he’s sick with it. As far as “discussion” is concerned, we have seen the likes of Jake Tapper, James Fallows, Friedersdorf (I think), along with many other bloggers show up here to discuss/ clarify positions they have had. EDK just seems to be posting and moving on. I welcome new voices, especially of those I disagree with, because when it comes to being right, even I am usually wrong on a lot of shit more than 50% of the time. It’s just part of being human, so I get that and I try to adjust.
/petulant asshole
AhabTRuler
@The Dangerman: I miss the old Sadly, No!. I haven’t really been back there much in the past few years, and when I do, the fastball just ain’t what it used to be,YMMV. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault, per se, I just think that the S,N! shtick had a shelf-life.
Jimbo
I’m pretty this is John Cole’s Balloon Juice, so I’m guessing what he says goes. Just a guess, but still
BTW John – Fuckin’ A Bubba
Restrung
E.D. Kain is the white Jimmy Carter.
whatsisname is trying to run a website here. And it’s still interesting, for one or more reasons. TUUUNNNCH! oh fer fuxake. A fellow St Paulite could say it better. meh
S. cerevisiae
John, you could always get “Dr” Pezzi, I hear he’s looking for a gig now.
Ron Beasley
I enjoy getting Erik’s perspective. Most of the time I think he’s totally full of shit but he’s not insane which is refreshing. I post at both the dirty fucking hippie site Newshoggers and the more even handed The Moderate Voice. I enjoy the feedback I get at TMV, Newshoggers is usually preaching to the choir. I do think Erik could do a better job of defending himself in comments – other than that to complaints here.
i am a 64 year old dirty fucking hippie by the way.
Big City Mary
I just have to say this-I go through the day hoping no one will bring up politics because I really need to get along with my co-workers and superiors.
But here is the bottom line-I absolutely cannot stand someone who votes Republican or thinks Republican-I mean CANNOT stand them! I think they are “no body but me” kind of people with absolutely no interest in their fellow humans unless said humans are blood related and heirs. And I wish each and every one of them would wake up tomorrow morning-I mean TOMORROW MORNING, with not a damn thing that collective taxation ever did!!
demkat620
I love me some cranky John Cole.
Joel
I got me some serious Herm Edwards vibe there:
Be a man.
Or a woman.
Put your name on it!
Jade Jordan
The new conservadude is worthless. He needs to be a little more teabaggy. Give him a script: Obama is a communist socialist facist marxist usurper kenyan.
Lazy libral elitists have stolen our country and we want it back.
I am going to start flaming him unless he gets it together.
Sifu Tweety
We mocked because we loved, John.
No, honest! We just didn’t think it would work.
kdaug
@Big City Mary: Tell us how you really feel.
Chuck Butcher
@Ron Beasley:
Yes, you are…
eemom
oooh! I lurvs it when he gets all pissed off and feisty and tell us how bad we suck. Yeehaw!
And I TOLD y’all we were supposed to be polite to the RC.
Poopyman
So much for the food coma. Have another Old Fashioned.
I just don’t read stuff here early enough to comment, but I don’t think I’ve read anything of Erik’s that would really trigger some knee-jerk reaction. In other words, I’ve seen nothing in his arguments to really object to.
Meh.
Poopy at +0, but missing a couple of units of platelets
LiberalTarian
Erik who? Red State Erik? See, this is what happens when you go on vacation. No? Well, then what the fuck is the freak out about? It isn’t as if John Cole is no longer conservative, he just doesn’t buy the idea that the Republican Party is the fount of all good things anymore.
Listen, I would love to see some gold old conservative values–the ones conservative used to mean, not the invade every aspect of your life and give your tax dollars to big corporations and little people are of no consequence conservative.
For that matter, give me the old-fashioned liberal elite, burdened with noblesse oblige, who did a lot of heavy lifting for the working man without getting a sainthood for it.
Yeah, them good old days were sure good.
Who doesn’t love a good argument? ESPECIALLY on Balloon-Juice?
Corner Stone
Maybe you could get Erick Erickson to post here.
He’d probably use the same baseless tropes, rightwing catchphrases and nonsensical garbage EDK does.
Tool.
cmorenc
Here’s another enthusiastic, solid second for Eric-the-BJ-resident-conservative, from someone who has solidly progressive views himself. So far, he’s shown he’s temperate and writes in a fashion designed to appeal to facts, reason, and sane sensibility. Without a few articulate people like him in here who don’t necessarily sing the same tunes as the progressive choir, a forum like this tends to become smugly insular and gravitate too closely around our own orthodoxies, and fail too often to see some important potential problems with our own positions and sometimes even our own harsh criticisms of wingers, teabaggers, and republican politicians. We only see the bona fide insanity and meanness in the opposition, and too little of what bona fide, though badly misguided, appeal they sometimes have with too much of the electorate.
Much better Eric than Brick Oven Bill to carry the argument to us when need be.
Harry Kawasaki
And, speaking of Oliver Willis, he doesn’t post things like:
No complaints from this liberal.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder: Fucking Viva Espania!
Co-sign this business.
Corner Stone
God damn. Let me get this straight. His views, viewpoints and beliefs are NOT the problem. If he can bring it then he should by God bring it.
But don’t throw some fantastically right wing extraordinaire bullshit in there as if it’s not supposed TO FUCKING MATTER.
EDK isn’t making a case, he’s propagating.
So, fuck that.
AhabTRuler
@freelancer: I will go back to one of the first fucking thing he said:
The name that describes that position is “pro-choice,” anything else smacks of mendacity or political expediency (if not craven opportunism).
Dude, first fucking thread, and it just gets worse from there. Wouldn’t it be better if we voted on fundamental rights? Tapping the deregulation pony while framing it as quoted above. Weak fucking tea, and this is before we start to mine his postings at other sites
BR
I think it’s nice having a diversity of opinion here. I just prefer long comment thread discussion rather than posts that then don’t engage in debate.
So E.D. – welcome, and please stay, but stick around and discuss stuff in the comments, on your posts and on the cat/dog blogging too.
Cerberus
Maybe cause there’s no such thing as a sane conservative, only idiots who don’t know history or anything about the positions of their opponents, greedy “I got mine, fuck you” libertarians, and masters of High Broderism.
Finding one with a penchant of hiding his crazy in passive-aggressivism, hiding his fallacies in “throwaway comments” and a willingness to be on the “right side” of no-shit-sherlock issues enough to seem “approachable” doesn’t actually make a sane conservative.
As many have stated, unlike you, Doug, mistermix, kay, he shows no willingness or desire to learn and grow from one moment to the next and no matter what objections are raised to his views at one moment, he will fail to read a single one of them and his position will remain unchanged even if factually wrong.
But whatevs, I haven’t really bothered to slam the guy until now, but there are real structural problems with him, including the inability to engage with him and have the sort of factual and rhetorical debate you are asking us to do with him.
And also, I might have to question you on the epistemic closure thing.
Uh, you are a lefty blog, you read lefty blogs, in what way are they epistemically closed?
I mean sure, they have a lefty slant, but they reference right-wing views, quotes, and sites all the time, encouraging their followers to follow the links if they dare and wade into the belly of the beast to truly see and understand the crazy and the nature of their opponents.
See, in liberal worlds, actually understanding conservative common wisdom, actions, thoughts, and thought processes is part of a regular blog cycle. What is the “common mainstream wisdom of the Beltway” and what the far-right believe tends to be evening news and trumpeted far and wide, you often have to search for a left-wing view about anything, which is why many have turned to reading “liberal blogs”.
You’d have to work at it to become “epistemically closed” on the lefty blogs, to somehow avoid all right-wing viewpoints or mainstream conservative viewpoints about issues. Hell, you’d pretty much have to develop selective reading because on average every one-in-five if not more posts by liberal is simply the reposting of a conservative nutjob printed in full if not in the post, then in the comments. You’d have to work at avoiding that shit.
So yeah, a tired retread of glibertarianism with a “I’ll jump on the right side of some no shit sherlock issues” seasoning is going to seem like every other High Broder Beltway wisdom pile of shit that’s referenced every few posts on blogs such as well, this one.
I can see why some people may react with “sigh, this again” rather than energetic and fresh to engage with someone who is really “oh, so close to being sane, really, pull my finger, we mean it this time.”
I get that your angry that people are rolling their eyes at this blogger choice, but it doesn’t mean that inane “I know you are, but what is he” arguments aren’t going to receive a due amount of flak.
JGabriel
John Cole:
You can’t argue on the merits if you can’t agree on the facts. Erik has, for instance, a couple of egregious fact errors in his post on pensions, the usual wingnut type myths about excessive salaries and pensions, which several people, including me, have called him on.
Erik hasn’t responded to people’s comments about it, corrected the errors, or defended his statements.
We’ve sucked it up and stated our case. Why isn’t Erik stating and defending his case, instead of hiding behind your coattails for defense?
.
matoko_chan
it is not what hes written here……hes been careful.
I read his Fisher King piece which is really a beautiful work
But….. hes said some epic stupid at Sully’s which we all read.
fetus=slave, the teatards aren’t REALLY racists, etc.
hes already refused to talk about abortion, cuz he knows hes just base-pandering and he cant defend.
Erik can write beautifully when he wants to…..sadly we have a Crazy Eddie Point between us……i think it is his responsibility to educate his base and call out the crazipants bullshytt memes they embrace (like the fetus=slave stuff), and he thinks its his responsibility to pander to them so that he doesn’t lose his influence with them when they gulag him for being a RINO.
hes the same as douthat and mcmegan and weigel…..they live in pantswettng fear of their base.
its pure-D base pandering.
that is what id like to talk about.
Chuck Butcher
Since I’m in moderation hell for calling him a pu**y, I’ll just say that his gratuitous use of right wing memes and usage of easily challenged assertations should make him real fun. Looks to me like lots of opportunities to kick the snot out lying liars and their lies. A soft spoken lie is still a lie and its use as an attack weapon is passive aggressive horsemanure easily mocked and will probably even get some really fierce blowback.
This should make comments pretty interesting for awhile at least until he gets ignored by anybody other than the suckers who can’t manage to see what he’s up to.
AhabTRuler
@LiberalTarian:
meet:
@Corner Stone:
&
@Midnight Marauder:
numbskull
Hey, it’s your joint, but don’t pretend that we’re the problem. Many HAVE been making points on merit (not me, of course). Is E.D.’s false equivalency habit rubbing off on you?
So come come on E.D. We’re pulling for you. We (apparently) hunger for the magic sane conservative: Suck it up and make your case(s). The fate of centrists around the globe rests in your hands!
ChrisWWW
I for one welcome Erik and his thoughtful brand of politics. I enjoyed reading his stuff and chatting with him at The League.
Ash Can
Thank you, John.
PS: That picture of Jesus is pitch-perfect.
elm
Bring on the Freeper, so long as he attempts to reply to some/any comments on his B.S.
Sentient Puddle
John, you said it better than I ever could. So I’ll just +1 this post.
dms
Christ on a @$#%in’ stick, could you possibly be any more sanctimonious? You’re like every one of the liberal hawks who now bemoan their championing of the Iraq war. Their bullshit is now that they were wrong for the right reasons, while those of us who weren’t bamboozled from the get-go were right for the wrong reasons. I guess since you were a Republican and had this agonizing awakening, you’re just so much greater a critical thinker than all of us liberal rubes.
Hey, it’s your blog and you can effect whatever online personality you want, but your hectoring is getting mighty tiresome.
You really are the “left’s” version of David Brooks. Golly gee, if only we were all like you, the world would be perfect.
Swellsman
Count me among the Erik fans . . . until he says something that pisses me off. But, so far . . . nothing like that.
I ended up having what are called “liberal beliefs” because what now falls under the rubric “liberal” makes sense to me. But — much like our host — I started off conservative. ‘Cause that made sense to me. But then the “conservative” beliefs became whacko, and so — apparently — my political orientation changed.
(One of my favorite lines, from Pearl Jam, I think, is: “I change by not changing at all.”)
And, as for Erik not engaging in the comments . . . eh. I like the idea of someone throwing something out there, an idea or a point of view, and then watching to see how the rest of us react. Shit! Isn’t the point of a site like this to get each other talking to ourselves, and not to have one of the regular contributors directing the conversation?
I’d think that Erik would chime in if it appeared that a bunch of us mistook what he was trying to say, and that he would take the opportunity to clarify what may have been bad writing. But other than that, I’d like to think that the point of this here blog is for the rest of us to weigh in with our own opinions and maybe take something that one guy started and take it someplace else.
So, y’know . . . more Erik.
BR
@Cerberus:
So maybe it has to do with the definition of conservative.
Because I was of that opinion until recently, but I’ve discovered an extremely rare worldview that few espouse (best examples might be someone like Dmitry Orlov or James Howard Kunstler)- the “we’re really and truly broke (economically, environmentally, culturally) and so need to salvage what we can” viewpoint. On some weird level, that’s kind of Teddy Roosevelt conservatism mixed with a bit of Ron Paul paleo-libertarian-whatever. I’m not sure most folks would classify it as conservative or liberal, but I think it’s a genuinely different and interesting way of looking at things.
