Even those of us who advocate spanking children (or, more accurately, will not rule it out) know that "spanking with 'sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely'" is just cruelty.
If it doesn't hurt you emotionally more than it does the child physically, you're not doing it right.
What Teresa Said.
A blog that has Amy Sullivan as a regular contributor will not be harmed by Dan Drezner. Especially as his posting ties in nicely with the articles in the current issue of the magazine.
The WaMo blog is not Calpundit.
I freely admit that the invalidation of Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution is more daunting than the election results--especially as I doubt I'm the only one who sees cause and effect there (OH, MO, especially).
I spoke with about 100-150 people in Ohio yesterday. Most had already voted; no one--and I asked, even though it wasn't on the script--said they had had trouble at the polls.
We got out the vote haphazardly. The people who took over my ancestral party and turned it into what it is got out the vote based on over twenty years of organization and techniques leveraged from self-haters such as Terry Dolan. This is not necessarily a permanent gap.
Quo Vadimus? The real issues and the real scandals are still there, and 2006 is only a recession away. The battle is lost, not the war.
Laura, they had that day job in 2001 and 2003 as well.
That noted, I'm in perfect agreement that attending protests in NYC this week--heck, ENTERING midtown Manhattan this week--is going to be pointless, and would point to the descriptions above of what happened in Seattle in comparison to the public perception of same. Or the delusions of janegalt and others to which Kevin referred above regarding who the "troublemakers" were in Florida.
The worst anyone could do in 2001 or 2003 was (choose or combine appropriately) a) undercount the demonstrators, b) disparage the demonstrations because of their organizers, c) ignore the event entirely, or d) act as if it happened but was unimportant. (The latter is apparently the Washington Post's current argument.) The best anyone could do was stand up and be undercounted and reinforce for people that they were not alone in opposition.
The worst--and expected--possibility of NYC 2004 is that a few people will cause damage or have an encounter with NY's Finest, and the rest of the attendees will be tarred with having "being party to" an "anarchist" activity.
We and the rest of the world already KNOW that a large number of like-minded souls oppose the current administration. Leaving town and explicitly denying the city its expected revenues--or even just going in, doing the job, and going home as if there were nothing more important than a late-season Knicks or Rangers game happening at MSG next week--is a sufficient protest for the moment. (Not to disparage the signs, lights, chants or pantie-flashings, none of which depend on gathering sitting ducks all in the same location.)
And it would be, pace Eric, even if Worldcon didn't overlap.
Does Eric Olsen's knowledgeable post automatically get him added to the Justice Department's watch list?
And why am I paranoid enough to think it might?
Will a Kerry presidency ease that paranoia? Probably not--but the man who investigated BCCI gives me a slightly warmer, marginally less fuzzy feeling than the man who was taking money from them.
"Fuggedaboutit!" is nice, even if it might get that Clinton/DeNiro video back on television. Still it's better than "We're mad as hell and not going to take it any more" from a spin cycle perspective.
Thank you, Patrick, for the note to Mitch (saving this old Midwesterner from having to say it).
Mitch does bring up an interesting point, in his way: given that there will be "trouble" at the protests (think FL during the recount), will there actually be a CHANGE of voters (or will people who are undecided conclude that they should vote for Bush because a couple of people get bloodied in NYC)?
We don't need to care about the people who are going to vote for Bush in November anyway--they won't be converted by any signs of unrest or unruliness.
I've seen a lot of members of the press talking about how we're heading for 1968 redux. In 1968, we had rioting at both conventions [Miami and Chicago], marches on Washington, DC, and general signs of unruliness and civil unrest throughout the country. In such an environment, no great surprise that middle-class White guys did their equivalent of "wilding"--voted Republican/Wallace.
But this is 2004. Boston was peaceful. No one has taken to the streets of San Francisco, except those who prematurely expected that they could expect to be treated as equal citizens under the law. No one has scheduled a mass protest in DC, not even for September 11th, the day after the assault weapon ban expires.
Are a few protestors getting into a scrape with NYC police (they known for excessive force [e.g., Baez] and poor shooting [41 shots, 19 hits, at close range]) really going to convince voters?
Granted, I'm not crazy about taking the chance--there is no upside to being a rabble, and relatively little to protesting, especially compared to the alternatives--but I'm not convinced the downside AMONG THE UNDECIDED is significant, assuming there are not "follow-up" riots.
Oh, as noted I'll definitely take the trade; I was taking your closing line as contrasting the two quotes, not "just" as a comment on the Voice piece.
No question: Anyone who wants to accomplish something and has the free time next week would be working on a "get out the vote" campaign in FL or PA or OH, not getting into fights with cops on 32nd Street.
