| Friday, August 22, 2008 |
| Check out the new blog: Diamond John McCain |
Here you go! It's brand new, so be gentle! Anyone interested in contributing, please drop me an email.
| Labels: blogs, John McCain |
posted by JReid @ 1:12 AM   |
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| Tuesday, August 19, 2008 |
| Banned in 240 seconds: RedState becomes the Free Republic |
I did an experiment today, to see how long it would take to get banned from RedState.com, the right wing site that styles itself a home for "independent conservative thinkers," not at all like the thought-policed, drone-winger sites like the Free Republic, or the loony bin flypaper sites like Little Green Footballs, and which gets frequent link love from "legit" online journalists at places like Politico and the Washington Post. So here's what I did. I signed up, using the same ID I use here, JReid. Then, I posted a comment to a thread entitled "You are the one McCain is waiting for" whose point is, I guess, that ordinary Republicans will carry McCain over the top, not his vp pick. (I think the post is supposed to be tongue in cheek, but hell, with this crowd? Who knows...) First a clip from the original post:
Much virtual ink has been spilled Internet-wide on the problem of Senator McCain's running mate selection. Policy views, succession, age, experience, home states, and every other conceivable preference are touted by one person or another as essential to the pick.
I say they're all right, and they're all wrong. You should be John McCain's running mate in 2008. It's perfect! You are in a swing state, you shore up the Bush states, and you make Obama work in his 'safe' states. You are a political novice, and you are experienced. You're young. You're mature. You are a mainstream Republican, a reformer, and a maverick. You even look like America.
You were even Time's People of the Year. You can't go wrong. ... Okay, so now for my comment, which went up at 11:02 a.m. by their clock (which is odd, because I joined at 11:48 a.m. EST) Anyhoo, I wrote:
RedStaters discover God: and He is John McCain
JReid August 19th, 2008 at 11:02 a.m. (link)
What's with the sudden hero worship of McCain by RedStaters? Here I'm assuming it's tongue and cheek, but other threads? Not so much. Frankly, it's getting creepy, like the "Pray for George W. Bush" threads that used to dominate the Free Republic.
John McCain is a politician, and frankly, not a very good one. Certainly not an inspiring one. His entire campaign boils down to: "vote for me. The other guy's a traitor." Which means that no matter who wins in November, his campaign has ensured that half the country will hate the next president's guts ... again.
Besides, wasn't this the guy RS readers found unacceptable during the primaries? Now he's Godlike? Kind of hard to accuse Democrats of beatifying Obama when this site does the same to John McCain...
[Waiting to be banned for apostasy.] Literally 4 minutes later, came this post:
well, if you insist.
Moe Lane August 19th, 2008 at 11:06 a.m. (link)
Although if I wasn't on my way to Pearl right now I'd keep you around long enough to ask whether you guys really think that anybody actually believes you when you try to pass yourselves off as Republicans. So that's it. The amount of time it takes to be banned from RedState for criticizing John McCain is 4 minutes. And you can't be a Republican if you don't slavishly support John McCain.
I think that might even beat my previous record at Free Republic, where I was banned a grand total of THREE TIMES (using three different ID's) for criticizing George W. Bush, back before he became "unpopular..." The point: the right is consistent, in using strict thought policing to keep their flock in line. The FReepers aren't outliers, they're mainstream. Recall that RedState was one of those sites where so-called conservatives denounced John McCain all through the primaries (along with tax raiser Mike Huckabee,) as unacceptable as the Republican nominee. McCain, lo those many months ago, was guilty of the sin of collusion with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He was soft on immigration. He was soft on the Bush tax cuts. He was soft on torture. Now, having reversed himself on all three, and returned to his pre-Bush, neoconservative zeal on Iraq, McCain is RedState's boy, and you'd better love him, if you want to post there. Sadly, American conservatism has been reduced to a series of cults of personality -- Reagan, then Bush II, now John McCain, where the drones (talk radio listeners, group blog members, and worse, Republican voters of all economic classes,) are inducted, indoctrinated, and deployed in the service of the people paying the bills: major corporations, oil companies, and lately, the private military. To push the agenda, the right uses wealthy individual talking heads like Rush, Hannity and the former Bush flaks who run RedState, and they whip their throng into shape, demanding total loyalty and obeisance, and weeding out doubters. Perhaps most unseemly of all, the right has also indoctrinated religious zealots -- America's Taliban, if you will -- to tie these beliefs to existing zealotry on issues like abortion. Combined, its a potent mix of religious zeal, hero worship, and strident determination to enrich others, at the expense of the faithful. I find it remarkable that it continues to work on so many people, and that the right has managed to convince those poor slobs that it's the other guy who's turning their candidate of choice into a Messiah. | Labels: blogs, John McCain, RedState, right wingers |
| posted by JReid @ 12:25 PM |
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| Thursday, July 17, 2008 |
| Flashback post of the week: Carswell's ghost |
The winner is: Blog de Leon, from January 18, 2005, on the curious tale of Harrold Carswell, and a cautionary tale for Charlie Crist (with interesting shout outs to Pat Buchanan, and the guy he confused John McCain with the other night, Dwight Eisenhower.)
| Labels: blogs, Charlie Crist, Florida, not gay politicians |
| posted by JReid @ 3:27 PM |
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| Friday, April 18, 2008 |
The Huffpo's October Friday surprise? |
First, they posted the ill-gotten recording of Barack Obama's closed to the press fundraiser in San Francisco, taped by an opinionated non-reporter. Now, they've got secret video on Hillary, also at a closed-door event. The Huffington Post is fast becoming the "Inside Edition" of the web.