That is, they’re not saying fuck you, I got mine, but rather they’re saying that the economic system is a ponzi scheme that’s gone too far and the planet has been pushed past its limits, so lets try to soften the inevitable landing we’ll have, which means less of everything for everyone. So these kind of guys are for eliminating military spending and welfare spending, but they’re also for public transit and local agriculture.
matoko_chan
@Cerberus: well…..this blog is epistemically closed on the heritability of intelligence.
:)
BH
John: So I’m going through your post, and I see a lot of whining about people saying mean things about Erik. Because I’ve mellowed in my older age, I’ll just tell you to deal with it.
Keith G
Cole, I called E.D. out (probably) twice. Once for redundancy and the last time for using a link to a page about a story that I do not think he read – based on the notion that the facts in the original story do not support the idea he was making.
If that’s being whiny then too fucking bad.
Hey, it’s a tough room, but a fair one.
WereBear
Maybe Erik could tell us what a conservative is these days.
That would open the giant economy size can of worms.
demimondian
Look, John — Erik is unfailingly polite. Thoughtful. And probably nide to kids and dogs.
But you can’t expect someone to come here are post things asking whether prop 8 should have been overruled by “the democratic process” and not get his head handed to him. Some of us have marriages *at all* because previous marriage laws were over-ruled by the courts. Some of us remember that the courts *are* a part of the democratic process, kept in place because the Framers understood that the ballot box was not sufficient to guarantee freedom. Those aren’t “debatable” — they’re simply facts.
Bend
Amen
freelancer
@Chuck Butcher:
@AhabTRuler:
Wait, what’s this? Oregon won’t let you pump your own fucking gas? What kind of nanny-state fucking knucklehead bullshit is that?! Are the exteriors of everything covered in protective padding and bike helmets mandatory for pedestrians too lest the public hurt themselves? Since I’m a guy, if I visit, are the Staties gonna pull me over and make sure I’m wearing a cup?
Fuck Oregon. Oregon SUCKS.
Toast
On the one hand, I’m as liberal as the day is long, and absolutely nothing Erik has written this week has offended or even bothered me. If anything, his posts have been remarkable in that he really hasn’t said much of anything.
On the other hand, in defense of the commentariat, really? “Make the argument”? John, we on the left have made the argument, over and over, for years. The argument’s over. We won it. I, for one, don’t want to “engage” conservatives and “make the argument”. I want them to shut up and go away.
BR
@Toast:
I was with you until that. While our viewpoint is right, we haven’t won it by any means. Until we figure out how to convince other folks and by this I mean the at least 1/3 of America that is apolitical but believes nonsense, we may be right all by our lonesomes but it won’t do us any good.
AhabTRuler
So to sum up, we have:
And it isn’t as if he doesn’t have fans and defenders. So what more do you want out of threads and a commentariat? Politesse?
Xero
Perhaps the new guy is a rescue conservative.
Hawes
That was a righteous rant.
Why are people upset about a guy coming around here praising Jimmy Carter?
Alice Blue
Oh goody, John is pissed off! Spank us, daddy!!
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler:
Here? I almost had a stroke I laughed so hard.
Bob Loblaw
You know what, the best thing that could ever happen to this country is mass epistemic closure on the liberal side of the equation. If no viewpoint to the right of Mark Warner was ever even considered in polite company for the next generation, every single goddamn problem facing this country would be, at minimum, alleviated if not disposed of entirely.
The left is right. The left will continue to be right. Centrists and conservatives can go jump in a lake. Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Live with it.
You want to know the problem with E.D. Kain, tell me when he’s been correct on matters of public policy in the last ten years? And when those six and a half seconds are up, shut the fuck up yourself.
But hey, he’s your friend, and I’m sure he does give great head…
El Cid
I promise to work much, much harder on the comments I will leave on this blog named Balloon-Juice.
Harry Kawasaki
How the hell is one guy going to sit and address every argument from dozens of commenters?
Does John Cole or any other front-pager at any blog comment on every criticism of a post? No.
Chuck Butcher
@BR:
You have got to be shitting me? He isn’t up to any such thing, it is the “reasonable conservative” game. Utter and complete horseshit put out with nice demeanor doesn’t make it a rose.
Check his damned assertions for truth and you’ll find themm entirely lacking it or or so twisted as to have no resemblence to the actual facts. He’s smiling in your face while he’s lifting your wallet.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus:
You mean you don’t confuse BJ with a Jane Austen novel?
debit
Remember that one time Cole said he loved us? That was nice.
Harry Kawasaki
@BR: Exactly. Liberals are human and we are wrong at times.
General Stuck
You can’t feed liberals red state meat and expect their farts to not stink up the place.
I have no idea what that means, but I think it may be deep.
matoko_chan
Cole…..
….it is the premise that both sides are the same.
Maybe that was true once upon a time…..it is not true anymore.
Its why TNC sticks up for Weigel and Douthat, and why Sully links McMegan and AllahP.
We are not the same.
I guess it is why you gave Kain a platform.
The false equivalence is that bad, stupid and wrong ideas deserve equal representation.
Sully and TNC especially go around in pantswetting terror of a uniparty system if the GOP goes under. Douthat, Kain, McArdle, Weigel, all go around in pantswetting fear of alienating their base by telling them the truth.
I say let them burn.
we survived the death of the Whigs, something else will arise to take the GOP’s place.
No more lifesupport for conservative failmemes.
No more welfare epics for Kain.
let him stand and defend.
starting wth abortion and the fetus slaves.
BR
@Bob Loblaw:
Not necessarily. If we ended up doing what Jane Hamsher or David Sirota thinks is best, the country would be fucked just as well. Perhaps not as fucked as if it was run by Grover Norquist, though I hear they are allies.
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher:
Give us an example.
BR
@Chuck Butcher:
I’m not saying E.D. is one of those folks. I was disagreeing with the idea that there exists no such thing as sane conservatism. And disagreeing that there are no other very different yet interesting and worthwhile viewpoints other than modern liberalism.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav:
Of course I do, but it’s this one.
elm
@Harry Kawasaki:
Does John Cole or any other front-pager at any blog comment on
everyany criticism of a post?NoYes.Nobody expects him to reply to every criticism, but he’s commented 0 times on (at least) his last 5 front-page postings — that’s super-weak.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: ok, I’ve not peeked, does it involve zombies?
ETA: YES!
General Stuck
@debit:
Wait till you make the front page, Nailed to the BJ cross and firewood piled at your feet. Now, that is an act of love.
Martin
I like him. I take issue with some of his reasoning, but it’s not like you or DougJ or Stuck or I are really any better – nobody’s got perfect reasoning in an imperfect world.
I’d like to see him down in the comments more. His presence will reap greater benefits if there’s some challenge-response going on (in both directions).
Mark S.
@AhabTRuler:
95% of SN content these days:
Shorter Conservative Tool:
I’m a big dummy and I say dumb things.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Yep, and ultraviolence.
Greenhouse Guy
Holy Fucking Popcorn Batman!
Uff-dah! He goes to Mad-Town and has a new front-pager that stirs the sheeeitte up!
Congrats, I think more conversation in the comments from E.D. would be very appreciated.
I’m a newbie to this site but, please talk/defend…hell this is the place to do it.
mclaren
@The Dangerman:
You’re thinking of Billmon. He was awesome. When the Repubs crashed and burned he didn’t seem to need to roast ’em on a rotisserie anymore so he shut his blog down. Damn shame. Here’s the announcement from 2007. Don’t think think Billmon’s blog is even available online anymore but you can download the entire Billmon blog archive in zip format here.
But he did some of the most brilliant commentary on contemporary politics, hands down. His recent article (March 2010) at Kos “Spock With A Beard: The Sequel” is sheer genius.
eemom
@Xero:
Quite possibly right.
In that case the first thing to do is get him fixed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
He posted two articles about how Carter adjusted regulations and made everything better, which was great, except he posted them on the idea in his head that liberals favor more regulation as an end not as a means. Numerous people called him on it, pointing out that we don’t like regulation for its own sake either.
Now, as a conservative willing to brave even this website, he has to expect some questioning about what his beliefs are and why. He’s our foreign exchange student about a country we’ve only heard about.
As a final note, this is not the blog to be posting to if you can’t take the punches.
gwangung
@elm: Which, I think merits heat. But not, in my book, as much as he’s gotten in the comments. (I mean, my rule of thumb is that I wait at least a week until I break out the heavy artillery).
Hey, self righteous and arrogance are found in all parts of the political spectrum.
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Go read the disputed posts and comments for yourself.
AhabTRuler
@freelancer: Hey I learned that Oregon has robust health and safety requirements, including licensing, in the Food Service industry for, apparently, all workers. As a certified NRAE-approved, ServSafe Food Safety, er, dude (through 2013), I find that I highly informative.
Plus, the stuff about the lemonade stand was low-info crap, as the first article pointed out that the police had just shut down a number of unlicensed Latino ice-cream vendors, and the little girl was merely being held to the same standards for everyone else. Equal access to the market, eh?
General Stuck
@eemom: Ya got any popcorn?
jetan
I think Kain has been fine. He is pretty sane, as conservatives go. I really would hate to think that we were all a bunch of Freeper types enforcing some psychotic variant of liberalism. Besides, I love reading Larison and he is about 200 times more conservative than Kain is.
As far as Kain’s comments on Prop 8 go, Sully has acknowledged that there are some serious dangers and drawbacks to advancing the issue of gay marriage in the courts. Respecting regulatory burdens, I ain’t afeered of that debate….Hell, we might all learn something.
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher: No, you’re making the argument here and now. If what he’s done is so egregious, you should be able to delineate and link it.
Again, give us an example.
Chuck Butcher
@BR:
I suppose that if you want to come up with your own definitions of words rather than use their own you could get there. I take them at their word in this particular case.
But then what passes for progressive or liberal anymore is pretty strange compared to the past. also-too.
kdaug
@BR: Yeah, I’ve read Kunstler on and off for years. He’s been the same Cassandra about peak oil since the beginning, and I generally believe he’s right.
But his “solutions” just aren’t going to happen, not in the time frames and scopes that he’s talking about.
Prairie Logic
My apologies… was going to go scrolling back… looking… but it has been a long day at work… I just got home… and I’m tired. So I thought I’d post my initial reaction: “who the f*?K is Eric?”
jrg
I’ve also heard it said before that an agnostic is a chicken-shit atheist.
In this case, someone who’s “pro-life”, but is against outlawing abortion really needs to shit or get off the pot. If it’s truly murder, then take a hard stand against it, and support outlawing it – otherwise, it comes off as gutless fence-sitting.
So in a sense, “some bottom feeder at the Free Republic” might have a more respectable point of view.
That said, I like E.D. He’s a class act. Maybe that’s the problem.
freelancer
@AhabTRuler:
I was just trolling, because I find EDK (nice though he may be, I think part of my indifference to his writing is that it is banal and humorless), and this “controversy” surrounding him to be a total fucking bore. I think I’m off to eat a cheezburger and finish season 1 of Veronica Mars (Dood, how come nobody told me about this fucking show? It’s awesome noir. Eat your heart out, Brick.)
Michael D.
I’m sympathetic to the “You jerks aren’t giving the guy a chance or arguing with him” line, John, because that’s the way it’s always been here.
Having said that, most people here are absolutely right. He writes a post and leaves. That’s not fair and it’s not the way this site operates. When I posted here, I participated, even though I got shit on most of the time. Still, I appreciated the comments. I learned from them and actually changed a lot of my opinions.
Doug is always in here. Ann Laurie, Tim, mistermix, etc. All participate.
As right or as wrong as E.D. might be, he makes an argument, people disagree (some are rude but most aren’t) and he leaves and doesn’t come back for the discussion, which is what this site has always been – a discussion. My guess is that even the people being assholes are being so because arguing with someone who doesn’t stick around to hear you out is mind-numbingly frustrating. I’ve not paid too much attention to E.D. and the comments, but if what everyone is saying is true, then it’s largely his fault, and yours, for not properly explaining to him how things work around here.
Sorry, amigo, you’re wrong to blame this one on the commentariat – even if some (not most) are being jerks to E.D.
I’m guessing he doesn’t even know people are criticizing him.
Balloon Juice is a conversation. Sometimes it seems to be very one-sided, so I am glad you have someone halfway sane here to post from the other side. But dude, he needs to listen and answer.
Hugin & Munin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it, there are a bunch of “Independents” and minty-fresh Dems who can’t wait for the Republican Party to be reformed or replaced so they can go crawling back to middle-class Conservatism, but spare me. It’s not that Kain is peddling shit, it’s that he is doing so badly and lazily.
MoR beTr FP tr0lz, plz.
birthmarker
It’s your blog and you rightfully have sole control. I respect that.
Here’s my complaint.
An early post was about whether he preferred Gary Johnson or Mitch Daniels for president. He seemed to think we would actually debate their relative merits.
Well, I prefer Obama.
Then a link to Hot Air, then one to the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation. IMO anyone quoting the HF supports the corporatization of America. I happen not to.
Then false info about Cali prison guards making 6 figures. No clarification, BTW.
This is his right, and yours, too, but as a reader of BJ it’s a hard thing for me.
I hate to lose one of the last great spots on the net for libs.
