The Shift

Replies to American Power blog (AmericanNeoCon)

American Power

Since Nero's limiting me to one reply/his post on his blog, I'm setting up this topic in an effort to keep the dialog flowing... He's welcome to post here, or I'll drop reply links over there... I don't take well to those who edit my posts for content, but I confess to enjoying the twisted NeoCon bullshit that comes out of his mind, sometimes...

Either this'll work, or it won't... But I figured I'd give it a try...

AmericanNeoCon edits me out.

The post: American Power: Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left

My first reply, as originally posted:

I'm examing the nature of today's far left-wing movement in campaign '08, particularly the degree to which contemporary radicals are rallying to the Obama banner. So far, there some's evidence for this in Tom Hayden's call earlier this week for the left to unite behind the Illinois Senator, " Progressives for Obama."

There is?

Which radical(s) have rallied to the Obama banner?

Tom Hayden? (& the other authors of that piece, Bill Fletcher Jr, Danny Glover, & Barbara Ehrenreich)?

How can you claim there has been some evidence that contemporary radicals are rallying to the Obama banner, yet and not name any contemporary radicals who actually have rallied to the Obama banner?

Captain Ed's got an interesting post

I think that’s Malkin’s Hot Air.

Minor pick from the “Captain’s” post: Apparently, the sobriquet only applies if one actually kills people, at least in Salon’s eyes.

Actually, that was the law, up until recently… Is Briana Waters a terrorist? | Salon News: "Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the State Department defined terrorism as 'premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants.' But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense 'calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government' or 'to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.' Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action."

At first glance, I hesitatingly support the change, as long as the courts apply the new laws fairly… Should wackos on the right start murdering “abortionists,” again, I want the same laws to apply… And I’ll be interested to see how broadly it’s applied to various interest groups.

Now, to be clear: There's no mention of partisan political ties between the ECL terrorists and the Barack Obama campaign.

So what you’re saying is, these radicals (& I agree that these are radicals) are not rallying to the Obama campaign.


Still, a quick link to the Earth Liberation Front homepage indicates (as of March 27, 20008) that some activists in the eco-liberation movement advocate closer ties to the Democratic Party, specifically the Al Gore global-warming ayatollah wing.

Please go back ASAP & explain that… Because from what I see,

Mentions of the word “democrat” on the homepage – 1 – from a 2006 Washington Post article:
“FBI Arrests 3 Suspected ELF Members In Placer Co.In Fire's Wake, Logging Study Inflames Debate University Study Challenges Cutting Of Burnt Timber
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post
February 27, 2006”

reprinted on the ELF home page.

Let’s try the word “Gore.” – 5 matches:

1) From what appears to be another reprinted news story, but has no byline: They say the environmental movement remains strong - building on the work of grass roots activists, or supporting mainstream advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore, or going deeper underground to avoid the fate of the 10 activists brought to justice in Eugene.
2) A banner link on the left side of the page: Did you Know that Al Gore Invented the Internet ? Find out the Truth about Al Gore Invented The Internet - we have Al to thank for the World Wide Web
3) Same ad as #2
4) Banner ad just below the previous one: It's time we make the Corporations pay for the damages caused by global warming. Read about the Global Warming Lawsuit- you might be eligible for a settlement check! President Al Gore has pledged to help clean up the environment and reverse the effects of Global Warming.
5) A letter written to the webmaster by a right winger: Recent Letter To Webmaster:
As a Marine, I find the worst form of coward to be one that does what you asses do on a regular basis. When you blow up a lot full of SUV’S how much damage are YOU doing to the environment? Talk about carbon! But I know “ don’t judge by our results , judge on our intent” What a bunch of left wing pussies. Well here is an open invitation to come get my SUV, but remember some of us are still armed , and well trained. Get a life. Your professors were wrong, ALGORE is not God , the earth doesn’t love you, God gave us the earth to use AND take care of . OH one more thing trees grow back, in case you missed that in school. Really the only way that you can not impact the earth , is to not exist! So do me and the rest of humanity , and mother earth, a favor and remove your unbathed hippy ass out of the equation! That ‘d be a true testament to Mother Earth. Ahhh I can feel the love now!!!!
Jim H.