So now, Hillary will get a taste of what it's like to be zapped by secret audio. Her offense: spouting off at Moveon.org:
At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.
"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me." The audio is on the site.
For the record, I think it's just as smarmy for someone to have secretly taped Hillary as it was for Mayhill Fowler to pull the same sleaze on Barack Obama. And I think the only way that Hillary will be truly hurt by this is if there somehow are lefties in PA who haven't yet made up their minds, and I doubt that. Most of the undecideds aren't MoveOn's constituency. The main problem for Hillary is beyond PA, where MoveOn's millions will surely mount a massive campaign to take her down in subsequent states.
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Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, blogs, Huffington Post, media, presidential candidates |
| posted by JReid @ 9:20 PM |
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| Tuesday, April 15, 2008 |
| Unethical |
Arianna Huffington is having a grand old time criticizing Hillary Clinton for trying to score cheap political points on the "bittergate" non-story (which the press is continuing to flog, five days on.) Writes Arianna today:
Here's Sen. Evan Bayh, commenting on the political firestorm surrounding Barack Obama's remarks -- broken here on HuffPost's OffTheBus -- about economically-depressed small town voters: "The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidates, whether it's Al Gore or John Kerry. I'm afraid this is the kind of fodder they might use to harm him."
They? They? It's not the far right wing relentlessly using these comments for political gain, Senator. It's your candidate, Hillary Clinton, adopting the frames, lies, stereotypes and destructive clichés long embraced by the likes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. She has clearly decided that the road to victory runs through scorched earth.
The question is, if she succeeds, what kind of Party will she be left to lead? She's burning down the village to save it -- or to prove that she would make the best fire chief. But the village won't be saved; only one house will be left standing. A house with room for just two occupants. Hill and Bill. The trouble is, scoring cheap political points is, for better or for worse, Hillary's political strategy at the moment. She is losing the campaign, and is throwing the "kitchen sink" at her opponent in an attempt to wrestle away the nomination.
The Huffington Post, on the other hand, is a multi-contributor blog purporting to also be a journalistic outfit. As such, it is perfectly legitimate to ask, as Howard Kurtz did briefly in his WaPo column yesterday, whether it is ethical for the Huffington Post to send a supposed "Obama supporter" (Mayhill Fowler) into an Obama fundraiser, for which she purportedly made a donation in order to enter, and whether having her secretly tape the procedings and post a rambling cavalcade of personal opinion bears the slightest resemblance to actual journalism.
Fowler as blogger infiltrator, OK I get that. But Fowler as crack journalist? Hm. Today, Jay Rosen, Arianna's partner in crime on the blog that originally published Fowler's story (OfftheBus,) is complaining that the HuffPo and Fowler were not credited by Tim Russert and other MSM types for her story.
... Would Russert pick up on the novelty of the situation? An Obama supporter and donor, who also wrote regular dispatches for Huffington Post's pro-am campaign news site, OffTheBus, recorded Obama's words at an April 6th San Francisco fundraiser, and then wrote about what concerned her in them. From there it exploded. Pretty good story! (As the Guardian recognized today.) Plus, it would allow Russert to sound a savvy warning: "Heads up, candidates, your supporters include bloggers and they exercise their First Amendment rights. Barack Obama found
that out this week...."
Tim and his staff decided on erasure. You'd have to ask them why. Mayhill Fowler's Obama quotes were shown on screen, but Meet the Press made no mention of her, or OffTheBus, or the Huffington Post. Huh??? So the problem isn't that Ms. Fowler, a woman squarely in Hillary Clinton's age and gender demographic, faked her way into an Obama event and then conducted what amounts to a bugging of the candidate ... and the problem isn't that her "report" contained only her personal opinins, with nary a quote from another soul who attended the event, hence, it doesn't contain any actual journalism ... the problem isn't that the Huffington Post is now orchestrating campaign "gotchas" rather than covering them ... the problem is that Fowler didn't get her 15 minutes of fame? Interesting ethics over at the Huffpo.
Related: One HuffPo contributor agrees with me.
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Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, blogs, Huffington Post, media, presidential candidates |
| posted by JReid @ 10:39 AM |
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| Sunday, February 25, 2007 |
| Whither the Blackosphere... |
I've wondered about this myself ... namely, why is it that the left end of the blogosphere is so overwhelmingly white? I know there are a number of us "Black bloggers" out there (although I must admit I don't write about race, per se, all that much...) but we seem not to have been able to traverse to the deep end of the pool. Meanwhile, the Kosworld is a rather snow-white one. Why is that? Blogger Francis Holland dares to asks the question, and gets mugged over at MyDD. Hat tip to African-American pundit. Hm. Maybe it's time to finally start posting to my MyDD diary? Aw hell, who has the time...