BR
@kdaug:
Yeah, though if we implemented his solutions, I honestly believe we’d be better off. And nobody – not on the left and especially not on the right – is pushing seriously for things he’s passionate about, like downsizing cities and suburbs and building a good national railroad system.
kdaug
@Toast:
Apparently EDK got the message.
Cerberus
@BR:
That’d be a mix of liberalism and leftism, maybe moderate liberalism.
The thing is that liberalism isn’t uniform and anyone who has been in the community for five seconds can see that. Hell, just on names alone, liberalism, progressivism, leftism, communism, anarchism, socialism, and all of these often distinct, dramatically so and containing sub-categories even more distinct and that’s just on the broad categories, we’ve got views aplenty on a thousand different issues. In fact, someone who is radically leftist on a good number of issues can turn around and be flat-out wingnut on another.
There is so much diversity in the umbrella group liberal and thanks to years of wingnuts dominating the airwaves, pretty much every sane person or only slightly crazy person on the planet is now some form of liberal, otherwise they are hiding an overarching crazy or stupid or greedy.
This doesn’t mean some mythical other side is right about everything.
There’s so much scare-tactics about if the liberals became all there were, but liberals can argue with themselves better than any conservative and about actual issues of tactics and progress, speed of progress, necessary laws, passable laws, slow and fast burn, which issues need addressing at all, and so forth. We could have a fragmented PR government ready to kill each other with guns ranging from nearly all points of view outside “Jesus wants me to kill brown people with guns” simply from progressives.
Look at the wars between the Firebaggers and the Juicers for just one such example.
There may be a couple of conservatives out there who just call themselves such and are sane, but they will prove ignorant in that they will have no ideas about what liberals actually believe up to and including viewing them as a uniform block rather than a mewling herd of cats.
Maybe there is a sane, well-informed, well-reasoned conservative out there, but I will tell you this, I have yet to find him.
Conservatism is all about delaying progress for as long as possible, protecting systems of injustice, and increasingly in modern times, defending the rich in their class war attempts to kill the rest of us off, an attempt to reduce the inherent diversity of the human species into a stifling box so they don’t have to deal with the “new” or the “different”.
And for those of us, who these issues are not debate club games but matters of life or death?
I can see how some end up getting short and giving those who smile with crocodile teeth less than their fair share of credit.
BR
@Chuck Butcher:
That’s the thing, though. Andrew Sullivan claims to be as much of a conservative as Tom Tancredo as Ron Paul as Mike Huckabee. What does it mean to be conservative?
Keith G
@AhabTRuler: Exactly.
I saw him as either being lazy or ingenuous in this instance.
General Stuck
Erik is our Captain Tuttle.
Cerberus
Ah dreaded soc.ialism word left me in moderation. Oh well.
Leaking Geek
Jesus Flipping the Bird…All I can say is: Get’cha Popcorn Ready!
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
This last isn’t quite in the same league.
Bob Loblaw
@BR:
It means nothing. It means he can’t bring himself to be called a nasty liberal, since they’re the ones who were mean to Maggie the Magnificent.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
So, if I have this right, Erik is such a sensitive and delicate flower that he needs a blogowner +4 to pipe up and be his lawyer, because the puppies here are not all licking his hand on the first day.
Got it. Just another day at BJ. IOKIYAAFP.
If your first instinct is to tell folks to STFU, you could always close the comments on Erik’s pieces. That would show solid support for the guy, right there.
Leaking Geek
@General Stuck: Awesome M*A*S*H reference.
freelancer
@Michael D.:
This.
I distinctly thought that, when, instead of conversing on the thread that DougJ posted about journalistic clubbyness, he just replied with his own new thread.
Count me in as co-signed with Michael D. This place is a conversation.
Keith G
@Keith G: Doh!! Should have been ‘disingenuous’.
Gotta click the correct spell check option next time.
BR
@Bob Loblaw:
But he objectively isn’t what most folks would call liberal either. See his views on, say, abortion or welfare or weird racial things or etc.
AhabTRuler
@Leaking Geek: No, it’s dull really. Kain can continue to bring weak-sauce arguments, and people can continue to bring up the above points, only less polite, and he can continue to fail to engage. Where does it go from there? Snore.
Instead, here’s a cool song.
Harry Kawasaki
@BR: Again, exactly. Today I heard Limbaugh ranting about Byrd, Wallace, Bull Connor, etc… being Democrats, but I’m guessing Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were Democrats, too.
calipygian
Holy fuck this post is funny. This is why I keep coming back.
suzanne
That’s an awfully white Jesus.
Erik’s lack of engagement has underwhelmed me thus far. I might be convinced to ignore his posts altogether, but for this place to stay as vital and thought-provoking as it is, he needs to respond and debate.
eemom
To be fair, I do think the Erik fella is a nice pleasant gentleman.
But I also think it’s fair to complain that he doesn’t get down here in the cheap seats with us rubes and slug it out.
Hell, even Glenn friggin Greenwald has the common courtesy to come over here and personally call each and every one of us a mindless Dear Leader-worshipping Obot before getting back on his Purity Horse and riding off into the sunset.
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher: Was that serious?1?!?!
Are you really doing this over that?
kdaug
@BR: Yeah, that’s it exactly. I agree with all of his solutions – walkable cities, telecommunication, local ag on the perimeters – but that’s way to much disruption to be feasible in the time we appear to have.
Chuck Butcher
@BR:
Oh c’mon – he is, except for the gay part. Sure, there are variations of lunacy and lying, but Sully? He’s a really pathetic version whose own little cross to bear should be exempted from the selfish hateful crap they all espouse.
If you want to talk about civil libertarianism that is another creature – I will point out how the existence of the 2nd Amendment raises hackle with some around here.
TEL
I had a different impression than you Cole. I read a lot of the Jimmy Carter regulation thread, and while there were a few commenters who did the quickie drive-by insults, there were many more who gave informed opinions in response to Erik’s post that I thought really added to the discussion. It would have been interesting to see him engage one or two of the points that were repeatedly brought up, and find out if he agreed, and if not, why.
I think having Erik on the blogroll is an interesting addition, and look forward to more engagement from him in the future.
Llelldorin
As everyone else here has already said, Kain really needs to stick around, even if only to post something like “Oh, fuck you all, I’m going bowling — E.D. Kain +6” as comment 65.
Otherwise, he gives the sense that he’s not so much a commenter on the site as a radio blaring away in the corner.
scav
@jrg: An agnostic can also just be a hardliner about there’s no real fucking data either way about the existence or non-existence of any god(s). And one can certainly make the case that is conceivable to “as a rule and personally” be “pro-life” or, say, “anti-war” or “anti-murder” and still admit the possibility that there are complicating circumstances like saving the life of the mother or preventing genocide or stopping somebody going postal in a workplace and and so not making everything into a hard-line strictly either/or proposition. But one does have to be around to argue and make the case about why you’re taking the position you’re taking.
Wiesman
When my wife bakes, she bakes cakes or cupcakes, almost exclusively. I love cake, not complaining, but every once in a while (not just at Thanksgiving) I am in the mood for pie. You know, like a good old fashioned apple pie, with maybe a glop of vanilla bean ice cream (where you can see the little black dots) on top.
My favorite pie is apple, followed by pumpkin. After that, I’m kind of pie agnostic. They’re all just a blur, kind of just generally, you know, pie.
scarshapedstar
Damn, John, you two might as well head to California and make it official!
Kiril
I was reading the Tiger Mike memos earlier today.
Yutsano
@freelancer: Oh now you done did it. I can no longer shelter you from the wrath that is about to come down upon you. And BTW if I’m not mistaken you can’t pump your own gas in Maryland either. I may be incorrect but there are two states where that’s true.
Oh and if y’all bothered to pay attention, ED works until very late at night. So he’s not answering because he can’t. He mentioned that a few posts back.
@calipygian: Co-sign. That and wifey’s tatas.
pragmatism
give it some time everyone. jeebus. at least do some dancin and hand holdin before you try to fuck each other.
freelancer (itouch)
@Wiesman:
Damn, and that was without Cleek’s help!
JMonkey
It’s posts like this one that keep me coming back to Balloon Juice. Pure awesome sauce.
Omnes Omnibus
So, to sum up, there are norms that developed here (e.g., Front Pagers getting down in the muck and engaging in the comments section) and, if they are not followed by the new guys, the sans-culottes of BJ go for their pitchforks and torches. John Cole, stuffed to the gills with meat and spinach, informs the peasantry that they can eat cake. Peasantry mutters angrily. Did I miss anything?
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Doing what? Calling him out on regurgitated talking points of the reich wing? Making out and out false statements to bolster a weak point of the right’s so-called deficit concern? Nah, that’s fine – lie about the cops’ pension, it ain’t like they work for it or anything, just another little guy victim of conservatism’s lies.
I’d be a bit more charitable toward your concern if I had a feeling that you give a fuck what happens to those who actually work for a living. I don’t. Run through his other horse shit, same little throw away lies and half truths.
I don’t give a damn if he stays or even continues to breath but he’ll be a lot of fun until it’s just plain boring to kill such easy meat.
burnspbesq
@Toast:
Really? I guess that explains why Obama got 58 percent of the popular vote and the Dems have 69 seats in the Senate and 302 in the House.
Wait … what?
LiberalTarian
Yap. Balloon-juice. It’s all about the argument–if ya can’t argue, well, hang it up sister. Go home.
Thin skin ain’t a real winner either.
And honestly, John, you called this one before he ever started posting. “While I’m on vacation …”
So, I hope he keeps doing his thing, you keep doing yours, and I’m going to keep waiting for more episodes of The Guild to come out so I can keep doing mine.
I *do* love “rescue conservative.” Did you hang signs? I laughed so hard Southern Comfort-root beer came out of my nose.
Cerberus
Another thing that is stupid about the “epistemic closure on the left” debate.
It might actually be structurally impossible to have that be the case. See, right-wingers and conservatives and moderates in general are generally just trying to protect a status quo or an imagined past utopia with whatever shit will stick on the wall because change can be scary and requires education to keep up with, which could leave you falling behind and feeling like nothing makes sense anymore.
This is why older people trend conservative.
Leftists and DFHs in general tend to fight a battle that is pretty much in every way similar to that of various minority groups, often because they are one and the same with said minority groups, but that’s a separate point.
As such, they interact in the same way with the world as minority groups, having to learn and understand the viewpoints and worldviews of the majority as a survival mechanism as well as the world of their own. As such, women literally can’t avoid the world of men, blacks the world and worldviews of whites and so on. Even if they eliminated it as much they could in their personal life, they’d be in a culture where it dominated the viewpoint of the news, the slant of the “serious persons” worthy of debate, the statements in the churches, the books on the bookshelves and bookstores, the media on the TV. Everything is sold and based on selling to a white male audience.
In the same way, everything is sold and based on a conservative or moderate worldview, it’s all assumes that tomorrow will be in every way like yesterday, sells regressive views of minorities, values the viewpoints of professional bigots, giant corporations, and wingnut welfare recipients and High Broderism is seen as a virtue rather than an inability to think for one’s self.
Minorities in general can’t escape the majority world and so learn it in addition to their life experiences and have to deliberately seek out viewpoints, shared experiences, and media for them or coming from their point of view. They will always learn the majority and they have their own.
The majority however will only see their own viewpoints, parroted in the culture and the life experiences of minorities seem alien and hard-to-grasp.
The same is true of liberals, we see every day the “pain” of wingnuts and moderates, the white male world we’re all living in, the conservative viewpoints unremovable from our systems and in the inane talking points we would have to work to escape from, which are impossible to escape from really. And we have to search for liberal viewpoints in the same way as minorities, seeking in corners, seeking each other out, finding the few rare media which is unabashedly liberal or leftist.
And we see it in how our ideas are treated. Moderates, majority-belonging people are always treated as more serious and believable over the lived experiences of minority groups and it takes a long time of fighting before basic reality is acknowledged and issues are addressed.
In the same way, DFHs are always ignored and ridiculed despite almost universally being shown to be right on issues. In fact, this whole debate of Eric being a “sane” conservative started entirely because he took the liberal side on enough issues to be shown to not be completely nuts and it’s indeed those aspects where he is conservative that it is apparent that he is nuts (or at least ill-informed), just better at hiding it in High Broderism.
The same struggle of being marginalized, ignored, despite being accurate about the actual state of reality and the need for justice and the same life experience of having to know both worlds as a simple matter of survival.
The privileged and the conservative can afford to live in one world. It is physically possible for them to live in one world, the world of fantasy. The rest of us have to live in two, by the nature of the game.
They can become epistemically closed, we cannot.
Because of the way the system is, we have to learn the other side’s view, there is no escaping it.
Reaching out may feed the moderate lies that “moderation” is good in all things and civility is better than accuracy and “conservatives have to have good ideas otherwise what point would they have as a group to take seriously”. But that’s all they are, lies we’ve internalized, like we’ve internalized sexism, racism, homophobia, etc…
So yeah, I can see the “meh” reaction and why the epistemic closure argument is a BS one, especially when his twaddle is actually starting to crowd out all other posters.
What is he? More than half of the first page right now? That’s messed up behavior for a “guest”.
jetan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope.
FormerSwingVoter
That would be hilarious. Can you do this anyway? Please? And make him post under DougJ’s nick, just for extra lulz.
scav
Somebody bookmark this one for when we get called slavish followers of John or something. . .
