Archive for January, 2011

The Reclusive Leftist weighs in

Posted: January 18, 2011 by datechguy in blogs, internet/free speech
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One of days I must have the Reclusive Leftist on my show on the subject of Sarah Palin and the left. We disagree on almost everything else but she has been willing from day one to call out her fellow leftists on Palin Derangement syndrome.

I finally had a chance to take a peek at her blog to see what she had to say about the last week and she wrote a series of post that confirmed her dislike of the right but were as honest as the day was long.

She started on the 9th:

As soon as I heard the news Saturday and read an online article (forget where) with the gleanings from the guy’s various communiques, that was my impression. Mind control, grammar, the possible constitutional ramifications and/or mind control of said grammar, strange obsessions with the currency and its frightening message to trust in God, nonsensical ramblings: it could be a page out of Vaslav Nijinksy’s diary. It’s not just the content, but the style. Classic paranoid schizophrenia.

So imagine my surprise when I checked in on the news later last night and saw that Sarah Palin had been blamed for the shooting.

In the post she insults the tea party but that doesn’t stop her from seeing nonsense for what it is.

Later that same day she reminds us of some of the non violent memes of the lefts opposition to Sarah Palin and says:

That’s right. He was busy calling for Hillary Clinton’s death and then, when Clinton was over, foaming at the mouth about

Palin hunt image via the reclusive leftist

Sarah Palin. Lots of people were foaming at the mouth about Sarah Palin. There was the “art” exhibit in New York inviting people to play at shooting her with a rifle. She was hung in effigy in Los Angeles. Sandra Bernhardt said she should be raped, and not a few other people gleefully called for her death.

Was there any outrage about this at the time? Only from people like me, who were running around with our hair on fire, screaming to our allegedly “progressive” brethren and sistren “UR DOIN IT WRONG!!!!!” Everybody else seemed to think it was just fine. After all, Sarah Palin really did deserve to be raped and murdered and shot and lynched because she’s a foul c*** who needs to die, so what was wrong with saying so? Lighten up, bitch. What are you, a secret Republican?

And again she is the reclusive leftist so she makes it clear what she thinks of Sarah Palin’s political positions:

Sarah Palin is a Republican. That’s all. She’s just a silly rightwing Republican. The country’s crawling with them. Look, they’re all around you! They’re your county supervisors, state senators, congresspeople, governors, and former presidents. Remember Bush? Remember Reagan? Sarah Palin didn’t invent any of this stuff. She didn’t invent any of the ideas or any of the rhetoric. She certainly didn’t invent extremist violence, nor does she seem to be in any way connected with that kind of thing. She’s just an ordinary idiot Republican who believes ordinary idiot Republican things, like the millions of other ordinary idiot Republicans in this country.

What is it about her that’s so special? What could it possibly be that makes this utterly ordinary idiot Republican somehow a billion times worse than all the rest?

…and she gives her explanation but go to the link and read it, she deserves the hits.

Finally on the 16th she hits it out of the park on RFK Jr’s essay:

He just wanted to talk about the dangers of right-wing hate. Okay, fine. That’s cool. Let’s talk about it. But still: how do you leave out the sentence about Oswald? As a writer, how do you do that? I couldn’t. It feels obligatory. You write this highly-charged essay, you make a big deal about how ugly the right-wing stuff was in Dallas, you evoke the horror of the president’s death; even if you want your takeaway message to be about the dangers of superheated rhetoric, how do you leave out the undeniable historical reality that Oswald was cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth? Even if you tuck it in as a parenthetical throwaway (”of course, ironically…”), you still have to acknowledge it. Don’t you?

I had just about persuaded myself to forget about it—chalk it up to a single editorial decision not to muddy the main point—when I learned today that Eric Boehlert wrote an extremely similar essay in 2009: A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this. It’s exactly the same argument RFK Jr. makes, and with exactly the same stunning omission. No Oswald! Oswald has simply disappeared. He’s gone. And everything that motivated the man is gone. No Cuba, no Fidel, no Soviet Union, no Marxism, no Communism, no nothing. There’s not even a nod to Oswald’s real motive, which was the inchoate longing to be somebody, to be a great man, to be important.

Read this whole essay, yeah it’s hard on the right, but it’s honest and fair and from the left.

I will never agree with the Reclusive Leftist on religion, abortion, George Bush and a million other issues, but boy do I respect her.

Update: Thanks for the lanche Glenn but thanks even more for linking to Violet, honest leftists should be celebrated. BTW Insty readers make sure you read all three of her posts on the subject.

Update 2: A lot of readers think that I’m giving Violet too much credit. Remember a lot of us on the right were once on the left, it took a while for us to get it, its not a switch. If you want to let people find their way to truth the best way is to encourage them along the way.

Morning Joe today: “Sarah Palin is not a serious person”: Update they find Fuller!

Posted: January 18, 2011 by datechguy in media, opinion/news
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Again the transformation from the “when is she going to speak out” before she talked to the “she shouldn’t’ make it about herself”.