So where are these “activists in the eco-liberation movement advocating closer ties to the Democratic Party”? Did I use the wrong words?
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But it seems that NeroCon had other plans: Here's what's there now, thanks to Nero's edit:

American Power - Comments: "So where are these “activists in the eco-liberation movement advocating closer ties to the Democratic Party”? Did I use the wrong words?
repsac3 | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 6:41 pm | #"

Cowardly, or what?

I'll update, as the debate continues.
------------------

While I was being edited, I was replying to Nero's comment, which said:

I linked to ECL, Repsac.

I was there, obviously... I brought back anything linked to Dems or to Gore. There was no there, there.

I'm asking you to be specific, not just claim there were unnamed folks advocating unnamed ties.
-------------

But while I was doing that, Nero was changing his reply, to read:

Me: "So where are these “activists in the eco-liberation movement advocating closer ties to the Democratic Party”?

I linked to ECL, Repsac, and added the quote. The site provides no link to the source:

"They say the environmental movement remains strong - building on the work of grass roots activists, or supporting mainstream advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore, or going deeper underground to avoid the fate of the 10 activists brought to justice in Eugene. “The environmental problems on the planet aren't getting any better, they're getting worse,” said Jim Flynn, former editor of the Earth First! Journal and a veteran of protests in Eugene. 'People will do what it takes to either try and stop environmental degradation, or draw attention to it.'"
---------

That quote is from a 2006 Washington Post article:
“FBI Arrests 3 Suspected ELF Members In Placer Co. In Fire's Wake, Logging Study Inflames Debate University Study Challenges Cutting Of Burnt Timber
By Blaine Harden
 - Washington Post - 
February 27, 2006”

I had already posted that info, before the edit. That's the only time the word "Democrat" appears on the ELF page.
repsac3 | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 9:10 pm | #
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Obama doesn't need to endorse them, but the fact is that they prefer him.
Shoprat | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 7:45 pm | #
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Whether or not they prefer him (& perhaps, to who?) is what the professor is aiming to show... with examples eventually, I hope.

I see he's convinced one person, already... I hope you don't mind if I wait until he's actually linked a few radicals to the Obama campaign, before agreeing with you.

(If I'm feeling really charitable, I might give him Hayden, even though the guy hasn't actually done anything politically radical in a very long time... There was a time when his ideas were radical, but both the times, and he, have changed.)
repsac3 | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 8:44 pm | #
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Repsac3: My blog, my rules.

You're generating complaints and you're bothering me. I'll debate, but I won't be harranged. If you've got a lot to say, write it on your blog, and drop the link here, within my blog rules. Look how I've debated at Biobrain's, post and response, not obssess and obssess, like you're doing here.

Also, I carefully avoid sweeping generalizations at the ECL post, so you're critizing me for something I haven't done. ECL works through some mainstreams groups. I claim nothing more.
Americaneocon | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 9:35 pm | #
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I thought I was doing pretty well, aside the html accident...

But as with everything else, I cannot force you to use a level playing field...

We'll give it a shot, but I think I'm going to post to my blog, with a link to yours, so that I know you cannot again edit my words after I've posted them. I find that most distasteful...

You're welcome to post at W&M, as long as you don't just drop your comments anywhere, as you did last week... Please stay on topic for the post... I intend to keep an open thread, just for you.

I never used the words "sweeping generalization" to describe your ELF post, did I? Where is the criticism?

And where are the mainstream groups through which ELF works? I didn't notice any listed...

Tactics of the right-wing noise machine - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Tactics of the right-wing noise machine - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Choice quote:

While Democrats are constantly forced by manufactured controversies generated by the right-wing noise machine and their media allies to "repudiate" and "renounce" a never ending carousel of "extremists" ranging from the moderate to the irrelevant (Michael Moore, MoveOn, Louis Farrakhan, Ward Churchill, etc. etc.), the GOP establishment for years has tied itself at the hip to hate-mongering extremists along the lines of John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Pat Roberston, Ann Coulter, and all sorts of various Instapunks, with no repercussions or accountability whatsoever.

no comment

john.he.is

McCain '08: Like Hope, But Different

Oh, The Hannity! Wright is wrong, but Fallwell fares well...