Martin
@suzanne: Look, Jesus rode his velociraptor across the Atlantic ocean and founded America as a white Christian nation. How white was he? Well, even generations after getting it on heterosexually with all the natives here, all of the natural born American patriots are still lily white. Don’t be smearing him as a darkie, mkay?
Punchy
Oh go fuck off. The guy compared the plight of a fetus to fucking slavery. If you want me to make a rebuttal of that shit, just ask me. Most of us see that shit for what it is — pandering to the base.
AhabTRuler
@Yutsano: No, in MD we have absolutely no problem pumping our own gas. NJ requires full service statewide, IIRC. It certainly does on the turnpike (which despite its reputation, isn’t an entirely unpleasant experience, as highways go, although the dickheads in Camaros have been replaced by dickheads in Escalades).
Yutsano
@Martin: Oh so you’re a Mormon.
@AhabTRuler: I think you’re right. I know it was on the Eastern seaboard, just not the exact state.
Chuck Butcher
@freelancer:
Aren’t you just the cutest little thing ever? (chucking under the chin while making cooing noises)
kdaug
@Omnes Omnibus: Just that the peasants are revolting.
(Yeah, like that).
Bnut
@LiberalTarian:
SoCo and rootbeer? I am wavering between vomit and appreciation. Much like my dating life.
Urza
You should consider putting that pic on balloon juice tshirts and other swag. Could talk me into buying a few.
Cerberus
I will also note that with all minority groups, them “arguing their case” is treated by the majority groups as “meaningless whining”.
Same with DFHs.
Pointing out “X, X, and Y is inaccurate, Z does not follow from previous arguments, G, H, and I are standard talking points from the right-wing, K, L, and M are usually dog whistles and good signs of bad faith argument, and N is an issue he wants to ‘debate’ that has already been well-settled with established evidence easily accessible on google”
receives in response:
“Geez, bitches, way to whine, make your case or shut up”.
Oddly enough, this often succeeds in desires to make the annoying truth-tellers shut the fuck up, because who the hell wants to argue a case against those who won’t pay attention anyways?
I’m pointing all this out as a teachable moment, because this is a big deal in all minority and progressive movements and one of the biggest obstacles needing to be dealt with for positive change on all fronts.
soonergrunt
Rock the fuck on, then.
AhabTRuler
Another song, while I wait for bacon.
Urza
@Punchy: Perhaps I missed an article, but I could swear I read everything since we got our warmed over conservative overlord and I don’t recall actually seeing anything about babies and slavery in the same article. Would you mind providing a link to help prove your case?
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher: You haven’t pointed anyone to his “out and out false statements”> Do the cops in Cali make that pension? Sounds about right to me. Where did he go wrong?
Do you wanna argue about the UMWA Jobs Bank? If I were a conservative, I sure as hell would!
Really… the Oregon Lemonade story? I couldn’t care less about that. Call him boring for bringing it up, and I’m your new BFF.
OMFG, HE STATED THE OBVIOUS!! Put a carrot on his nose and see if he floats.
And then borrow a tampon from the nearest female.
soonergrunt
@kdaug:
Of course they are. They don’t bathe regularly. (rimshot)
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug: I thought that that was one of those things that goes without saying. Obviously, I was wrong. See, I can admit it; why can’t others? That is, why can’t others admit that they are wrong? If I hadn’t cleared that up, all you vipers would have been perfectly willing to admit that I was wrong and think yourselves witty at the same time. Ha, I’ve run circles ’round you logically.
Omnes Omnibus, +0
AhabTRuler
@Cerberus: Being engaged to an early childhood educator, I hate the phrase ‘teachable moment’ with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but otherwise, endorsed.
Batocchio
He’s welcome to keep posting as far as I’m concerned, not that it’s my blog. I haven’t seen him post anything completely offensive or stone-cold idiotic yet, and my impression is he’s sincere in his beliefs (as are conservative friends of mine). But he has offered some straw men and silly arguments, and those have been substantively challenged and dissected in the comments.
Seriously, John, give me a fucking break – that’s exactly what many commenters have been doing. We’ve asked him to make his case, show his work, link older posts if they give greater context to his views, etc. I don’t think most people have been that rude, either, and several folks have given him credit for some points. (As I wrote in his intro post, I appreciate that he supports civil liberties and doesn’t like unnecessary wars. Quaint notions, and it’d be great if he could take over the GOP!) I’ll go back to some older posts to see if he actually responded, not that he has the time to respond to every point.
BJ posts are often quick and snarky but with some substance to ’em, as are the comments in the threads. Hey, if we really want to have a “serious discussion” about this and that, there are plenty of long, substantial comprehensive posts and studies out there to quote and link. The house/community style here is different from, say, ObWi or Crooked Timber, but you’ve got to be fucking kidding if you think the commentariat here doesn’t have game, or hasn’t made reality-based objections to date. It’s good to hear Erik or anyone of good faith out, and let him make his case, but that doesn’t mean we should wipe our minds of all previous knowledge and suspend all critical judgment. He deserves a fair hearing, but he should bring his A game.
Punchy
Anyone wanna take a stab at how many Cole’s consumed before posting this? +8? +10?
myself, +7
kdaug
@Punchy: Hold your powder, Punchy. Let’s give him the opportunity to back himself up on what he’s written here first. We can deal with his rather unique ideas and sense of equivalencies from other places later.
Cerberus
@Cerberus:
This is also why the rest of the world seems to know so much about U.S. culture and politics while we know jack shit about anyone other than ourselves and often misunderstand ourselves.
Privilege has its advantages, but education and knowledge ain’t one of them.
Wiesman
@Cerberus:
As a fellow liberal I would love to believe that well-written little bit of happy horseshit, but unfortunately, I can’t.
The first sign of epistemic closure is to believe that epistemic closure is impossible.
moops
I will just echo that there is no “debate” going on here with Erik. He just states a conservative argument, on your soapbox, then walks away.
No engaging the discussion thread, no follow-up posting with clarification.
There is also not much open dialogue even being asked for. Most BalloonJuice posters (John being the prime example) often post saying “am I crazy ? what am I missing?” They deliberately expose their doubts to arrive at the better answer, through the medium of a blog community. I don’t think Erik gets the whole point of this exercise.
Nellcote
@Swellsman:
That’s pretty much the definition of a troll.
elm
@FormerSwingVoter:
Lets make this happen! +1
freelancer (itouch)
@Chuck Butcher:
So That’s what it’s like to be treated like a helpless infant. I’ve never been to Oregon, so it’s kinda new to me. Thanks though!
burnspbesq
@jrg:
OH COME THE FUCK ON!
That’s just certifiably insane.
My personal view, based on a combination of my faith and other things that you do not need to know, is that abortion is morally wrong. However, this is America. We have this thing called the First Amendment, part of which says that I don’t get to jam my religious views down your throat. I accept that. The benefits that I get from freedom or religion far outweigh the detriments. So I am anti-abortion and pro-choice. Is that so fucking hard to understand?
Martin
@Chuck Butcher:
Fair enough, but at some point we need to stop talking past each other and engage directly. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen here.
MikeJ
Sorry I showed up late here. The first day whatshis face posted, some fuckwit here started lying about what he said in the body the the post. Where anybody who wanted to could go and look at it. When I protested, this person decided to “attack” me by saying he was my new BFF.
I say keep him on until people learn to argue honestly.
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Not even close.
How about stupid and boring for the lemonaide story? I’m not short on BFFs so I don’t really care. There is the aspect that OR’s food and liquor licensing practices are very good ideas particularly when you consider that the employer can get seriously whacked for violations and employees are also subject to fines. To be sure it is only boring to make ridicule of something that is in the interest of a lot of employers and their employees. Oh yes, a couple alcohol violations can cost you your business so it isn’t small change and the fines are serious. How’s this, serve a visibly intoxicated person who then does vehicular homicide and you’re in violation of the law and squarely in the civil court’s sights.
Boring.
Cerberus
@AhabTRuler: Yeah, it’s probably in no way whatsoever obvious that I’m seeking an eventual career in education is it?
Sorry about causing you brain pain.
demimondian
@burnspbesq: No, it’s not. In fact, it’s a morally consistent position.
It is, however, not a pro-life all along the line position. It is, in fact, a *pro-choice* position. The problem isn’t with Erik’s position on abortion — a committed pacifist would be anti-abortion — but with the weasel word unwillingness to call his position what it is: the pro-choice position.
scav
@freelancer (itouch): kiddo, you’re kinda acting like an infant by insisting all states arrange themselves to suit your preferences.
AhabTRuler
Really, by this point it’s just a buzzword or catchphrase.
People will continue to believe what they want to believe, regardless.
kdaug
@Urza: @Urza: Start here, work your way backwards.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/you-are-not-harriet-tubman-cont/60953/
TNC and EDK were in a debate last week over ED’s equivalency argument between a fetus and a slave.
I won’t attempt to deconstruct (that’s kinda the job of the parties involved. Ahem.) But aside from the mutual respect expressed by all sides, it is an interesting insight into our new buddy. Not putting in a agree/disagree chip. Just want to hear it played out.
Poopyman
@Yutsano:
You most certainly can pump your own gas in Maryland, and in fact I can’t even think of anywhere near me here on the Western Shore where someone will do it for you. Some municipalities might have regulations, but I don’t know of any. And some of the snobbier areas (hello Potomac and Chevy Chase) might have full-serve stations.
Just a data point. Now back to our regularly-scheduled poster-bashing ….
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler: Of course, the first rule of epistemic closure is you do not talk about epistemic closure.
demimondian
@Wiesman: This.
We’re no better than — and, in fact, not much different from — the “other guys” we bait and mock. In particular, we’re every bit as prone to epistemic closure as they are. Don’t believe it? Go over to GOS, and suggest (accurately, by the way) that nuclear power is a safe, proven technology which could easily provide our entire base load needs for as long as the species will survive.
Then site back, and watch the fireworks.
FormerSwingVoter
@elm:
Damn straight! Sign the Petition!
FSV +5
MikeJ
@demimondian: I like the way you tie opposition to your pet cause to epistemic closure. There’s nothing anyone can say that won’t cause you to ejaculate, “Aha! Epistemic closure!”
AhabTRuler
@scav:
<sotto voce>
♪ ♫ trolling ♪ ♫
</sotto voce>
Punchy
@Urza: Right here
Here’s a flavor:
Cerberus
@Wiesman:
See that would be some of my points, that a well-presented argument of the reality of minority experiences in a majority culture and how that relates in the same way to DFHs with often the same results produces the same immediate dismissal by moderates and the majority with zero evidence other than a shallow and simplistic understanding of an issue framed within “both sides do it” “logic” space.
Where can you find a space in leftist or minority communities where there is no exploration, reading, or exposure to the ideas and culture of either the right-wing and moderates (in the case of leftists) or the majority (in the case of minority groups)?
The structure of what is considered the “base” culture makes that impossible, one would have to essentially break away from reality or invent one hell of a strict separatist community (like fundies do to enforce their insane culture).
freelancer (itouch)
@scav:
I’m really not, just bored and trolling. I live in Omaha. I got no room to talk about shitty government. Ben Nelson is my senator.
AhabTRuler
@Omnes Omnibus:Ok guys, get the rubber band ready!
Chuck Butcher
@freelancer (itouch):
Don’t expect to get even a taste of OR on a two week vacation unless you really like to drive – a lot. That said, your gas gauge and a map are your friends, those dots on the map with names – they deserve their dot status. Yes, that highway is one and it does have good pavement and no, there isn’t anybody else there.*
* outside the small urban area called Willamette Valley
scav
there’s epistemic closure and then there’s having a mind so permanently open that there’s no braincase whatsoever.
scav
@freelancer (itouch): ouch, I’m suffering blago fallout.
burnspbesq
@demimondian:
That’s fair, but maybe we should worry a bit less about semantics and a bit more about substance. On that issue, from my perspective he’s dead right and I don’t much care that he expresses himself in a funny way.
scav
@AhabTRuler: fink, you’ve got notes. It’s been moving too fast here to keep up anymore.
soonergrunt
@demimondian: ayup.
They freak the fuck out over there at ANYTHING that violates the site’s received wisdom on any subject.
kdaug
@Omnes Omnibus: Wondering who the first one would be…
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher:
YOU ARE NOT PROVING HIM WRONG! You are just saying he’s wrong. WTF!?!?
Is there some kid serving cocktails at a lemonade stand in OR that I’m not aware of?
Convince me with links and quotes instead of wanking, please.
Wiesman
@demimondian:
Oh, I’m not sure I would go that far. I do think we are different, but I think both sides have members who are susceptible to groupthink. I think (maybe hope is better) that the percentage on our side is lower than on theirs, but who knows?
Also, not sure I agree with your assertion about nuclear power either, but that’s another thread. I grant your point about the fireworks that would ensue if that statement were posted at the GOS.
But let’s not get caught up in false equivalences. The pie fight at GOS over nuclear power wouldn’t compare to the shitshow that suggesting, oh say, evidence strongly supports the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming over at RedState would create.
