June 16, 2005
6/16: In The Future, Everyone Will Be Hitler For Fifteen Minutes
The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.
One of the big questions since the fight earlier this year over Terri Schiavo's life has been: Will this matter in elections since? We can't see ahead to '06 yet, but reactions to the autopsy report released yesterday prove the topic is still highly volatile, and somewhat hotter on the right. Lefty bloggers do chime in to applaud the report, but not as frequently as the right-blogosphere debates itself about the meaning of these findings. The conservative split over Schiavo has changed little in the months since her passing.
A popular link among many conservative bloggers is to a Washington Post column by Robert Samuelson titled "The End of Europe." The Blogometer avoids most issues of pure foreign policy; one can find multiple blogger reactions at Memeorandum.
Otherwise, it's still a bit slow on the blogs today: Guantanamo Bay continues to be highly controversial, accusations of racism and Hitler-ness abound, the left- and right-blogospheres discuss what each half looks like, does, and what it means. Plus, our latest blogger spotlight.
TRACKBACKS: Schiavo-ing The Moment
Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:
- The AP reports on the Schiavo autopsy; the blogosphere converges. One worth noting is Blogs for Terri, which started in 2/05 and has continued on as an advocate keeping alive those in Schiavo's position.
>> Conservative Wizbang: "Along with some seriously sloppy reporting on the autopsy (such as stating that the autopsy confirmed she was in a persistive vegetative state), one of the major memes played out this afternoon is that anyone who argued for Terri's life to be spared owes Michael Schiavo an apology. The other meme is that anyone supporting Terri is a wingnut/moron/fundie/theocon (pick you slur) for their beliefs." PoliPundit: "One repeated theme I heard was that the Republicans should not have taken action in the Schiavo case. ... Here is what some responsible journalist should have asked -- what about all the Democrats in the House and Senate that joined Republicans in trying to prevent the starvation death of Terri Schiavo? Is Tom Harkin a Republican? He was one of the strongest supporters of the action on the Schiavo case."
>> John Derbyshire, himself a religious conservative, knocks down several "pro-tube" Schiavo arguments The Corner: "'1. No human life should be contingent as to whether or not another person gives it credibility or not.' So if anyone, in any condition, has a metabolism that can be kept functioning somehow, that ought to be done, regardless (!) of what any person -- spouse, parent, eminent neurosurgeon, judge -- thinks? Start building some real big warehouses -- you're going to need them." The Moderate Voice: "It's now official and documented: by the time Terri Schiavo's died her brain had shrunk and there were no signs of abuse -- nothing to back up the claims that she had been abused. In other words: nothing to CONFIRM the allegations -- asserted with absolute certainty by audience-seeking talk show hosts and vote-seeking politicians -- that her husband had abused her."
>> Liberal Think Progress quote Bill Frist, on Schiavo recently: "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." And the doctors yesterday: "The vision centers of her brain were dead."
>> More reactions: Balloon Juice; Majikthise; Democratic Veteran; RedState; Secular Blasphemy; PoliBlog; Political Animal; TAPPED; Hit and Run; INDC Journal; Road to Surfdom; Kesher Talk; American Digest; Andrew Sullivan; LaShawn Barber.
- Once again, the AP has it: the most-widely linked discussion of the House vote to strip library/bookstore record access from the Patriot Act's renewal.
>> Left-libertarian The Talking Dog writes, "it looks like we may have finally exhausted the statute of limitations on the President's ability to repeat the word 'terrorist' like a mantra and get whatever the hell he wants..."
>> Conservative Power Line defends the provisions of the act, adding: "Given these facts, and given that there has never yet been a case where section 215 has been used to obtain library or bookstore records, today's vote was symbolic, at best. What it symbolized was certain House members' commitment to "civil liberties," which, however, were never threatened."
>> More: NewsHog; Outside The Beltway; Daly Thoughts; Happy Furry Puppy Story Time.
GITMO I: The Durbin Of Proof
Jeralyn Merritt reports, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) "is being attacked by right-wing talk radio and the White House for" a floor statement on Gitmo on 6/15. After repeating witness testimony of an interrogation room, Durbin added: "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners." Merritt approves: "Kudos to Durbin for calling it like it is."
But Wall Street Journal's James Taranto writes: "We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3 1/2 years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance -- and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis."
Daily Kos: "To the pea brains on the Right, incapable of reading the English language in its most basic, unuanced form, they claim Durbin is calling our troops Nazis. The Wingnutosphere is making that claim. Rush is making that claim. Hannity is making that claim. Drudge is making that claim. Look to Fox News to jump on the bandwagon tomorrow."