Can good works redeem a man's bad rhetoric?

For Hannity, it appears that ideology is key...

From HuffPo:

In discussion last week with Obama supporter Rev. Bill Lawson, March 19, 2008:

HANNITY: Reverend Lawson, with all that we've heard from Reverend Wright, do you support everything he has said?

LAWSON: Of course not. I don't support everything anybody says, even members of my own family. But I do recognize him as a friend, as a prophetic preacher and as a person who has been extremely valuable, not only in Chicago but nationwide, almost globally. He is a good man.

HANNITY: He is a good man that says G.D. America, the U.S. KKK of America, all of these statements. Do you think that's coming from a good man?

In discussion with Christopher Hitchens following Falwell's death, May 16, 2007:

HITCHENS: I think we have been rid of an extremely dangerous demagogue who lived by hatred of others, and prejudice, and who committed treason by saying that the United States deserved the attack upon it and its civil society of September of 2001 by other religious nut cases like himself.

HANNITY: He profoundly and repeatedly apologized. And I'm sure you're perfect.

HITCHENS: No, he did not enough.

HANNITY: I'm sure you're perfect in your life and that you've never made any mistakes.

HITCHENS: I've never committed treason like that. I don't believe in the sincerity of his apology...

HANNITY: I knew Reverend Falwell, Christopher. I know the good work that this man has done.

HITCHENS: Tell me about it.

HANNITY: Well...

HITCHENS: Takes a lot to make me cry.

HANNITY: I know you think you're the smartest guy in the room, but you sound like a jackass when you attack his family like this. But I know...

HITCHENS: I didn't attack his family. Excuse me.

HANNITY: ... what he did for unwed mothers. I know what he did for alcoholics. I know what he did for drug addicts.

HITCHENS: Excuse me, sir.

HANNITY: Yes.

HITCHENS: I did not attack his family. And no fair-minded viewer of yours will say it. I'm not going to be conscripted to say that it's my job, when you invite me on to discuss this man, first to say how sorry I am for him and his family. That isn't what I feel. You no doubt, as a Christian or whatever you are, require hypocrisy of people. And so you're asking me...

HANNITY: I'm not asking -- no, but I am asking for human decency. And if you don't think it has an impact on his family to use even the phrases tonight that he's vulgar, a fraud and a crook. And then to say that...

HITCHENS: Am I supposed to conceal my -- you asked me on.

HANNITY: I think you are incredibly mean, incredibly selfish and thoughtless.

HITCHENS: You invited me, sir, to give my opinion of the departed. I give it to you, and you say, well, might that not upset his family. I said it while he was alive. That might have upset his family, too.

read more | digg story

What Made Obama's Speech Great

The true power of the speech is that it does what it says. It not only talks about empathy, it creates it.

We are on the cusp of a new politics in America. It should be dated from March 18, 2008, the date of Barack Obama's landmark speech "A More Perfect Union." The usual pundits have looked mainly at the speech's surface theme: race. They weren't wrong. It was indeed the most important statement about race in recent history.

But it was much more. It was a general call to a new politics and an outline for what it needs to be. Just as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was about much more than the war dead on that battlefield, so Obama's speech -- widely hailed as in the same ballpark as Lincoln's -- went beyond race to the nature of America, its ideals and its future.

read more | digg story

There's Nothing Wrong with Rev. Wright

"The manufactured controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright ignores the tradition of 'prophetic preaching' in African-American churches."

I expect there will be several more articles like this showing up, to explain why many were neither shocked or offended by those little snippets of Wright's words...



read more | digg story

4000

h/t: Crooks and Liars

Conservatives Beware

What's the matter with conservatism? Its problems start with the failure of George W. Bush's presidency but they don't end there....

So begins a truthdig article discussing two books by con writers that explore the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement.

The authors are worried about their movement’s future, and accept—to use the language directed once upon a time against liberals—that the right is tired, short of ideas and mired in the past.

I think they may be right.

