Archive for the 'Bloggers' category

When Are The Democrats Going To Denounce Matt Stoller?

Aug 23 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Craziness, Stuck On Stupid

My dear friend Matthew “Go Ahead Punch Me In The Face” Stoller is at it again.

It is very likely that McCain has cancer or some other serious illness. There’s no reason McCain wouldn’t let reporters look at his records otherwise. McCain is 72 years old and he was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Stoller makes the claim that McCain is hiding something despite the fact that earlier in the same post he points out that reporters were invited to look at his records – albeit with conditions. It’s simply not true that McCain won’t let the media look at them (as Matt states before contradicting himself). What McCain refused to do is let our ridiculous stable of yellow journalists give him a drive by colonoscopy, so to speak. He chose not to let them pour over every minute detail looking for something they could exploit to make news.

Stoller, compared to real journalists, doesn’t actually need facts. He just makes stuff up, or quotes what sounds like they might actually be facts without ever backing them up. For instance:

[McCain] was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Is that true? Sounds like it could be, but who knows. Did he actually do any research to verify that claim? He certainly didn’t cite a source. Did he make it up? It would be his style.

Further, Matt jumps clearly afield with this little bit of stupidity

Cancer is relevant to the Presidency. Misleading the press about one’s health is relevant to the Presidency. This is not just a dude looking for a job, he’s going to have his hand on the nuclear trigger. Imminent death from a terminal disease kind of skews your perspective on this, you know what I’m saying?

Actually, Matt, I have no idea what your saying. Most people that I have been close to who died after a long fight with terminal illness (three grandparents among them), had developed an incredible respect for life. They had come to intimately understand the fragile nature of it and felt it was precious – not something to throw away.

Stoller, on the other hand, seems to imply that someone close to death from a terminal disease would be more than happy to take those around him down with them. That’s simply not a logical argument to make if you account for the number of deathbed confessions, last minute searches for God, and people trying to reconcile themselves with the great beyond.

Yesterday I was challenged by a pair of lefty Twitter users for not denouncing Jerome Corsi, an extremist fruit cake unfortunately aligned with the GOP. Now, anybody who has asked me about Corsi’s book has heard me decry his brand of venom. I had not, however, posted on the topic, so somehow I was abetting Corsi.

If that’s the measure we are to use, where are the Democrats who will step up and denounce Stoller for his repeated and over-the-top, Anne Coulter-esque diatribes? Why is the left, which was quick to challenge me, so unwilling to call out Matt Stoller and his absurd rants?

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Culberson, Capuano, and the Struggle for Relevance

Jul 11 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Congress, Craziness, Government, The Internet, Web 2.0

Shelbinator has a ridiculous little post up defending Rep. Capuano’s braindead attempt to regualte YouTube for political speech.  Patrick Ruffini at The Next Right has a good post up calling out the frightening number of Dems trying to make this about partisanship.

The fact is the whole thing is stupid.  Capuano’s argument for why he is doing this, Nancy Pelosi’s defense of him in her letter to Boehner, and Shelbinator’s defense all come down to the same lame argument.

In order to keep up with the “decorum” of the House, they ought to find a way to do so that doesn’t get too tangled up in commerce or political campaigning due to free market forces (i.e., if you watch a Representative’s “official” YouTube video, it might be unbecoming if the three “related” videos that pop up in the YouTube player after it’s over were a racist anti-Obama ad, a pitch for Viagra, or candid footage of Britney Spears’ crotch). Not unreasonable suggestions, I think.

I left a comment on Shelby’s site, but I think it bears repeating here.

If these rules are so critical to protect us from unrefined content that might accompany “official” communications, why hasn’t the Franking Commission required newspapers to print any columns submitted by Members on facing pages with no advertising, comic strips, or campaign news?

If this is such a reasonable request, why hasn’t the Franking Commission required TV news programs to not bookend Member appearances with commercials?  Why don’t they have rules for what other stories can appear in the crawl on the chyron?

The fact is Capuano is ignorant of the equivalence between offline and online communications.  He clearly doesn’t use, know, or understand the area over which he is attempting to exert jurisdiction.

Honestly, the idea of franking dates back to the 1600s.  The entire concept of the Commission is a joke in the era of the Internet.  With newspapers losing subscribers, TV losing viewers, and every other aspect of society being radically changed, Capuano’s action is nothing but a desperate attempt to remain relevant in a position that is growing obsolete by the second.

When Micah Sifry and I were in London in April, we had many discussions with the academics there that felt they could just watch the Internet change everything else on the planet, but somehow they would be excused from the Internet Age.

