Tim Blair

When Bush gets his second term these people are going to lose they fucking minds.

It's going to be like a raging tornado made of hysteria and abuse destroying a silo packed with bullshit, creating a raging brown cloud a thousand feet tall.

When you lie down with dogs...

I feel bad for Kevin. He's making an honest attempt to reasonable and decent and honest and his "readers" go after him like rabid dogs. This was the moment for the (shrinking) lefty side of the blogosphere to declare its independence from legacy media and the DNC, and build and become a force for the future. Instead, with few exceptions, they've tied themselves to the fate of the very people and ideas the blogosphere is making obsolete. Sad.

Oooh, they mentioned lunch.

This is like watching one of those plane crash movies where the survivors start to eat their own!! lol

I don't get it. how could these calm, clear-minded, dispassionate professionals be losing? Just makes no sense.

They lose because they refuse to lower themselves to the level of the sheeple. They are just too good and high minded for this crude world.

I'm just reading that comment thread now. The poor bastard is trying to plug the holes in a sinking ship, and the other crew members are beating him with baseball bats.

This reminds me of my own experience in the Left, many years ago. There comes a point when you try to talk sense to the Kool-aid drinkers, and they begin to perceive you as the enemy.

Jesus, you should see what's happening on Democratic underground. A bizzare doublethink dynamic is raging where anyone who questions the validity of the memos is vilified as a fascist stooge whilst simultaneously conspiracy theories are bandied around about how Rove passed CBS the memos.

Both position are being professed by the same people!

"Fake but accurate"

LOL what a load of balls. Fake but accurate. Bookmark that link and savour it on Nov 3.

No mercy, no pity. Drum is the guy who has been screaming "AWOL!AWOL!" like some demented parrott for YEARS now; even after the White House released Bush's records, he was posting that the fact that they did so PROVED tht there was a great conspiracy to cover up Bush's TANG career; he jumped on these memos like they were the last life-preserver off of the Titanic...

And let's not forget that when Susan Estridge posted her, "Democrats need to run a DIRTY campaign" memo, there was little Kevin tagging right along behind her and agreeing with every word.

So now his bubble has burst and he just wants to let it drop? HELL no. So now the vermin who post on his site have gone asymptotic over the fact that he's gone limp, and I should have pity? HELL no.

Live by the smear, die by the smear.

Last year I invented the term "Lefty Coyote" to describe these sorts of folks. They have already ran past the cliff face into open air, we are now waiting in that comical moment while they hang in mid-air for the few seconds before they fall out of the sky. It would be sad if it didn't keep happening again and again and again.

I have my line all picked out when Dan resigns or is made to walk the plank.

I'm going to do that line from "Better Off Dead", where the black guy says "Daamn... now that be a real shame, when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that". No one will be around when I say it, so you'll have to take my word it'll be great.

I don't agree with most of what he says, but I'll give him respect for having the balls to say what he believes rather than ponying to what the crowd wants to hear.

I can't believe Drum would bail like that. Remember, the smart people, they vote Democrat! Watching Drum's commentators seethe, I can understand---I mean, for the smart ones to be retreating like this, in the face of their betters.

Yeesh!

They're not really like that. They only act that way because they think right-wingers act like that. Ask them, they'll tell you.

One thing Kevin Drums acolytes don't get is that Kevin is an effective spokesman for their side exactly because he has some internal control and some objective view of the that pesky little thing called the truth.

This was a fun comment also on Drum's site: I think this just adds ammo to my theory that these are printouts of documents that were scanned via OCR into a word processing program back in the 80s.

Okay, then.

I think a subset on the Global War on Terror is the Global War on Stupid. I tire of all my Lefty friends starting dabates with "Given: Bushitler is a Moron, therefore...."
Two kinds of people. Those who take facts, and assemble truth, and those who make a TRUTH, and assemble facts.
The World's not flat.

There's a Global War on Stupid? Where do I sign up?

