Well I still am curious as to what they were doing there and I certainly think it is foolish to be breaking the law, yet this puts a whole new spin on what happened the other day. I’ll bet if it gets thrown out of court, the MSM will have the story buried on page 27. Good for Andrew Breitbart for following this story.
by Patterico
Looks like law enforcement and James O’Keefe’s supporters agree: he did not intend to wiretap Mary Landrieu:
A law enforcement official says the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls.The Washington Post, which this morning claimed otherwise, today had to retract that mistake — a grave error that Andrew Breitbart socked them for last night, and I socked them for this morning. Here is the relevant part of their embarrassing correction:
Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that James O’Keefe faced charges in an alleged plot to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu. The charges were related to an alleged plot to tamper with a phone system. The headline incorrectly referred to a plot to bug the phone and a caption incorrectly referred to an alleged wiretap scheme.
That’s the second O’Keefe correction by the same reporter. Time to retire her from this story.
So there was no intent to wiretap. Let’s dispel that idea now. Nobody is claiming he was trying to bug Landrieu. Everyone who compared this to Watergate was wrong, wrong, wrong — and should be embarrassed. Period.
The only question now is what he and 3 other men did intend to do.
The Government position is that O’Keefe & Company wanted to shut down Landrieu’s phone system:
Instead, the official says, the men, led by conservative videomaker James O’Keefe, wanted to see how her local office staff would respond if the phones were inoperative. They were apparently motivated, the official says, by criticism that when Sen. Landrieu became a big player in the health care debate, people in Louisiana were having a hard time getting through on the phones to register their views.
That is, the official says, what led the four men to pull this stunt — to see how the local staffers would react if the phones went out. Would the staff just laugh it off, or would they express great concern that local folks couldn’t get through?
Nice theory. Let’s see if you can prove it.
Note that even the Government now believes that O’Keefe targeted Landrieu for the reason I previously highlighted — first last night (subtly, in UPDATE x4), and somewhat less subtly this morning — namely, her claim that phone lines were “jammed” when constituents tried to reprimand her for the Louisiana Purchase.
Read the rest.
Tags: James O'Keefe, Mary Landrieu
Still a stupid thing to do
I hink what they were doing there was rather simple. They were going to film Senators office and staff ignoring constituents phone calls.
simple as that really.
Will Chuckles issue an update?
Very stupid.
Betcha he gets the book thrown at him, though.
There is a phrase used at an old Blog I used to read.
“Nontroversy”
Bumr50 wrote:
Nah a good lawyer should be able to get him off. He really didn’t do anything.
@ Nevergiveup:
We shall see.
Bumr50 wrote:
Of course it will cost them a small fortune
@ Bumr50:
Stupid if caught, Brilliant and ballsee if successful!!
@ SciFiGuy:
If they need ideas and are willing to put their necks out, they should consult a bit more.
I just don’t think that this would’ve had too much of an impact in the big picture.
My Sens. (Casey and Specter) ignore me regularly.
Somebody didn’t do his worst case scenario analysis.
@ snork:
It probably sounded a lot better right after the bong hits and beer pong.
My speculation is that Okeefe wanted to record calling the phone that he was filming to demonstrate that the number did not work. It was some sort of documentary covering the 300 million dollar bribe that Landrieu took for her vote on Obamacare.
But it is wrong to try to demonstrate our Senators are lying thieves. Wonder what they would find in Landrieu freezer at home? I think William Jefferson had one for sale on Craigs list.
Even this is suspicious:
Why isn’t the government claiming that they were going to wiretap? Because they didn’t have wiretap equipment on their persons. So you have a couple of guys dressed up as phone repairmen, with no particular tools on them, and you have to accuse them of something. I think this is the best they could come up with given the fact that they didn’t have any specialized telecom tools.
I don’t know what they were doing, but I think the government will have a hard time making that story stick, if they have a reasonably competent lawyer. They’ll have to prove intent, and they’ll also have to prove that these guys knew the equipment well enough to shut everything down. That’s going to be hard to prove.
Bumr50 wrote:
Is there a video game I’m not familiar with?
beer pong
Blogmocracy is having issues on Bumr50′s system.
BBL, all!
@ snork:
I think you’re right.
If this story pivots on Landrieu not answering phone calls from constituents, I’d expect the story and even the charges to vanish into thin air.
Catcher in the Rye’ Author J.D. Salinger Dies
I’m sure I read “catcher” but it did not make much of an impact on me. I’ll leave it to others, more informed than me, to commnet
GrandJunctionite @ 2:
That’s what I was thinking.
‘Catcher in the Rye’ author J.D. Salinger dies
He always sounded like a bit of a nut to me. About 10 years ago I finally read Catcher In the Rye and thought to myself “That’s all there is?” – I failed to see what was so great about it.
@ Nevergiveup:
he was trespassing at worse.
@ Nevergiveup:
I read that supossedly serial killers like that book. Why, I have no clue!
*speculation alert*
I wonder if they were pretending to be fixing the phones looking for reaction from staffers that there were problems with the phones and constituents were having trouble getting through. I would imagine you might see some snide or arrogant comments from the staffers like “it doesn’t matter if the phones don’t work…we don’t listen anyway.”
It just makes me wonder why he would be filming the two other men if they didn’t have any of the equipment necessary to disable or bug the phone system.
@ S the Elder:
That seems like the likely explanation.
@ snork:
Given that the intention to shut down the phone system is not provable, where is the crime?
Gaining entry by false pretenses?
Attempted citizen inspection of phone system?
Trespassing (but with no damage)?
Causing anxiety that they might have intended an unauthorized wiretap?
Conspiracy to conduct unauthorized inspection?
Attempted fact-checking of Senator?