Congress is now making the same mistake.  They’re attempting to ignore the flames around them and keep playing their fiddles as the US burns.  They’ll continue looking for ways to apply 17th century standards of decorum to 21st century communications technology.  It’s frightening that our institiutions are so far behind the world around them.  But that’s what you get with bureaucracies…

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An Open Challenge to Matt Stoller

Jun 18 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Political Parties, Politics, Polls, Republicans, The Internet

I recently wrote a post about the fact that someone punched Matt Stoller in the face, and suggested it might have had something to do with him accusing people of being racist at every opportunity. Matt even weighed in and (correctly) pointed out that the post I had linked to was not drafted by him. He didn’t argue that charge that he likes to cry racism, he just argued the post’s authorship.

Well now he’s at it again.

In a post referring to an overtly racist pin some jackass was selling at the Texas GOP convention, Matt can’t help but make the claim that this is evidence of rampant racism in the Republican Party.

Every time I go on C-Span, and I’ve been on five times now, I get asked about race by callers on both sides. And while I try to make the point that the Republican Party is pretty racist on an institutional basis, the regular Republican activists are just so much more eloquent at expressing this point themselves.

His Twitter post of the same linked post said simply:

Texas Republicans, adorably racist as usual

Now this isn’t the first time Stoller has leveled this charge against Republicans. In a February 2006 post about a commenter at RedState, he claims to throw the term around sparingly.

I don’t throw around the racist word very often, because to me it is a very very serious charge. But there’s no other way to say it; this right-wing blogger ‘Blanton’ at Redstate is racist, and all the commenter freaks nodding in frothing agreement to his screed seem mighty close as well.

Yet his Twitter post, his current piece on the pin, his post on McCain’s “racist dogwhistle” in Meridian, a March 2006 post about the GOP’s “deeply racist institutional nature” and other Stoller diatribes have been pretty loose with the term and the generalization that Republicans are racist. (Granted, the McCain post was later updated to reflect his error, but how many of the people who linked initially updated their posts later to note his retraction?)

So a guy who claims to be conservative in the frequency with which he levels that particular charge uses some pretty generalized language whenever he does.

I find this interesting give the Democratic Primary voters who indicated that race was the sole or significant factor in casting their vote. Based on exit polls in a variety of states, you could easily argue that 15-20% of the Democratic base is racist. They openly declared that they voted based on that, or it was a significant factor in their decision.

So here’s my challenge to Matt…

I have $100 for him and will, on the day after the election, issue via this blog, TheNextRight, RedState, and TechPresident both a public apology for my “black eye post” as well as a formal acknowledgement that my party is more racist than the Democrats.

The conditions

On election day, if the final exit polls show Republican voters are significantly more racist, I will give Matt the hundred dollars and the apology. (By significantly, I’ll propose a 10% variation – so if Democrats report 15%, the Republicans can be no higher than 16.5%. If the Democrats are 20%, the Republicans can’t exceed 22%)

If, however, the number of Republicans who say that they voted based on race is lower than, or not significantly higher than the number of Democrats who say the same, Matt will give me $100 and post on OpenLeft, MyDD, and DailyKos a written statement that he is wrong, and Republicans are not institutionally racist, and his own party, is in fact, more so.

Pu your money where your mouth is, Matt. How sure are you about the GOP given your own party’s proclivity to declare their racism openly?

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Identifying Progress, No Matter How Small

Jun 11 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Bloggers, Candidates, John McCain, Politics, The Internet

On this blog, I have spent considerable digital ink discussing the things the GOP is doing wrong, and calling out the more egregious acts of folly in which the right’s infrastructure engages.

For my inaugural post at The Next Right, I thought I’d take a closer look at some of the incremental steps I see in the right direction. A recent e-mail exchange with a colleague pointed out one such item I had overlooked – John McCain’s “McCain Report”.

While I still must point out some of the things I find awkward about McCain’s blogs (not the least of which is that he has two of them that seem to compete with one another), I will note that Goldfarb’s content seems to be vastly superior to what is ostensibly their flagship blog – titled simply the “McCain Blog”.

The McCain Blog is largely the sort of press release and dull e-mail fodder we’ve come to expect from campaigns. It recaps the latest rally and pimps “new eco-friendly items” available in the McCain store. It gets updated every few days. The one upshot is they do allow discussion.

Goldfarb’s McCain Report, on the other hand, is actually good. It’s not full of PR fluff and cheerleading. It’s updated several times a day and it contains substantive material. It is what campaign blogs should be (save for the fact that McCain should occasionally author posts, which he so far has not).