We are different. We just can’t get too cocky about it.
jrg
@burnspbesq: Generally, when people talk about being “pro-life”, they’re not talking about their fee-fees – they’re talking about legislation and/or a SCOTUS decision. That’s why E.D.’s choice of words is loaded and misleading.
I could give a fuck how you feel about abortion, personally. If stating your moral objections to it makes you feel better about being pro-choice, then whatever.
Cerberus
@demimondian:
“watch the fireworks”
Because that’s an inane argument that ignores well-documented issues with to simply limit the list to a few points:
The problem of disposal of radioactive dangerous byproducts, the fact that Uranium and Plutonium are even rarer than Oil and thus would only provide short-term benefits with greater soil pollution, negative effect to environment, and the like, issues that while “safe” powerstations are possible, modern companies have been making “safe” structures quite unsafe simply by cost-cutting key emergency measures as seen in the gulf, the fact again that long-term clean renewable energy is necessary and nuclear power would require a massive coal and oil investment that would only provide energy for a short-term, an investment better spent on systems that can provide long-term outputs, especially with the dwindling carbon-based supplies, ignoring things like the fact that we’re still getting negative environmental impacts from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and so on?
Yeah, that’s totally epistemic closure and not dismissal on the grounds that it’s a stupid idea brought up by someone with a shallow understanding of the subject.
I’d probably roll my eyes at you if you said “if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys”, wouldn’t make that statement anymore cogent or my response proof of epistemic closure.
Chuck Butcher
@freelancer (itouch):
Then the “there’s almost nobody out there” concept probably holds some meaning for you but there is a hell of a lot more of Oregon for it to be so in.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: But that can be one of the problems, can’t it? Defining oneself as pro-life and against the pro-choice folks while holding what are, in reality, pro-choice views can be dissonant. Pointing that out is valuable.
Wiesman
@Cerberus:
Wow, I read that first paragraph three times.
Brain hurts now.
kdaug
@Cerberus: Define “leftist”.
EZSmirkzz
Why John, I thought you were the only Republican that made any sense not long ago, and look how corrupted you have become. I have great hopes in your community with Eric.
As far as Republicans go I would suggest everyone dig into the archives from 2009 late 2008 and reload the same bullets in their guns since the GOP positions have only deteriorated from there.
Tim Connor
This post is
“a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
–“Macbeth, Scene V”
sven
@freelancer (itouch):
Oregon pluses:
great beer
a real commitment to public transportation
great beer
fine public universities (and oregon state)
unique entertainment options
great beer
lots of outdoors opportunities
a very casual dress code
great beer
and great beer
Oregon minuses:
weird gas pumping laws
Personally, I’m inclined to give them a pass…
CJ
I like what he’s been posting, I don’t like the drive-by nature of it. Come down and muck around in the slop with us.
And by us, I mean all you wonderful denizens of the commentariat. I just lurk, you guys comment so fast I can’t keep up.
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug: Woohoo! I win.
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Then read the fucking post and the comments or shut the fuck up about your ignorance of the topic.
Cerberus
@kdaug: True, replace my usage of leftist with American-based progressive then.
freelancer (itouch)
@Chuck Butcher:
True, it looks like you’ve got your own for real troll now, so I’ll relent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cerberus: Define “American-based progressive.” Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Jim Yeager
Well, I’m an ex-progressive, still-a-liberal type with a libertarian stripe that keeps getting wider, I’ve read Erik’s last five posts, and I can’t find any serious fault with any of them. The one on Bill Kristol in particular is fucking brilliant. By bringing Erik on board, you’ve made Balloon Juice that much better. I don’t see what any of the fuss is about.
All the same, please don’t give some Freeper idiot access to your blog, for any reason. Giving one of them encouragement would result in the kind of behavior Beavis of Beavis and Butthead exhibited after drinking a six-pack of Mountain Dew. That may be funny in a cartoon, but it would be tragic on one of the best political blogs…
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
This is what you are doing.
See, the evidence in question takes time to gather and its not our job to educate you about what is a quick google search or a reading of the post where these arguments were made in full.
If you are too lazy to perform these actions, it doesn’t make you right, it simply makes you aggressive about your ignorance.
Chuck Butcher
@sven:
You missed a really big one:
Almost none of the population of the US lives here
kdaug
@Omnes Omnibus: There is no win. There is only try.
AhabTRuler
@burnspbesq: That’s too much ground to concede to someone who has already consigned the abortion issue to the realm of “culture wars,” as if the topic is as important as how many times you can say fuck and still get a PG-13.
I don’t see abortion as a cultural issue, but rather one of policy, and that policy is: safe, legal and rare. Of course, part of that is supporting women on the issues of reproductive health, sex-ed, and contraception, among other issues.
Chuck Butcher
@freelancer (itouch):
You’re more fun and considerably less stupid.
burnspbesq
@Harry Kawasaki:
Go to this website and review the pdf file about correction officer comp and benefits. You can do the arithmetic.
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Career_Opportunities/POR/…/payandbenefits.pdf
It is theoretically possible for a California correction officer to receive a six-figure pension, but only if he or she works for around 37 years and gets to the top of the pay scale (approximately $93,300/yr.)early in his or her career. Don’t know that anyone does that. But three percent times years of service based is a really really juicy pension, even if it’s based on career average pay instead of last year or some average of the last three or five.
Corner Stone
Sounds like someone needs their diapy changed.
kdaug
@Jim Yeager:
Come on.
No.
Linda Featheringill
Hi, John.
1. The new guy is a little awkward but he’ll get better. He is also a little boring but that will get better too.
2. We had some strange people that I had never seen here before come in and make some really emotional attacks on little Erik. I don’t know what that is all about.
3. You have proven your worth by defending little Erik against all of us terrible people. That’s a good boy. Now run along and play.
4. Life is hard and short and we have problems now and it looks like we’ll have a lot more in the future. Maybe we could look at those issues?
5. Really, John. Erik is a grown man, isn’t he? Let him find his own place in his own way. He’ll figue something out.
Cerberus
@Wiesman:
What part of it would you like me to explain?
The way minority or progressive arguments are more easily dismissed culturally and on average despite a good history of being accurate assessments of reality?
The way that arguments full of strong arguments are treated as if someone was fapping into a napkin?
The “both sides do it” framing of an issue?
Or the fact that evidence or argumentation from a minority group or progressive standpoint are treated solely as bold assertions and are treated solely with bold assertions in kind such as your immediate jump to referring to my statements as nonsense while only possessing a shallow understanding of the concept of minority/majority sociological interactions?
Was it poorly written, too dense, or hard-to understand?
Or something else entirely?
burnspbesq
@jrg:
It’s only misleading if you’re not trying.
Corner Stone
Where?
burnspbesq
@Chuck Butcher:
Chuck, you’ve been a bully and a blowhard for as long as I’ve been coming to this site. Glad to see some things don’t change.
Harry Kawasaki
@Cerberus: Bullshit. I’ve asked him to defend his argument , and he blockquoted some statements without proving them wrong. If he can quote the statements, he can point out why they’re wrong. I’ve Googled CA state police pensions several times in various ways, and have come up with nothing. Help a brother out with a link.
JGabriel
AhabTRuler:
Epistemic closure was a catchphrase the moment it published. It was MEANT to be a catchphrase.
That said, it is kind of useful.
.
BethanyAnne
@Cerberus: I’m late as usual to this party, but I love what you’ve been writing. Skipping ahead 50 or so comments to post a link to Derailing for Dummies, because it seems really appropriate here.
sven
@Chuck Butcher: Nahhh, too many people in both Washington and Oregon now…
On the other hand, more of the United States is similar to Oregon than otherwise…
robert green
i’ve spent my life SOAKING in lefties and leftishness, leftism and i feel confident in asserting that the whole SPLITTERS routine from Life of Brian is endemic to our side. we can’t help it. we love to argue, poke holes, create circular firing squads, lose the forest for the trees and so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby.
the idea that epistemic closure is like everything else in idiotland: you know, some say it’s x and some say it’s y and who are we to have an opinion? IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. and i’m sick to death of having to be polite with people who use my politesse against me! if, in 2010, you remain capable of self-describing as conservative, of claiming that the right in this country is for anything other than the utter destruction of…BUNNIES AND PUPPIES AND THE BABY JESUS (not the religious one, the cute one) AND THE IDEA OF AMERICA…well, you’re too stupid for words.
conservativism has a bias towards epistemic closure, and liberalism has a bias AWAY from epistemic closure. and inviting a mediocre thinker who skews right to a blog that skews left and seeing him mocked and picked apart mercilessly…that’s NOT an example of epistemic closure.
if this continues, i’m going to start linking to Erik’s previous work, and John will be ashamed.
Harry Kawasaki
@burnspbesq: “Page Cannot Be Found”.
Someone has to pony up some real criticism or I’m going to think I’m at FDL..
Chuck Butcher
@Jim Yeager:
Right, and John King is a fucking journalist … also, too.
Fuck me running. Maybe nobody told you that Troy made a mistake with that horse thing, you know looks are everything? I swear to god the guy pulls a St Ronnie on you and you fall for it.
burnspbesq
@Harry Kawasaki:
Google “california correction officer pensions.” It’s about the fifth or sixth link. It operns directly to the pdf file.
MikeJ
@sven: Most of the US has always been empty space. A map of Orygun would be fractally like the map of the US, a few blobs of high density and mostly empty everywhere else.
jrg
@AhabTRuler:
This. This is exactly what I meant when I said “someone who’s “pro-life”, but is against outlawing abortion really needs to shit or get off the pot. If it’s truly murder, then take a hard stand against it, and support outlawing it – otherwise, it comes off as gutless fence-sitting.”
Clear enough for you, burnspbesq? As cited above multiple times, E.D. compared abortion to slavery. If he really believes it’s that evil, he needs to show some nuts and support a repeal of Rowe vs Wade
Or is making this OBVIOUS FUCKING POINT “certifiably insane”?
kdaug
@robert green:
Oh, come on.
Again?
No.
It’s not even clever.
BethanyAnne
@Cerberus: hehe, I see that I was indeed late with that link. Carry on. :)
scav
ok, looks to be calming down slightly, got some testing to play with ♪ ♫ ♭ ♮ ♯ consider this a lullaby for trolls both genetic and trollvestite if it works.
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Are you too stupid to read the article and the links in the comments? Since it was posted right here and that is what the whole thread is about maybe you could avail yourself and even develop your own idea of what’s going on.
soonergrunt
@jrg:
This, x6
soonergrunt minus 1job, +2pneumonia
Omnes Omnibus
@Harry Kawasaki: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Career_Opportunities/POR/docs/payandbenefits.pdf
Look through that and do your own math.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@burnspbesq:
Well said. You and I will never agree on the moral issue, but I have no problem with what you just said there.
One thing I have noticed about pro lifers is that they tend — tend, I am not making a blanket generality here — to be rigid. I use by brother, the most avid pro lifer and assiduous fighter for that cause I have ever met personally (he is probably just short of being the kind of person who would go out and shoot an abortionist) as an example of someone who absolutely will not brook the slightest deviation from his pro life view.
I, on the other hand, am pretty flexible. I’d surrender very strict controls over third trimester abortions in return for choice in the first two trimesters. I am willing to give a lot of ground to policies that reduce unwanted pregnancy and prevent the abortion scenario in the first place. I’d argue that my willingness to do that would prevent more abortions than all the hardass abortion opposition I have ever seen, including the demonstrations and zero sum politics and all the rest.
I am not sure what this issue has to do with Erik, or with conservatism vs liberalism in the first place, really. Just thinking out loud here. I take the thing to be a personal decision, and that makes it inherently separate from politics, or should … in a world where a political machine has hung its flag from the thing since Ronald Reagan was governor of California. At this point I just see the issue being used as a tool to round up coalitions on the right and left, and this has diminished the moral weight of the question AFAIC.
As a political thing, I find the idea that people can tolerate each others’ personal choice views a much more attractive rallying point than a moral line in the sand could ever be. But that is just me.
Chuck Butcher
@burnspbesq:
Thank you ever so much. I assure you I have equal appreciation for yourself and your passive aggressive little snits.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: Oh I dunno, I find trolls a hoot personally. Plus FL is a young’un yet, so he has lots of room to grow. Having said that, we gotta get him outta Omaha.
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
Ok.
Boom
Boom
And the Hadouken finishing move:
Mancini
Now that we’ve performed a 10 minute google search for your majesty, would you like us to wipe your chin and do your math for you before we tuck you into bed.
Jebus on a stick, and we get accused of not arguing our shit and epistemic closure. No wonder so many people get burned out and drop out.
sven
@MikeJ: Right, I think you and I are making exactly the same point…
fraught
I think Kain is phoning it in because he thinks this is a part-time gig he got from John because he was having another baby or something. He seems to be trying to pander to us and yet slips in little obvious RW BS points that we’ve all seen a million time because we all read wingnut blogs.
I also think he went crying to John that we were being mean and that maybe he was going to quit because the fucking he was getting wasn’t worth the money John was leaving on the dresser.
So, STFU, John? You STFU. This guy lacks edge. He doesn’t belong here, he has no pets but he does have a ‘lovely wife”, for Christ’s sake. He’s as smarmy as Tucker Carlson.
(If saying STFU to john can get me banned here, I take it back.
John Aravosis banned me four time for calling him an asshole.)