Rodan wrote:
if true, I wonder what they do have on tape…there would be a great deal of publicity for the release of the video. We don’t know how long they were there or if they had been into the office at other times…
Overlook wrote:
Trouble is a US Senate Office is FEDERAL. Ya don’t fuck with the Feds.
@ Speranza:
I never “got it” either. I think it’s the sort of book that only an adolescent— perhaps only a baby-boom adolescent —could love.
Then again, I was a baby-boom adolescent and still didn’t “get it.” So maybe it’s just one of a whole category of 60′s-70′s stuff that just don’t work without drugs.
@ Nevergiveup:
Yup, that’s jail time!
I still think though that O”eefe was stupid to allow himself to get involved in something that was against the law. However the work done in exposing ACORN was not about O’Keefe so it should not be discredited.
wolfie wrote:
@ Speranza:
The issue is how was it “against the law”?
There might be a civil case here. Cannot see a criminal one, unless there is strict-liability regulation concerning entry onto federal property under false pretenses.
@ Overlook:
trespassing maybe?
OT:
Hey, what do you call someone who has thin skin, is ego driven, emotionally unsound, childish, ban crazy, insanely sensitive to criticism, willing to take credit for someone else’s work, and willing to outright ban someone for simply disagreeing with them, then wipe a blog completely clean of their work?
Bayonet wrote:
Dead to me
@ Speranza:
True and decidedly sick story. I had a friend in college who got pregnant and was all set to get an abortion. She hesitated because she thought it would be sooooo cool to have a kid just so she could name it “Holden.” Then she decided she could delay that gratification and went ahead and got rid of the little thing. Creepy.
@ Nevergiveup:
Yea that sounds a lot like “Charles Johnson” does it?
Is Bayonet really Wrath?
@ Nevergiveup:
That isn’t who I was describing however. You’ll probably be quite surprised by the answer though.
one last clue: http://www.theblogmocracy.com/?s=Shabbat
-something here is different!
Bayonet @ 35:
You posted that on the last thread, what’s your point
@ Nevergiveup:
Death threat!!! I see a death threat!!!
( Ya allknow that what they will say at the Swamp..)
@ Aladin Sane:
Yes, and I have never denied it. Its a sock I set up when Admins were shut out of threads that were over 300 posts.
@ Aladin Sane:
The Blogmocracy’s very own “Savage” (I am nearly 99.9% sure) has pulled a clear case of Charles Johnson banning!
Quickly after the “Hitler is not Hitler” thread where “WrathofG-d” (aka: me) expressed a disagreement with that type of thread, “Savage” silently banned me as “WrathofG-d”, and went back though the archives and eliminated any traces of my threads. What was the great sin? Only, “telling him how to run “his” blog”, and daring to disagree with him.
JUST LIKE LGF AND CHARLES JOHNSON!
I see that Howard Zinn bit the dust too.
Wish we could bury his People’s History of the US and all of its pathetic clones with him.
Waldensianspirit explained it to me last night. He/she believes O’Keefe was tracing wires; checking to see if the phone lines were dead or being re-routed. As in constituents calls not being recieved. On purpose. Sounds plausable considering the mind of a corrupt libral.
Bayonet wrote:
I must be missing something. I clicked on your link to the searched archives and your posts were still there in the threads. At least the one I looked at…
@ Bayonet:
What???
BBL, off to look at the “Hitler is not Hitler” thread.
Christ, you guys, you had something good here.
vagabond trader wrote:
Ditto.
@ Aladin Sane:
@ vagabond trader:
Take a look here at the Shabbat thread. Something that everyone who has ever read this blog knows is directly associated with “WrathofG-d”.
Look at whom the new author is now shown as: http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2010/01/01/open-thread-image-of-g-d-end-of-days-edition/
This all started right after I dared to question the “all powerful” Savage on his idiotic “Hitler is Hitler” thread. The banning is not surprising however as he has been threatening (or so another Admin told me) to ban me for not following in line behind-the-scenes and otherwise daring to tell him how to run this blog.
This is all so LGF-esque, and thus ironic, that it is almost humorous! Congrats “Savage” (or another Admin, but that is doubtful) you have become a mirror imagine of Charles Johnson!
@ archonix:
We still do. The problem is not “you guys”, as only one person would have dared to do something like this, or would be thin skinned enough to actually go through with it just because someone dared to question their “brilliance”.
You can look for other Charles-like behaviors in the future I’m sure. Will my personal information be outed? Will I be bad mouthed at other sites?
@ Bayonet:
Well, we may not always see eye to eye but your contributions have always been appreciated. I’ll send a diplomatic note to savage if its ok with you.
@ Bayonet:
Hey,
I he’s going to email you later. This is between you two. Alos I’m at work, when I get home I’ll email you. I got the 4/11. I’m not going to discuss it in public.
Speranza wrote:
Catcher in the Rye is one of the most destructive books ever published in this country.
When I was a kid it was pushed on us around 8th grade/first half of high school, in a bid to make literature “relevant.” Well, the relevance of a preppie brat’s angst is questionable, but we got into the book anyway, because it had dirty words and statements like “he was giving her a feel under the table,” which was hot stuff in the suburbs in the mid-late ’60s (for you younger posters, the Great Porno Explosion in society did not really get going until the early ’70s).
But the problem with the book is this: it is a glorification of passive, unproductive, whining adolescence. Holden Caulfield is a self-pitying inmate of a mental institution, who sees nothing as being worth doing except being an imaginary “catcher in the rye.” In this, he fits perfectly with another book of the same era, Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd, which is basically an extended scholarly whine about how alienated the poor kiddies are today because there is nothing really worth doing, and they all have to go work for soulless corporations.