Separately from the Durbin issue, Power Line writes: "Is there evidence that anyone ever became a terrorist because we treat prisoners too harshly? Does it make any sense to suppose that someone prepared to take up arms against the U.S. will abandon that quest if only we provide prisoners with access to federal district court? We know from al Qaeda's own training materials and the ridicule it has heaped on the U.S. that it views our obsession with legal process as the laughable equivalent of selling the rope with which to be hanged. What reason is there to believe that those predisposed to join al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations view things differently?"
Gitmo II: Why Do We Think This Debate Would Be Less Hysterical If Held In December?
Conservative blog Dummocrats website will soon start selling "The Gitmo Cookbook": "If you're tired of all the torture allegations, of hearing the media imply that handling a Quran without gloves on is the moral equivalent of beheading someone, and of all the hysteria about enemy combatants, you'll enjoy the Gitmo Cookbook. It contains the actual recipes and menus for the food served to the Gitmo detainees, along with interesting facts about how American soldiers are working every day to treat prisoners humanely while still getting the information we need to protect ourselves. Baked Tandouri Chicken Breast, Mustard-Dill Baked Fish, Lyonnaise Rice, and Fish Amandine are just a few of the recipes you'll find in the Gitmo Cookbook."
- Media Slander: "I can't imagine what our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are subjected to at the dinner table. And as for the torture allegations I've been reading about (staying awake, standing up, being poked), I suffered worse in boot camp."
RedState offers a modest proposal re: Gitmo: "We have three options it seems: (A) release them, (B) keep them, and (C) kill them. Given the three choices, (B) is most preferable for most of the terrorists. But, since the Senators will not stand for it, nor will the media or the left or most anyone else for that matter, we will not keep them. Let's kill them before they kill us is the logical conclusion, but it is not really the right answer. Know it all and holier than thou types in the Senate would suggest we let these murderous terrorists out, which is even more the wrong answer. Perhaps we should let them out. Then Joe Biden can explain to people why that was more brilliant than having these terrorists listen to Christina Aguilera while eating well in Gitmo in perpetuity when next they bring down more of our buildings and take away more of our mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. There is a war on."
DEMOCRATS: Number Theory
Righty John Hawkins presents a chart (courtesy DANEgerous Weblog) showing the "long, slow, steady slide" of Senate Dem membership since the 1960's. And "although there are peaks and valleys, the height of the peaks is getting progressively lower. Furthermore, now that the Dems have almost completely lost the South, the may not even have the capacity to get more than a seat or two above 50 for the foreseeable future." More: "[T]his is not a 'band-aid' problem for the Dems, it's serious business."
REPUBLICANS: Which Branch Of Government Is Tis?
Lefty Matthew Yglesias, on the lack of cong. investigations into the Bush admin.: "It isn't written into the fabric of the universe that congressional Republicans need to operate as White House stooges and block all oversight of the executive branch. There's such a thing as doing the right thing, and the fact that zero members of the GOP on the Hill are doing it is worthy of notice. In the Senate, especially, it would only take a handful of the people who pride themselves on their reputation for high-minded statesmanship and independence to actually demonstrate high-minded statesmanship and independence to make a world of difference."
BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS I: Now It's Everybody's DD
On 6/12 MyDD's Chris Bowers wrote a lengthy post arguing that community-based liberal blogs were proving more popular than "top-down" conservative blogs (see 6/13 Blogometer). One blogger he singled out, PoliPundit, responds: "If a conservative blog allows comments, it is immediately overrun by juvenile, illiterate, liberal hecklers who ruin the comments section. We here at polipundit.com have been fighting this ever since I turned on comments, and only ceaseless vigilance has allowed us to keep the comments section open. If a larger conservative/libertarian blog, like Instapundit, were to start a Comments section, then the blogger would have to spend every waking moment policing liberal trolls. So the net takeaway is this: If you believe Bowers' reasons and PoliPundit.com's experience, liberal bloggers have more traffic because liberals have succeeded in heckling conservative blog readers into silence."
- Not long after, Bowers replied: "I don't even know why I am bothering with this. I can't imagine that I would accomplish anything except encouraging more conservatives to use [the blogging software] Scoop, which would very quickly allow them to become more competitive with liberal bloggers. I'd rather not have that. Still, so far in the thread, I have found nothing but resistance to the idea of letting people post diaries and form a real community. I guess the simple fact that liberals use Scoop will make conservatives resist it into infinity."
- Now others are weighing in. Centrist Andrew Sullivan responds to Bowers, writing "it's inevitable and healthy that with national power now exclusively held by Republicans, the left will experience a revival in the popularity of its journalism. I'd also say that it may be helpful to think of community, activist blogs as a different species than querulous, individual blogs like this one. ... Writers-who-blog are going to be different than online forums designed to forge new political alignments. There's space for all of us."