Signs below flights will actually accomplish something?
I'm reminded of the final scene of _Dick_, when Nixon's helicopter goes over Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams's sign. It wasn't the sign that accomplished anything--it was their actions as Deep Throat that =resulted in= the sign.
Don't disagree with the general premise--as an old friend pointed out, "me and 100,000 of my closest friends" gathering before Gulfstream War Haliburton had no effect--but I do fail to see how the signs will "accomplish change." They can be disparaged by commentators just as easily, and won't change the minds of the delegates.
I just want to hope that Robert got a GMail account.
Thanks to Yahoo!'s change of service, I am severely overcapicitized as is--until such time, of course, as the market catches up with the current oversupply.
The juxtaposition of philosophies and the offer would lead me to conclude--probably erroneously--that the Voltaire attitude would be "GMail must be necessary, as it is available" while Rousseau might note that GMail may be available, but will not necessarily address the problem.
Wow. The only thing missing from that Spiro post is her role as the Praying Mantis Woman in the first season of Buffy...
I just want to note for the record that I have never been prouder on my (soon-to-be-ex)governor than I am right now.
The year I graduated produced three members of the Clinton administration: James Rubin in State, speechwriter Mike Waldman, and our from-the-waitlist valedictorian, George Stephanopoulos.
It's nice to see that one kid a year us behind will probably outdo all three.
Remember, Patrick: being able to vote against something is valued only so long as you believe there is a chance the alternative will make it better. If you can delude yourself (or be deluded by others) that there is no difference between choices.
Which Martha Stewart sentence: 5 months, 5 months, and 19 more months or "I cheated no one"?
Welcome back.
And, on a more humorous note, is anyone else disoriented slightly that the e-mail memo is from "Daniel [read: Danny] Dunn"?
Fred P. Taylor is identified as "defense counsel."
The argument he presents appears similar to the one put forward by the defense attorney for one of the grunts accused of being one of the Iraqi Seven: we didn't have enough people, we didn't have enough control ("no replacement mechanism, graf 3c--which is itself an indictment of the BG's policy if you believe that a general who allows a group to be "operating significantly below full strength, not getting replacements, and received [read: accepting] additional mission" is derelict in duty), and didn't know what we were doing ("non-doctrinal mission").
The quaintest part of it is graf 3f, which states in part "The finding of a lack of continuous Geneva Convention training...are without merit." I think I'll wait patiently for Rush Limbaugh to cite that sentence.
Considering Taylor's letter a rebuttal, instead of a searing indictment of the whole CF, is a difficult step. At least for those of us who do not get deeply into defence legalities.
"Paul" claims that Paul is inaccurate, Chuck.
Patrick again: "left-leaning people who are also religious feel disrespected or unwelcome in leftish circles"
Most of us don't travel in such circles, and are therefore noting that we're being tarred by Brill (and Melanie, who declares herself "pointedly ignored by the secular left ") in a manner that they or you would rightly find offensive if we lumped you in with the "Xian right."
Why, to be blunt about it, should we spend our most valuable resource (time) dealing with people who declare loudly and publicly that we don't want them?
On the cross-post, to Anticorium:
I don't thinking of it as "wallowing in mud with a pig" to not waste time posting indignantly every time someone posts something silly on the internet. Your expectation that liberals must fight any and all at all times while conservatives choose their battles (and tar with impunity) is at best dubious.
The first comment on KD's site referred to "religious nutbags." This apparently was offensive to Patrick (who is religious but not a nutbag), but I note that he decries the line here, but not there.
By your reasoning, should he not be obligated to do that as well?
For me, the most accurate and relevant statement in that exchange so far is:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_04/003740.php#150963
Patrick: "...if they hadn't rationalized to themselves that religion and religious people are somehow a special case in the general rules of decent social behavior."
Ah, if THAT is the issue that Drum and Brill are raising--Brill seemed more to be working from the premise that liberals don't want him or others like him playing in their pool, and using Shaw's bias to reinforce his own--then by all means it's a legitimate discussion, and one being carried on by liberals of all stripe (e.g. http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=7572 and http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=7373).
Jeremy Leader got it right, though, in one significant respect: the discussion is about public perception, not reality. And that has been shaped by a discourse that allows self-declared Xians to hide behind their declaration of religion--no matter how askew it is from Jim Caviezel's (or Martin Luther's; see http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4767275/) teachings--and declare liberals to be antagonistic to what they call "Xian values."
Not exactly something that could be repaired in the next six months, or six years.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 3 |
| 2004 | 39 |
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