One more “liberal abuse blog” takes the troll bait
September 11, 2007
Via Folkbum, I see that Jessica McBride has been nice enough to give us a perfect reminder of why I, like so many of my countrymen, have spent the last six years becoming increasingly contemptuous of conservatism and the Republican Party.
This is the sort of thing that should be copied down and preserved, so that schoolkids twenty years from now can be astonished at how deranged our politics were, sort of like how kids of my generation read about the craziness of the Vietnam War:
It’s irrefutable: If bin Laden lived in America, he’d be most inclined to vote Democrat. After all, he’s pretty much adopted the Democratic Party’s rhetoric and platform…
Democrats, here’s a challenge: Does it bother you at all that our mortal enemy, bin Laden, sounds exactly like so many of you do? Or are you secretly thinking, “you know, I can’t admit it, but in a lot of ways he makes sense.” And if you don’t think he makes sense, then aren’t you repudiating many of your own positions?.
This nonsense used to be confined, like Jessica McBride, to the fringes of wingnut radio. But since George Bush took office, this kind of rhetoric has found a home in our national debate. You hear it from quasi-legitimate news channels. You hear it from Dick Cheney. You hear it from the ex-Speaker of the House, and from the House Minority Leader. You hear it from the President of the United States, and from all of the major candidates for the Republican nomination.
It’s completely absurd.
Why do I care what Osama bin Laden says about anything? He’s a preposterous figure, and since my job is not that of an NSA analyst deconstructing the video for clues about what cave he’s hiding in, I don’t give a shit about his message. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about global warming, and I don’t give a shit about his take on marginal tax rates in the Islamic world. I don’t feel the need to argue with him, or to make sure that I always and everywhere believe the exact opposite of what he says.
Only someone who’s not very bright would be inclined to take bin Laden’s pronouncements at face value. They’re transparently ridiculous propaganda. Can’t you imagine these same people 65 years ago, listening intently to radio broadcasts from Tokyo Rose, cheering gleefully if Franklin Roosevelt was praised as a Communist, as if that settled the matter (”Stalin has pretty much adopted the Democratic Party’s rhetoric and platform”)? They would rightly be dismissed as lunatics.
Here’s another take on the thing: George Bush and Osama bin Laden are each using the other to prop up their respective agendas. When al Qaeda looked like a big, scary threat, George Bush’s political fortunes were much better than they are now. And Bush’s feckless blustering, combined with his incompetent and belligerent foreign policy, has made al Qaeda’s message seem a lot more plausible to the Islamic world, and has emaciated American power in the region. He’s the best recruiting tool al Qaeda has. Bush and bin Laden are locked in a perpetual embrace, and with any luck, they will soon hurl each other over a metaphorical Reichenbach Falls.
Wingnut radio, however, will always be with us.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Excellent use of a Sherlock Holmes reference, but who is vanquishing who here?
September 12th, 2007 at 5:11 am
Yeah your right 20 years from now our kids will look back and ask why was the Democratic Party so adamant about calling for our country’s defeat? why did Harry Reid say that we had lost the War when we were begining to win it? Why did all the Democrats say the Surge Policy was a failure before it even began? One more questions whose blogs are more abusive? I would have to say the Daily KOS and MoveON.org are way more abusive. just to name a couple.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Brilliant historical parallel to past propaganda — and hysteria, BB. (But yes, I also enjoyed the literary allusion. And it’s quite clear that Bin Laden is not the one being vanquished. First, we have to find him . . . again.)
Jason, anything to say about the blog being talked about here, the topic here?
September 12th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Hmm how about in alot of ways she is right. Democrats have a few things in common with OSama. For one you both hate Capitalism. You both want us to lose in IRAQ. Dems only want us to if Bush is blamed though. In my eyes that is dangerous. I disagree what he has to say is important I mean he is telling us why he hates us so much. In the end though Osama himself isn’t that important I mean if we do capture him do you really think that will end the fight against radical ISLAM? Oh and since you brought it up what is wrong with our foriegn policy? what would you do differently?
September 12th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Democrats have a few things in common with OSama. For one you both hate Capitalism.
What on earth are you talking about?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
He He I’m talking about the canidates which all say that the Capitalist system is totally unfair so we need to raise taxes on the rich and to quote Hillary “I’m going to take the Profits of the Oil Companies” so they can give money to “The poor”. They also want the government to take over Health Care. Hmm that sounds very Anti Capitalist to me.
