I think Kos and his ilk are largely responsible for creating the environment that encourages things like Howard Dean's comments, and in turn the two together are largely responsible for the recent drop in approval for the Democratic Party.

Sadly, both for two-party democracy and for the republic, they are not being ignored. In fact, they are actually growing in influence.

At some point, they are going to have to realize the Democratic Party cannot serve its sponsors at the expense of its constituents, or it's going to lose the latter and with them all political relevance.

I voted Republican as a the lesser of two evils (I'm really mostly a neolibertarian). I do not want to see 70 Republicans in the Senate, but we seem to be headed that way thanks to the Kossacks.

I still wonder how much of Koz's funding covertly comes from Karl Rove.

@TallDave

I could not agree more. As frustrated as I get with the Republican obtuseness, I simply have to look at the alternative and shudder. The Democratic Party today has precisely 0 ideas, a fact that became blatantly obvious during the Kerry campaign when his response to nearly every question was "check out my website". Now the only thing that the Democratic leadership excels in is inane histrionics, reflexive/unreflective criticism, and obstructionism.

And dare I say, the main impetus behind this sad turn is none other than Kos and much of the lefty blogosphere.

One of the things that is so striking to me is the incredible difference between left and right wing blogosphere. The right wing is composed primarily of libertarians and classical liberal who have nothing but disdain for their social conservative counterparts. Even the boys at Powerline aren't that bad.

All this stands in stunning contrast to the left-wing blogosphere which almost overwhelmingly speaks for the Noam Chomsky style of "liberalism", if such a term is even meaningful anymore. Kos pushed hard to get Dean appointed DNC chair and we can all see what a disaster that has turned out to be.

Given the rising clout of the blogosphere, I cannot help but think the different tones on either side will pull their respective political axis in different ways.

Agree except for this:

The right wing is composed primarily of libertarians and classical liberal who have nothing but disdain for their social conservative counterparts.

I think that there are more straight conservatives than classical liberals and libertarians, these days, though they adopt classical liberslism in support of certain policies. And Powerline is pretty socially conservative.

There's definitely some kind of qualitative difference between left and right in the 'spehere, but it's hard to describe what it is exactly.

I think more than anything else, online righties are just somewhat more inclusive of libertarians like Instapundit and hawkish liberals like Dean Esmay, whereas the lefty congregatations like Kos and DU tend to demand everyone toe their line. You get a few spats like Goldstein had with so-cons like John Hawkins, but the GOP really has become the bigger-tent party of the two. I think this is happening for two reasons: 1) the GOP was a minority party for so long that they still instinctively grasp for any allies they can find and work not to offend anyone with outright craziness, while Dems still have the opposite instincts; and 2) Dem special-interest groups exert considerably more discipline over the national party than their GOP equivalents through tactics like "primarying," with considerably less support from Dem constituents. It's natural that advocacy groups like NAACP and NOW, who once had not just a mission but a mandate from those they represent, would become a drag on the party once the respective groups they advocated for achieved equality and perhaps more.

The party discipline in the GOP seems to come mostly from the center. Bush stuck his neck out for Arlen Specter over what's-his-name (Toomey?) in a GOP primary. Trent Lott resigned over a misconstrued compliment to Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday. Meanwhile the Dems have Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Cynthia McKinney (whose father blamed an electoral defeat on "the Jews") out there embarassing the party every week... I can't think of any GOP equivalents for those people, and they're barely criticized by their party. So those attitudes bleed over from politics to 'sphere and back, I think.

He's never been a strong voice - he simply runs an effective piece of software which enables user interactivity. His commentary was never compelling or influential, and it never will be. He would be best served, as well as his users, to stop commenting all together an merely reap the benefits of his design.

I thought this was funny.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/8/144220/5031

Kos purged a bunch of posts and his users fought back.

Agree or disagree with the sentiment, can you even imagine a Kossack writing a similar post?

No. Nor can I imagine Powerline making some of the in-depth balanced posts I read here. How influential Kos is, is hard to say. If you have lots of viewers, you have some influence. But Desparate Housewives (or the O.C., for Bill's sake) have lots of viewers to. Do people get convinced by what they read there, or just enjoy reading it whether they already agree or not? Lefties can go to Kos for the club atmosphere of people like them.

The Kos format is closer to a topic-driven message board than a blog, and it is more activist oriented than most right leaning blogs. The general bias in the media (excepting foxnews) already leans in kos' favor, so him pushing stories that are even further off the deep end doesn't do much. The gannon story was fun and all, but it turns out Gannon really was a nobody. (Until we find out he was matt coopers source via Karl Rove, and also the voice transmitting to Bush via the "bulge" in the debates. Source: Koz).

@milowent

Powerline's not that bad at all. If you ignore the social-con BS they are actually quite intelligent and make some very good points. Either way they in no way compare to drivel put out daily by Kos or Atrios.

Maybe I just have a higher tolerance than most. Andrew Sullivan drives me nuts with his bizarre reasoning and self- congratulatory posts, but I still visit his blog at least every week. I'd even go so far as to say that LGF has some good stuff as long as you say out of the comments. However the tone of that blog just creeps me out so I make my visits short and sweet.

Interaction between different political groups seems to be getting pretty difficult - each sees the other groups as crazy, closed-minded people, and they just yell at and insult each other and try to craft clever insults about the other groups to say to others in their group.

Even this thread fits the pattern, if more civil than the site I last saw, which called for 'hanging liberal traitors from trees', and named several democratic senators to hang.

It's basically various rants against dailkos and moaning about how they don't agree and the world is doomed because it exists. Very few facts, except for the snarky sort which are not representative for any reasonable discussion.

In other words, the thread is really nothing bug fluff, and perpetuating the problem, rather than any attempt to discuss the issues, to say something useful outside of 'why can't they see we're right'.

So, DailyKOS once said 'screw them' about some contract mercenaries killed in Iraq. Does that mean they do nothing good as well? Can you discuss the issue of what they said rationally, and tolerate different opinions?

