QandO
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July 06, 2004 Quick Hits A few assorted thoughts.....
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer who runs one of the most popular liberal blogs -- Dailykos.com -- predicted that many bloggers will beam a reliably pro-Democratic message back to their readers. "We're all partisan. We don't pretend to be otherwise and would not be constrained by bounds of having to balance out what we write with the other side," he said. "So it's a much more direct way to get out the party's message to its constituents and potential constituents."This, more than almost anything else, bothers me about the blogosphere - and especially, in my experience, the left side of the 'sphere. If you are "reliably pro-Democratic"--or, for that matter, "reliably pro-Republican", why should we pay attention to anything you say? As a friend once told me, anybody who always agrees with a political Party is being paid to do so. That Kos admits he doesn't feel "constrained by bounds of having to balance out what we write with the other side" is all the reason anybody needs--even, perhaps especially, Democrats--to pay him no further attention. Question: What kind of analysis...what kind of intellectual honesty can you expect from someone who is dedicated not to his principles, ideology and politics, but to a Party? Answer: Just about as much intellectual honesty and fairness as we expect from a Party press release. That is to say, none at all. Shame on Kos. And, more than that, screw him. Screw him, and screw any blogger--of any Party--who has more devotion to his Party, than to intellectual honesty. They poison the intellectual environment for all of us.
I'm not taking the NY Post as the final word on the subject, particularly as I'm holding out hope that not even John "Do You Know Who I Am?" Kerry is this out of touch.A couple thoughts, though this will probably be a moot points within minutes: 1: Really, what are the odds that the NY Post has the scoop on this? They are hardly an organ of the DNC. 2: The continuous noise about Gephardt--a candidate so boring, even Democrats are begging Kerry not to do it--is making me wonder if this isn't just a ruse....and the NY Post story, just a bit of disinformation. Why would they do that? Few reasons: The latter, I think, is probable. After the potentially exciting prospect of a McCain VP was shot down, in somewhat embarrassing fashion, any VP can only be a bit of a downer. However, if Kerry floats Gephardt as a VP, expectations are lowered back down to a manageable level.....and compared to Gephardt, pretty much anybody is exciting. That's my bet, anyway. I could be wrong, and I could be wrong within minutes.
The overriding purpose of my blogging is to educate myself. You have to do a lot of reading before you have something coherent to say, and you have think a lot harder about what you’re going to say when you know that thousands of intelligent readers are watching every word you say.Spot on. Putting thoughts into text requires some degree of self-analysis: am I right? Does this make as much sense now as it did before I wrote it down? What arguments can be made against it, are they valid, and how do I deal with them? It's nice to have readers, but the self-education....that's The Thing.
Yes--inter alia--they are, you fucktard. We've spent the last week or so bombing "safe houses used by the Al-Qaeda-linked Zarqawi". Zarqawi sent a letter to Bin Laden telling him of their ongoing operations inside Iraq. And Al Qaeda leaders told ousted Taliban leaders "Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq."SEN. LIEBERMAN: These are the very same people who attacked us on September 11.Um, Joe? No, they're not you dumbass. Atrios will eat his own--even call them racists--for being more informed than he is. Sad. |
Atrios is a member of the Michael Moore left officially... The "insurgents" are the "Minutemen."
Posted by: HH at July 6, 2004 12:40 PM
He's not talking about Zarqawi's people, he's talking about Iraqis in general, who are the ones taking the vast majority of the destruction. Check the related post - according to the military itself, only a very small number of people being held are foreign fighters of the sort that al-Qaida is made up of. Zarqawi's group, Ansar al-Islam, is Kurdish (yes they're in Iraq but they're not ethnic Iraqis. There's many of them in Turkey too).
And I would be a little hesitant to bring up Zarqawi, since Bush declined to have him taken out because it would have messed up his case for war (see Jacob Levy over at volokh.com for more on this). We know where their priorities lay, and it wasn't with getting the people behind 9/11.
Posted by: Sneaky at July 6, 2004 01:18 PM
Sneaky: you may note that I didn't only cite Zarqawi. It's hardly uncommon knowledge that Al Qaeda is operating inside Iraq. Hell, it's one of the DNC talking points that Al Qaeda is inside Iraq since the invasion.
The merits of that argument aside, it means they are in Iraq. And they are among the people we are fighting.
...which makes Lieberman right.
As regards the pre-war Zarqawi issue, we know very little about that....certainly not enough to make an informed judgement.
Posted by: Jon Henke at July 6, 2004 01:27 PM
We also know that it is quite credible that Bill Clinton is a rapist. We "know" this because Lisa Myers of NBC News reported it, Sneaky, so I'm assuming you'll say that's absolutely correct with no question as well. Myers is also among the many to have pointed out the lack of credibility of Michael Moore, so I'm sure you agree on that too... she reported it so it must now be seen as fact rather than a report from a source which may or may not be credible.
Posted by: HH at July 7, 2004 12:33 AM