2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

And, far west coasters up so early in the am, miles before the sun reaches 'em

Full moon, Blatham? That must be a Canadian moon. Down here for the past several nights the moon has been an utterly beautiful, mysterious cradle, a crescent at rest, a smile in the sky.

Tartarin

Yes, our moons up here are always full to o'erflowing. One can, on very clear evenings, lay outside on the fallen leaves and feel the moonlight gather like dew on one's eyelids and thighs.

Lay what, Blatham? A gigantic caribou egg?!

Here's a paragraph from CNN's transcript of Bush's (heckled) speech in Australia. Kindly parse, verify. Could one characterize what follows as an elaborate campaign to perpetuate a lie?

"...Since the liberation of Iraq, we have discovered Saddam's clandestine network of biological laboratories, the design work on prohibited long-range missiles, his elaborate campaign to hide illegal weapons programs. Saddam Hussein spent years frustrating U.N. inspectors for a simple reason: because he was violating U.N. demands. And in the end, rather than surrender his programs and abandon his lies, he chose defiance and his own undoing..."

Hey hey hey! This is a "PG" rated board. We'll have none of this "moonlight gathering on one's thighs" stuff here. Noooo sireeee.

(Geez Bernie, you been writing romance novel again??? lol)

Hmmm...Cana'jun, male, romance novels.......OH NO! Blatham's the Bastard Son of Henry VIII! Was Blatham the influence for this series?

A tingle word, "thighs." But when you actually think about it, the kook in the Mountie outfit stripping and "laying" outside on a suburban lawn just short of the frozen north during the second half of October, well...

Putcher pants on, Reginald dear, and rake up those leaves, wouldja hon? I'll make some nice cocoa and we can sit on the glassed-in porch and appreciate the moon.

If what you were proposing wasn't being practiced to an exasperating extent already - if it wasn't clear some people are indeed practising it in the sincere belief that it will actually help or prove something, or something <rolls eyes> - I coulda seen it with a smiley, sure.

As it is, you weren't doing much more than simply appealing to others to all start doing what you're doing yourself already often enough.



Are you talking A2K or the big bad world?

Here on A2K I've seen some people on left and right dishing it out in equal measures - and other people on the left and right trying to have a decent discussion. Sometimes people go from one category to another for the duration of a post or two (or lapse from one into the other category altogether); but usually the two different sets are recognizable easily enough - and let's just say that they're not parted up along a left/right divide.

In the big bad world of politics, sure, go get your gloves, by all means. But I'm here on A2K for my enjoyment, thank you very much!



Noone compares to Italgato ... and in any case there are others not quite on such a unique plane of their own, among the peddlers of rhetorics left and right, who'll provide plenty better parallels.

But the little mock-appeal Tart was making, sure is of an Italgatoesque category. You'll see the distinction between comparing the person and comparing the practice she's suggesting.

(The comparison wasn't even about 'nice' - merely about effectiveness. Do you think Italgato achieved anything here for American conservatism? If not, why would you consider it worthwhile to use his/her habits?)



Booyaa - next time I'll suggest to all go get Georgeob1 (or something), I'll count on you to come to my rescue when moderators complain, praising at least my forthrightness about it.

No - the thing is - one might not argue the notion is better suggested behind closed doors. One might argue that the notion is better off slaughtered, dead, burnt and buried in the high tundra. The accompanying behavior is already practiced abundantly enough.

OK - so, after all the ranting, I'm still left with the one obvious question - call it curiosity. Its the part in brackets, above, about the Italgato comparison. Wholly apart from how annoying that kind of thing is, or even unethical, p'haps - what good would it actually do? You suggest it should have been hatched out of sight, so I assume you think it'd achieve something - but what?

I really wonder about that part. Yeh yeh - Rove, Coulter, gloves, on - all that - but what good does it do here, on A2K, to engage in childish nickname-sticking and the like? Would it win the Dems a single vote extra?

(My suspicion - to be honest - is that the whole Rove reference thing is just an excuse to behave badly. Call it liberation. Let's all agree that, in general, it's time for the left to put its boxing gloves on - and then feel free to rant, bitch and ridicule to our heart's delight whenever we feel like it. Admit it - we all feel like it sometimes. The political excuse is all too convenient. Thank you Rove - for liberating our dark side and helping us to embrace our shadow! )

Bush said THAT? Oh my goodness! None of the news stations reported much of the speech.

nimh

I'll briefly take up this one paragraph, then let this shitstorm pass into an overdue death.

This, more than anything else, you have wrong. If your contention is that we, or some of us, need to define ourselves or can define ourselves only in opposition to others, it's a contention about human cognition and behavior which I do not accept. If your contention is that Tartarin and myself are merely long-toothed holdouts from the sixties - chicago seven wannabes uncomfortable in this pacific and panglossian modernity, then you are wrong on that one too.

On the patriot thread you advanced some similar notions (following craven) as to why and when and with whom folks argue. Some years ago, an ACLU spokesperson was attacked by a rep of a feminist organization for some legal position the ACLU, usually supportive of feminist causes, was supporting in opposition to the feminist group. He replied that his constituency was not any group of people, but rather a group of principles.

I just started a political thread this morning hoping to discuss (coming out of three different pieces, the strauss piece being one of them) that there is something seriously amiss right now, something enough amiss to worry us very seriously. There is a risk in making such a claim, and you are bright enough to understand precisely what that risk is. But as I said there, to discount the possibility of such, or even to consider it highly improbably enough that concern is itself evidence of extremism, constitutes a self-defeating blindness.