Take one recent piece triggered by a Ben Smith item in the Politico:

As Ben Smith reported yesterday, the Obama campaign recently brought Jason Furman on as a senior economic advisor. Smith notes that Furman wrote a lengthy defense of Wal-Mart in 2005, titled “Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story.” In it Furman denies that Wal-Mart is suppressing wages, or exploiting their employees. The fact “that more than 1.3 million Americans work at Wal-Mart demonstrates that its compensation is at least as good as the alternatives,” he says. And he adds that ‚Äúthe available data is consistent with the premise that Wal-Mart pays wages that are comparable to the retail sector.‚Äù

His new boss takes a different view. In 2006, Obama told Fortune that “Wal-Mart is making enormous profits, and yet it has chosen to go with low wages and diminished benefits.” And in 2007, Obama told union members that he won’t even shop at Wal-Mart because of their exploitation of American workers. Has Obama moderated his views on Wal-Mart or will Furman and he just agree to disagree?

That is far from the typical piece on the campaign’s other blog:

Today, John McCain addressed the threat of global climate change and outlined his strategy to lead America to meet its obligations as a steward of this planet. The centerpiece of his plan is a market-based system designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, mobilize innovative technologies, and strengthen the economy.

Be sure to watch the newest tv ad called, “A Better Way,” then click here for more information on the McCain Plan.

I’m actually very pleased to see the McCain camp doing something well. In fact, what impresses me most is the superior quality of the McCain Report when compared to the Obama blog.

Senator Obama released the following statement today in response to the news of the trade deficit increase:

Today we learned that the trade deficit jumped to its highest level in 13 months. This is not an accident. This is yet another sign of the failed economic policies of the Bush administration that John McCain seeks to extend – policies that reflect unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility and borrowing from abroad. Rather than get America’s fiscal house in order, Senator McCain is proposing $300 billion more in tax breaks and loopholes for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and he hasn’t explained how he’d pay for them. Just this week, John McCain reaffirmed his commitment to special interest-driven economic policies that will widen the trade deficit, but won’t help American automakers secure fair treatment in South Korea, and won’t ensure that China stops devaluing its currency and tilting the playing field against American workers. As President, Barack Obama will stand up for fiscal responsibility by restoring fairness to our economy, investing in a renewable energy future, and adopting a trade policy that serves the interests not just of multinational corporations but of America’s hardworking families.

You can learn more about Barack’s stance on trade here.

That is a stark contrast. The Obama team (vaunted as they are for their superior web skills) is running a dry boring blog, while McCain’s team have at least begun to get it. It’s nice to see.

(As a side note, I’d like to offer two suggestions to Team McCain. First, look into search engine friendly urls. Second, optimize the meta tags on your blog posts to actually include the specific content of the post. Especially with this new stuff critical of Obama, it’s going to be important that people can actually find it.

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It Must Be Sweeps Week On The Blogosphere

Apr 28 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Craziness, Miscellany, Society, The Internet

When John Hawkins ran his first look at conservative women and dating, I sent a note asking if I had missed a memo and not realized it was sweeps week. It was such an odd post that I assumed our sites were being judged on sex appeal that week. The response he got was fascinating. It got picked up everywhere.

I actually can’t believe the first piece was only a month ago, however… And now he’s back with part two.

I’ll excerpt a bit, but you really should go read it all. There’s some great material in there.

Tell me the worst dating story of your life.

I fell asleep on the guy…. [My cousin] had the brilliant idea of setting us up to go see a play… I’m watching it, it’s warm in the theater, I’m sitting next to him and he’s not talking — The next thing I remember, he’s shaking me awake. I think I was drooling on his shoulder. I was out cold. I was so embarassed.

What do you think the biggest thing women have wrong about men is?

We, in our heads, over-analyze everything that the guy did. The reason that he moved to the couch was because there was more room, not because he was trying to get away from you.

What is the weirdest date you have gone on or been asked to go on.

…An Easter brunch where the guy I was dating told me I’d meet all the other girls he was dating, and sternly warned me I had to be nice to them. Obviously I didn’t go to that gathering. I never signed up to be on The Bachelor!

…The weirdest date I ever went on was when I was in college. I was taken, I swear to God I am not making this up, by a guy from my Spanish class to go to the dump and shoot rats with his friends… I didn’t hit any. I am tender hearted. …I really like shooting, but I don’t like shooting living creatures. …But, I did fire off a handgun or two, at cans.

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