Actually, I get all my news from conservative weblogs, and I run my own, so I guess I've been involved in the War on Stupid for a while; I just didn't realize it.

As for poor Kev - what did he expect? Hating Bush is not a logical position for these people; it's a *religion*. He should have know that truth, facts, and logic were not adequate to justify his refusing to follow the faith. Of course his readers are furious; he is showing reluctantance to bow down to their god.

In fairness, the ravers noted above are countered by posts such as this one, who hasn't drunk the Kool-aid:

Now we can go through the comments here and separate the reasoning people from the Kool-Aid drinkers. And those who will attack Kevin for not gulping it down.

"Fake but accurate." Good God. A Republican coming up with a pantload like that to justify forged documents that favored Bush would be flayed alive and dragged across the Utah salt flats behind wild horses.
Posted by: tbrosz on September 15, 2004 at 12:51 AM

It's a good sign to see some dissention and reason in the ranks over there...

This is happening on a couple of lefty blogs.

The truth as to who, exactly, these bloggers have been speaking to over the past couple of years is coming out. They're now starting to realize how nutty their audience really is.

Reality is a bitch.

Amos, love the Better off Dead ref....Twooooooo Dooollllaaaarrrsssss......

But it reminds me more of The Island of Doctor Moreau, and thier creations are now out of control and turning on 'daddy'.......

So according to his readers, Kevin drank kool-ade, then bleated into the wind?

Musta been carbonated.
-

Even in the darkest days of the Boy Clinton era, the closest I ever got to such mindless, spittle-drenched hatred was Doom II...

A bizzare doublethink dynamic is raging where anyone who questions the validity of the memos is vilified as a fascist stooge whilst simultaneously conspiracy theories are bandied around about how Rove passed CBS the memos. Both position are being professed by the same people!

For years, I've been trying to explain to people that schizophrenia is not the same thing as "split" or "multiple" personality disorder. Schizophrenia is characterized by the bizarre ability to hold two opposing beliefs at the same time. You have just seen it demonstrated.

Wow.

My Grandpa explained to me many years ago that it is pretty pointless trying to explain things to fools. The are not only consistently fools, they are persistent as all hell at it.

I hope to at least as they run over that cliff to be standing by to toss them the essential anvil.

To be fair, if the sides were switched on this, there'd be plenty of equally nutty freaks on the other side howling about it. Still. Fun to watch, innit?

This is like the arabs who feel pride for the 9/11 attacks but simultaneously believe that only the Mossad could have pulled it off to make them look bad....

My mother-in-law phoned me last night after 60 Minutes to argue about Rather and the documents. I spent about 10 minutes taking her through my thoughts and in the end she said, "Well, maybe...but I just can't stand George W. Bush." So that's all it boils down to...

I always knew KKKevin would drink the Bushitler KKKoolaid. His chicKKKenshit retreat from the "fake but accurate" memo debate only proves it.

Does anybody reading this blog have a spare KKKeyboard? Preferably one with a known-to-be-working 'SHIFT' + 'k' key combination.

I similar thing happened to Chris Albritton of Back to Iraq 3.0 when he expressed the thought that Sadr was a goon instead of a brave patriot. The lefties were pissed, feeling that he'd deserted them.

Chris' page is good, by the way.

Amos, your first post way at the top has me cracking up so hard the tears are rolling down my cheeks. A better description of the hysteria on the left has never been penned.

I have to agree with Treacher though - if Tim posted something that was considered (by some) to be against the party line, there are enough right wing nuts around that would post similarly stupid comments.

Still, it is fun watching them go nuts. A Howard/Bush double win would be the sweetest political moment of my life, purely for the meltdown that would occur on the left. Bring on Amos' raging shit tornado!

There are plenty of nuts to go around on both the right and the left; niether side has a monopoly on them. I've seen some pretty shocking things in the comments on LGF.

