Very interesting op-ed (from the very liberal columnist E.J. Dionne, though aside from a few sentences it could have been written by David Brooks) about Daily Kos and Rush Limbaugh:

The greatest gift to Limbaugh was Bill Clinton's election as president in 1992. Talk-show hosts are much better on offense than defense. Limbaugh was unusually hesitant about Pat Buchanan's challenge to the first President Bush during the 1992 Republican primaries because their fight split Limbaugh's base. With Bush dispatched that fall, Clinton brought conservatives together in rage, and Limbaugh stoked it. He deserves major credit for the Republicans' 1994 landslide.

Democrats and liberals realized they needed a mobilizing force of their own but could not match Limbaugh's reach on the radio. Enter the Internet, and Markos Moulitsas.

An Army veteran, a former Republican, and the son of a Salvadoran mother and a Greek father, Moulitsas, 35, created his Daily Kos Web site on May 26, 2002 -- "in those dark days," as his site puts it, "when an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous." Daily Kos took off because so many Democrats shared Moulitsas's view of the second President Bush.

Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan. Its core assumption is that ideological conservatives made the Republican Party their vehicle and rallied in lock step against Democrats. The party of FDR and JFK needed to find the same discipline. The key litmus tests for Kos and his many allies in the blogosphere involve not long lists of issues developed by the American Civil Liberties Union or the AFL-CIO, but loyalty in standing up against Bush and doing what's necessary to build a Democratic majority.

I think he's got this exactly right. I used to get really fed up with the extreme Democratic partisanship of the Kos site; I posted a diary on there two years ago about why I was intending to vote for Bloomberg in the NYC mayoral, and got blasted with a wider range of insults than I've ever taken from right-wingers. That's the downside. The importance of the site, however, is that in a time when Bush/Rove Republicans were essentially trying to create a one-party country, it's served as a counterforce.

Just as Limbaugh became somewhat less relevant in the time of total Republican control, it will be very interesting to track how Daily Kos evolves if/when the Democrats take everything next year.

Wow

August 3, 2007
Tancredo: Threaten to bomb Muslim holy sites in retaliation Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo’s campaign stood by his assertion that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good “deterrent” to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the United States, his spokeswoman said Friday.

“This shows that we mean business,” said Bay Buchanan, a senior Tancredo adviser. “There’s no more effective deterrent than that. But he is open-minded and willing to embrace other options. This is just a means to deter them from attacking us.”

On Tuesday, Tancredo warned a group of Iowans that another terrorist attack would “cause a worldwide economic collapse.” IowaPolitics.com recorded his comments.

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” Tancredo said. “That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong, fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent, or you will find an attack.”

Tom Casey, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, told CNN’s Elise Labott that the congressman’s comments were “reprehensible” and “absolutely crazy.” Tancredo was widely criticized in 2005 for making a similar suggestion.

whoever invented religion was a very bad person

steagles wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Straw men.

By any measure you like, tax revenues are up, WAAAAAAY up, in the wake of Bush tax cuts.

if i'm not mistaken, hasn't the dollar lost a whole lot of value these last 5 years?

Also, the Phillies have not been in the playoffs these last five years.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

-- Winston Churchill

Churchill was a lush wasn't he?

Speaking of straw men... note the phrase "into prosperity." I just want a safe infrastructure.

I don't what the tax rates were during Churchill's second (non-WWII) term, but I suspect they were a lot higher than under the Chimperor.

dajafi wrote:Speaking of straw men... note the phrase "into prosperity." I just want a safe infrastructure.

I don't what the tax rates were during Churchill's second (non-WWII) term, but I suspect they were a lot higher than under the Chimperor.

What do you think is the ideal rate?

Even as an anti-tax small-government advocate, I'm cool with taxing "the rich" at a higher rate.

There can be no perfect system, and of course we'll never see meaningful change, but let's dream.

I vote for a flat 15% national sales tax and abolition of the income tax. Instantly, every criminal becomes a taxpayer. I would exempt food (even luxury food) and probably clothing from the tax.

Quick question to you polisciheads out there. What is considered far-left? You hear it demonized by the conservatives in this country pointing their fingers at sites like DailyKos and MediaMatters. But are they far left? I had always thought that socialism->communism (please, no jokes) were far left.

This is my chart on how America has been for as long as I can remember...

|--far left-----left-------center-----X-right------far right--|

It may even be further to the right, but it feels like people think that that X is in the center. I think we are a LOT closer to a Christian Coalition state than we are to a communist or socialist one. Sites like DailyKos and MediaMatters are left leaning, but they certainly aren't far left. It is a matter of perspective and I think the right side plays victim and makes us think that the right is actually center and center is actually the left.