September 13th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I don’t understand how tax structures are “Anti Capitalist”, unless they are being employed in a kind of social engineering experiment way. They aren’t, if you’d care to look. There is a huge deficit and it needs to be paid for.
As for health care, Democrats seem alone in understanding that health care has inelastic demand, and that this gives rise to problems in the market that government can and should help. Barack Obama’s plan, for example, makes the government a player right alongside private health plans. If you don’t like your health plan, you can just switch over to the government’s, but you’re not forced to. If you’re so sure that the red tape and government bureaucrats will lead to bad care, you have nothing to worry about.
Isn’t that the kind of thing Conservatives like- using a knowledge of the market to solve problems? Isn’t it an even *more* “capitalist” idea than flat out ignoring the problem?
September 14th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Well if we have such a big deficit why don’t we cut in a realistic way by hmmm cutting spending that we don’t need? I don’t know about you but by going to a one payer health care system that is governed by Beurocrats is going to cut the deficit all it is going to do is give more control of your life to the government. If government run health care is such a good thing why is it that Canadians who have that continually come to the US for care? Tax structures arn’t in and of them selves anti capitalist what is anti capitalist is when you use them to re-distribute wealth. I mean really how does it help you when Dems raise taxes on those with higher incomes.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Spending is a big problem. Not spending $451 billion dollars in Iraq, $2 billion a week, would help things quite a bit, I think. Somehow, I don’t think that that’s the kind of spending you’re talking about cutting. Democrats have been fairly open about the spending they’d like to cut- military budgets, subsidies to oil companies, yadda yadda. I’d even throw in farm subsidies as a potential target for cutting spending.
What programs would you like to cut, Jason?
Next, to your point about giving control of your life to the government. If you’d read Obama’s plan or my ObamaLite summary of it, you’d recall that enrollment in the plan is COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY. You don’t have to enroll in the plan if you don’t want to. Maybe I’m confusing his with Edwards’ (Ben knows better than I do), but you have the freedom to do what you want.
I don’t know the anecdotal evidence about Canadians coming here, but I could counter with anecdotal evidence about people fleeing to Canada for emergency treatment. Also, remember how Doyle or some other governor wanted to purchase a lot of prescription drugs from Canada because they were cheaper? Am I nuts in remembering this?
Lastly, nothing about the tax code really encourages this redistribution of wealth. If it’s designed to do that, it’s failing miserably! When Dems raise taxes on those with higher incomes, it helps me by paying down the national debt, making everyone pay a little less.
September 14th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I’m a democrat, and I LOVE capitalism. I just don’t beleive in supply-side economics or entirely unregulated industry - mostly because I have severe doubts that Adam Smith’s invisible hand is capable of keeping the roads maintained.
I’m not anticapitalist when I say the rich should have tax cuts. Because what I’m saying is that *I* should have a tax cut instead. The rich aren’t going to miss that extra 5%, hell, they’d probably just blow it on gold-plated faucets or fancy german cars (which increases our trade deficit!) - I however could use those extra few hundred bucks that it would represent to a middle class schmoe like myself to, you know, buy gas for my car or groceries. Seems like a fair trade.
Snarkiness aside, I do SO hate this “you’re either with us or against us” mentality that’s pervading american politics. So I think GW misprosecuted the war and was following an entirely misguided strategy - that in no way implies that I somehow hate america. There is NO dichotomy here.
I also hate generalizations. It’s the stupidest argument tactic ever.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Both Obama and Edwards have proposals to create a public insurance plan, which would then compete in the free market with private plans.
Edwards calls for “state and regional health markets”, while Obama would create a “National Health Insurance Exchange”. Edwards would create a “Medicare-like” proposal, while Obama’s would be modelled after the current plan for federal employees.
Edwards, but not Obama, has raised the possibility of requiring insurance, similar to car insurance, but with subsidies for the poor. Obama’s plan rests on the assumption that, if you bring costs down, people will choose to buy adequate health insurance.
Not surprisingly, all the Democratic candidates have pretty similar plans, and since any resultant program would be as much a product of the relevant Congressional committees as the administration, what’s probably more important than the specifics of a candidate’s plan is the center of debate within the Democratic Party, and a president’s ability to expend political capital on health care.