--Rick Taylor

Josh Marshall got similar reactions by email (he doesn't have a comments section) when he wrote that (italics his) "[t]here's a word, though, for these sorts of recreations, if that's what they are: forgeries."

Atilla,
LOL. The (hopefully) forthcoming meltdown has made me piss myself laughing. The media, in particular, are already nutty enough without their world crashing down. Looking forward with much anticipation to the "documented" conspiracies!

I have to agree with Treacher though - if Tim posted something that was considered (by some) to be against the party line, there are enough right wing nuts around that would post similarly stupid comments.

True, but I'd wager that most of them would be drive-by postings, not from the usual crowd here at Spleenville. On the other hand, the feeling I got from reading that thread at Kevin Drum's blog was he's being crucified by pretty much the very crowd that regularly hangs out in his comments.

I must admit I'm having trouble working up much sympathy for Kevin, though...as pointed out above, he was at the front lines of the Bush-AWOL brouhaha, so his comment posters really are just pissed that he's stopped delivering the lefty gospel to them. He's cultivated that abysmal excuse for a comments section through his postings; he'll have to live with what he has created now.

I should never have visted Drum's site to view the response.

I’m afraid I’ll still hear the shrill shrieking of those pod people in my ears as I go to bed tonight.

On Saturday night my wife and I were at a dinner party. The host stated that she thought that "George Bush was a crooked bastard". I responded that I thought GWB was a great President, an honest man and that in these evil times we were lucky to have him.

Really I said it in a reasonable manner ie, she had her opinion and I had mine, I expected no further comment on the subject. She and the other guests (except of course my wonderful right wing wife) went ballistic. Clearly they were allowed to say terrible things about GWB but I was not allowed to say good things. I have noticed this all through both the Australian and US elections.

Why do democrats/greenies/peaceniks etc get so violent? It seems the opposite reaction to logical. Is it because they see their hold on power slipping away?

The argument, were it not that it involved good friends, was laughable. They quoted Michael Moore to say that Bush stole the election. I said that if he did that he would be in jail. I pointed out that the US Supreme Court had decided the election was legal. They moved on and said that "Stupid White Men" showed there were lots of other illegalities ..."lots of people not allowed to vote" etc.

I pointed out that Michael Moore's book had been destroyed item by item on many occasions and that I had access to the information and would gladly send it to them. They then changed tack and said he shouldn't have invaded Iraq and it was all about oil.

I pointed out that if it was about oil why didn't he just buy the country as it surely would have cost less than the $US 200 billion quoted by Kerry? That was when they said "Well what is he doing about Ethiopia?" I asked what was wrong in Ethiopia and was told (they were shouting now) "Thousands of people are dying!"

I responded that I was clearly ignorant of that and they must have later information. It was at this point my wife told me to pull my head in and seeing the blood lust in their eyes I agreed with her.

I subsequently looked up relevant data on the internet and sent it to what I thought was the most reasonable of the guests including the fact that Ethiopia is at peace. His response was "Thanks for the research but did you know Bush's grandfather supported Hitler FACT" (sic)

Thought I should share this with you all. There is much more but I admit I am really confused. I thought us right wing Nazis were the scary ones.

That's really a very poor and misleading way to frame those snips. Certainly, people were upset, but you're making it seem as if they were incited merely by Kevin refuting some leftist gospel you imagine exists. That's simply false.

If you read the comments, you'll see that most of the people you've cited were upset with how Kevin framed the issue for the duration of the story. In that particular post, he ignored a large part of the story he linked to (the secretary lending credibility to the content of the memos), in favor of vindicating his own view. In fact, many of Kevin's commenters thought the documents were probably forgeries, so you're even misstating the views of his audience.