Cerberus
Bob damnitt, moderation again, this time for linking to relevant searches. Fuck you whatever the system BJ uses, fuck you straight to hell.
Chuck Butcher
Another post bites the dust of the evil strike through.
Turgidson
@Harry Kawasaki:
That quote is only OBVIOUS to right-wingers who have never actually conversed with a liberal about the role regulation ought to play in government and society and would rather just keep believing that liberals are teh stoopid than actually have an independent thought about the topic. I won’t go so far as to say it’s something Rush told him to think, but it’s not that far off from that. There ARE NO LIBERALS (well maybe a few, worldwide, somewhere) who want to regulate everything or think slapping regulations on every little thing will lead to utopia. That’s just a lazy, fucking retarded thing to say.
On the other hand, it has basically become a plank of the GOP platform to oppose pretty much ANY regulation. Even during the worst days of the oil spill they were defending oil companies.
But just because the hard right are fucking fundamentalists about deregulation, doesn’t mean liberals must be painted as the diametric opposite for balance. I suspect Kain wants it to be that way to make “his side” look less crazy . Well, tough shit. The right is fucking crazy. The left…just isn’t.
BethanyAnne
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: I think that the context that you don’t have is that Erik made a post comparing abortion to slavery a few days back. last week? fuck, it’s friday night, so the week’s a bit blurry. It was picked up by Sully, so it became a bit of a high profile piece. Lots of folk were upset by one bit of it or another, so they were a bit, um, ready to reply, when he posted other stuff here.
Midnight Marauder
@Harry Kawasaki:
I’m assuming you’ve read the thread in question and found the numerous critical posts on the matter lacking.
You have read the original thread in question, haven’t you? Otherwise, your increasingly petulant demands are going to keep looking more and more absurd.
Mayken
@Cerberus: Thank you so much for that link – the site is made from Awesome!
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Just a last note about Erik ….
I haven’t flamed the guy. I have rather mildly but sarcastically disagreed with what I took to be some of his views, but I am open to seeing what he wants to do with his space here. So far I don’t know for sure what that is, and that is okay with me. I’m not sure he knows for sure either, and that is okay too.
But to put up this testy shield because his welcoming party is a little rowdy …. I don’t think is a great idea. If I were him, I’d say, leave me alone, I can handle this myself. I’m sure he is a big boy.
Harry Kawasaki
@burnspbesq: Jesus Fucking Christ!!! 2 minutes in and I read:
You are a complete fucking asshole for making me do that, and if you are in fact a liberal, you are the ones who give us a bad name.
Cerberus
As a biologist, a woman, and a feminist very few things cause me to more quickly develop a migraine borne of pure rage than the “abortion debate”.
The fact that there even is a “debate” to me demonstrates the appalling nature of biology education, respect for women as actual human beings, and our views towards consent and bodily autonomy. And none of what is demonstrated is at all any good.
I appreciate as a political necessity those who are pro-choice but “well, personally anti-abortion, cause you know, it’ll never affect me”, but in general, the whole thing just makes me pissed.
That it has become such a big wedge issue that people will go “gosh, I support you know sanity, but bitches controlling their body just makes me think that Republicans are so ‘right’ y’know?” is personally sickening and causes me to despair for humanity.
jrg
@soonergrunt: Sorry to hear about the job. Hope you feel better, and keep your head up.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@BethanyAnne:
Thanks, I guess I need to check out that post you refer to.
My gut feel is that the politicians have done such a good job of mindfucking everybody on this issue that we have all lost our ability to see clearly what it is and what we really want to do with it.
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
Ah, you indeed, as I surmised, can’t do math to save your life.
To save you the trouble, one of my links which got et by the moderation curse noted by their internal summation of California Public Employee Retirement Benefits or CalPERS that the average monthly retirement allowance for retirees is $2,101.
Furthermore, 78% of all service retirees receive $36,000 a year or less.
So, a bit far off to say the least and certainly designed as an invective to stir the “that’s not fair” resentment of the rich of the poorly informed.
And let’s see if link fares better.
Cerberus
Huzzah, a post with a link went through.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Cerberus:
Well, take heart. Most of the liberal men I know including me would gladly give women full control over this issue and let you all settle it among yourselves.
For another perspective, how about the Last Comic Standing line from the other night? The guy is in a bar and says something feministy, and a woman calls over, “You are only saying that because you want to get laid.”
He says, “Wait a minute, are you saying that that’s all I have to say to you to get laid?” And as it turned out, it was! So it all worked out.
Heh.
jman
@freelancer: Yes Oregon sucks alright but did you notice those people working at the gas stations filling gas? They have jobs and pay checks.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
FL has potential if he can keep a straight face, on the other hand Harry is just stupidly repetitive about something he is either interested in or not – since he can’t be bothered to read the post and comments being discussed I’d say not.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
By the way, the picture up top there … That’s John Cole?
What’s with the Randy Johnson hairdo, man?
E.D. Kain
Thanks John. And to those of you with substantive critiques I will try to respond. I will not try to respond to all 200 comments on any given thread, but fortunately only some of those are substantive…
Gus
I’ve been reading Erik at Extraordinary Gentlemen for a while. I tend to disagree with him, but I like the way he expresses himself, and it’s obvious he has an open mind. I like having him here. The reason this is one of my favorite blogs is it isn’t reflexively lefty, more common sense. Of course common sense (like reality) has a liberal bias.
AhabTRuler
@fraught: Saying STFU doesn’t even get you a response from John Cole.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: That’s why I defended FL and not Harry.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
Like I told FL, I like him and he’s not remotely as stupid.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I feel like I just wandered into a bar where everyone is pants-pissing drunk and waving pool cues, yet I’ve missed the whole thing. I hate you all.
Harry Kawasaki
@Cerberus: Furthermore, Shakespeare, not one of you motherfuckers has had the decency to link to the offending statement. Apparently, you know where it is. I don’t. You say he’s wrong with blockquotes, but steadfastly refuse to a href. I follow the one link provided and it backs up said blockquotes.
Make your case in full, dickhead.
RadioOne
OK, I’ll bite. I don’t know much about E.D. Kain, and I appreciate, like I do David Frum, his frank negative assessment of some of the more fringe elements of his party, but if he’s a serious responsible conservative, does he still believe that a “perfect” implementation of supply side economics, attempted but failed by both Reagan and W, could actually work? Because if he does, that’s almost as crazy as what the tea party crew are saying.
Chuck Butcher
@E.D. Kain: If you’d like to get along here, idiotology aside, try keeping things honest because this place is relentless about bullshitters. Ask me, I’ve made a mistake.
Hunski
I’ve been reading this blog daily for just over 2 years, but rarely comment. What brings me back is the mix of style and content that most of the front pagers exhibit. I don’t want to say the new guy is bland, but I almost feel like I’m reading a textbook instead of a BJ blog post. As a result, I’ve quickly learned to simply scroll past his posts. I’m not opposed to hearing out other points of view, but his posts don’t bring the pop you get from a dougJ or mistermix. I can find a bland, ‘reasonable’ conservative viewpoint elsewhere. That’s not why I come here. I really would prefer a freeper, at least you’d get some color.
I also enjoy how Cole loses his shit every 3rd month on average and disparages his loyal readership. Pretty funny stuff. Cheers.
shortstop
The Swedish Jesus! If only my grandma could see him now!
Nom de Plume
I don’t have an opinion on whoever you choose to have write here, as that’s none of my business. I just want to know why you choose to have, like, 493 different writers. Is there a finite limit on the number of people at a single blog? And if so, will you ever reach it?
robert green
@kdaug: good point. or not. hard to tell. you don’t actually make one in your reply.
perhaps epistemic closure has a unique way of expressing itself in the style of argument of one side of our unique little debate, perhaps it doesn’t. and maybe having someone on board here at BJ who believes that a man’s perspective on why abortion is evil is an interestingthing to do, or maybe it isn’t.
what i’m saying is: it isn’t. it’s lame. quoting megan mcardle to back up your points is lame. pretending that the track records of the people you quote don’t exist, so that even your appeals to authority suck… is lame. ED isn’t bringing something new or different–it’s the same shit different day. john is selling himself short–he brings new perspectives and angles and ideas that make this blog worth reading, and he brings people like dougj to the table who, while i am already wholly on board with them, nonetheless manage to edify.
next time you reply you should have a reply ready. it’s polite!
Harry Kawasaki
@Yutsano: LINK IT. WHERE IS IT? You say he’s wrong for saying x..where is x?
Are we supposed to sift through the entire BJ archives until we stumble upon it?
AhabTRuler
@Nom de Plume: Yeah, and can any of them learn the HTML for a fold…this dump is getting to be murder on my mobile device.
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
Cripes ya big baby. Catch the part where it’s on this page?
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
Wait, now you need us to hand-hold you to a post on the front page of this blog?
Okay…
Are you sure you know how to work this magic box called a computer or do you just follow the magic voices at random?
Anne Laurie
@AhabTRuler:
I can tell you how they lost one constant reader/commenter — they let too many trolls cut’n’paste great wads of wingnuttery until the signal-to-noise ratio collapsed. (Of course, Seb, Brad, Gavin & the others never had the Brilliant Idea of front-paging a diarrhetic CW Troll, but aren’t we all just standing on the shoulders of giants?)
And, Dangerman, if you never read the late Steve Gilliard, you missed one of the most brilliant bloggers ever to grace the Internet. Whenever the wingnuts scurry like roaches in a tenement and talk of the Yankees bleeds into the “real” news, I miss Steve Gilliard…
Gian
@freelancer:
veronica mars? one of the earliest, I mean earliest liberal bloggers was pimping that show when it was on
snip : Robert, Veronica Mars worked for her dad, a private detective.
Most of the jobs private detectives get are cheating husband cases.
You would fault the show because men cheat more than women?
We watched one weaker episode during Season One and it seemed OK, nothing special,
but people kept raving about it so we gave it another chance and BOOM, we were hooked.
It probably wasn’t the BEST show on TV during those years, but I’ll put it this way:
If we were leaving town for a week and our TIVO could only hold one show
we would’ve record Veronica Mars and that’s true for a whole lot of people.
Like Buffy, it was a cult show where people either got it or didn’t.
…
the web site is bartcop.com – not affilated, and hadn’t been there in months, but I remembered that. (and if you want to read shrill… bartcop is probably the site, but he’s been at it since the days he called it something like limbaugh is a lying nazi whore back before Y2K and such)
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
fer cripes sake, two tries to get it
Chuck Butcher
FYWP
you’d think I could do this
Martin
@Harry Kawasaki: California Correctional officers (and firefighter) pension plan is a 3% @ 50 plan with an 8% employee contribution. By comparison, the peace officer plan was 3% @ 50 with no contribution and the Cal State plan is 2% @ 55 with a 5% contribution. The new peace officer plan is supposed to be 3% @ 55 with a 10% contribution.
By comparison, the UC plan (different pension system) is a 2.5% @ 60 plan and we’ve had to make no contribution since 1990 until last year due to a sizable surplus in the pension fund. I think we’re making a 5% contribution now.
The corrections officer plan is quite generous. It’s not unheard of for a high-risk job, but I don’t think we’d be hearing about it if there weren’t so many employees in the system. Simply not locking half the state away would solve a multitude of fiscal problems beyond the pension issue.
Gian
@jrg:
on the abortion thing, was I the only one, who during election 2000 noticed the disdain McCain had for the life of the mother question during the debate?
let’s just say that when pregnant with a child the doc says there’s a high probability you’re going to die as a result of this pregnancy, and the baby probably won’t make it, and if it does, it’s going to be horribly handicapped and in pain. your other kids could be left without a mother
and the current last presidential candidate said basically “so what”
I mean, at the very basic core if you’re really “prolife” the concept of requiring by law someone to die in childbirth isn’t “prolife”
I mean you can even dislike arbortion, and wish people wouldn’t do it, but realize that banning it makes the women die too, because they will go, as they have in the past, to people who will not do things cleanly or safely, it will happen
Corner Stone
@Anne Laurie:
Ouch?
KDP
What. You. Said. John. Back to lurking, but B-J is first read for me. Too much work to take time to try to add even the occasional comment. I’ve enjoyed read E. D. Kain, I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions, but I respect his courteous and respectful approach.
Have a nice vacation!
Harry Kawasaki
@Chuck Butcher: Thank you. Really, I appreciate you doing that.
NOW PROVE HIM WRONG. Or is it technically true, but collectively bullshit? Is there no problems with public employee pensions?
Here is an editorial from as liberal a source as you can get about the public employee pension crisis.
See how that works? Someone says something you disagree with, and you link to something and make an opposing argument.
Shit we learned in kindergarten.
Harry Kawasaki
@Martin: But that doesn’t make E. D. wrong, does it?
Phillip J. Birmingham
You tell ’em, J.C.!
I’m glad to see Erik here.
Chuck Butcher
Since somebody had to use an obscure word to mean closed minded I’ve been trying to figure out how it applies to something other than those wedded to the status quo politically. The fact that I’m willing to throw brick bats at EDK doesn’t make me closed minded, it makes me offended by the tactics of those so-called conservatives (whatever the latest defining characteristic is other than lying and misleading). Since I, and others, can only catch them at their game by getting the information to call them out with I do not see how that equates to closed minded.