Thus, Catcher—and its scholarly contemporaries—may be seen as the antithesis, indeed, the enemy, of the spirit behind such things as the Scouting movement. Contrast the tone of Catcher with, say, Kipling’s fictionalized record of his own schooldays, Stalky & Co. The boys in Stalky—except for the Kipling-based character, Beetle—are preparing to enter the Army. They are as young or younger than Holden Caulfield, but they know what direction their lives are going to take. Even Beetle, unfit for future Army service because of his eyesight, is being guided towards a useful and fulfilling destiny.
The exaltation of Catcher in the Rye marks the beginning of the abdication by the school system of the task of preparing children to enter the world of productive adulthood. It is no wonder that the book is so vehemently defended by certain elements when issues arise of what is or is not fit for children to read, for it validates the adolescent attitude of standing apart from and rejecting the challenges of adulthood at precisely the time when these attitudes do not need to be reinforced.
@ Aladin Sane:
I really hope that your posts have not been deleted. Your contributions here are appreciated and make for an interesting “record” of this blog.
Even if he does he will still try to make O’keefe look like an ax
murderer.
@ Overlook:
Sorry, that should have been to Bayonet/Wrath. Not that I do not appreciate Aladin Sane…
@ Rodan:
Good. I know you guys can work it out. We all need to stick together in these times.Enough real enemies out there.
@ Bayonet:
I can’t really think of anything else to say. Disagreements are one thing, but wiping out the authorship of someone’s work is just plain wrong. Whoever did that to you is plain immoral.
Rodan wrote:
Fair enough. I look forward to hearing the explanation. As I am a person of my word, if somehow I am given a reasonable excuse for this behavior (doubtful) I will apologize publicly.
That being said, I thought we all came here to The Blogmocracy to rid ourselves of “Charles Johnson” and his petty ways, not to trade him in for a newer model.
@ vagabond trader:
Yeah I just saw 0′s finger flailing again.
Fascinating! Thanks for the post!
I am VERY happy to hear this clarified. (Wonder how many OTHER offices they checked, and what we are going to find…)
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Hear, hear. Hooray for smashing another icon.
Have to go, though…
O’Keefe’s intent really does matter in this case.
I’d already heard that he was trying to show that Landrieu’s office was deliberately ignoring or thwarting citizens’ attempts to reach her by phone to complain about what she’d been doing.
If they were trying to confirm that the phones had been deliberately set up so that Landrieu wouldn’t get calls from angry constituents, it’s a far cry from wire tapping.
We’ll see what happens.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Aye, and you can see the end-game of that path in Twilight.
@ Bayonet:
That’s what I thought as well.
For the record, I didn’t know anything about this or what was going on.
archonix wrote:
I’m not familiar with Twilight. Could you elaborate?
MikeA wrote:
I don’t think they are allowed to talk about us here anymore except for a blessed few
@ vagabond trader:
You can always do whatever it is you would like. As for “seeing eye-to-eye”, you are completely correct. I don’t need to agree with anyone, I only ask that they disagree politely. Same goes for “Savage” or any other Admin, if you don’t like what I have to say prove me wrong, argue your case. If thereafter we still don’t agree fine….this is America, and The Blogomcracy where you have a right to disagree.
This is not LGF, or so I thought! I have disagreed with many Netizens, and Admins about various issues, but have NEVER called for any of them to be banned if they were polite about it.
I have e-mailed “Savage” and it seems that he means to send me an e-mail. I guess I will withhold judgment from now on on his side, although I doubt that there will be a good enough excuse for emulating this LGF-esque behavior.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I read many serial killers love this book.
@ Bayonet:
I must have missed all this stuff?
@ Overlook:
The Thread posts are there, it is WrathofG-d that has been eliminated. Those threads are now attributed to “Trumpets of Joshua”
You can see here: http://www.theblogmocracy.com/?s=Shabbat
or here, (the results of a search for “WrathofG-d”
@ Rodan:
No surprise, the character is a sociopath iirc. We were forced to read it as well.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I’m not familiar with Twilight. Could you elaborate?
Passive-aggressive whinging female “protagonist” knocks rocks with passive-aggressive whinging bad-boy hearthrob who happens to be a vampire, only he’s all sparkly and moody-looking so that’s ok. He stalks her for a bit and this is somehow a good thing, then they spend most of the book being angsty and complaining about how much life sucks. And, the best part is, it’s written the way a badly educated teenager would write, only the author is in her late 30s. A certain sort of girl laps this story up for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom.
Rodan wrote:
Salinger is certainly not responsible for that—nor, in fairness, is he responsible for his book being touted, as it has been for the last four or five decades, as a “must-read” for adolescents. I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with a mature mind reading the book, though the maturer the mind the less Holden Caulfield’s antics are likely to be appealing.
What I object to is Catcher in the Rye being foisted on adolescents at precisely the time that they should be viewing with excitement the fact that they are on the cusp of maturity and about to ascend to the responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. Catcher in the Rye chronicles the misery of someone who cannot bring himself to cross the Rubicon of adulthood—but the book in the hands of an adolescent is far more likely to be seen as a validation of the adolescent’s fear and rejection of adulthood than a chronicle of how miserable it is to flee from it.
@ Nevergiveup:
No, it was done silently. Presumably, since my nic was banned I wouldnt’ be able to come in and discuss it. Who knows. I wish our new “Charles” aka: Savage was here to explain himself.
Honestly though at least when Charles banned me he was man enough to warn me, and then bid me adieu.
@ archonix:
Well, that certainly sounds like a book I can place on my must-miss list.
lol our cute little spambot has returned.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I did not know this book was actually assigned in schools! (I didn’t go to high school in the US.) It seemed as if all the kids in college had already read it, which is why I felt I had to, but I always assumed it was an extracurricular thing. Like Superman comics or the Beatles.
Very interesting. The book’s place is our cultural history evidently goes far beyond that of just another silly fad.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Try series. Plus films. At Whiskey’s Place There’s a discussion of the film here and more discussion of the phenomena behind it here.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Thanks for that explanation.