Labels: blogosphere, blogs, race |
| posted by JReid @ 2:06 AM |
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| Saturday, December 30, 2006 |
| Death for Saddam, nothing much for America |
As I related in this earlier post, Hugh Hewitt and other Bush accolytes are railing against the reaction on the left end of the blogosphere to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Says Hewitt:
Question: is any major event not fodder for the online left's complaints about the Administration of George W. Bush? They are, to be sure, by and large obsessive cultists in form and effect; but surely reason may kick in at points. One gets the impression of a class of people who wake up, drink their coffee, go to shave, cut themselves, and promptly curse the war in Iraq. The monomania simply does not end -- and the execution of Saddam Hussein is no different. I have already expressed my dislike for executions: but I also retain the bare capacity for rationality that allows me to understand the end of the dictator as a fundamental good.
The leftist "netroots"? Not so much. Well I'm not sure if I qualify as a member of the left "netroots" -- but I will say that even as a staunch opponent of the death penalty, which I consider distasteful, draconian and uncivilized (not to mention a constant opponent of this awful, pathetically incompetent president,) I knew from the moment that U.S. troops pulled Saddam Hussein out of that spider hole that his execution was the only possible outcome (well, that or his being dragged by armed Shiite or Kurdish gunmen out of his American holding cell and murdered like a dog in the street... and even that would have probably ended with a hanging...)
For Shia and Kurdish Iraqis, who were so brutally victimized under a man who was for some, the only leader they have known, Saddam's death was perhaps a necessary catharsis. But I would caution Hugh and other Bush fans that catharsis for Iraqis was never, and still is not, the primary concern for Americans. Especially since catharsis for Iraqis has so far, not translated into good will for American troops, cooperation with the U.S. "mission" in Iraq, or an end to the violent civil war that is tearing that country apart while our guys are stuck in the middle.
What is of primary concern is American foreign policy, and whether those policies, undertaken by our elected leadership, are in the best interests of the United States. I would argue that Saddam's hanging advances U.S. interests not one whit, and it wasn't even a stated goal in the war (Bush, after all, on March 18, 2003 offered to allow him to leave Iraq alive with his sons and surrender the country, and its oil wealth, to us, which supposedly would have avoided war altogether...)
Iraqi catharsis isn't even likely to reduce the rampant and seemingly bottomless violence and sectarian bloodletting that is of primary concern to American troops and taxpayers, who are paying, in very different ways, for a policy that has already proven to be bereft of benefit for America. (December is now officially the deadliest month for U.S. troops this year.) Iraq posed no military threat to us, so toppling Saddam and taking over his country didn't protect us from attack (I won't even mention the nuclear piece, which has long since been rendered ridiculous.) He had no ties to terrorists, except possibly the Mujeheddin e-Kalq, an anti-Iranian terror group that members of Congress favor, so deposing Saddam and having him summarily executed doesn't protect us from terrorism.
The only possible benefit to the U.S. of Saddam's death will be the fact that members of the U.S. military will no longer have to guard him inside Iraq, something that posed a constant security threat to American troops, given the number of Iraqis who likely wanted to find and kill him. Of course, much the same thing could have been accomplished by exiling the man. And perhaps the hanging will strengthen the unelected fourth prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who even Washington doubts can control the country. But since the U.S. has been sending signals that it may be shopping for replacement, strengthening Maliki -- and by extension, his backers, like Moqtada al-Sadr, whose father was executed by Saddam -- may be counterproductive for us... emphasis on for us... (recall that the U.S. had been cuddling up to a possible Maliki replacement, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of something called SCIRI -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq , until of course, we went and grabbed a couple of Iranian diplomats and accused them of planning terror attacks ... needless to say, we've since let them go...)
To sum it up, I don't believe that Saddam's death advances U.S. interests, and therefore I see no reason to except my general opposition to the death penalty in this case. At the same time, I understand that for Iraqis, if not for us, this was something that was probably inevitable, and in many ways, very much understandable, from their point of view. How that helps our cause in Iraq -- whatever in Gods name that cause is, at this point -- I sure as hell don't know.
So is Saddam's death a "fundamental good" as Hewitt (who also appears to oppose the death penalty) asserts? I don't think that you can credibly argue that it is. It's fundamentally cathartic for many Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis, it puts the coda on a brutal and terrifying chapter of Iraqi history, and in that it probably won't abate, and could worsen, sectarian violence in Iraq, it is either a net irrelevancy, or a net negative, from a policy standpoint, to the American people.
Hell, it wasn't even important enough for Hewitt's beloved president to stay up an hour past his bedtime for.
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Labels: blogs, Hugh Hewitt, Iraq, Iraq war, right wingers, Saddam, Saddam Hussein |
| posted by JReid @ 2:54 PM |
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