The most consistent complaints during the CBS story's lifetime on Washington Monthly were that, in the view of Kevin's readers, (1) the forgery story became a big story long before there was any credible evidence of forgery from real analysts, and Kevin was buying into the nonce claims of sudden Internet experts in typography (I find this a justifiable complaint, given how much crap people on the right threw at this story trying to get something to stick--witness the utterly idiotic "th" superscript line of argument); and (2) Kevin consistently ignored other aspects of the story that may have abrogated the importance of the forgery aspect (which probably requires you to have already made up your mind in favor of the story to begin with).

Kevin didn't help matters by responding to the second point by saying it was really his readers who were keeping that aspect of the story alive. I think it's understandable if those who disagreed with Kevin's framing of the issue from the beginning were upset with him now saying it was really their fault.

No excuses, of course, for people being uncivil. Or for some of the radical sentiments. But what can you do? There are bound to be people who get upset and say something stupid. And there are bound to be stupid people who always say stupid things.

I don't know what you think you're demonstrating by playing these ridiculous little games with random quotes drawn from a wide variety of comments. You haven't taken a representative sample, so you can't really claim it's indicative of Kevin's readership as a whole, let alone the left as a whole. And given that anyone on the left could do the same thing to most right-of-center blogs, what have you shown other than that people are people regardless of political affiliation?

Hey dak

"I don't know what you think you're demonstrating by playing these ridiculous little games with random quotes drawn from a wide variety of comments. You haven't taken a representative sample, so you can't really claim it's indicative of Kevin's readership as a whole,"

If you read Tim's post (with both eyes, not just one) you will see that he said "And here are some of the reactions from Drum’s furious readers"

Did he say "and look what a representative sample which is indicative of the whole of the left said"?

No. And unlike certain other people (*cough* Moore *cough*), when he quoted them, he gave the link so we could all see the context and make up our own minds.

Just like i can look at the documents, then look at Microsoft Word that I use *every single freakin day* and realise that there is just a little too much coincidence.

But even leaving that aside - I provide you with the same challenge i have provided every other CBS defender on here - explain away the fact that the guard officer referred to had retired 18 months before the document was allegedly written.

CBS hasnt explained it, and neither has the daily Kos, so none of you have had an answer to post yet.

Why do democrats/greenies/peaceniks etc get so violent?

I think it's probably false to claim that these people get "so violent" in any special way. Most people react negatively when they're openly and unapologetically challenged on matters they believe. I would bet dollars to donuts that I could positively enrage many Republicans by simply challenging them on whether Kerry "voted against body armor for the troops" or "voted against every major weapons system".

This post, and I think your comment, if you'll excuse me for saying so, seem to be attempting to ascribe solely to liberals behaviors that are obviously universal, and have absolutely nothing at all to do with how one self-identifies.

I'm also concerned that you feel your ability to catch a few schmos flat-flooted somehow vindicates your political viewpoint, and indicative of general ignorance or a lack of defensible positions on the Democratic side. You ought to instead take pride in the fact that you're informed on some issues many people aren't. After all, there are many crackpots who could challenge my own naive view of physics, but that wouldn't lend credence to their pet theories.

"I don't know what you think you're demonstrating by playing these ridiculous little games with random quotes drawn from a wide variety of comments. [...]"

If you read Tim's post (with both eyes, not just one) you will see that he said "And here are some of the reactions from Drum’s furious readers"

If you read what you just quoted me as saying, you'll see that I said I don't know what he was trying to demonstrate. I assume he's trying to make some meaningful point, but I don't see one. The best I can get is, "some readers at Washington Monthly react poorly in some situations, which is fairly typical for people in general." And that's hardly much of a point at all.

And unlike certain other people (*cough* Moore *cough*), when he quoted them, he gave the link so we could all see the context and make up our own minds.

You're allowed to say directly that you believe Michael Moore to distort or obscure sources or even outright lie. I won't take offense. The only Michael Moore movie I've ever seen is "Roger & Me", which was okay, in its own way, and that was a long time ago. I didn't fact-check it, but I didn't care to. My girlfriend liked "F9/11", but I went to see "Spider-man 2". Besides, even the matinee costs an arm and a leg. (I think the full price for a movie ticket is now your first-born son.)

