Commenter Archive

That's a weird picture of the 50s economy.

Scott, I agree that Alex's approach is pretty counterproductive, and it plays right into Tom's hands, to boot (if nothing else, it justifies Tom's sense of persecution, and allows him to continue to avoid actually presenting a case for his position).

I agree to an extent. There’s a bunch of interesting research (some of which I’ve done myself, yay me) on the effect of labeling an individual with a particular label. The most relevant effect is essentialism: saying someone is exhibiting bigotry, or even that they are being bigoted, produces a very different representation than saying someone is a bigot. The latter suggests something essential, and something lasting, whereas the former at least admits that the offense might be context specific. On the other hand, if someone refuses to let go of an obviously bigoted opinion, I’m not sure the perception of permanence is all that unfortunate.

Eh, I don't recall any top level poster using it, but it was a frequently used word in a threat not to long ago, in which Tom took repeated offense to it (others did as well, to be fair). I honestly think "bigot" is a pretty damn good word, when it's used well, which is to say, when its use is backed up with reasons. I also think it's as problematic to cut off the legitimate use of a word because it's used illegitimately at times as it is to use such words illegitimately. It's unfortunate that, when such words are used, the conversation becomes about the words themselves, but that's rarely if ever the fault of the people using the word legitimately; more often than not, it's the fault of those who take offense to legitimately having such labels applied to them.

I think "bigotry" came up as an analog to "warmongerer," which E.D. (I think it was E.D.; I'm too lazy to go back and look) used at some point. Tom took it as an invitation to rail against effrontery on the part of those with whom he disagrees, so that he could cry "winning," leave in a huff (multiple times), and never actually present an argument for his position.

It's a strange world that Tom lives in, in which moral outrages like torture are immune to criticism for fear of offending their proponents. We'd do well not to try to comprehend that world.

This is his tactic in pretty much every debate. That he uses it in this one only puts its absurdity in stark contrast.

I actually think it's possible to discuss torture rationally, with an open mind. That is, while I think torture is self-evidently evil, and that it is blatant moral relativism to argue that it can be a moral good, or at least a lesser moral evil, when a.) it produces results that are good for us, and b.) it's not being done by the other guy, I could possibly be convinced otherwise. Tom, however, will never be the person to convince anyone of anything of that sort, because he's not, and never will be, arguing in good faith. But it is fun to watch him leave in a huff, only to post again 5 minutes later. "I say good day, sir!"

What I find odd in this discussion, by the way, is the position that it is somehow cowardly, or at least a cop out, to argue that torture is ineffective in addition to being immoral, when torture's effectiveness is the only possible argument that its proponents can use to defend it as a method of interrogation. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any other topic of dispute for which one side argues on a particular dimension, and at the same time suggests that dimension is off limits for the other side to even address.

I enjoyed Hum back in the 90s, though I don't think they've held up well over time, but I think of a band like Kyuss (definitely underappreciated, but not the least bit accessible), and I wonder about calling Hum "the best guitar band of the 90s."

I do enjoy seeing Tom demand that every opinion be on the table, except those that are overly or too directly critical of his own.

By the way, I am a big fan of civility, but certain views and opinions, while they should in no way be directly silenced, should be treated with words like bigotry and warmongering, because that's what they amount to. Can such labels be misused? Of course, but their misuse is no more likely than that of the tactic Tom is using to avoid ever having to address then.

If all trade is coercion, then "coercion" is a meaningless word.

Generations of Democrats got elected by promising to stay on the straight and narrow to the folks back home and then get their freak on when they got to Washington. Mr. Clinton was no exception.

This, of course, is even more revisionist than the bit about Clinton getting rolled.

It must be nice to have as much faith in a team as Koz does, though.

"In our study, we found no effect of mild torture compared to the control group. We did, however, find a statistically significant effect of severe torture: severe torture produced 6 times the amount of information as both mild torture and no torture (control). In fact, the effect of severe torture was so strong that, though we had initially intended the study period to be 6 weeks, after 3 weeks we stopped the study and put everyone from the mild and control groups into the severe torture group."

Bob will believe nothing short of an autopsy preformed by himself.

You do know, Bob, that during the 2008 campaign, Obama said that he would go into Pakistan if he had credible information than bin Laden was there, right? At the time, he got a bunch of flack from both the right and the left for saying so.

Also, the reports I hear was that many in his administration were opposed to the operation. Who knows, though, eh?

If only they were celebrating V.W.o.T. Day, or even just V.A. or V.I. Day.

Bob, the "revenue" quote is almost certainly apocryphal. In addition to the fact that there are about 10 different versions of it, there's never a source. But hey, you keep reading those southern pride websites, and the books that confirm the opinions you started with, and things will be juuuuuust fiiiiiine.

Scott, you're thinking about this wrong: The residents of West Virginia had the right not to commit treason in defense of slavery; the residents of the rest of Virginia did not have the right to commit treason in defense of slavery. It's the same standard applied to two different, and in fact opposite actions.

