What’s that medication for schizophrenia?

Lex, I look forward to your future posts.

Geez. We’re done here.

Yah, I omitted ‘near’ on purpose. Put that in your pipe and wonder why…

And maybe do some reading?

By the way, I’ve been a Republican here in North Carolina for all but a few months of my adult life, which is to say for almost 29 years. So be sure to include THAT number in your standard deviation, mmkay?

No surprise buddy Rosen was on the panel.

Ha!

After reading your blog and your lefty journalist blog to boot, I daresay you’re one of those ‘homogenous’ types Carson referred to.

Cheers,

We’re got YOur number.

Thank God I took statistics.

Longer segments with better video controls are posted here: http://www.fora.tv/

Eileen, if you think the polls’ results are skewed by the news organizations that commission them, then I’m sure you were just as forthright in your criticism of them when the president’s approval ratings approached triple digits post-9/11. Right?

But I don’t agree with your clarification point, EIther. What ‘majority of the U.S.’ believes that Iraq ‘has gone bad’ aside from Kos Kids and the MSM? Or that ‘we never should have gone there to begin with’?

I don’t buy the MSM’s talking points/paid for and delivered ‘polls’ for even a second of their propaganda spin time.

I guess we’ll see who’s right in November, eh?

That’s real advanced, dropping selective poll results to buttress your point.

To which majority of the country are you referring? The 65% that can’t find their own state on a map?

Wasn’t 75% of the country against Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War?

Majorities are neither categorically right nor wrong, but they seem to be consistent talking points for non-substantive arguments.

Your clarification merely transformed your generaliztion from what the majority of Americans “think” into what the majority of Americans “think about Iraq”, as if that is the only issue people care about.

Would it shock you to know that issues other than Iraq abound: illegal immigration, abortion, capitalism, GWOT, taxes, education, gas prices, ….

Are Kos children in line with the majority of Americans on those issues?

These people are NOT the base, no matter how much they claim they are.

As for Kos, I believe he is an opportunist who is merely out for himself.

These people are NOT the base, no matter how much they claim they are.

As for Kos, I believe he is an opportunist who is merely out for himself.

You urged others not to generalize about Daily Kos but just before that you asserted that it represents a “majority of the country”.

That’s a bald, self-aggrandizing generalization if I ever heard one.

Yeah, there are no sweeping generalizations on the Kos site either(sarcasm).

I can think of at least two possibilities:

1) These “honest, sincere, good-hearted people, baffled and dismayed by what their country has become,” are finding neither Republicans nor Democrats are meeting their political needs.

2) Daily Kos isn’t a cult, or at least isn’t just a cult. It’s also a place where people of generally like mind — a mind represented by a majority of the country these days — come to congregate because they’re not seeing their views reflected in either the actions of government or the reports of the news media.

One other thing: Daily Kos has a boatload of regular contributors, many of whom disagree with one another on a variety of key issues. I would urge caution to anyone tempted to generalize about it.

On planet Earth, an invitation seems a most bizarre way to tell someone they aren’t welcome.

The question is what sorts of citizens are being produced and enabled. It could be a good or bad thing, ultimately. My own personal experiences with readers of DailyKos have not been good, but that is not a basis for judgement when it looks like something major is happening – that Old Media/New Media, insider/outsider distinction is not to be taken lightly in terms of of whether wants and goals for those at YearlyKos are changing.

- If you’re passionate, how come only a few thousand of you have paid for Kos’ book?

- If you’re influential, how come all of Kos’ general election endorsements have lost?

- If you’re so serious, how come you advocate extreme language from mainstream politicians, and when they understandably backpedal, backstab them?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5823&R=C61B4B3

THE DICK DURBIN FIASCO of a few weeks ago provides a wonderful case in point. As is well known, on June 14 Senator Durbin compared the conditions at the Guantanamo detention center to what one could have seen in Nazi Germany or a Stalin-run gulag or while receiving the tender mercies of Pol Pot.

Durbin’s comments made him an instant hero in the left-wing blogosphere where hyperbolic Bush-bashing is always received warmly. Steve Gilliard, a Daily Kos alumnus, penned a lengthy defense of Durbin in which he reminded the senator’s critics that climate control was the preferred interrogation technique for the Luftwaffe. Moulitsas called the ensuing controversy a “moronic Right Wing smear attack” and proclaimed, “I stand with Durbin. Proudly.”

Durbin’s attempt to curry favor with the left-wing worked. Temporarily, at least. But one shouldn’t require the counsel of David Gergen or Michael Barone to realize that outside the alternative worlds of the blogs, comparing America’s military to Nazis, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge is a political loser.

In the week that followed, it became apparent to the senator and his staff that he had made a terrible mistake. Now that he was in the soup, to whom did the senator turn?

To the bloggers. On June 21, Senator Durbin’s office held a conference call with several left-wing bloggers. Of the seven attendees, there was no representative of the left-wing blogosphere’s royalty. There was no Moulitsas, no Gilliard, no Atrios.

Even more indicative of the pathetic nature of this outreach attempt is the fact that this became probably the first Senatorial background conference-call ever to be “liveblogged.” One of the participants, “Annatopia” of MyDD.com, posted a fairly detailed account of the proceedings on her blog . (Curiously, this post was later taken down for reasons unknown; you can see a copy of the post here.) At least two members of the senator’s staff talked strategy with the bloggers and testified that thanks to the senator’s acquaintance with a constituent who was a POW in Vietnam, Durbin felt very strongly about this issue.

(It is interesting to note that there is some disagreement as to how the call came together in the first place. Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker insists that the senator’s office arranged the call in response to a request from the blogging community. Jeralyn Merritt of Talkleft.com, one of the call’s participants, recalls things differently. She writes in an email, “A number of bloggers, myself included, had been e-mailing back and forth with individual members of Senator Durbin’s staff on the issue of Guantanamo and his remarks. Sen. Durbin decided it would be more productive to get us all on one call. I was asked to invite some bloggers to participate, and I did.”)

Yet later that day, Durbin offered an overwrought apology from the Senate floor, his commitment to his former POW constituent having apparently evanesced with remarkable rapidity. Shortly thereafter, Durbin learned that the left-wing blogosphere was not won over by his charm offensive and that liberal bloggers far prefer substance (in this case, determined and unflinching opposition to the Bush war effort) to touching the hem of a senator’s garment.

For many of the bloggers who had supported Durbin through his ordeal, his apology occasioned a spasm of characteristically potty-mouthed outrage. Steve Gilliard suggested that Durbin “go fuck himself”; on the Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas concurred, observing that he agreed with Gilliard and added that “Durbin fucked up.”