The problem that some don’t get is that they feel allowed to make unsubstaniated statements because it is a St Ronnie theme and a lot of people have bought into it without bothering with the facts. Because the Sainted One made a theme of “liberals regulating eveything” it follows that EDK can just ape it and get away with it. Horseshit. He tries to bury the horseapples under the “both sides” garbage and thinks it is an applause line. When you allow that, more will follow. I don’t know what to say to the clappers in the audience…
I’ll wager that after about a month of having fun at EDK’s expense, those will get bored and the clappers will continue to call him a reasonable (responsible) individual bringing much needed variety. (as though that variety isn’t available from Fox and other Murdochians outlets). I know I’ll get bored with stupid prattle about the virtues of *sane* conservatism backed by manufactured evidence and GOPer talking points.
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
So not our job to educate you and since you apparently needed someone to hand-hold you to a post on the front page of this very site, I’m not entirely sure you are in a position to be getting huffy and all high-and-mighty about our level of engagement for you.
I’m seeking employment as a teacher, I finished my thesis and have performed all forms of academic and lab-based research. It’s not my job to perform similar actions for you for free. I and others may do so out of SIWOTI or the nature of activism, but it doesn’t mean that this isn’t taking real time out of our real lives to do this service and frankly, nine out of ten times, at least, someone too lazy to do basic google searches or find something on the front page of the blog he is on is unlikely to be anything less than a troll seeking a means to dismiss arguments on the most shallow of understandings of the issues being raised.
As demonstrated by you wasting about an hour of our lives spoon-feeding you just to demonstrate one of our sub-points about the habit of the “sane conservative” to trade in factual inaccuracies, right-wing talking points, and various signs of shallow understandings of liberalism in general.
In short, thank you for demonstrating Dunning-Kruger right.
And no, I’m not going to explain that to you, you’ll actually have to exercise your fingers and learn how to use your magic box if you want to know what the hell I’m talking about.
jman
@Harry Kawasaki:
Do you need a research assistant? How about you get to a search engine and look for police salary or look for police retirement or look for police retirement benefit calculator.
How hard could it be?
Now its your turn to show me where local city or county police officers at the top end get salaries above 65,000 per year.
arguingwithsignposts
@Harry Kawasaki:
Dude, the Charleston Gazette as “as liberal a source as you can get”?
BTW, many of these pension plans are underfunded because the asshole politicians robbed the funds to spend elsewhere (see Security, Social). In short, it’s another example of screw the worker.
Harry Kawasaki
@Cerberus: You haven’t done shit. I hear this argument in the context of “I want to be a teacher”, and I hear the weakest link of the progressive agenda with the loudest complaint. Just like the UMWA’s Jobs Bank.
You are fucking killing us.
Harry Kawasaki
Sorry, UAW’s Jobs Bank.
Anne Laurie
@kdaug:
And yet… This is soooo WIN!
AhabTRuler
@Harry Kawasaki: So you have a hobby-horse, point being?
Chuck Butcher
@Harry Kawasaki:
There’s implication and reality. Ever hear of the military’s 25 and out? What you have to get is that it is the years of service not the age and that’s the part bullshitters don’t want you to get.
Insurers will tell you that being a roofer is more dangerous than being a cop, but that doesn’t cover the really shitty aspects of that job and 30 years of that is a long long time.
Do you notice some missing information? Like 30 yrs service? No? Then you’ve been played for a fool. You’re supposed to resent that early retiring taxpayer leeching copper. Like that? If John Cole likes him then he’ll stay, if he gets tired of bullshit on his blog I doubt bullshit will keep happening.
Cerberus
Oh, exciting side note about the whole “prison guard” thing?
He was wrong about the whole “6 figures” thing as well:
Average salary for a prison guard: $32,670 a year.
Maximum salary for a prison guard is $52, 370
So at maximum a prison guard is making half the very first rung of a “6 digit salary”.
So let’s assume that a prison guard was making maximum salary for the entirety of his 30-year career and paid in his full deductible of what would be his own money, that he earned fair and square in a 30 year career where he set this percentage of his paycheck aside, a physical impossibility, but it’s worth using as an insane benchmark for the sake of pointing out the stupidity.
He’d be making $47,133 a year in pension.
That’s if maximum salary for the entirety of a 30-year career and it’d all be money he set aside from his paycheck.
This is impossible of course, because entry level salary is $22,010 a year and he’d only be likely to even make close to maximum as a promoted member of the prison guard with a lifelong history of exemplary performance. And even then only for a few years.
90% of the average salary which would be closer to the average salary of a 30 year career as well would see $29, 403 a year in take-home benefits, again culled from money the person in question paid in as mandatory reductions in his paychecks for the sake of feeding said pension.
ED argued instead that most of a “6 figured income”, meant to evoke numbers along the lines of 500,000 dollars, would come directly from the state rather than deductions from paychecks and was primarily responsible for California’s budget crisis.
This is not only dishonest, but ill-informed horseshit.
Sure, it’s more robust than the average social security benefit for a private worker and merely allows one to retain what used to be standard as the benefits of a career well-served to a single duty to one’s country and employer, but claiming it’s bankrupting America with “6-digit salaries” each is so wrong it could only come from a gross ignorance of a subject I was able to look up on google in a matter of minutes.
BrooksBenson
@Yutsano:
Ahem.. It’s New Jersey. You aren’t allowed to pump your own gas in New Jersey.
srv
Hey, there are a lot of places worse than Omaha. It’s got art, culture and some decent food. Not paradise, but I always enjoy visiting it.
Perhaps y’all need to work on avoiding geographic closure also.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
Damn. I’m very sorry to hear that, and hope both issues will resolve themselves in record time.
Chuck Butcher
@BrooksBenson:
Somebody finally got that? I suppose Oregonians are for obvious reasons pretty familiar with it.
Montysano
@JGabriel:
Precisely which “egregious errors” are you referring to? And as far as “calling” him on anything, you sniffed “I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m just saying I don’t trust this statement without a link to verify it.” It took me about 30 seconds on Google to find that his assertions were valid.
It was a good post about a serious subject: can we afford to pay $2.5M in pensions (plus medical) to someone who paid in $100K over 20 years? Instead of a discussion, we were treated to a bunch of Hannity-esque evasion and distraction.
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
Yeah and as a teacher, if a student such as you, asked me to perform their research assignment for them or write their paper for them, I would similarly admonish them for being lazy, point them to basic research tools they could use (such as I did by pointing out google and several useful resources).
As a teacher, my job would not be coddling lazy students and doing their work for them. If I do that, they will not learn and merely will become lazy aggressively ignorant jackoffs like you.
Also, I’m not being paid to educate you. I’m doing this for free in lieu of enjoying a Friday night.
I guess, what I’m getting at is:
“Awww, does baby need a bottle, let me just get one out of the bag marked, go fuck yourself, I ain’t on the clock!”
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: I’m thinking I’ll pass on the chicken soup recipe to BHF anyway. If at least one ill person gets benefit from it I’ll be happy.
Corner Stone
@srv: Omaha?
Anne Laurie
@Nom de Plume:
Heck, at least Cole lets us all sign our posts. Unlike such sterling professional high-dollar foundational bloggers as Andrew Sullivan. Of course, if it turns out everyone here but me and Kay is another DougJ sockpuppet, I’m gonna look a bigger fool than I already do…
Cerberus
@Chuck Butcher:
It’s the second part that’s actually worse, where he claims a “6-figure salary” that’s impossible to get as a prison guard and then makes a claim that the money would entirely come from the government as almost a “gift” rather than something the person in question was paying into their entire career by taking reductions in their paycheck for the purpose of creating their “pension”.
In short, government hater is stupid, ill-informed, and dishonest, news at 11.
srv
@Corner Stone: There are even gheys there too!
Get out some more
You enlightened folks do remember that black guy winning Omaha’s electoral vote? Probably not.
AhabTRuler
@Corner Stone: There’s always 311.
Corner Stone
@srv: I’ve never been to NE. I was just asking.
No need to get your homosexually gay pink panties in a tightly bunched bunch.
AhabTRuler
Did the moderation filter get more ludicrous lately?
Ahem, to wit:
@Corner Stone: There is always 311.
Corner Stone
@srv:
How many EC votes does the state of Omaha hold?
Cerberus
@Montysano:
See my comment @319
Nothing about his statement was accurate.
A prison guard can’t make a “6-figure salary”. Pensioners pay into their own pensions with reduced take-home paychecks. 90% cannot occur just by “being 50” nor as a result as you claim of a “20-year career”, but rather a life-long career of 30 full years post-training and education. Such a take home is only twice the average social security take-home rather than a giant drain on resources. It’s only a “problem” because the greedy fucks have been draining the pensions as “free money” when they weren’t but rather things the pensioners themselves were paying into with money they personally earned.
In short, you are a moron.
And again, I’ll note the pattern:
Liberals give long explanation pointing out points.
Moderates/conservatives respond with “nuh uh”, blanket dismissals, and then accuse the liberals of just whining and not backing up their shit.
In short, projection seems to be an art form for the privileged and the faint of brain.
AhabTRuler
WTF is the logic of the mod filter?!?
Press click here.
Harry Kawasaki
@jman: No, I didn’t miss that.@Cerberus:
Notice how you link to a Fresno police site and quote it as a “prison guard” thing? I did. Are all Cali prison guards employed by Fresno? Can you make your argument work better than an internet get-rich-quick math?
JoshA
I like him. I disagree with him about stuff. But while I think his views are incorrect, I do not find him to be a crazy person blithering on about UN takeovers and birth certificates. Its a nice change.
srv
@Corner Stone: 1 more than any other city in the Union.
Look it up.
Chuck Butcher
About this open dialogue thing, has anybody noticed that these asshats have controlled the dialoge for over 30 years to the extent that a Republican health care proposal passed all these years later is soshulizm? I’m real sure it is in the national interest to provide these, ahem, conservatives with a platform to keep us all in a state of open mindedness. This is a situation where that uber liberal CNN has its journalist John King state that both sides do it in regards to the Sherrod lies. Yes, that liberal bastion CNN.
I can’t imagine how BJ could resist the onslaught of
without its very own purveyor of readily available horseshit. Kicking the obvious lunatics is not exactly a substitute for sanity, it is a demonstration of less crazy or more crafty. Beating up on the disabled isn’t sport or much of one so EDK will get boring to whack.
I’ll make common cause with EDK on issues where we are somehow congruent, but I’ll watch for the shiv in my back every second. It’s there, already been evidenced.
Corner Stone
@srv: No.
robert green
sadly, no! has reached heights few other political blogs (mediawhoresonline perhaps, though maybe my memory of them is rosy because of how much they opened my eyes) could possibly reach. the problem is the lads need to get paid, and they don’t make money off of sadly, no! so we get less posts, less html mencken brilliance, less gavin triple-obscure punstery, less of everything that makes it both the funniest and most trenchant place on the internetz.
wouldn’t a website featuring them, the editors (poorman), an occasional jc general and other harsh comedy sites be magic? it would.
business model needed, STAT
srv
@Chuck Butcher: If Dems had had a clue, they would have called it the Nixon-Kennedy health care bill.
Nom de Plume
@Anne Laurie:
Oh, that’s all good. I just never got this whole “let’s add the Manhattan phonebook to the front page, that’ll make it even more awesome”. A bunch of my favorite writers have done the same thing, and I could never figure out why. I didn’t name this bookmark “John Cole and 3489579345 guys I never heard of”.
AhabTRuler
@srv: If Dems had a clue they would have named it the Ronald Wilson Reagan Super-Duper Sexytime Healthcare and Free Erectile Dysfunction Medication Bill.
Nom de Plume
@Corner Stone:
Are you unaware that Omaha has an electoral vote?
AhabTRuler
@Anne Laurie: No, we’ve discussed it, and we are all DougJ experiencing himself subjectively.
Chuck Butcher
@srv:
It isn’t that Dems don’t have a clue, they are by nature not inclined to kick the dog snot out of people. Worse yet, in the face of evidence to the contrary they will continue to ascribe virtues to GOPers. They don’t seem to be able to get it into their heart of hearts that the electoral politics of “NO” trump the nation’s welfare for those pricks. They’ve known right along how to make electoral nightmares for them with things like earmark denials and assorted others and don’t do it. Democrats are nice people – except me, I guess.
Chuck Butcher
@AhabTRuler:
I object to the subjectively part…
arguingwithsignposts
And why are people bagging on prison guards anyway? That’s a pretty fucked up job if you ask me. I’ve known a couple of people who worked in prisons, and you couldn’t pay me to put up with the shit they have to put up with – and they weren’t getting paid anywhere *near* six figures.
Chuck Butcher
@Montysano:
You are a dumbass, I give you @Chuck Butcher:
You approve of lying by omission I take it?
Chuck Butcher
@arguingwithsignposts:
Because our resident douche bag sane conservative raised the spector of greedy public employees. We’re now elevated by having him to this level.
Cerberus
@Harry Kawasaki:
I was wondering when:
was going to be proven correct. And so it has.
Yeah, so not getting paid for this.
I’m out.
Sent Erik the research and corrections because John claims he’s “so reasonable and will totally honestly won’t respond like every other moderate and conservative blowhard does when corrected, honest.”