You know, some people feel that the US has a big shortage of empathy for other people as equal human beings, and feels that when we choose a war killing 2 to 3 million vietnamese, we are the victim, when we choose a war with Iraq which kills tens of thousands of Iraqs, we're the victim. They're frustrated by the zero concern so many Americans show for the innocents killed by our policies, pushed by many blindly: support the war or you're a traitor. Perhaps there should be some understanding why they feel that the lives of four men who chose to go over to Iraq and be in a position where many innocent Iraqis are reportedly killed by mercenary excesses don't deserve to get so much more attention than the invisible Iraqi casualties.

There can be a discussion. But can you partake?

Interesting lecture. "can [I] partake?"

No, not in the way you'd like. Why?

So, DailyKOS once said 'screw them' about some contract mercenaries killed in Iraq. Does that mean they do nothing good as well? Can you discuss the issue of what they said rationally, and tolerate different opinions?

1. It's funny that you challenge me with that, as I did discuss it with Kos and he shut me out after the first communication, then failed to ever really apologize for the original comment; I was pretty much the only person on the right that engaged him. (Feel a little silly yet? Just because I came to the rational conclusion that his opinions were an anathema, I'm inferior or intolerant?)

2. Some comments constitute something worse than merely "different opinions," and failing to recognize this constitutes a moral equivalence that dogs the left (a concept that is admittedly underutilized at times on the right). So while you may think that your auto-inclusiveness makes you superior, I believe that it makes your judgment suspect.

Kos's site is a hotbed of vitriol on the internet. I'm not interested in sorting out the nuggets from the nastiness and conspiratorial thinking. And making such a distinction does not make me closed-minded, no matter your sniffing judgment; It makes me capable of rational moral judgment as well as personal taste. Try them both out for a spin, I promise they won't bite.

People like Craig are a dime a dozen, always trotting out their perceived superiority, something they think they've earned for keeping a perpetually open mind -- as if ever REACHING A CONCLUSION, based on empirical evidence and rational consideration, is somehow less important than the FACT OF BEING WILLING TO PERPETUALLY CONSIDER.

From where I stand, Craig is interested in form over substance; and that kind of interaction creates the "appearance" of a "conversation," rather than adding anything useful to the subject being discussed.

It's funny how the same people who whine about the situation are the cause of it.

Note the constant insulting, from the 'spittle on the screen' in the original post, to the claim that I should try out personal moral judgement and personal taste (the former, at least, something I've no doubt I have well in excess of the poster, the latter we can each judge for ourselves), and Jeff G with his own nonsensical attempts at witty insulting comments.

For what it's worth, I can agree on one thing, that it's unfortunatel DailyKOS is into censorship and not discussing the issues with the other side, *when reasonably approached*. I usually see that on the right, not the left.

But after that, you miss the point, that it's all too easy to simply be isolated and point fingers at the other views and say isn't it so terrible they could say things we disagree with, and the melodramatic attempts to say their speech is 'so horrible' you can't discuss it are pathetic.

Not that there aren't such comments, but rather that you apply the label to comments which fall far short of that standard. What did you have to say about the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed which you presumably view as 'acceptable collateral damage' while denying the other side the right to view their casualties the same way? Silence - and perhaps a silence more offensive than the Daily KOS comment you condemn.

You are doomed for now to whine about the other groups since you cannot engage them in discussion.

Jeff, you miss the point utterly, too: it's hardly favoring form over substance or the appearance of a conversation - it's pointing out that the situation is isolated groups and the need is for communication, not the sort of empty whining in this thread which does no good.

Your inability to do anything but call names suggests that you cannot step up to the plate.

There's plenty to discuss for those who can, and until then, there will be the irrelevant threads.

We're all in this together, even if some make the situation pretty miserable.

I fight the temptation myself - it's all too easy to reach 'personal moral decisions' which make the other side not worth talking to since they support something so evil. But at the end of the day, all these sides have *some* more merit than their opponent gives them credit for usually.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to get through the walls with some people.

One suggestion for the OP: put yourself in their shoes for a moment - if four men of thouands who came over to the US and occupied us, killing many Americans, were killed by an angry public, as their country expressed no concern over our civilians killed, could you see the 'screw you'?

Bush Derangement Syndrome is a remarkable psycho-sociological phenomenon.

The precipitous decline in the decorum of American political discourse seemed to begin during the Clinton administration. Certainly there is blame on both sides, but I think Clinton's bitter and calculated campaign to discredit Ken Starr was the defining moment. While perhaps no different from, or even as bad as, Nixon's pattern of skullduggery against his enemies, unlike Nixon's scheming behind closed doors, the Clinton counter-offensive against Starr was waged very openly in the media, and designed (IMO) to change the subject from his own illegal conduct by demonizing Starr. There's no doubt that he succeeded brilliantly, because by the time the truth finally did come out, he had convinced roughly half the country that he was a victim rather than the cause of the problem.

The pernicious side effect, however, was a marked degeneration of the political atmosphere. That in turn carried over into the 2000 presidential campaign, where by the end Gore and his allies were using inflammatory rhetoric unprecedented in recent memory, for example suggesting that GWB was somehow complicit in the murder of James Byrd, planned to reinstitute black slavery, etc.

Then came the Florida post-election mess. I remember the day after the election, watching Jesse Jackson unashamedly harangue a crowd with outright lies, watching Gore try to steal the election with a selective recount, watching the Florida Supremes try to rewrite the law post-facto, etc. I think this was clearly Stage 2. When, despite pulling out all the stops, GWB still won, a large segment of the Left just went ape-sh*t. They had hyped themselves up during the campaign and the recount that a Bush victory would be the end of the world, so when it finally happened, they had to act like it was.

What seems to have happened, starting with Clinton's counter-offensive against Starr, is that the Dems conceded any debate on the issues, and instead adopted two complementary process-oriented tactics: 1) impugn the integrity and motives of their opponents, and 2) when that doesn't work and they lose, attempt to delegitimize the process that led to their defeat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The problem with the "slime and whine" strategy is that it is entirely unconstructive and debilitating. On the Right, the base is in constant ferment, proposing and arguing over the merits of a wide variety of ideas. I probably disagree with half the stuff I read on blogs like National Review (and INDC), but thinking about what is posted there (and the follow-ups from other smart people) is like doing mental aerobics daily.