@ wolfie:
I read it in 11th Grade.
They should have dressed as Black Panthers, carrying night-sticks, rather than phone repairmen….there would be no Federal investigation.
/But really, O’Keef is exhibiting grandiose investigative behavior. Not a well thought out plan.
@ wolfie:
Cannot recall if it was required or on a list of must read X number of these books. I do believe it was not High School but Middle School.
Nancy Pelosi sounds like a lunatic
Bayonet wrote:
Fuck Charles. He didn’t warn me or hundreds of others.
archonix wrote:
There are a disturbing number of middle-aged women fans of this teeny booper flick. Why does no one want to grow up? It’s one thing to wish one’s boobs weren’t sagging but quiet another to still find teenage boys romantic.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
It’s funny, but I’ve never actually read “Catcher in the Rye.” It wasn’t required reading at my high school. However, I got curious about it recently so I looked up the entire plot on Wikipedia.
I’ve discovered recently that many movies and books have their entire plots (including every possible spoiler) on Wikipedia.
So I read the entire plot of “Catcher in the Rye” and I asked myself, “Why on Earth is this considered a must-read classic, especially for young people?”
I’m glad I’ve never read it.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Interesting. I’ve never read Catcher, but I have little sympathy for adolescent angst, a luxury of our opulent age taken so for granted.
vagabond trader wrote:
It is often on reading lists given to students, so that it is read but not discussed—result being that the toxicity of Holden Caulfield’s worldview is not explicated by the teacher, but absorbed by the student without guidance.
It is not uncommon for Catcher’s presence on such reading lists to be objected to by more conservatively-minded parents, usually for the swearwords and the episode where Caulfield hires a prostitute rather than for the books overall worldview, and these objections are frequently used as evidence of the right wing’s desire to ban books.
Again, to my mind the problem is not to the book itself, but that it is recommended as “an important work of literature” at precisely the time it can do the most damage by validating rejection of society and adulthood when these things should be shown as something to look forward to.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Guess that’s why I am different from most kids I grew up with. I read Heinlen juveniles and a lot of Kipling. As well a lot of classic fiction with knights and stuff.
And speaking of looking on the bright side, I found yet another advantage of going to a sub-par backwoods high school.
We didn’t read Catcher in the Rye.
On the other hand, I doubt we would have been swayed. We mocked Waiting for Godot pretty heavily.
Silhouette wrote:
G-D I hated that book
Silhouette wrote:
Don’t ever go to Go dot com. The site never loads.
Ever notice how we aren’t supposed to ever “jump to conclusions” when those conclusions might be inconvenient to the Liberal narrative, yet Libs in the MSM never have any problems “jumping to conclusions” themselves? Odd, that.
PaladinPhil wrote:
You troglodyte, you! Heh.
@ IslandLibertarian:
Yeah it was a botched sting.
archonix wrote:
I’d say you could see the end game in the Obama election, through the elevation of feelings and narcissim above reason and will, validating yourself by joining a movement based on empty platitudes and the like.
Twilight is merely a symptom.
wolfie wrote:
Good grief there are some stupid people out there.
@ Silhouette:
I’ve seen both Twilight movies because a male friend of mine likes vampire movies and TV shows. I go with him to such movies to keep him company.
I can’t begin to imagine why anyone would like vampire movies and TV shows, but he’s a former co-worker of mine and incredibly brilliant (MIT grad) so I’m willing to be a friend and see vampire movies with him.
The thing that amuses me the most about this “love” story in the Twilight movies is that the lead characters are the most socially clumsy people I’ve ever seen in a movie. This must be part of the teen angst or whatever. The vampire hunk rolls his eyes when his vampire family says embarrassing things in front of his non-vampire sweetie. She cringes every time someone says something unexpected to her.
I don’t see it as romantic at all. Then again, I’m there to support a vampire fan so I’m not into the movie for the romance. I’m watching the vampires.
A Manhattan federal court judge will decide this afternoon whether an MIT-trained Pakistani woman accused of trying to kill Americans in Afghanistan can take the stand at her own trial.
Aafia Siddiqui’s desire to testify has set off a battle between her lawyers and federal prosecutors.
Asked this morning by Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman if she wanted to testify, Siddiqui said, “Yes sir.”
The jury was not present at the hearing and did not hear from Siddiqui, who also spoke about her time at an American military hospital following her arrest and her interaction with two FBI agents.
Her lawyers claim Siddiqui, 37, should be banned from testifying because of her “diminished capacity.”
In a letter to the judge earlier this week, the “Terror Mom’s” legal team said their outburst-prone client’s “conduct cannot be contained” and that she’d use the witness stand to “turn the proceeding into a spectacle.”
The judge has tossed Siddiqui from the courtroom several times over the past few weeks because of her outbursts.
The feds said Siddiqui, a mother of two, is as an al Qaeda supporter who tried to kill FBI and Army officers in Afghanistan in 2008.
Oh yeah, these trial in NYC are gonna work out so well??????
AS a high school freshman Dickens “Great Expectations ” was required reading twice. We had to do a full book report.
God that book is heinous, Mrs. Haversham etc.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Me too! Also anything by Harold Pinter.
@ Jesusland:
yes…conservatives tend to act stupidly…//
Jesusland wrote:
You mean like all the Ft. Hood stories having paragraphs dedicated to PTSD, without any evidence it was a motivation, just because someone wondered aloud about it once, and ignoring all other theories people wondered aloud about like jihad?
RIX wrote:
Silas Marner and Tess of the d”Urbervilles was both torture.
@ Speranza:
Silas Marner, gah!
@ Bayonet:
I hope that was just a misundestanding, or a highly exceptional exception, because the banning of regulars tends to sour other people as well. I become very disillusioned by that.