Some more quotes:

Many on the right think there is no problem with conservatism today that doing a better job of imitating Ronald Reagan wouldn’t solve. But the 1980s were a long time ago. What made Reagan great, Frum argues, “was his ability to respond to the demands of his times. We must respond to the demands of ours.”

Frum acknowledges that the problem of economic inequality is real. “The American economy grew handsomely between 2001 and 2006,” he writes. “But over those five years, the income of the median American ... did not rise at all. The number of people in poverty rose by 5.4 million between 2000 and 2004.”

“There is emerging within the Republican Party a very interesting debate about whether we need to change our approach, or just reassert the policies we already have,” Frum said in an interview.

Frum would like the heretical Republicans to come together to create their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council. The GOP sure could use something. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that only 27 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage in Pew’s 16 years of polling. If ever there was a moment for change agents within the nation’s conservative party, this is it.

read more | digg story

An AmericanNeoCon has something to say...

...but believes it right & proper to piss his words out anywhere he sees fit (in this case in the "Protest symbol turns 50" thread, below, as though anything he posted had the slightest thing to do with peace)

Repsac: Are you and Biobrain calling me names over at that old thread?

Since you linked to it, the thread shows that Biobrain went limp after I applied the same logic to his arguments. But here's my comment tonight:

"A nutjob?

I don't recall, Biobrain, that you'd resort to argumentium ad hominem, but in reveiwing the debate here, I do recall how sleazy your debating practices ended up being, particularly when you you wouldn't apply a fact based rebuttal to your own arguments.

Look at the debate here. You can see that once I applied a strict decision rule about your example of judges, you were flummoxed.

Here's a quote for you:

"Conservatives have long been amazed by liberals who ask, indeed demand, of every conservative they meet to give reasons for each and every of their views, yet when faced with logical answers that astound them, either retort with some jibberish that bears no relevance to the issue being discussed, make some snide remark, or immediately seek to change the subject that they themselves so insistently started."

I applied it to Repsac as well. You're two peas in a pod, and obviously you've sunk to a new low with the name calling.

Totally. Intellectually. Dishonest. Repsac's no better."

Yes, NeroCon (who fiddles while America burns) I believe I did call you a name or two at that old thread (this old thread: And Doctor Biobrain's Response Is...: Why Bush Invented Terrorism and the Ideology of Hate... ...and perhaps elsewhere, too...

If you can call me an anti-intellectual fraud, I can reply in kind... (I know... It's all different when you dip into the insult pool, because when you say it--& seemingly by virtue of your saying it alone, & nothing more--it's all true... Get a friggin' life.)

As far as your cute & cuddly little quote, I replied to it on your blog, the first of the three times you've posted it this eve... (1, 2, and here makes 3) I contend that it doesn't apply to the conversation we were having there, as you have not seen fit to answer any of my requests for evidence in support of your many claims, let alone do so employing anything in the way of logic.

Aside that, it can just as easily be turned around so as to be a leftwing slogan against the right, a christian slogan against jews, or a white slogan against blacks... There is nothing that makes it apply any better to one group over another... ...& considering how piss poorly you've been doing in defending your points & backing up your claims of late, I really don't think you want folks to think too hard on the subject of good debate techniques, lest they apply such things to the words you write.

I was just checking out the rest of the article from which your "conservatives have long been..." quote comes, and landed on this little bit: CFP: The Root Cause of Why Some Liberals Are Unresponsive to Logic and Debate: "He or she does not have to give proofs and those who dare to challenge the scientist’s assertions are heretics."

Now, who does that quote about proof (& indeed the title of the whole article, save the misplaced word "liberal") really describe; me, or you? Think about it...

World's best-known protest symbol turns 50

"It started life as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world. It has also been adapted, attacked and commercialised."

Read the rest here

More info here: Peace symbol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Cole learns from his mistakes.

Balloon Juice:
My Iraq War Retrospective, by John Cole:

I see that Andrew Sullivan was asked to list what he got wrong about Iraq for the five year anniversary of the invasion, and since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:

Everything.

(Follow the link for the rest of his post.)

It takes guts to admit to being wrong, and John has earned my respect for doing so... Far too many partisans of all stripes are never, never, EVER wrong about anything they utter...