The Left, on the other hand, squanders its energy and creativity on finding new and more puerile ways to preach the gospel of "BUSH LIED!" and "We wuz robbed" to the converted, occasionally pausing to parrot some vacuous shibboleth they heard on NPR or a re-run of The West Wing and act like they've just revealed a profound, universally applicable truth.

It's like two football teams, one of which prepares with a week of hard, full-contact scrimmaging, while the other bitches over the officiating in their previous game and talks trash to the media about how their upcoming opponent belongs in a Pop Warner league. Which team would give points on in the office pool?

DailyKos is just a reductio ad absurdum of a wider (and more troubling) phenomenon, I think.

LagunaDave, with your first sentence I thought you were on the right track, but you crashed soon after.

That's a Bizarro misrepresentation of the history, akin to claiming Nixon was framed.

The hostility in political discource has come from the right for decades - from those who said a vote for FDR was a vote for communism, to the McCarthy communist attacks, to the John Birchers, to the Lee Atwater type attacks, but it did spiral out of control under Clinton.

The republicans went into insane attack mode, completely disloyal to the country by making their priority to undermine the president by means legal, abusive, and illegal. Over 40 congressional investigations to investigate phony scandals, public statements saying he could not be trusted to protect the nation,accusations of traitorous behavior, unprecedented blocking of his nominees, blackmailing him with the threat of blocking nominees to force him to submit all planned recesss nomintations in advance, and so on. That's where the problems got really bad, in the radical right under Clinton. None of the 40+ investigations found anything on Clinton other than the one affair with Monica and his lie to hide it.

Ken Starr was a partisan hack who was breaking the law going after Clinton as viciously as he could, leaking information, with all kinds of inappropriate relatiosnhips between the 'elves', the radical right lawyers secretly setting up Linda Tripp and Paula Jones to do the most damage possible to Clinton, with right wing media, congressional, and Starr people.

Today, I was reading the site I mentioned above with people calling for hangind democratic senators from trees, and you say the problem is the left. What a joke. Get the history right.

What did you have to say about the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed which you presumably view as 'acceptable collateral damage' while denying the other side the right to view their casualties the same way? Silence - and perhaps a silence more offensive than the Daily KOS comment you condemn.

I think it's horrible. You have no idea how I view it, you only assume. What do you have to say about the millions of Iraqis that died under the brutal regime of Saddamn Hussein? I presume that you found those losses, from starvation, torture, wars of conquest all more "'acceptable," because America had indirect influence at most.

And what are you talking about, "denying the other side?" Kos is the other side?! If that's not what you're implying, then your moral equivalence (with respect to insurgents and jihadists) truly is repugnant to me.

I assume that you came over from Salon, and look - our moral frames of reference are too different to come to any agreement, much less engage in extended civil discourse. I reject your moral equivalence, I reject the fact that you look down your nose at all ad hominem (it has a place, especially on a site that often doesn't take itself seriously) and I especially reject your comparison of the discourse in this post and thread to the Kossacks (or worse).

You are doomed for now to whine about the other groups since you cannot engage them in discussion.

I'm not whining, my friend - I'm mocking, deriding, dismissive of Kos's practical political influence. Kos and (apparently perhaps you) are so far gone to the wilds of selective argumentation and moral equivalence that engagement is pointless. Look at one silly fallacy that you claim:

I fight the temptation myself - it's all too easy to reach 'personal moral decisions' which make the other side not worth talking to since they support something so evil. But at the end of the day, all these sides have *some* more merit than their opponent gives them credit for usually.

I understand fighting this temptation, as I do myself - with individuals that I respect. Thus, I didn't reject "the other side," I rejected The Daily Kos.

I am drawing my boundaries, in the sense that a person that I don't agree with like Kevin Drum is reasonable and worth engaging. Matthew Yglesias, yes. Josh Marshall, sure.

Kos is not. Very simple. Your assertions rely on an infuriating brand of deconstructionism and selective argumentation. I have no responsibility to engage an individual like Zuniga, when

a. I tried

b. I find his writing consistently paranoid, nasty while being devoid of humor and illogical.

Deal with my judgment, and stop extrapolating it as unwillingness to engage those that disagree with me. I wouldn't engage conspiracy theorists on the DU that think the jews were behind 9-11, and I won't deal with Kos, as I consider his analysis barely above such tripe.

I'm also done debating this with you. Now, I know that you're going to consider that "unwillingness to engage the other side," but it's actually more along the lines of "spending my time on something more fruitful and enjoyable," like slamming my head in the refrigerator door.

Oh my ... was that uncivil? Don't faint at the ruthless ad hominem, it's just a dry, light remark.

Lighten up, Francis.

Craig is willing to communicate, Bill. He strives for some connection.

Your (and my) having been there, done that, and concluded that there is no reason on earth, intellectual, to engage with the daily Kossacks' sophistry, vitriol, and factually-relaxed attitude that priviliges rhetoric over substance, is immaterial, however, to Craig.

Because you must always be willing to communicate, or else you are simply not as good a human as.

That's not form over substance, though. That's just...well, something better.

kos' wish is little more than a thinly veiled attempt at buying some time for him to try and figure a way to more forcefully point the finger at bush for the london attacks.

he is simply begging for some time to think up some new bullshit

That's a Bizarro misrepresentation of the history, akin to claiming Nixon was framed.

I claimed no such thing. You are misrepresenting me.

The hostility in political discource has come from the right for decades - from those who said a vote for FDR was a vote for communism, to the McCarthy communist attacks, to the John Birchers, to the Lee Atwater type attacks, but it did spiral out of control under Clinton.

I see, and I suppose you're going to tell us next that the Communist Party, labor unions, socialists, anti-war groups etc never villified or demonized anybody. Or FDR for that matter. Uh huh. The "McCarthy communist attacks" must have really stung, since they were basically accurate...

Contrast the public demeanor of Nixon during Watergate with Clinton's during his eight-year Caligulan binge. Contrast the Reagan administration's demeanor during Iran-Contra.