Speranza wrote:
In the new version, Tess of Suburbanville, she has the out of wedlock child and becomes a pop-tart singing sensation.
@ Eliana:
I never got that as well!
hi kids
@ Silhouette:
Yeah, kinda like that.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
LOL! It’ll be a huge hit.
wolfie wrote:
I got a thread about him coming up.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I have been accused of being a knuckle dragger on occasion. Usually a cup of coffee helps with that though.
Spitzer offers his definition of love
“His wife, Silda, has stuck by his side and several sources say she believes he was driven out of office unfairly.” She must be as freaken crazy as he is?
wolfie wrote:
The USA is more Zinned against than Zinning.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
The Twilight books— I believe there are four in the series — are all the rage with teen-aged girls. I doubt that a single male has ever read one.
Having read the first one myself — no easy task considering the clumsy illiteracy of the author— I’d say archonix’s summary nails it.
There is one thing, however, that fascinated me. The emo protagonists do not “knock rocks,” at least not in the first book. They are passionately in love, Heathcliff-Cathy in love, but physically consummate their love only at the very end of the book with just a kiss.
Whatever else may be said about Twilight, it pays tribute to an old-fashioned longing for romance and is a huge repudiation of the hookup culture.
@ Rodan:
My friend (the vampire movie and TV shows fan) can’t explain it either.
One gets the idea that books must be miserable and depressing to be lauded. Because if you “really understood” what was going on, man, you’d be depressed, too.
But despite what John Cougar says, the thrill of living is not long gong after 16. It’s going to snow tomorrow, and I’m giddy. Snow, just ordinary weather and it makes me feel like a child watching magic every time. And no, I didn’t grow up in a warm climate without snow. My life is full of peace and joy, yet I’m derided as being some sort of moron if I can’t see the world sucks.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Two comments,
It was discussed at the time the Palin bans books smear was going around, but there is a huge difference between not offering something, in a school or public library, and actually restricting something. Liberals also miss this distinction with regards to, oh everything, where cutting spending or not funding something is painted as akin to stealing from people.
Also, I wish more conservatives were sophisticated enough to grasp and articulate the larger dangers in, for example, cultural works like you do here. Also, though, regulation such as Obama’s healthcare–it’s not just that it doesn’t work, or is costly; it fundamentally rewrites the relationship between citizen and state to something distinctly unAmerican, and that is more important than “merely” costing another trillion. If people were made to see the larger picture, than we wouldn’t have to have so many battles about the particulars.
@ Eliana:
It’s very weird, it’s now more popular than ever. I see Vampire and weerwolve movies coming out regularly now.
@ RIX:
Read it when I was older. I see it more as a cautionary tale of what not to do then anything else.
@ Nevergiveup:
Spitzer needs to be reminded that he should never ever ever ever appear to bite his lip in public again under any circumstances.
Don’t ever make this face again, Eliot!!
@ Nikis Knight:
Well said, and thank you, too!
RIX wrote:
I love that book!
And, like spinach, it was good for you!
@ wolfie:
The margins of Dickens’ works, properly chewed, make good spitballs. Great expectorations, if you will.
Speranza wrote:
BUt worse thatn That is the liitle old woman form the Poltergeist movie also died this morning. I’ll miss her most of all. Zelda RUbenstein..
Speranza wrote:
Well, I guess it’s too late for a noose!
.
I’m going to really get out there., I always found Papa Hemingway boreing.
His Spanish Civil War Novel, ‘ “For Whom the Bell Tolls” with Pillar & the rest had too much about personal relationships.
“The Old Man & Tha Sea” lots of action./
“The Sun Also Rises” great, a guy with his manhood blown off & neurosis all over the place.
@ Nikis Knight:
Well said!
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I forgot to mention that at least as far as health care goes, Steyn and Prager are good at articulating the danger of incremental socialism, and some others too. Maybe the media is just good a sushing that part of the debate.
Rodan wrote:
Lots of witches on TV. From Sabrina to the Wizards of Waverly Place to Halloween Town.
A study, not of sexual behaviour, IMHO, but of controlling the language.
Afghan Men Struggle With Sexual Identity, Study Finds
RIX wrote:
You got me on your side this time.
Snore city.
You guys are making me feel better about missing some “great literature.”
Though I probably out read my peers 5 or 10 to 1, it was a lot of sci-fi and such like Phil.
Though I suspect I am missing on some genuine great books. What’re some recommendations in the opposite direction, important and useful books?
wolfie wrote:
Give me Franz Kafka any day.
RIX wrote:
One of the reasons Hemingway remains promoted heavily is that he wrote in simple sentences, so he is easy for the lazy reader to understand.
Another is that he was nicely hooked in with the Communists back during his heyday in the Thirties, and his oh-so-virile persona was a nice contrast to the usual stereotype of the Communist as weedy bespectacled intellectual.
He was, at that time, good friends with John Dos Passos, for whom I will put in a huge plug: Dos Passos’ USA trilogy is one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century. Dos Passos started out leftish, sort of flabbily anarcho-syndicalist, but got very conservative in his later years, which is why you have probably never heard of him. He and Hemingway had known each other since they were both ambulance drivers in WWII.
Both Dos Passos and Hemingway were in Spain during the Civil War, on the pro-Loyalist side. An old friend of Dos Passos’ was arrested and murdered by the Stalinists who took over the Loyalist cause, which was instrumental in the scales falling from Dos Passos’ eyes as to what the Communists really were (though even in his earlier works you can see his discomfort with them), just as Orwell became virulently anti-Stalinist due to his experiences in Spain.
Dos Passos broke with Hemingway over Hemingway’s defense of the Stalinists for having murdered his friend.