Disco Stu wrote:Quick question to you polisciheads out there. What is considered far-left? You hear it demonized by the conservatives in this country pointing their fingers at sites like DailyKos and MediaMatters. But are they far left? I had always thought that socialism->communism (please, no jokes) were far left.

This is my chart on how America has been for as long as I can remember...

|--far left-----left-------center-----X-right------far right--|

It may even be further to the right, but it feels like people think that that X is in the center. I think we are a LOT closer to a Christian Coalition state than we are to a communist or socialist one. Sites like DailyKos and MediaMatters are left leaning, but they certainly aren't far left. It is a matter of perspective and I think the right side plays victim and makes us think that the right is actually center and center is actually the left.

Well, Karl Rove and Hugh Hewitt agree with you. They always talk about how the country is "center-right." I don't buy it. The saying is that Americans are philosophically conservative but operationally liberal, and that's probably true. We like smaller government in theory but not in practice--if you screw with our entitlements, from Medicare to the mortgage deduction, we get very upset. We claim to support "family values" and go to church and all, but we get pissy--about 85 percent of us anyway--if you try to censor entertainment content, and most of us don't have an irrational hatred of The Gays.

The thing is that both parties tend at times to focus on their extremes, and maybe also their more controversial issues, mostly I think because that's where the energy is. Republican activists don't protest, and Republican politicians don't speechify, about the stuff TomatoPie most cares about; they freak out and demagogue on stem cells or guns. Democrats, at least during primary season, talk (loudly) more about protecting a woman's right to choose than boosting the NIH budget or shifting the transportation budget towards transit.

Of course you could be asking about the political class rather than the public itself. In that case I'd half-agree. The mainstream media and punditocracy leans corporatist/militarist right (as in there's generally a bias toward use of force and free market/crony capitalism) and secular/tolerant left (as in they don't really get the religious nuts and they tend not to be homophobes)--strangely, a little at odds with the center of public opinion on both.

I think the outliers on the right far outweigh the outliers on the left.

The ultra conservative religious types do have a control on a significant portion of our community and I tend to think that they are as far to the right as possible. Even if most Americans are a little to the left of what I showed, when you average in the right right constituency which pushes us right overall.

I am not even saying that the government is a good reflection of the general public. I also think that people tend to be more liberal in their own lives, but when they vote, they get that guilty feeling and go more conservative. Look at BillO. He has no problem harassing that woman at work or showing graphic pictures on his program for "shock value" but he is considered "conservative" with respect to sex.

dajafi, will you stop defending the hatemongers at dailykos?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ApOkZJN7-c[/youtube]

There's really no such thing as a "conservative" in American politics these days--there's never been a Burkean movement, and the kind of conservativism espoused by Alexander Hamilton died a long time ago.

Rather, we have an odd mixture of religious enthusiasm/populism, which probably has a lot more to do with the fanatics who trouble Hobbes so much in the 17th c. These people are generally on the right, but they have no real commitment to anything that could be called conservativism.

On the left, JS Mill "I'm OK, you're OK liberalism" with a dose of weird self-actualizing Freudianism. Both are political philosophies commited to mediocrity.

That's why in the US, "elitist" is an epithet to the uninformed, and those who pander to them.

Phan Paul wrote:There's really no such thing as a "conservative" in American politics these days--there's never been a Burkean movement, and the kind of conservativism espoused by Alexander Hamilton died a long time ago.

Rather, we have an odd mixture of religious enthusiasm/populism, which probably has a lot more to do with the fanatics who trouble Hobbes so much in the 17th c. These people are generally on the right, but they have no real commitment to anything that could be called conservativism.

On the left, JS Mill "I'm OK, you're OK liberalism" with a dose of weird self-actualizing Freudianism. Both are political philosophies commited to mediocrity.

That's why in the US, "elitist" is an epithet to the uninformed, and those who pander to them.

do go on, Phan Paul - you've opened several cans, & baited at least a couple of hooks here.

Toss in 2-3 examples for clarity.

THE must-have childrens book

drsmooth wrote:

Phan Paul wrote:There's really no such thing as a "conservative" in American politics these days--there's never been a Burkean movement, and the kind of conservativism espoused by Alexander Hamilton died a long time ago.

Rather, we have an odd mixture of religious enthusiasm/populism, which probably has a lot more to do with the fanatics who trouble Hobbes so much in the 17th c. These people are generally on the right, but they have no real commitment to anything that could be called conservativism.

On the left, JS Mill "I'm OK, you're OK liberalism" with a dose of weird self-actualizing Freudianism. Both are political philosophies commited to mediocrity.

That's why in the US, "elitist" is an epithet to the uninformed, and those who pander to them.

do go on, Phan Paul - you've opened several cans, & baited at least a couple of hooks here.

Toss in 2-3 examples for clarity.

Awards for participation, Rick Warren, who's to say that Aretha Franklin is a better singer than Britney Spears, that's just your opinion, pop culture studies.