There are two interesting articles in the November Harper's. The opening shot this month from Lewis Lapham addresses, in part, the issue of anti-liberal vs. anti-conservative and goes on to excoriate the mess we've gotten ourselves into.

Many attribute this -- and I think they're right -- to the Bush administration's playing out of a fantasy "mandate" after a dubious "election." Had the administration shown itself to be more accomodating -- I'd say humble if it weren't such a comical word to use in conjunction with this administration -- both to the facts of the election and to the customs of presidential duties to Congress and the people, we'd probably be a much healthier discussion group. I think those who didn't vote for Bush have the right and -- given his misuse of office -- the duty to pull him to shreds ideologically, politically. It's certainly one way of keeping self-defeating blindness at bay.

The second is an article by an old favorite, Thomas Zengotita, in which he plays with the concept of developing a liberal talk show. I've only skimmed the latter, but can recommend it highly, particularly to those with heads full of current events but limited to those who have at least an BA in humor. In the coda he takes on Strauss...

The bummer is that Harper's doesn't post its stuff on line until it's gathered enough dust to be almost worthless to the current events addicts. The solution is to leaf through a copy at your nearest MegaBooks or break down and subscribe. I don't remember a single issue of Harper's in the past year which hasn't had at least two articles highly relevant to discussions in A2K.

Just a note of clarification here; statistically, when it comes to the causers of thread lockings, post-pullings, and bannings-for-cause, there is parity between Liberals and Conservatives. All it takes is one idiot to set the rest off ... sorta like an otherwise well-behaved pack of dogs who go nuts when one of their fellows starts barking at shadows.

Blatham, from your admittedly colourfully-worded post (and I do love colourfully-worded posts) - may I briefly pick this one up, then?



.. and add a few question marks to connotate my utter confusion?

Where in heaven's name did I write ANYthing, whatsoever, that suggested ANYthing of any such kind?

Lookit - <shrugs> - shitstorm or not, my contention was quite specific - about the exasperation instilled by a specific mode of posting (nicknames, silly rhetorical putdowns, preferably oft-repeated) further encouraged - made into a question of political action, even - by Tartarin's post.

I asked a specific question, too, since I've seen some posters so often take up the practice in question already with seeming deliberation: what do they actually aim to achieve with it? Cause I'm totally puzzled there.

Now in response we've seen, first, general assertions about how the Left should defend itself in political tactics against Rove c.s. - fine, but seemingly irrelevant - and now this rejection of some stereotype that I have trouble picturing, let alone having put forward anything like it? <blinks>

<shakes head, fuhgedsabouttit>

nimh, outside the fact that Tartarin was completely tongue in cheek, I will make a factoid that does not okay it but just points something out -

The Right Wing in America has developed a complete industry out of the action you are so adament about - the perpatrators being Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Horowitz, Coulter, Savage etc and was originated by Rove, Atwater and Bush Jr.

Tartarin did not invited nor incite it just parodied it! Give it a break, please - okay

if it were parody she wouldnt be practising it already every week, hello.

i'm tired of - "the rightists do it, too, so its ok". i wouldnt listen to rush, o'reilly etc, so why should i put up with such crap here.

and i'm perfectly happy to drop the subject of tartarin's thing, but i'm still baffled by blatham's unlikely list of things i apparently inferred.

i guess i'm capable of saying many more things than i can even imagine!

thats kinda cool, i guess.

A good point that everyone should always remember - this illogical agrument is used more than anyother. A person is not limited ever to the brief statement made, but one chooses to agrue the strawman and the "missing man" because it is easiest.

As I stated "I will make a factoid that does not okay it but just points something out ", because it was a must at that time, IMHO.

[Bill - noted that you said, "that does not okay it", and that I thus jumped the gun when responding, "i'm tired of - 'the rightists do it, too, so its ok'."]

<reverts back to rant mode - hey, thanks Rove!>

you know what? alla you are right. i was just frontin'. you're spot-on, in fact.

its not just that i hate having to wade through scores of posts along the lines of - "see, the bushists/chiracists are all scoundrels, its a scandal, and dont you just gotta laugh about those lib/con pygmy posters here". thats not it at all.

in fact, it is that i insist dean to behave like an angelic baby with a goldenrosed soul when he's attacked by rove c.s. and want you all to remain perfect, tut-tutting gentlemen when you're out protesting and get harassed by skinheads -

and furthermore, its also that i consider blatham, tartarin, bill, craven, sofia and georgeob1 each and all toothless funny-looking typical 1950s-60s-70s out-of-touch pseudo-punk-hippie-yuppies who are obviously at a total loss in this here 2-stepping andromorphic post-Iliescuan age that belongs to people like me, who are - in fact - destined to establish and take up world government any time now.

yep. thats it.

mmwwAAHHAAAHHAAAHAAA!!!!

<stomps out in mock anger, turns corner, and shakes head grinning>

and in the end, it just matters to one vote

(This is where I also like to add that I actually have 6 - mine, my wifes, my dead parents (aside to the aside, that's added for sympathy), one dog and one cat But, everyone knows its a lie..... )

But, we will make room for a European hegemonist who's out to take over the world in how many weeks

Thank you Bill. I appreciate your understanding of the irony Nimh was trying to beat to death.

i was thinkin' about ten weeks, bill - what, with new year's eve an' all, could be the occasion for a good party ...