Silhouette wrote:
Wasn’t there a reference to that in “Charlie Wilson’s War”?
My favorite 19th century Gothic novel (actually 1890) Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
@ Silhouette:
“Homosexual” as a separate status is a modern Western invention, no more than perhaps 150 years old.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Hemingway was a Red apologist in the 1930′s as was George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.
Speranza wrote:
Yes; he wrote for The New Masses, among other publications.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
So prior to, say, 1850 they were referred to as “buggerers”?
@ RIX:
Hemmingway was overrated; not even in the top 20 American writers, in my opinion. He was good, but not near the legend that he is now assumed to be.
Bill Nelson (D FL) is a jack ass
Speranza wrote:
Wells is where Goldberg got his title Liberal Fascsim from, and Wells didn’t mean in disapprovingly.
MacDuff wrote:
he was his own best public relations man – creating a myth about himself. In reality he was a miserable man – lousy husband, lousy father, pro Red, and a bit of a Jew hater.
Nevergiveup wrote:
He’s always reminded me of G.D. Spradlin, the actor who plays the Nevada Senator shaking down Michael Corleone in Godfather II. Creepy.
Nikis Knight wrote:
“I have seen the future and it works” – Lincoln Steffens although once attributed to GB Shaw sums up what the pseudo intellectuals thought abut Stalin’s USSR in the 1930′s.
@ Silhouette:
They use young boys for sex.
savage wrote:
You have an admin issue that need attention. Since it has been aired here, I think we deserve to know what is happening with deleting comments and stealth banning Wrath. Hopefully most of us are not going accept that level of censorship again.
@ Silhouette:
This is common in the Muslim world in general.
Women are covered up and locked away (under fear of death for the woman if someone starts lusting after her) so the men have sex with each other.
It’s a PRISON mentality where they don’t see themselves as being homosexual. They’re just being, well, sexually opportunistic.
When such men move to western countries, they see western women (who are NOT covered up) as available for raping.
One cleric called western women “pieces of meat,” in fact.
It’s not that all Muslim men are rapists, but when the opportunity strikes and the women available are western women who they see as being “ok to rape” — it’s a horrible situation for the women.
Rapes of European women by “immigrants” (religion not usually specified) is way up in places like Sweden. The Swedish society is too politically correct to address it or to even acknowledge it.
Silhouette wrote:
And why not? The designation of individuals (as opposed to specific behaviors) as “homosexual” is largely a construct of the 20th century West anyway.
Whatever one may think of Pashtun behavior, I hardly fault them for not seeing “sexual orientation” or “sexual identity” the way that we do. Through the lens of millenia, we are the weirdos where that is concerned.
Yes
LGoPs wrote:
Great catch
Speranza wrote:
Yes!
Aladin Sane wrote:
While there were always pejorative terms for those who habitually engaged in same-sex sex acts, my point is that there was no claim that such people formed a distinct group, separate from other people, until the pseudoscientific declaration that “homosexuals” was invented.
As late as the mid-Thirties of the last century, people were variously describing those with same-sex attraction as “undersexed” (because they did not attain opposite-sex attration), “oversexed” (because they were allegedly attracted to men in addition to women), and “a third sex” (though the “third sex” description was fading by that time).
Homosexual desire exists on the continuum of human desire; some experience it exclusively, some not at all, some are willing to engage in it when nothing “better” presents itself, and some are merely susceptible to it—but it is not a separate status. It is the claim that those experiencing such desire are a separate subgroup that is a modern pseudoscientific lie.
I’ve always had a healthy dislike of intellectuals. Intellectuals live in a cocooned world, insulated from any consequences that might ensue from their ideas. I’m generalizing of course and there are exceptions, Victor Davis Hanson being an excellent one. But his intellectualism has been leavened with life experiences that add wisdom to his knowledge – a trait missing in the ones I disparage. Intellectuals are especially dangerous when they’re put in charge of anything and I’m afraid that this administration is full of them.
@ Rodan:
It’s part of the initiation of making it into the tough guys club.
Arafat used to adopt the sons of his “martyrs” and raise them himself while having sex with them from an early age. They would become his loyal bodyguards later. They were ready to die for him.
His quarters with the bodyguards was bugged by communists at one point and they (Arafat and the bodyguards) were described as screaming like hyenas during sex.
Rodan wrote:
Hallmarks of a great religion ha?
@ snowcrash:
I am going to put a thread together regarding that issue and I will be posting it soon, probably tomorrow, once I get done with work. It will explain everything and all the steps that led to it.
This has been going on for over a year now and I decided to put an end to it.
Eliana wrote:
Thanks. There goes my lunch
Landrieu doesn’t want anything like this to get more publicity.
I’m for the guy, but impersonating phone company employees without a warrant should be made illegal. It’s a popularly reported social hacking phenomena. Get a service worker tag, tailgate outside smokers back into the building after smoking with them, use cell phone to snap picture of access points and numbers etc. Front desk security personnel need to attach temporary security badges to people at the front door. Of course Tom Cruise will still get in an whack your systems out if he wants to. No stopping him.
All true & I didn’t read Dos Passos until college & enjoyed him
Ewww, you want me to do what??!
@ Eliana:
Muslim men have no game on charming women!
Now us Latin men…..
snowcrash wrote:
I agree. We went through that once at the cesspool. Have no desire to see that happen here. Things need to be straightened out.
@ Nikis Knight:
I would recommend reading Kipling. The Jungle Book is a far cry from the Disney peace of crap. I also read Ivanhoe, and it is interesting in it’s own way. The original Robin Hood as well. Mind you it’s “Romantic” era writing. Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers. So many classics I have read, and some I can’t even remember believe it or not.
@ vagabond trader:
Spambot?