As you can guess by that snark, I’m not really expecting anything.
If there’s a sane conservative in the world, I’ve yet to meet him. His position on abortion already sums up whether Erik is one, but let’s see if he’s wingnut lite or if he actually is willing to look at reality if it doesn’t conform to his right wing/common wisdom talking points.
Chuck Butcher
I once played lefty on a multiple voices blog, turns out what they really wanted was different versions of conservatism rather than independent thought. The proprietor gave into that pressure, embarrassingly enough, I was proven correct and they to be horse’s asses – later enough to make no difference. (other than to me)
cleek
there’s a reason i’ve cut way back on political blogs.
and that’s the reason.
“the left” is just as prone to groupthink and mindless demonization as anyone else. why? because it’s not a left/right thing. it’s a people thing.
i got a lot of shit for trying to point this out way back when “epistemic closure” was a new hip phrase. glad to see you’ve noticed the problem too, JC.
Anne Laurie
@Nom de Plume:
Possibly because coming up with enough brilliant, witty, cogent posts to keep all us internetz rage monkeys happy is an impossible load for a single individual? That’s why even dedicated filter-free professionals like Andrew Sullivan started using nameless “interns” to keep shovelling sand against the tide. (And eventually the interns developed distinct enough voices that Sullivan had to let them sign their work.) Or why sites like FireDogLake have been able to “borg” wonderful independent blogs like TBogg and Emptywheel… it’s not that those bloggers aren’t good enough to attract readers, just that it’s way easier for them to blog when the FDL aggregator is doing all the unseen FYWP gruntwork.
There’s this concept that economists call the Golden Triangle, which boiled down to fit on a pinback button goes:
Gian
@@Harry Kawasaki:
There’s implication and reality. Ever hear of the military’s 25 and out? What you have to get is that it is the years of service not the age and that’s the part bullshitters don’t want you to get.
Insurers will tell you that being a roofer is more dangerous than being a cop, but that doesn’t cover the really shitty aspects of that job and 30 years of that is a long long time.
In California, cops can retire at age 50 with 90% pay and full benefits
Do you notice some missing information? Like 30 yrs service? No? Then you’ve been played for a fool. You’re supposed to resent that early retiring taxpayer leeching copper. Like that? If John Cole likes him then he’ll stay, if he gets tired of bullshit on his blog I doubt bullshit will keep happening.
Chuck Butcher:
to add additional studd, it depends on which part of cali, and which agency, all cops want 3% at 50 and really, what rational person wouldn’t want it? some have 2/5 at 50 some have 3 at 55, etc.
the state prison guards do game the system with overtime (as do many locals) and really there ought to be some way to prevent someone from pension spiking by working 3 times the hours they usually worked in the career in the last year of service.
but really the public sevice pension whining is the right wing trying to make the people who have been fucked over since St. Ronnie and the pension guarantee fund, and the “leveraged buyout, raid the pensions” crap started jealous of people who haven’t been fucked over yet, the pay hike of one CEO since 1980 – say at GE to pick one could prolly pay the whole cost, and that guy had a tax cut.
fucking distraction, fucking make the working class divide to fight itself bullshit
Hippie Killer
My case is that if I wanted to read demonstrably false horseshit like “prison guards often make 6 figures,” I’d read Don Surber’s blog. That fact that Erik is apparently trapped under something heavy and unable to defend his own writing only makes it worse.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Thanks. I’m pretty proud of them, myself. Free drinks, bitchez!
As for Kain, I don’t much care either way. I do think you’re being unfair to the commentariat because many have argued against him, and quite effectively. Kain has been sloppy with his facts, and he gets called out on it, as he should be. That’s kinda the whole point, and you should know because it’s happened to you many times as well.
Chuck Butcher
@Gian:
The word conservative with or without its various modifiers should be the real clue. It isn’t, apparently, enough for some around here. Add in sane and kick a couple fucking lunatics and you’re gold. Any of you brainiacs remember AD2000 and compassionate conservative? Go ahead and lick the boot that kicks you, I find it endlessly amusing to watch.
Oh hell, EDK is probably quite a nice person – once you get past his politics which I have not the least reason to do. I’m not once going to get the chance to get personally involved in his nice personal attributes and I’ll not like that boot.
If you do not get the idea that this guy is your economic enemy and a shill for plutocratic interests then you are either dense or deliberately obtuse. He’s politely telling you that he’d like to nail you to the wall and you clap because he’s polite about his rapaciousness unlike some others.
roshan
HA, Mom told you guys to tamp it down, didn’t she? I knew this would happen. Now be nice and go scream in your room with the door closed.
Cacti
I would say the case has been made many times, in many ways, by many different posters.
If JC’s new BFF can’t be arsed to defend his throwaway right wing conventional wisdom, then what is his function beyond being a well-spoken propagandist for the other side?
lawnorder
Eric is fine, he reminds me of you before you “saw the light”. We will take him to the light yet :)
E.D. Kain
@RadioOne: I think supply side economics has been wildly distorted as a concept. The initial idea behind it was that tax cuts could be offset in part by productivity gains. Something like ten to twenty percent of lost revenues. Certainly they were never meant to pay for themselves. That became a talking point and a selling point for tax cuts, but it’s a myth nonetheless and I’m happy to say so. Obviously I still think low taxes are an undeniably good thing – if possible. If we’re breaking the bank because we can’t ever hike a tax that’s just irresponsible.
Yutsano
@E.D. Kain:
I want you to take this statement and send it to every single conservative who will still bother to take your e-mails after messing around with us. This is neither a conservative nor a liberal position; it is a responsible one. And we need to suck it up and start paying our bills period. That and knock off some useless defense systems and combat Medicare fraud better. There are good sense solutions out there that don’t involve seniors eating cat food or sucking every drop out of the lower classes.
E.D. Kain
Ok damnit. 367 comments and counting. I’ve read through them but I can’t respond to so many – let alone the others on my other posts. Reminder to write fewer posts! I’m not, to be quite frank, used to this level of commenting on a blog. So. Like I said elsewhere, I’ll try to link more and be more precise. You guys are right: sloppy on my part and there’s no reason to sell you or myself short here.
E.D. Kain
@Yutsano: I think the only way we can ever hope to balance the budget is to combine tax hikes with spending cuts. I don’t mean that to be a wishy-washy middle of the road statement. I think it’s just fact. I’d obviously love to do it all by cutting unnecessary spending but since noone will ever agree on what that might be, we’re going to also have to raise taxes. And – not just on the rich. They can find too many ways to avoid taxes, too many loopholes. Like the European nations, we’ll have to raise taxes across the board.
Darnell
Oh yeah? Well Fuck you, JESUS! Fuck you too!
Jesus; I never truster that nib-jibbler and I never will!
Hey, Jesus Christ: Suck it!
J.W. Hamner
For the record, I have no complaints regarding Mr. E.D. Kain. I do feel like he is stealing my initials thing though, which is kind of B.S.
djESNO
here, here! wtg, john!
ksmiami
John, as the one who came up with “warmed over conservative”, I resent this. I am always open to new ideas, but in every post I write, I challenge conventional wisdom and try to be creative without screaming, name calling, etc. I, however, see that the BJ general populace (one of the smartest online forums) has seen through the hazy shade of the so-called conservative platform and utterly rejected 90& of their arguments as running the gamut from “meh”, “wrong”, “Mind your own business” and “utterly toxic to civil society” and so when Ed comes in and shoots off a post about liberal regulations wrecking the US, I will not pull punches. (BTW, I think Ed is pretty balanced and enjoy the challenge of conversion) And the worst part is that BJ is one of the only media outlets aside from Krugman that challenges most conservative orthodoxy in a really engaging way and systematically refutes arguments from many directions. Where else in the internets or cable can you get that? Everyone is too polite to say – “we’ve tried your economic ideas for 30++ years and they sucked sucked sucked for the majority of Americans.”
/sorry just wanted to defend myself
Michael
@mclaren:
Assumes facts not in evidence. To date, they’ve demonstrated no integrity on this.
Jugular
Get ’em!
John S.
Do we get any of the benefits that those in the lower/middle class get in those European nations, or is it just another way to pump more money into the hands of the wealthy? Because raising taxes across the board might make sense when you have a strong social safety net and everyone’s fate is more or less linked together.
Here? Not so much.
This is the problem with you being a conservative. Your ideology says “government is bad”, so you take the option of closing the loopholes or modifying the tax code off the table right from the start. Then your libertarian streak says “it’s not fair for the rich to be singled out”, so you think it must be pain for everyone. You may write cogently and intelligently, but your dogmatic views will undo any of that and make you utterly full of shit in the end.
Svensker
@jman:
Here’s the salary breakout for Wyckoff, NJ:
Officers hired on or after Jan. 1, 2010, will receive 2010 salaries as follows:
* Captain—$124,013
* Lieutenant—$118,714
* Sergeant—$113,416
* Patrolman (top step)—$108,115
* Patrolman (after 8th year of service)—$101,746
* Patrolman (after 7th year of service)—$95,375
* Patrolman (after 6th year of service)—$89,003
* Patrolman (after 5th year of service)—$82,631
* Patrolman (after 4th year of service)—$76,260
* Patrolman (after 3rd year of service)—$69,888
* Patrolman (after 2nd year of service)—$63,516
* Patrolman (after 1st year of service—$57,145
* Patrolman (7-12 months)—$46,919
* Patrolman (Academy-6 months)—$31,384
They also get a 2% wage hike per year, and have to pay $700/year for health insurance for the family (as opposed to about $14000/year that the tax payers in the area pay. Here’s the link. Wyckoff is very typical for suburban NJ.
Harry Kawasaki
@jman: See?
And my whole problem last night was that you were accusing E.D. of doing something you were doing too.
There is a public employee pension problem. That doesn’t make public employees greedy or Chris Christie not an asshole, but you cannot argue that there isn’t a serious problem.
ellie
Give us hell Quimby, er John!
lawnorder
You guys should give Erik a break. He could not post comments, and said so. Besides he is a new guest, be nice and welcome him here and give him time to get settled.
Erik I welcome you, your enthusiasm is contagious.
Now about that whole conservative thing… come to the light young padawan…
Rex
And here I was thinking that John liked the knee-jerk hive-mind that his comments threads have become. I find Erik to be thoughtful and a breath of fresh air from the “progressives” that have commandeered this site over the past couple of years.
matoko_chan
@lawnorder: shorter Cole– Kain is a token…..make nice.
i say, let him run the gauntlet of our brutal arrogance if he wants to be a juicer.
stand and deliver!
D-Chance.
a) A good blogger never actively posts in his own threads. Use updates.
b) A good blogger never trolls another pee-on with “hey, I’m just asking” posts (if you’re inquisitive, use e-mail).
c) Liberals were the original tea-baggers. Be loud, be obnoxious, shout down opposing voices at all expense. See above post.
Boots
My only issue against conservatives is that since all their arguments have been 100% destroyed by the events of the past 30 years, and their philosophies have zero credibility now, why give them any space at all? All I’ve got to do is point to Alan Greenspan as a rebuttal.
Do what you want, it’s your site, but IMO you may as well give time to a flat earther. There’s no sense in wasting time with arguments since what’s happened on their watch is argument enough against them.
JGabriel
@Montysano:
Then you should have read a little further and searched a little longer. I pointed out later in the same thread that the CA guards were, in fact, not making 100k salaries, but that less than 10 percent were making a little over that due to overtime – which hardly justifies Erik’s assertion that California “Prison guards often make over six figures.”
Right. If by often you mean less than 10 percent, and include overtime because the state won’t hire enough guards. As his statement was in support of an argument that benefits and salaries are too generous, omitting those qualifications deceptively left the impression that 100k salaries were routine for guards working normal hours.
Source: San Diego Union Tribune.
Your 30 second Google search must have been quite cursory, as that story from the San Diego Union Tribune is currently the top result on the search terms “CA prison guard salary”.
Others have pointed out that the 90% of salary figure Erik cites for police pensions only comes after 30 years service, which, again, hardly seems overly generous. I’ll leave them to provide links, as any more links in this post will force it into moderation.
.
LiberalTarian
@Bnut: Heh. Didn’t have any mixer and the root beer was in the fridge. Turns out I kinda like it. :)
LiberalTarian
@scav: Indeed. Being too open to others’ opinions amounts to having no opinion of your own.
wonkie
I think that the best way to hone one’s own arguments and clarify one’s own thoughts (and maybe learn something) is to be challenged by another point of view.
Erik seems like a nice gy and he doesn’t spew nutty shit or mindless talking points. I’m glad he’s here.
BongCrosby
@Svensker:
$100K plus may seem like a lot, but Wyckoff is one of the wealthiest communities in the United States.
A Wikipedia article on Wyckoff says that it ranks 53rd out of the 100 highest-income places in the United States, with a median income of over $100,000.
So in most instances, they’re paying policemen about the median or a bit lower. That doesn’t sound too outrageous to me.
lawnorder
Come on guys, don’t be heartless. Give Eric a week or two to settle in. You can rip him to shreds later if you chose, but no one jumps from a small blog to a big blog without a few weeks of wobbly posts.
Show some sportsmanship. Let the “other side” guy get his bearings first.