I want to develop a world-view in which anyone who disagrees with me is merely biased or deceived by the Man, so that I don’t actually have to consider any of their views, much less any “facts” that get in my way. I wonder, if I did that, would I become as cantankerous, or worse, as credulous as Bob, though? It seems like a necessary side effect.

Tom, while you're researching West Virginia, you might also research East Tennessee. That part of the state very nearly seceded from the rest of the state, as West Virginia did from Virginia, after Tennessee as a whole seceded from the Union. East Tennessee, of course, is made up primarily of mountains.

Yeah, I don't think that memo does what you think it does. But hey, this is a partisan game, right? It can't be your side's fault, so it must be the other side's fault.

The reality is that Bush screwed up, but there's enough blame to go around when it comes to the intelligence failures.

It sounds like the intelligence was gathered over a 4 year period, with the exact location being discovered sometime earlier this year. From what I can tell, they planned the raid over the last few weeks.

They clearly notified Pakistani officials at least a few hours befor the raid, as they got approval for the incursion into Pakistani air space, and at least some reports include ISI members being at the location during (or maybe immediately after?) the raid. But as the ISI is notorious for its mixed loyalties, it would have been a particularly bad idea to give the Pakistanis too much information too early.

Also, one can bet that the U.S. had eyes on that compound for weeks, if not months, so that when they finally got the go order, they knew damn well that whoever was supposed to be in there was in there (and hadn't run off at the last minute, say).

That has to be the strangest defense of the South I’ve ever seen. First, extrapolating from New Orleans to the rest of the South is silly. New Orleans, as Jason notes, was a strange city, slave-wise. It was a center of the slave trade while slaves were still being imported, but it never had a large slave population within the city. It was, however, surrounded by a large slave population working on plantations outside of the city. One of the strange demographic facts this created was a larger number of free black people than slaves within the city limits. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, in the 1830s, almost all of the free black people in Louisiana were in New Orleans (Louisiana, as a state, wasn't big on having free blacks around). However, if you look outside of New Orleans (even immediately outside of New Orleans), you’ll find that the slave population in Louisiana vastly outnumbered the free population (including the free blacks in New Orleans). In fact, the slave population of Louisiana, by 1850, damn near outnumbered the white population (this was a big fear in Louisiana: that slaves would soon outnumber whites, making revolt more likely and more dangerous). I don’t have the percentage of white Louisiana residents who owned slaves in that year, though I don’t doubt that it was relatively low, but the fact is, the vast majority of the slave population was owned by whites, and outside of New Orleans, there were almost no free blacks in Louisiana. What’s more, outside of New Orleans, where almost all work was agricultural, there were no white people who were not in direct contact with slavery, and whose livelihood was not in some way dependent on it.

If you look at studies of other areas of the south (since you’re a John Hope Franklin fan, Mike, you might check out his book on free black people in North Carolina, where only a small number of free blacks owned slaves), you’ll find that the numbers don’t fit so well with your thesis, or with the idea that white slave ownership, and it’s importance to the South (it was the backbone of the South’s economy), is “propaganda.” In fact, you might even learn that, to achieve a certain level of economic success in the South, it was necessary to own slaves, which is why it's not so surprising, or even scandalous, that free blacks trying to get in on the South's economic game owned slaves. But I’m sure your ancestors were brave warriors who fought for a noble cause, and the fact that you favor the side that lost has nothing to do with race.

It gets more interesting in that, at least according to reports, the ISI was on site with the U.S. (likely SEAL) team that conducted the operation. So they didn't share intelligence with the Pakistanis, but they brought them along, or at least told them where to show up and when. How did that work?

The way this went down is going to be very interesting, and I agree with Member: this sounds like it happened the way the "War on Terror" should have been happening all along. I suppose when you have a military with a budget larger than the rest of the world's combined, you're tempted to use as much of it as you can when you've got something to use it for.

Bob, see Andy's post, but of course I know the history behind the start of the war, and of course, you know the southern myth. So why bother, eh?

When one side fires at the other, it seems strange to say that other side started the war.

Blücher, by the way, crazy or not, was a military genius, whose tactical successes in 1806, even when the end result was Prussian defeat, were amazing, particularly given the disadvantages he had. The American Civil War may have produced some impressive generals, but for the most part, American generals can't touch the European greats.

If I'm not mistaken, the elephant thing actually happened in 1806, after Prussias defeat, when he was quite physically ill, though apocryphal versions of the story have him saying something to that effect to Wellington, and sometimes add (at least I think this part is apocryphal) that he believed he had been impregnated with the elephant by a French grenadier, but I’m pretty sure whoever it was that impregnated him with an elephant, it happened almost a decade before Waterloo.

That wasn't his only little breakdown, either. At one point, he thought his head had turned to stone, and there's a possibly apocryphal story that he believed for a while that his staff was composed of French agents who were trying to burn his feet, so that when he sat he made sure to lift his feet, and when he stood he stood on one foot, alternating feet frequently (I read jumped from one foot for the other, but that's almost too funny to be believed). Apparently he had bouts of this mental... illness over the last couple decades of his life. To modern ears, it sounds like he may have had some sort of frontal lobe epilepsy or brain swelling or something. That or he was just coocoo for coco puffs.