A good side-by-side comparison is here.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:35 am
The problem with health care right now is too much government. I think President Bushs plan was a good one. As for IRAQ what do you think will happen if we do leave and cut spending from there , do you think that will best for the country. I honestly think the best place to cut spending is in Entitlements we spend 2x as much there as on national defense. I belive we spend alot more there than we need to. Oh and by the way right now we are having record amounts of revenue pouring in too the treasury do you think raising taxes will increase or decrease that?
September 18th, 2007 at 2:41 am
I was just tooling around onthe Internet and found that last week John Kerry when on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He was asked “Do you trust General Petraeus to deliver a credible and honest report?”
KERRY: None of us should be fooled, not the American people, not you in the media, not us in Congress. We should not be fooled into this tactical success debate. That’s not what this is about. Front page of the New York Times today, an important story about the real tensions in the streets and what is really happening there. I think that they’re courting disaster. I think there is sort of an illusion being put forward, and you can take a tactical success and misread it as we did in Vietnam
He was also asked this “Let me turn to that Osama Bin Laden tape. I want to show it. He seemed to be taunting the Democrats for not stopping the war. He said, ‘The Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions of dollars to continue the killing and the war there.’ Now, is it true that there are more troops in Iraq today than when Democrats were elected last November to control Congress? Is that a failure?”
and here is his response what do you think about this ?
KERRY: We don’t have 60 votes, George. No, I don’t think it’s a failure. We have changed the policy. We’ve already changed direction. We’ve had these revaluations taking place. We’ve had an accountability that never existed in the last years. And obviously that’s what elections are about, and 2008 will be about it. Osama Bin Laden’s tape is testimony to one thing, the failure of this administration to capture and kill him, the failure at Tora Bora and the failure subsequently
It sounds to me that he is making excuses for the Dems not being able to help Osama Win in Iraq. What do you think?
September 18th, 2007 at 7:06 am
It sounds to me that he’s trying to prevent the Bush Administration from using the (possible/ephemeral/localized) tactical benefits of the “surge” to hide the complete lack, not only of strategic success, but of strategic focus. The administration has no plan, which is why they’re forced to hide behind military generals who talk about tactical things. It’s also why our Iraq policy has been so inept — every short-term tactical gain over the last four years has evaporated, because they have no clue what to do.
But I suppose I should consider the alternate possibility that John Kerry is secretly an Islamofascist.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I never said he was an Islamic Fascist I just said he has the same goal.
He feels guilty over our past and doesn’t think we deserve to defend ourself that’s what I’m saying. Hey everyone makes mistakes I mean seriously It took us over 8 years to come up with our constitution. The Iraqis have bigger problems than we did at our inseption. President Bush isn’t hiding behind a General all he did was what what the law said. How can he convince anyone who imediatley disbelives anything that the Army says as propaganda. I mean how can we win the hearts and minds of the American people when the media belives the Enemy over our own Military? I don’t know about you but I believe somthing is terribly wrong when people belive the enemy over our own president and Military.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Ben could you or one of your fellow liberals answer a couple questions for me?
First why is it that democrat Polititions never talk about winning that war in Iraq?
Second What do you think will happen when we don’t give up and leave but go on to win in Iraq?
September 24th, 2007 at 10:32 am
What outcome in Iraq would you consider to be a win? How do you define winning?
September 24th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Well what I would consider winning is Iraq being strong enough to keep Alqadia at bay and with an US friendly/ Anti-terror government.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
But you never answered my questions why do the Demorcrats in Congress never speak of winning why do they alway talk about giving up even when we are being sucessful?
September 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
why do they alway talk about giving up even when we are being sucessful?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
September 25th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
What kind of question is that and what does it have to do with this discussion? And for the record I never have and never will beat my Wife.
September 25th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Sarcasm is a lost cause on the internets. “Have you stopped beating your wife” is a rhetorical device — the canonical response to a loaded question. Answer “yes”, and you suggest that you used to beat your wife. Answer “no”, and you suggest that you still do.
Similarly, we’re not “being successful” in Iraq, and the premise of your question is fundamentally flawed.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I guess you didn’t see the report from last week then. Our Military has been very sucessful and in reality that is all we can really control over there unless we are going to be what every claims we are.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:56 am
Ben- How are we not Being Successful?