- Conservative Galley Slaves: "It could well be that the liberal temperament is more predisposed to blog-reading than the conservative temperament is in the same way that, for instance, modern American liberalism is more predisposed to protest marches than modern American conservatism is. The size and number of protest movements, of course, means very little. In the 1990s, there were relatively few mass protest movements, but Bill Clinton was winning elections. Since 2000, there have been many big, impressive protest demonstrations by liberals -- yet they've been shellacked at the polls."
BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS II: Double Dog VDARE
Liberal Avenger notes that righty Michelle Malkin "links to and applauds" Steve Sailer of VDARE, whom he terms a "White Supremacist." Malkin, for those unfamiliar, has Filipino ancestry. Liberal Avenger: "The Malkinites have no place for inferior races in the conservative-controlled future Utopia they are seeking to build in the ruins of progressive United States. These are people who we must watch closely. It is well worth taking a few minutes to see what is being published as 'truth' on VDARE.COM and consider the mutual respect between VDARE and Malkin."
- VDARE Blog's Peter Brimelow responds to the general allegation of racism, albeit not the above-mentioned charge.
- Oliver Wills heads his related post "Grand Wizard Malkin?"
- Malkin doesn't respond, but does have a post about the proliferation of racism accusations titled "HITLER, HITLER, EVERYWHERE."
- Conservative humor blog Beautiful Atrocities has been updating a post titled "IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE HITLER FOR 15 MINUTES."
MOVEON: George Bush Vs. Big Bird
A recent MoveOn campaign warns: "The House is threatening to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with 'Sesame Street,' 'Reading Rainbow' and other commercial-free children's shows.'" The Volokh Conspiracy acknowledges, "Congress is considering whether to reduce the federal appropriation for public broadcasting from $400 million to $300 million, as a step toward phasing out federal funding altogether," but adding: "Why is this misleading? Because such shows are not the sort of programming which need federal support to survive. These PBS shows are immensely popular -- and hence immensely profitable."
NEW MEDIA: Coming Soon: "Bernie Goldberg Is A Big Fat Idiot"
The new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37)" -- by ex-CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg is receiving pre-publication publicity, from INDC Journal, Captain's Quarters and others.
MISCELLANY: Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut, Sometimes You Don't
- Little Green Footballs quotes the TAMU pres. disowning ex-Bush official/TAMU prof emeritus Morgan Reynolds, the 9/11 revisionist (see 6/15 Blogometer). LGF: "That's how you do it, academia. Kudos to President Gates. Time to expel the nuts."
- Kos: "Why are dozens of people emailing me that Rep. [Jim] Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has introduced an Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 22nd Amendment? Who cares? That kind of amendment is introduced all the time. Amendments take years to get through the states. People act as if it's the precursor to the apocalypse. Really weird. I actually think it's a good idea. Term limits for our presidents is undemocratic."
- Gay conservative blogger Gay Patriot, whose last post was on 3/25, has started posting again. For background on the controversy, see the Washington Blade's blog.
- Kausfiles: "How could a McCain third party candidacy overcome the obstacle posed by the Constitution, which says that if no candidate achieves an electoral majority the race is decided by the House of Representatives, currently dominated by the two major parties?" Several offbeat scenarios are considered. Note: No permalinks, so ctrl-F "Sticky Wikiness".
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Along Came Poli
Today the blogometer talks to conservative blogger "Polipundit," the anonymous founder (despite what he/she says below) of the very popular GOP-leaning blog PoliPundit.
What is your full name?
Barry Goldwater
What is your age?
30
Where did you grow up?
Somewhere on the Asian continent.
Where do you live now?
Bellevue, WA
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
Software geek. And no.
When did you start blogging and why?
Just before election 2002. Got tired of e-mailing friends and family. My first big post was a stunningly accurate analysis of how the election would turn out.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
John Kerry's SF-180.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
Blog a few posts every morning.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
Mickey Kaus. And what is this "non-political blogger" you speak of?
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
Michael Barone
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
"Special Report with Brit Hume"
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
Slate, OpinionJournal.com
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
Free Republic, National Review.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
What's a "newspaper"?
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
Dinosaurs and asteroids. Nuff said.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: One Approach To Blogging ...
Jeff Jarvis, at BuzzMachine: "Our new world of weblogs and citizens' media is all about possibilities -- many of them unrealized, I grant -- while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It's optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it's the medium in the better mood and that's catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates."
LEST WE FORGET: ... And Then Another
Last week the Blogometer missed a particularly insightful post at the once-active but lately less-so right-leaning humor blog Mother, May I Sleep With Treacher?, which is worth reproducing here:
June 03, 2005
Blogging
What's in it for me?
Posted by at June 16, 2005 12:00 PM
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