While there have always been fringe partisans on both ends of the political spectrum what I'm talking about is high-ranking Democratic political figures explicitly or implicitly sanctioning this form of political pornography. Like Mike al-Moore sitting in the Presidential box at the DNC. Or Deano blithely spinning off-the-wall conspiracy theories. Or a presidential candidate and his lackey's using unabashed racial demagogery to de-legitimize an election they lost.

The republicans went into insane attack mode, completely disloyal to the country by making their priority to undermine the president by means legal, abusive, and illegal.

So is it your position then that the President is above the law, and that an investigation signed off on by his own AG is unpatriotic?

Over 40 congressional investigations to investigate phony scandals, public statements saying he could not be trusted to protect the nation,accusations of traitorous behavior, unprecedented blocking of his nominees, blackmailing him with the threat of blocking nominees to force him to submit all planned recesss nomintations in advance, and so on.

Poor Bill!

That's where the problems got really bad, in the radical right under Clinton. None of the 40+ investigations found anything on Clinton other than the one affair with Monica and his lie to hide it.

Oh come on. He was up to his neck in Whitewater. Over a dozen convictions resulted.

FBI files on 900 political opponents turn up in the White House - just an honest mistake!

Subpoenaed billing records that were supposedly lost turn up on a table in the White House - well imagine that!

Campaign donations solicited and accepted from foreign nationals and Chinese intelligence agents, in return for who knows what - hey, he's a victim of circumstance!

Credible charges of suborning perjury, obstruction of justice, and rape - all a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!

Pardons for sale to terrorists and fugitives - be sure to make those checks payable to the Clinton Presidential Library!

So anyway, your argument seems to be: he only committed perjury while being sued for sexual assault. How many felonies should we give the President a pass on then, in your view?

Ken Starr was a partisan hack who was breaking the law going after Clinton as viciously as he could, leaking information, with all kinds of inappropriate relatiosnhips between the 'elves', the radical right lawyers secretly setting up Linda Tripp and Paula Jones to do the most damage possible to Clinton, with right wing media, congressional, and Starr people.

"A partisan hack" appointed by Clinton's own AG? The fact is that Starr performed admirably under a withering stream of falsehoods and villification by the target of his investigation, who abused the full power of the executive branch to avoid accountability under the law. Ken Starr is a hero for not giving in to tactics that would have made Al Capone blush. He never leaked anything, and nothing he did before, during or after the investigation supports your hysterical fantasies. His only sin was to try to uphold the rule of law.

Today, I was reading the site I mentioned above with people calling for hangind democratic senators from trees, and you say the problem is the left. What a joke. Get the history right.

This is just prattling nonsense. How long do you think it would take me to find a site with left wing loonies calling for the hanging of Republicans? We are talking about the adoption of such loopy rhetoric into the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Anyway, you don't get it, but that's not a problem. You, Deano, Big Mike, Kos and the rest of the BDS-afflicted - just keep talking. And we'll keep winning elections.

Bill, you got the response wrong - for the most part, I think we hit 'agree to disagree' territory, and my comments were not telling you to talk to DailyKOS - you may remember I said at the beginning that I agreed with you on not liking his policy on reasonable opposition - it was more general.

LagunaDave, however, has more issues.

"I claimed no such thing. You are misrepresenting me." I said "akin to" - I was expressing an opinion of your post, and illustrated the degree to which I found it accurate with an analogy - I did not misrepresent what you said.

"The "McCarthy communist attacks" must have really stung, since they were basically accurate..."

Yes, the United States Army was, indeed, overrun with communists. And Ike was suspect.

McCarthy's work was filled with lies which hurt a lot of people, and it was an example of the right-wing excesses and attacks. There's a reason he was censured and is infamous and it's not because he was 'basically accurate'.

Get the history right.

You get the Clinton history almost completely wrong as well. You list a long string of fantasies which the investigations did not find any culpability by him on, including his being completely cleared on Whitewater, and he did not commit perjury. He lied by misleading, but he did not commit perjury, by being 'technically' accurate in his denial.

Your boy Bush, of course, refused to testify under oath for the 9/11 commission. Hmmmm.

But we have plenty of lies about far more important things by him - and plenty more law-breaking. Would you like, for example, to re-visit his insider trading and evasion for prosecution by the SEC prosecutor who had been his attorney, and an SEC head appointed by his father?

As for Ken Starr - um, he was not appointed by Janet Reno - the 'special' judges did that, who were not free of bias themselves. The original *republican* prosecutor, Fisk, who actually was doing a good job, was gotten rid of by the horrified republicans in congress, *over Reno's objection*, on a trumped up conflict issue when they saw he wasn't going to get Clinton outside the facts - and their boy Starr had a greater conflict than Fisk had, but no matter.

Of course Starr was cooperating illegally with the people I said - read the documentation.

Go read 'The Hunting of the President', or 'The Clinton Wars', for example. Get the history right.

As for the 2000 election - there is no doubt that Gore won the majority vote in the nation; there is no doubt that he won the vote in Florida if any of a number of errors had not occured, including the butterfly ballot, and there is strong evidence of some intentional vote suppression by Jeb Bush.

The election was a travesty and a crime against the nation. You don't care.

"And we'll keep winning elections."

If not for horrible campaign practices, from exploiting 9/11 to selling out the public interest for unprecedented donations from harmful special interests, they would not be winning elections.

I suggest you carefully look at the chart in the following link and what it implies about him:

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm

It shows that the public reacts to exactly one issue - war - in his favor, with a campaign spike.

On every major area out of about 20 polled, he has over 50% opposed to him, except terrorism.

The issue with his getting elected is not DailyKOS, IMO.

mlah -

kos' wish is little more than a thinly veiled attempt at buying some time for him to try and figure a way to more forcefully point the finger at bush for the london attacks.

Kevin Drum wrote that, not Kos. And I believe it was relatively sincere.

I have to admit I’m glad we don’t have Kos and the like on this side of the pond. Then again, we do have The Guardian, so I suppose it balances out.

Kos' action struck me as sort of like banning the lunatics from the asylum.

Craig,

As for the 2000 election - there is no doubt that Gore won the majority vote in the nation;

Not how Presidents are elected.

there is no doubt that he won the vote in Florida if any of a number of errors had not occured, including the butterfly ballot, and there is strong evidence of some intentional vote suppression by Jeb Bush.