Guys I like you but are you actually listening to yourselves? You have given 10 minutes to Sarah Palin because it is your attempt to boost ratings. Remember MSNBC + CNN doesn’t manage to manage to draw as many views as Fox, so you go all Sarah Palin to fire up the niche market and to draw eyeballs of folks like me to see what you guys are going to say.

Mike, I love you, we are both guys from the kingdom, but if you decide that if you are tweeting you are not a serious person that places you in firmly in the middle of the 20th century (when you are born) c’mon Mike.

The problem is people on the right who don’t support her for president see this totally differently:

I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not yet qualified to be president, but my admiration for her continues to grow. Her interview with Sean Hannity, just aired, was almost pitch-perfect. It was dignified. It was well-modulated. It was strong. And it was thoughtful. She kept her composure even as Hannity put on the screen some of the vilest, most vicious attacks against her — the sorts of things that were so bad that if they were said about me they might shake me to my core. She explained her thought process after hearing about the shooting in Tucson, and explained the timing of her videotaped message, and explained her use of the term “blood libel.” She insisted, rightly, that strong and honest — but respectful — political debate should not be stifled, and noted that it only seems like the right is asked to stifle its views. She was correct on all counts.

Guys, I understand your job is to draw ratings but c’mon guys is there no other way to get audience?

Oh btw I was checking school cancellations so I missed a few min, I don’t know if they mentioned the Fuller Brush man’s apology, but I’ll watch through the 7 a.m. hour to see if that changes.

Update: They find the brush man at 6:33 a.m. in headlines at the bottom of the hour, they give him 30 seconds and Joe throws a comment or two.

Update 2: Does anyone remember the advice that Joe Scarborough & company gave the GOP all during 2009 & 2010. It was the opposite of what they did. If the Republican’s took your advice they would be the minority party in the house now.

Update 3: Joe unexpectedly tears into Carl Bernstein over the “ignorant” business. Carl quotes republicans who didn’t like her but plays the phony geography card showing that he, not Palin is the ignorant one. What on earth happened? He is really going after him on the Palin ignorant and demagogue stuff. What did they inject him with over the break?

Update 4: Joe has actually compared the way Palin is treated by the MSM to the way Reagan was treated in 1980 by the MSM. Am I actually awake and seeing this? This is what you call a 180.

Way too early reports on the apology

Posted: January 18, 2011 by datechguy in fun, media, opinion/news
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I fell asleep on the couch last night and work up at 5 a.m. Much to my youngest’s dismay I don’t see Fitchburg schools listed as canceled but I did turn on Way Too Early with Willie Geist and I see they have discovered Eric Fuller now that he has apologized.

That delay resulted in this post which resulted in my single best day since the blog opened, so I guess I should thank the MSNBC crew for delaying.

I presume Morning Joe will have it as well, but the focus is likely going to be another Palin derangement syndrome day.

(I think the battle hymn song is over the top, I think it enters Palin cult territory. I’m sure they are very nice people but I thought it was shall we say…amusing. )

Sudan and Tunisa two changes in government

Posted: January 17, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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The referendum in Sudan is over and the vote is independence:

International observers gave south Sudan’s independence referendum their seal of approval on Monday and said a vote for secession was now “virtually certain” in their first official judgment on the poll.

Early results from last week’s plebiscite suggest people from Sudan’s oil-producing south overwhelming voted to split away from the north after decades of civil war.

Might be a tad premature to say independence but this is now the best shot for the Christians in Southern Sudan to enjoy a modicum of peace.

If they manage to pull it off I would not be surprised to see Christians who are being slain elsewhere on the continent to head in that direction.

Meanwhile in Tunisia although there is violence Michael Totten thinks there is a real shot for shot for Democracy:

Unlike in war-torn Afghanistan or fanatical Saudi Arabia, Tunisian democracy is a real possibility. It’s a bit unlikely as it’s only one possible option of many, but it could happen. Mebazaa himself is now promising, perhaps even sincerely, “a better political life which will include democracy, plurality and active participation for all the children of Tunis.”

I’ve spent time in more than a dozen Muslim countries, eight of them Arab, and Tunisia is — or at least was before this month when things fell apart — one of the most advanced and stable. The majority of its citizens belong to a well-educated middle class, the infrastructure seems no worse than Europe’s, and a high percentage of women in the cities have discarded the veil and the headscarf and dress like Europeans. The latter may sound like a small thing, but in a Muslim country, it visually indicates how much women’s rights have advanced. The overwhelming majority live near the coast in cosmopolitan cities that have traded and been in cultural contact with Europeans for millennia. It’s not a Western country, but it fully belongs to the Mediterranean region and is oriented more toward the West than most Arab countries.

Beirut was once a cosmopolitanism place too. This will be a real test, can an Islamic country when removing a dictator create a state that has freedoms that other Islamic states avoid, or will it become a place where Sharia is either officially or unofficially enforced?

These two stories are going to tell us an awful lot. Let’s make sure we pay attention.

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