Just like i can look at the documents, then look at Microsoft Word that I use *every single freakin day* and realise that there is just a little too much coincidence.

My most frequent use of Word is for manuscripts (I use other software for technical papers), so I have it set up to use a fixed-width font. For me, all of the other documents look very similar to what I produce with Word. :)

But even leaving that aside - I provide you with the same challenge i have provided every other CBS defender on here -

I'm not sure how I got lumped in with defenders of CBS, but I'd like off that list. I'm rarely a defender of the media. And I certainly didn't make any assumptions about the provenience of the documents. (I'm beginning to wonder if your reply wasn't just a form letter you fire off whenever someone left of you comes along!)

explain away the fact that the guard officer referred to had retired 18 months before the document was allegedly written.

I'd be surprised if someone who's convinced the documents are authentic hasn't come up with a "plausible" explanation for that. People are very creative. For my part, I don't care to engage in speculation, especially since I suspect the documents are forgeries.

CBS hasnt explained it, and neither has the daily Kos, so none of you have had an answer to post yet.

As far as I know, none of me defends CBS or even reads daily Kos.

"I assume he's trying to make some meaningful point,"

I am not sure that is always a wise assumption on here - some things are done straight for laughs, others are done to make a point.

"The best I can get is, "some readers at Washington Monthly react poorly in some situations, which is fairly typical for people in general."

I am sure that wasn't the best you could get. It was Tim's post, but may I suggest "Some readers at Washington Monthly will turn incredibly vicious on a blogger if he in anyway departs from the party line as they perceive it, no matter how reasonable that departure is." would be closer?

You may not want to be seen as a defender of CBS, but by posting this:

"the forgery story became a big story long before there was any credible evidence of forgery from real analysts,"

You are defending their position, and denigrating those who showed, very quickly, that the documents were forgeries. And then this:

"Kevin was buying into the nonce claims of sudden Internet experts in typography "

Sites like INDC weren't claiming sudden expert status, he interviewed an acknowledged expert. Compare this to CBS's typewriter repairman, whose status got bumped up to 'technology consultant' once he became useful to them. And this:

"witness the utterly idiotic "th" superscript line of argument"

"utterly idiotic"? It is known that yes, typewriters existed that could do superscript, but its inconsistency with the other documents is an important fact. Examining it is not utterly idiotic. But finally this:

"Kevin consistently ignored other aspects of the story that may have abrogated the importance of the forgery aspect"

What can possibly 'abrogate the importance' of the documents being forged? That their 'content' was true? I cannot believe that otherwise intelligent people can honestly push such an intellectually dishonest argument. If a document is shown to be forged, then its content is irrelevant. You *can* *not* make allegations via a forged document, even if they coroborate other documents (though i am not suggesting these do). Anything contained in them is fruit from the poisoned tree.

"As far as I know, none of me defends CBS or even reads daily Kos."

Cute word play. However, because we were discussing the importance of context, I will point out that if my paragraph is read in conjunction with the previous one, it is clear that the 'you' referred to is the group of "CBS defenders" i so kindly grouped you with.

Daks, My ability to catch a few schmos "flatfooted" would simply indicate how clever I was but that is not the point I was making. Let me give you another example. I took my daughter to her 4 year old ballet class and another parent turned up wearing a tee-shirt with "Bush is a murderer". One of the staff walked out and I thought she would object but she said "I like your shirt".

Now I knew that if I had said "Bush, as far as I know is not a murderer but a great President" I would at the very least have caused a scene. Again, how does that work? My point is that rules of behaviour are clearly becoming different between the left and the right. To hate Bush is clearly enough. Once you do that you can be defammatory, illogical, implausible and downright rude.

The other point I guess I was making is how can these otherwise intelligent people pick up and believe scraps of crap from someone like Michael Moore? Puhlease!