The hand recount was illegal under FL election law anyway (it very clearly indicates by when results must be reported), Dems designed the butterfly ballot, so you have only yourselves to blame if your voters can't figure it out, virtually all the independent recounts found Bush won, and there's evidence Gore suppressed late military ballots. Frankly, there's more evidence JFK lost than that Bush lost; any Chiagoan can tell you Illinois' 9,000 margin was almost certainly stolen by the Machine.

The election was a travesty and a crime against the nation. You don't care.

We could take this kind of self-righteous rhetoric a bit more seriously if Dems weren't winking and nodding at massive urban/felon/illegal-immigrant vote fraud that they know benefits them, to the point of opposing picture IDs for voters.

Also, McCarthy was censored for embarassing politically powerful people despite being right because the evidence that proved his case was classified until 1995. Read the declassified decrypted Soviet cables in the Venona material sometime. It's scary how deeply our gov't was compromised.

TallDave, you are spinning, not discussing. I may as well be talkint with a paid republican operative.

"Not how Presidents are elected."

And I never said it is. Some of we supporters see some moral weight to who gets the most votes.

Your mileage may differ. In your indifference to issues in elections you win, you probably don't know that the Bush campaign had a major public relations campaign ready to attack the Gore presidency as illegitimate if Gore had won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote.

You are welcome not to care about the popular vote, I noted the fact because some do.

"The hand recount was illegal under FL election law anyway (it very clearly indicates by when results must be reported)"

Your simplistic analysis is not consistent with the facts. Rather than try to debate them with you - you can read books such as the one by Alan Dershowitz for the other side of the issue - I'll note that the law was what Florida's Supreme Court said it was, until the Supreme Court 5-4 theft.

"Dems designed the butterfly ballot, so you have only yourselves to blame if your voters can't figure it out"

Once again you spin by ignoring the important issue: the will of the voters was thwarted by a mistake. You could *care less* about the election reflecting the will of the voters, obviously, when it suits your desired outcome. I'd call that being partisan to the point of un-American.

I never said the republicans had anything to do with it, I said the voters' will was thwarted.

You *should* care about the will of the voters being accurately measured in an election.

"virtually all the independent recounts found Bush won"

Wrong.

Here's what you would find, if you did the research into the analysis paid for by the media consortium for an independant analysis, if you could not care less about the accuracy of a presidential election when the errors let your side win:

Had all the ballots where the Florida voters' intent could be determined, under all variations of the counting, been counted, Gore would have won the election.

Had the four counties that ended up in Gore's lawsuit *only* been counted, not statewide; or had only 'undervotes' and not 'overvotes', e.g., where some bad instructions led voters to both write in and check Gore's name, been counted, Bush would still have won.

You can see the comments at the time from the media: the results came out in November 2001, 2 months after 9/11, and they said that they did not want to say something which would undermine the president in that atmosphere, so they hyped the part of the results supporting Bush.

But the facts are not as you say. The major study reported Gore won when all the votes were counted, and as one commentator said, they created additional 'categories' of vote counts to give some wins to Bush, too. There were nine categories, IIRC, Gore won under five.

But the one I care about most was the 'had all the votes where the intent could be determined' standard, which was the law. You don't even want to get into the sleazy republican tactics to try to force the votes not to be counted, including flying GOP staffers from Wahington down, who formed a threatening mob at a key vote-counting center to disrupt the counting.

It was a disgrace for republicans.

"and there's evidence Gore suppressed late military ballots."

Ah yes, when the issue is for you, it's 'following the law', when against, it's 'suppressing votes'.

The law said when the votes had to be postmarked by to be counted.

The republicans demanded the law be ignored for one reason: an expectation the votes helped them.

"Frankly, there's more evidence JFK lost than that Bush lost; any Chiagoan can tell you Illinois' 9,000 margin was almost certainly stolen by the Machine."

And there's evidence Nixon cheated there, too, and other places.

For what it's worth, as much as I like JFK, I have to admit the possible role of mafia vote fraud.

Nixon was not shy of mob connections - but let's stick to the topic.

""The election was a travesty and a crime against the nation. You don't care."

We could take this kind of self-righteous rhetoric a bit more seriously if Dems weren't winking and nodding at massive urban/felon/illegal-immigrant vote fraud that they know benefits them, to the point of opposing picture IDs for voters."

I don't agree that democrats are broadly doing that, and I do not support fraud.

As for IDs, let's be clear: the issue is being argued on the basis of the fact that republicans want IDs simply because it'll give them more votes, and democrats oppose it primarily, I suspect, because it'll give fewer votes.

There are arguments on both sides. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of looking into the issue and trying to find a solution which will reduce the risk of fraud while maximizing the vote.

While criminals do vote heavily democratic, the reasons are not crime related, they're demographics, because democrats' policies are better for the poor and non-whites who are also disproportionately criminals.

But we also don't need to get into the debate of democrats' effective crime programs versus republicans' simplistic, ineffective policies which cause more crime.

"Also, McCarthy was censored for embarassing politically powerful people despite being right because the evidence that proved his case was classified until 1995. Read the declassified decrypted Soviet cables in the Venona material sometime. It's scary how deeply our gov't was compromised."

I'm aware of the problems, and they do not vindicate McCarthy, any more than the fact that Nixon did have some enemies vindicates his law-breaking abuse of his powers against them.

Your post says not a word about the excesses and the abuses of McCarthy.

In the immortal words of Mike Tyson, DailyKos should just "...fade into Bolivian."

TallDave, you are spinning, not discussing. I may as well be talkint with a paid republican operative.

Hey, don't shoot me --I'm just the messenger, baby. I got a package here for you marked "facts" from a place called "reality."

you probably don't know that the Bush campaign had a major public relations campaign ready to attack the Gore presidency as illegitimate if Gore had won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote.

Sure, we all heard that rumor, but so what? The Pentagon has plans to invade Canada. Not all plans are acted on. Gore tried to change FL election law to get an illegal recount, so a PR campaign is lightweight stuff. Also, your protests are pretty rich considering all the "selected, not elected" and "Bush-Cheney junta" talk we heard till Bush was re-elected.