Phan Paul wrote:

drsmooth wrote:
do go on, Phan Paul - you've opened several cans, & baited at least a couple of hooks here.

Toss in 2-3 examples for clarity.

Awards for participation, Rick Warren, who's to say that Aretha Franklin is a better singer than Britney Spears, that's just your opinion, pop culture studies.

No credit for Brad Bird's riff on the subject in The Incredibles ?

but surely cultural relativism is - well - relatively harmless...?

anyway, I'll say it: Aretha Franklin is a better singer than Britney. Prove me wrong

TomatoPie wrote:What do you think is the ideal rate?

Even as an anti-tax small-government advocate, I'm cool with taxing "the rich" at a higher rate.

There can be no HAMELS system, and of course we'll never see meaningful change, but let's dream.

I vote for a flat 15% national sales tax and abolition of the income tax. Instantly, every criminal becomes a taxpayer. I would exempt food (even luxury food) and probably clothing from the tax.

To your question, I don't think there is an "ideal" rate; I believe both the amount of revenue to be collected and how it's assessed have to be decided, and revised, by the democratic process.

It would help of course if both parties were honest (Democrats: "we'll give you more from the government, but it will cost at least some of you, maybe most of you, more in taxes; hopefully it will save you overall because you'll pay us less than you would the insurance company or the doctor"; Republicans: "we won't adequately address your concerns about health insurance, educational access, global warming, or infrastructure, but some of you will pay us less, and hopefully you'll pay less to take care of those things on your own than you would to us"). Seeing as that's not realistic, a media that doesn't have a built-in bias toward elite economic concerns would be nice.

As for your preference... I can never decide if proponents of the flat tax are willfully ignorant of its ramifications--vastly smaller government, and an unprecedented shift of the tax burden from the rich to the poor--or just don't care. But these things have been modeled extensively; there isn't much mystery what would happen if we implemented them.

The truth is that taxes are going up. Probably way up. So long as we're committed to the unfathomable and politically well-defended military budget and the politically untouchable entitlement programs of the New Deal and Great Society, with our current demographic situation and evident insistence upon acting as a "soft empire," we're going to hit a wall. I just wonder if our Chinese creditors will choose to pull the plug in a way that kills the Democrats or the Republicans.

America has been pretty much schizzo since the beginning. If you look at the original Jefferson/Hamilton conflicts you see that we pretty much have done a little of both. We certainly aren't the Agrarian Society thet Jefferson talked about. But we didn't go whole hog Hamiltonion either. I once heard a guy say we are a Jeffersonion country that achieved that via Hamiltonian means. I don't totally agree with that but that view has some merit I think.

In fact, at the time of the great Jefferson/Hamiton conflict, you'd have thought Jefferson won the debate since his party dominated and the Federalists just died out. Yet, the country did things more along the lines of what Hamilton envisioned as time went on.

The USA has always been a contradition. A country dedicated and founded on the proposition that all men are created equal yet that held slaves -- and lots of them for many decades. A country that was supposed to be isolationist and one that avoided entangling alliances yet one that has become one the great empires in world history.

We reluctantly go to war to stop other nation's "naked aggression" yet we also interfere in the affairs of many, many sovereign nations. We have sponsored revolutions and coups and assasinations.

This is certainly a funny country we live in. We have small government, get the goverment out of our lives types who also advocate telling everyone how to live their lives morally and have no problem with the government violating other folks civil rights when it's suitable. We also have folks who are pretty much athiests who talk about wanting peace, love and understanding and all of that good stuff that Jesus and Mohammed and Moses and Abraham all of those guys talked about all the time.

Me, I'm pretty much schizzo myself when it comes to this kind of stuff. I'm not a big, huge fan of the Federal government since I've had tons of first hand knowledge regarding just how wasteful and inefficient and stupid it can be. But I do recognize that the State does have an obligation to care for the weakest elements of its populance. I'm sort of a Left Wing Christian, although not totally left wing. I'm a veteran who is pretty much a pacifist in many ways. So I guess I fit right in with this country.

I hear you smitty. I don't generally have much use for David Brooks, but I've always thought his "BoBo" concept--"bourgeois bohemians"--described me and mine pretty well. We're secular and socially tolerant, but also thoroughly committed to family, community, and trying to make a world that's consistent with our own values.

I venerate both Hamilton and Jefferson. What's wonderful about America in many ways is that we've never entirely forced ourselves to choose between their visions. What worrie me now is that some of the best outgrowths of the Jeffersonian approach seem in serious danger--and that Hamilton's principle in the Federalist, that "ambition counters ambition" (I'm paraphrasing), which is the key to checks and balances working, has been severely undermined by the Rove/Carville approach to politics--that party loyalty matters more than anything else, including the Constitution.