@ Speranza:
Exactly, he created a personna of an adventurous type (the beard, frequently pictured in a bush jacket, etc.)which people translated into “great writer”. I must say he was a marketing genius, which hid the fact that he was a mediocre writer and a very troubled man.
He ended up eating the business end of a shotgun. To this day, his admirers claim it was an accident. How, exactly, to you blow your head off with a shotgun “by accident”?
@ Eliana:
The prison analogy is apt, in many many ways regarding Islam.
And both undermine the oft repeated arguement that conservatives concerns about homosexuality in schools (via teachers using books like Jennings, etc.) or boy scouts or in media are bigotry. They say that homosexuality is entirely innate and uncontrollable.
But that’s over-looking the fact that even if there is no conscious choice, that doesn’t mean there are no social influences on the matter. Social expectations and availibility can increase the number who are inclined to partake, though obviously it will never be zero and likely never a majority.
Which isn’t to say I want enforcement of anti-sodomy laws or abuse even verbal of homosexuals, I am just very much in favor of society being what is derided these days as “heteronormative.”
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Thanks for the explanation.
PaladinPhil wrote:
More than that: read Kipling’s non-Jungle Book short stories. They are excellent. A few to check out:
The Mother Hive
“His Son’s Wife”
The Head of the District
A Conference of the Powers
As Easy as A, B, C
MacDuff wrote:
He was debating a rabbit about hunting season.
So Pastun men don’t want to have sex with their women but yet they have more kids than us here in the West?
Yeah, you’re right. I had a Lit professor in college that loved him & assigned a paper on him.
In my paper I pointed out the authors neurosis & suicidal tendency.
The guy asked to see me & I am not making this up challenged my belief that Hemingway was suicidal.
I just looked at him & said “He committed suicide” he looked at me like , So?
@ 155 snowcrash: Ah there is no reason to ban Wrath. He has his point of point. Sometimes he will intensely project it out. He did ban some comments he shouldn’t have of Moe Katz long ago. That was a breakdown in ethics that watered down a lot his subsequent posts.Wrath needs to not take this blog so personally. No need to criticize Rodan’s presentation style constantly.Admins at this point in the blog history should do things collectively. Savage and I don’t agree on the reliability of Mandy Manners but he didn’t ban my posts about it. He did state she couldn’t join. Which I considered a poor decision. Let the tree bear fruit.If it’s rotten it will be disposed of.
OT – Jonah Goldberg has a good article up about Zero’s speech last night:
Obama’s answer for America: more of me
Zero is promising to work harder at doing all the things we hate and he thinks he can get away with it with more and more speeches to tell us that he’s going to keep doing the things we hate.
Zero’s speech last night can be summed up (by me, in my opinion) in the following way:
…and…
orangecrush wrote:
She tired to join?
@ Silhouette:
A quote I heard once, “A woman for children, a boy for pleasure, a melon for ecstasy”. This was told to me by a serbian when the topic of the Ottoman Empire came up.
Rodan wrote:
Ay ay ay!
The stength of theblogmocracy is the variety of posters and the variety of articles and their focus. Getting into personalities beyond removing trolls quickly is not productive.
At 1.0 Charles became what he hated. Let’s not do that here. Use him as the example of what not to do on a successful blog.
@ Nevergiveup:
No but she has the message “not welcome here”
@ RIX:
I ran across a post this morning which seems pretty appropriate to this subject:
I think you, like me, have at some stage worked in Academia and noticed what a right load of old deadlegs, time-servers, lickspittles, fornicators, schemers and ToyTown politicians are to be found there.
Not a one would survive 5 minutes in the real world.
-Charles Lee
Maybe it’s the English jargon … but I got a kick out of that
@ orangecrush:
Well, when we work our asses off on the admin side and then one of the admins states publically Welcome to a sinking ship, THATS when I see red.
There are many other examples I can share when I have time. And it will ALL be in the upcoming thread.
And I will point out the lack of a ding system here has a good effect on this blog. It was used for the wrong purposes at 1.0. It only succeeded into adding a negative to that blog.
@ Speranza:
I will wait for the explanation, I owe him that much for his blog hospitality. I will say that personality drama and heavy handed treatment are huge turn offs.
@ PaladinPhil:
I ‘spose it’s just me, but you use “woman” and “melon” in the same sentence, and it makes me think about uptoppers.
@ MacDuff:
yes Hemingway was a terrific marketer – of himself. Sort of like the Bill Gates of writing.
I’m with you, I love wordsmithing.
Nevergiveup wrote:
No she is still at LGF.
savage wrote:
Regardless of what happened, renaming the author on his threads is wrong. I won’t say more on the matter, except that sort of thing makes me see red.
@ savage:
I won’t disagree with you on that. Management of the situation is up to you admins. Never easy when people like me in the peanut gallery open up. Wrath goes through these moods that make him project a bleakness onto his productivity and he tries to tear that stuff down. I see that as him being an artist and looking at his work from a new angle. Rather then just taking a break, getting wiser and trying again. He is braver then I. People that put themselves out there like you admins and article poster are on a fast evolutionary path. It would be something I envy but don’t want to do myself.
I put negative checks in my mind on wrath postings.
neg 1 deleted moe katz comments
neg 2 criticized other admins focus on 1.0 and bawdiness
positive 1 good information on Israel and Judiasm
I would start to skip articles where he would rant on admins.
I got a sense that he was trying too hard. Taking the growth of the blog personally and feeling responsible for everyone’s posts. I dislike rap intensely, but I’ll listen to Rodan’s taste in it if it has a post point. I dislike photoshopped derogatory images of anyone, but it seems a lot of people like them. So I will measure those posts in accord. We definitely don’t want the world designed to my standards. All of you would be nuns in a convent.
orangecrush wrote:
Quite concur (as Dark-Falcon always says). Make Charles the model of what not to do.orangecrush wrote:
I would welcome her.
orangecrush wrote:
Indeed. Meant initially to be shorthand for responses like “I agree!, you’re right, hear hear, LOL,” and such so to make things more efficient, it morphed.