There are arguments on both sides.
No there aren't. What possible argument could there be for allowing vote fraud? There's one reason Dems unanimously oppose picture ID for voting: it costs them illegal votes.

Ah yes, when the issue is for you, it's 'following the law', when against, it's 'suppressing votes'.

Some might see a moral difference in cutting a break for our soldiers who have ballots delayed for reasons beyond their control, but OK, let's both follow the law -- and under that scenario, there's no illegal recount therefore Bush wins.

But the facts are not as you say.

Yes, they are. There were recounts done by several papers, and under all legal scenarios Bush won. The only way Gore maybe wins is if undervotes are counted only in Gore-leaning counties, which violates FL election law on two counts.

Your post says not a word about the excesses and the abuses of McCarthy.

I'm still waiting to hear one non-traitor who was abused excessively. Most of the people he got fired were treated as heroes and given cushy jobs at prestigious institutions. "McCarthyism" is a crock.

Yes, the United States Army was, indeed, overrun with communists. And Ike was suspect.
McCarthy's work was filled with lies which hurt a lot of people, and it was an example of the right-wing excesses and attacks. There's a reason he was censured and is infamous and it's not because he was 'basically accurate'.
Get the history right.

Physician, heal thine own history. The Army was, in fact, infiltrated by Communists. As were the Depts of State and Treasury, and many others, in the FDR Admin. This is now irrefutable since the opening of the Soviet archives to historians in the 90s; the evidence is overwhelming (it was merely strong before, tho dismissed by leftists who smirked about "McCarthyism" if one gave it any credence).

Documents from those archives show that Stalin was receiving intelligence from a dozen or so Communist sources placed in the Office of Strategic Services and then the Office of War Information. These spies were recruited by Communist Party USA member Milton Wolff, who drew on his fellow veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade -- U.S. Communists who had gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War and who possessed language skills the OSS and OWI found valuable.

Then there was William Weisband, who joined Officers Candidate School, and ended up with the National Security Agency (when it was still, during WWII, the Signal Security Agency). He was a secret CPUSA member and spy for Stalin, who kept his Moscow master apprised of how the U.S. was doing in decrypting Soviet codes.

I could go on and on. But the fact is, McCarthy got many of the individuals wrong, but he was not wrong about the problem per se. That this issue was left for a man such as McCarthy to demagogue can be laid at the feet of FDR and his administration refusing to take seriously the multiple warnings of spies -- ostensible Democrats and American citizens -- in its midst that it refused to believe. Blame can also be laid at the feet of many (tho certainly not all) liberals who pilloried and ridiculed former spies who defected and warned of what was happening -- the liberal elite of yesteryear rendered it uncool to take such claims seriously.

Stalin got the bomb many years before he would have -- and the Cold War thus played out far more dangerously than it otherwise might have -- because the Manhattan Project was crawling with Communist scientists spying for Stalin. It is possible Stalin would not have given the greenlight to North Korea to attack the South had that monster not been handed the bomb by traitors in the U.S. and elsewhere (they were in Canada and the U.K. as well).

I commend to you several books: Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and The Secret World of American Communism, also by Haynes and Klehr, along with Russian historian Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. The former deals with the decrypted Soviet cables which allowed the FBI and NSA to know that the Rosenbergs were guilty and that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American spies (traitors) in the government and in sensitive industries (Venona was declassified and released to historians in 1995). The latter addresses Soviet archival documents demonstrating the same thing.

TallDave writes:I'm still waiting to hear one non-traitor who was abused excessively. Most of the people he got fired were treated as heroes and given cushy jobs at prestigious institutions. "McCarthyism" is a crock.

The New York Times and the rest of the "enlightened" media went into a frenzy against all attempts to rout Communists in the govt when Harry Dexter White died of a heart attack three days after answering to allegations of espionage before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was Ivy League educated and a well-respected New Deal Economist who had been highly placed in FDR's Treasury Dept; and was named by two defecting spies as a Soviet agent.

For decades, most on the left responded with shrill cries of "McCarthyism" and such when the "martyred" White was brought to their attention as a spy. However, the documentary evidence cited in my post above makes it impossible to any longer deny that this liberal saint was a traitor-- among many other things, decrypted cables from KGB agents going to Moscow discuss White setting up a plan to meet his Soviet contacts in either "safe" apartments or in moving vehicles, and that he had discussed it with his wife and they both felt the risk of getting caught was worth it if he could aid the USSR. (As noted, these decryptions have only been available to the public for a decade.)

McCarthy went about it very badly, but the problem he identified was quite real. (There were hundreds of others just like White in FDR's Admin.)

TallDave:

"I got a package here for you marked "facts" from a place called "reality.""

Open the package and read it. Please, you need to.

""There are arguments on both sides."
No there aren't. What possible argument could there be for allowing vote fraud?"

I'll try to make it simple for you.

Photo IDs are not foolproof. I suggest that original birth certificates and biometric devices by required for all votes in the future. And there are not two sides to the issue - to quote you: "What possible argument could there be for allowing vote fraud?"

Oh, there can be an argument against any particular purported fraud reduction plan.

""But the facts are not as you say."

Yes, they are. There were recounts done by several papers, and under all legal scenarios Bush won. The only way Gore maybe wins is if undervotes are counted only in Gore-leaning counties, which violates FL election law on two counts."

No, the facts are not as you say. They're as I said. Go find any credible, detailed summary of the 'recounts done by several newspapers' (it was one big recount done by a consortium), and post the info and a link here, and we'll settle the facts. I'm right, and you're wrong.

""McCarthyism" is a crock."

I can only repeat myself: I don't disagree with the points Mona well documents about the fact that there were spies (and that the denials of this were excessive), but you say nothing, as I said before, about the excesses and abuses. In fact, you wrongly deny them.

You imply there is not one single person who was a victim - you need to read books on the other side.

You asked for one name of a victim. OK, here's one name, the man discussed in the following thread.
http://www.dustbury.com/archives/000641.html

Even Mona can admit that McCarthy "went about it very badly".

You know, child sexual abuse is a bad thing, and it's a real thing, but that does not mean that the hysteria we went through a while ago of false prosecutions of pre-school owners were not an evil hysteria. You can't defend the wrongs by listing cases of real abuse.

p.s., Mona, kudos on the documentation.