"If you read the comments, you'll see that most of the people you've cited were upset with how Kevin framed the issue for the duration of the story."

Oh Please, dak. I stopped reading your comment after that useless sentence. What bullshit. It's the "it's not what you said it's the way you said it" argument and you might as well say that therefore you aren't interested in the substance of any issue just how pretty it looks.

The sad thing is, Ken is right. Bush's TANG service is a non-issue for the voters. One the voters have dealt with 4 years ago. Even if the worst is true, its consistent with Bush's mispent youth. And irrelevant to the Bush's actions the last 4 years. Which is what the voters will be addressing at the ballot box. Not what happened 30 years ago, but what happened 3 years ago.

But they won't listen. Oh well.

Aaaaaaaahahahahahhaha!

I can't wait to see what the "tolerant" left does when the election is over and Bush is the one on top. They are absolutely hillarious when angry.

Yup. A lot of these lefty bloggers have HUGE audiences, but half of the 100,000 unique visitors a day they get are completely unhinged.

I used to run a somewhat conservative blog, and I had some dealings with visitors one lefty blogger was sending over to my blog with orders to get me. There was one particularly disturbing individual on anti-psychotic medication (I Googled him and found his testimonial!), who kept emailing me telling me he was going to kill me, that he knew where I lived, and that he would be waiting for me when I got home from work. He wasn't the only one threatening me, but I got the feeling he meant it (even if he wouldn't have ultimately been very successful against Messrs Smith and Wesson).

You have no idea how deep the hate runs, and how strongly it has taken control of the weak-minded. Drum has catered to the insane for years, now he is surprised by their insanity?

While I generally gravitate toward slightly rightward blogs for logic, and in forums have found the left to be more combative and dismissive, I'm not sure how much preening is warranted here. If
Andrew Sullivan allowed open comments on his blog, you'd see much same, since his change of heart on re-electing Bush.

That said, however, I do find the Democratic mantra (we may play dirty, but we'll never be as dirty as Republicans) amusing, and the mounting reports of vandalism on cars sporting Republican bumber stickers (along with the ugliness which greeted Republican conventioneers on the street) are worrying. At the moment, however, I'm just enjoying the fact that it's really, really difficult to spin Rathergate as anything other than flagrantly biased and unethical.

OK, I like Kevin too, but a reader pointed this out to me:

documents:

Sept 8: "These four memos are pretty close to a smoking gun."

Sept 15: "...there was really nothing in them that told us anything new."

Chin up, Kevin!

Amos, Richard: If W wins, I dread what some of the lefties might do here in the USA. It might not be very funny at all. Todd Gitlin recently wrote about the possibilities. Go down to the video store and rent that Weather Underground documentary to get a taste.

Q: How do you spot a wingnut?
A: Look for the one who is impervious to reality

As Yeats said, "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." He was speaking about Ireland in 1916, but the same applies today. Those willing to admit doubts, reassess, and grant the basic decency of someone with opposing viewpoints ("the best") seem to be getting rarer by the minute, as the Yahoos at the lunatic fringes of both parties indeed seem to be "full of passionate intensity." Kooks!

I just figured it out.

Do you remember the Producers where two bean counters rip off an over subscribed investor base with a film doomed for failure. With a failed show, no one would come looking for their money?

I think that Kerry and Edwards figured out that there were still a few deep pocket Dems out there and they were going to promise everything to everyone in return for $ - but then deliberately lose the election so that opposing special interests would never have to get their payoff.

"Christmas in Cambodia for Kerry"

Poor moonbats, they know Bush is really everything they believe he is, they just can't find any "real" proof of it.

Probably, I agree with you about the possible dangers resulting from the Left in the event of a Bush win.

In fact, I theorized before that there would be violence if Bush is re-elected.

http://historysend.blogspot.com/2004/07/post-election-prediction.html