@ RIX:
Heh, it’s almost as though “troubled” and “artist” are synonomous in academia and that’s a shame. Insanity and irrationality seem to be the personal trait to which these people gravitate.
Certainly, there have been great artists that were deeply troubled, but that shouldn’t be a touchsone in judging them.
I recall the controversy over Shakespeare’s alleged homosexuality (which I do not believe, nor do most of most of the Shakespeare scholors). The fact is that “the Bard” lived a pretty normal and ordered life, while being, arguably, the greatest writer in history, in any language. Must we assign some sort of footnote regarding his sexuality in order to accept him?
archonix wrote:
I’m with you.
@ Eliana:
Hey that was my thread for earlier!
Jonah always hist it off the mark!
@ savage:
We have A LOT to celebrate right now because of Zero’s and the Dems’ fortunes going sour at the beginning of the 2010 campaign season.
A public war between admins on this blog could do horrendous damage here.
Please work out a compromise in private between all the parties. The blog is doing GREAT! A public war could be catastrophic.
Compromise, please.
Please!
MacDuff wrote:
The point in ##140 and 161 above is that “homosexuality” as we view it in the modern world did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. Is it possible that he might have had a romantic, or merely sexual, attachment or liason to someone of the same sex? Yes—not that it matters. Because there was no bright-line distinction between “homosexuals” and “heterosexuals” back then, such an attachment would not of itself have been a defining part of his personality as the activists of today strive to make it.
@ 198 Speranza: The way not to become what you hate is to focus on a productive goal. Take all things in stride and stay on track. Recognize what you dislike about sometime and catalog it. See if there are any useful lessons there. Hate has it’s place when you need to kill someone trying to kill you. Or when you need to alter something in your consciousness memory via emotional intensity.
Non of that is occurring here. Create the productive blog rules as we go along. And people who can’t fit will alter their behavior. Online communities are tough to manage especially when everyone has a job.
@ Rodan:
Oh, sorry!
I was away from my computer earlier in the day, so I didn’t see everything!
Good topic!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Sorry that was #144 and #161.
Aladin Sane wrote:
Catamite?
@ orangecrush:
Hey It doesn’t bother me that people don’t like Rap. Those are usually Open Threads where people can do whatever. It’s all good with me and I really don’t it personal. I have changed my threads many times when I was out facted.
@ Eliana:
Jonah always hits a home run. He’s one the biggest influences in my political thinking.
vapig wrote:
I would think maybe “sodomite”, as well.
MacDuff wrote:
Yep. The idea being that these people are just so smart, so insightful, so in touch, that they can see it all whereas regular people cannot, and the overwhelming truth of it and their sensitivity drives them insane or to suicide.
Or one could say that we are getting all our descriptions of life from crazy people.
@ Speranza:
I’d welcome her too. A thread can’t have enopugh F*&k You’s in it .
LOL
Silhouette wrote:
When you quoted “troubled” and “artistic” I started thinking about Jim Morrison of The Doors.
I think I’ll kill myself if I hear another Doors song.
@ Eliana:
We have A LOT to celebrate right now because of Zero’s and the Dems’ fortunes going sour at the beginning of the 2010 campaign season.
Indeed the wind is at our backs now. No need for rough sea’s. Let the progs tear themselves apart.
GrandJunctionite wrote:
Great advice.
GrandJunctionite wrote:
as crude as she can be – she fights with iceweasel which means that she has some good features.
@ Silhouette:
They mentally torture themselves and call it “being present” (i.e., a higher level of consciousness). It’s really a worship of the self.
I’ve seen websites like this where such people create personal blogs with the specific intention of exploring their inner child and wailing endlessly about their inner fear (and being horribly fearful because they can’t understand the source of their fear which they aren’t even sure exists).
“I am afraid because I don’t know if I’m afraid or why I might be afraid if I am afraid.”
HUH??
This is what it means to “be present” in their view.
It’s self-indulgent horse puckey.
savage wrote:
Now doesn’t that sound JUST LIKE someone else we know? Amazing the similarities!
Just for the record, Savage has still yet to e-mail me.
@ Speranza:
Speranza, she could come here with an alias at any time. No one would know and she could out herself whenever or if ever she was comfortable enough. That is pretty small potatoes compared to the other issues at hand. I hope we aren’t going on a group migration again. Its gonna be hard to train other blogs to our ways. LOL
@ snowcrash:
I welcome anyone, and everyone. I have even extended an open invitation to Charles, Sharmuta, Killgore, etc., to come here and defend anything they dislike, or anything said about them. Because I hated that they would ban people, then not allow them a chance to response to the pile-on, I think it is the least we can do.
I have also never banned anyone.
[...] Law Enforcement Official: No Wiretap Attempt by O'Keefe › 2.0: The … [...]
My six year old is demoing drywall as I type.
His hands may have already seen more labor than Zero’s have in forty years.
It seems like academia only admires creativity if the subject is suffering for his art. True gravitas is ackknowleged if the subject is batshit crazy.
I do agree with you about the Bard.
Among all the nice things about Table 9 – one of them is that we have the ability to set up extra rooms – If you guys – the admins – need a place to talk, you can set up a room, and you can lock/password protect it, so that it is like your private board meeting room – so that you guys can work things out – we all want to see it fixed. This is an open offer.
@ Rose:
Rose what a really thoughtful offer.
It’s actually open to all of you, too, you can set up a room for chatting about the game, for example, or a book discussion room… sometimes one room is too crowded… it’s cool, but it is especially useful for things like this.
[...] Law Enforcement Official: No Wiretap Attempt by O'Keefe [...]