Craig, you are quite hilarious. You purport to be debunking others, but all you succeed in doing is demonstrate that you've drunk all the pitcher of Koolaid yourself.

You've only shown the wilful denial of reality you claim others possess.

Craig claims: No, the facts are not as you say. They're as I said. Go find any credible, detailed summary of the 'recounts done by several newspapers' (it was one big recount done by a consortium), and post the info and a link here, and we'll settle the facts. I'm right, and you're wrong.

Based on all data that I've seen, you are wrong. If you know of something credible demonstrating that Gore should have won, please link to it. In the meantime, I see no reason to doubt what even the anti-Bush MSM has determined about the matter. I read the consortium reports when they were current, but have not seen any of this other "evidence" you claim exists -- so please, link if it exists.

You add: kudos on the documentation.

Thank you, but to bring this back to the issue of Kos, he is precisely the sort of leftist source that would have pilloried anti-Communists and dismissed the espionage issue as McCarthyism, even as against those liberals who were concerned (and there definitely were some, just as there are Democrats and left-of-center individuals today who understand the imperatives of the WOT). Denial of Stalin's crimes was a staple of many on the far left and among many liberals, until very recently-- and apologia can still be found in the pages of the Nation. The right, and realistic liberals who get savaged by others on the left, for whatever their other faults, have a long pedigree of being correct on national security issues. I attribute this to the fact that the far left regards the U.S. as the enemy, which is what the CPUSA and its fellow travelers thought; today, the far left simply has no existing alternative (such as the USSR) to prefer. Only the anti-American animus remains.

You, yourself, exhibit unreasonable thinking, as for instance by equating an American who says "screw 'em" about the murderous video-taped beheadings of fellow Americans by religious lunatics, with the civilian deaths unavoidable in freeing a people from a tyrant who has been killing and torturing them and piling them (including children) in mass graves. The Dresden bombings killed a lot of civilians, too, but removing Hitler was necessary. One can only imagine how the nation would have reacted to a U.S. citizen celebrating the Nazi's beheading of a U.S. civilian -- and to someone who would defend such a thing by claiming the celebration was no different than silence about air raids on Der Fuhrer's homeland. The nation as a whole might have questioned the patriotism of such individuals.

It is not possible, as Bill has eloquently stated, to hold reasoned discussions with Kos or most of those who participate at his site. I do engage in exchanges with left-liberals on the issue of Bush's foreign policy elsewhere, but the site I have chosen to do that enforces civility and the liberal-left site owners are not moonbats unmoored from reality. They are not anti-American. I'd fall over in a faint if one of them expressed anything but outrage over the beheadings.

Craig,

I suggest that original birth certificates and biometric devices by required for all votes in the future.
Ha! The Democrat Party would NEVER agree to that. They veto similar measures over and over right here in WI. Just look at the legislative record; Democrats oppose anything that will reduce vote fraud, because vote fraud wins them elections.

Re the FL recounts: Nope, you're wrong. It's amazing how you can assert things so strongly when you're dead wrong.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html

In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.

And, as I described above -- the Herald pointed to one scenario under which Gore could have scored a narrow victory -- a fresh recount in all counties using the most generous standards.

Here's the other major media recount:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

More election trivia here, including the fact VNS and the MSM suppressed voting in the GOP-heavy FL panhandle: http://www.florida2000election.com/facts.htm

Re: http://www.dustbury.com/archives/000641.html

Where was McCarthy involved in that case? It was a military court-martial (for what? oh, he doesn't say. Hmmmmmmmm.). Also, there was no blacklist for "local electronics firms," so the story makes little sense. Sounds more likely he was a not-very-employable Communist sympathizer who did something untoward in the military -- and again, it had nothing to do with McCarthy.

And the referring link from Mr. Alan Moore in the article is broken, too. Did he get called on a bogus story and take it down?

Who pissed in your pot of coffee?

We will just have to disagree. If you want to see the crackpot talking points before they hit the mainstream, there is no better place than the diaries at Kos to visit.

If you want policy points, then Yglesias and Drum are the place to go...

TallDave writes: Also, there was no blacklist for "local electronics firms," so the story makes little sense. Sounds more likely he was a not-very-employable Communist sympathizer who did something untoward in the military -- and again, it had nothing to do with McCarthy.

No, it had to do with Harry Truman, who instituted loyalty screening in the late '40s. (But lefties typically include all such measures under the dismissive epithet of "McCarthyism," nevermind that McCarthy was not yet on the scene.) If Mr. Moore's father was a member of the CPUSA, or a non-member but sympathizer like Harry Dexter White described above, he should not have been employed in any electronics firm that in any way engaged in military contracting.

The Venona decrypts and the Soviet archives show that Julius Rosenberg's spy ring was not primarily about atomic espionage -- tho it did do some of that. In the main, the agents whose data Rosenberg collected and forwarded to Moscow came from CPUSA members who were, as was Mr. Moore's father, electronic engineers.

Some engineers who worked in private industry and passed technological secrets to courier Rosenberg, included Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant. When the "innocent" (as too many liberals insisted) Rosenberg was arrested for espionage, Barr and Sarant slipped into Mexico and ended up in the USSR where they spent the rest of their lives working in electronic engineering for their true Motherland.

Other engineers who passed data to Rosenberg were: Max Elitcher and his wife (actually, I do not believe she was an engineer), both of whom worked for the govt, Elitcher worked on fire control systems for heavy naval artillery at the U.S. Bureau of Standards and passed that and much else on to the Soviets, while his wife passed data from her position at the War Dept; then there was another engineer who passed data to Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, who worked for a private electronics firm on military contracts, and Sobell passed what he knew to the Soviets via Rosenberg. Both Elitcher and Sobell were flagged by the FBI when they attended an "American Peace Mobilization" rally, a CPUSA front group. The FBI's suspicions about that rally and both engineers turned out to be correct.

There are just many more examples, but McCarthy had very little to do with the PROPER exclusion of Mr. Moore's father from employment, if his background check showed membership in or affinity for the CPUSA or any of its front groups. There is no known instance of such individuals refusing to spy for Stalin, except on grounds of unacceptable risk. None on principle.

It is a very disturbing picture that emerges from Venona and the Soviet archives: American scientists who were to the left were delighted to spy for Stalin. I could list many more names of them, but the books I cited would be the best way to learn about this disgusting example of intellectuals of the left who truly do not have any loyalty to the United States. In any event, I have no sympathy for Mr. Moore's daddy, if he fit the profile after a background check.

Who pissed in your pot of coffee?

Ah, nobody. Just disputing your assertion.

PS - Tell me again about the time that you and Kos stole Reynolds' clothes while he was skinny dipping at blogger camp ...

PS - Tell me again about the time that you and Kos stole Reynolds' clothes while he was skinny dipping at blogger camp ...

hehe. You want to hear that story AGAIN?

That's a pretty impressive grasp of events Mona, and well-articulated. If it weren't so statistically unlikely, I'd almost think you were Mona Charen, slumming here in the 'sphere (no offense Bill).

TallDave writes: I'd almost think you were Mona Charen

You know, you are the third person to "accuse" me of being her. But I'm not a social conservative, which that Mona is, and she is Jewish, while I am culturally Catholic but, at the end of the day, a non-theist and libertarian.

Also, I don't think Charen holds a particular interest in the history of American Communism. I do, albeit an avocational one. (Could I do it over again, I'd pursue a Ph.D. in American Studies with an emphasis on intellectual history, instead of going to (blech) law school.)

BTW, you might find this interesting. Doing a search of Kos, I found little discussion of the Venona decrypts and what the Soviet archives reveal about Communist and fellow-traveling espionage. Except one diary. That laments that the Democratic Party was pressured by "McCarthyism" to "abandon" Communists, a group who the author perceives as a Democratic "ally." A Dem in the comments who coherently and sensibly objects to including Stalinists and spies in the fold is not well-treated. You should look at this incredible display of a contemporary embrace of Stalinists as natural Dem brethren at How Our Party Crumbles-The treatment of Communists.

(And I support equal treatment of gays, and would imagine a number of them would not appreciate being likened unto Stalinists, as that Diary does.)

Craig,

No, the facts are not as you say. They're as I said. Go find any credible, detailed summary of the 'recounts done by several newspapers' (it was one big recount done by a consortium), and post the info and a link here, and we'll settle the facts. I'm right, and you're wrong.

TallDave posted the links to the recounts by credible newspapers, which showed that Bush won.

BTW, you might find this interesting.
Thanks, that was interesting. It's amazing that anyone can write counterfactual things like this: "With baseless slanders of treason, the Red Scare ruthlessly demonized one small part of the liberal fringe as a threat to the country." I also enjoyed the idea that Communism was unfairly maligned (maybe it was the gulags, or the 100 million killed, or perhaps the totalitarian oppression).

Also, I don't think Charen holds a particular interest in the history of American Communism.
Believe it or not, she has a book on it -- Useful Idiots, it's called, after Lenin's phrase for Communist sympathizers in the West. Great book. It was similar to Ann Coulter's Treason, but more thorough and laid out in less bellicose prose. Definitely worth the read.

I'm not much of a so-con either, but Charen does makes some very compelling arguments re crime and welfare in her latest book, Do-Gooders. I don't agree with all of her conclusions, but she does put together a convincing case that some pendulums had swung too far for things like welfare entitlements and leniency on violent criminals in the 1960s (throwing out evidence on technicalities, etc.), to the great detriment of society. Worth a look, just for the statistics she's pulled together on the subjects. I was surprised to learn the welfate rate was far higher during 1994 than during the Depression, and that conviction rates per arrest dropped by 2/3 during the 1960s.

PIMF! Reposted for readability.

BTW, you might find this interesting.
Thanks, that was interesting. It's amazing that anyone can write counterfactual things like this: "With baseless slanders of treason, the Red Scare ruthlessly demonized one small part of the liberal fringe as a threat to the country." I also enjoyed the idea that Communism was unfairly maligned (maybe it was the gulags, or the 100 million killed, or perhaps the totalitarian oppression).

Also, I don't think Charen holds a particular interest in the history of American Communism.
Believe it or not, she has a book on it -- Useful Idiots, it's called, after Lenin's phrase for Communist sympathizers in the West. Great book. It was similar to Ann Coulter's Treason, but more thorough and laid out in less bellicose prose. Definitely worth the read.

I'm not much of a so-con either, but Charen does makes some very compelling arguments re crime and welfare in her latest book, Do-Gooders. I don't agree with all of her conclusions, but she does put together a convincing case that some pendulums had swung too far for things like welfare entitlements and leniency on violent criminals in the 1960s (throwing out evidence on technicalities, etc.), to the great detriment of society. Worth a look, just for the statistics she's pulled together on the subjects. I was surprised to learn the welfate rate was far higher during 1994 than during the Depression, and that conviction rates per arrest dropped by 2/3 during the 1960s.

Nice recounting of the facts, TallDave. Had one comment: You ran the quote: And, as I described above -- the Herald pointed to one scenario under which Gore could have scored a narrow victory -- a fresh recount in all counties using the most generous standards.

This is correct, if you mean by "the most generous standards" ... "standards which would not meet the constitutionality test of even an obviously biased heavily-Democrat Florida State Supreme Court."

As has also been pointed out elsewhere, the people who did the studies admit the existence of a bias in their recounts, and admit that there were more liberals than conservatives participating in their mock recounts. Thus it is saying quite a bit that they had such a great difficultly in locating a scenario in which Gore would actually win.

Gore lost, people died. Just kidding.

I think your last word was correct. Thinking, and that sort of place is more venting and emoting than thinking.

The replies are a mixed bag.

Some of them simply remind me of the huge gulf on some issues between different people, how nearly impossible it is to bridge. Imagine for a minute you were before the Civil war trying to argue with a slave-supporting community why it was wrong, that you were arguing in the 19th century for why the native American treatment was wrong, that you were arguing in 1935 with your fellow Germans why Hitler was wrong or in 1937 with your fellow Japanese why the country's militarism was wrong, or for one last example, that you were arguing in 1955 Alabama that racism was wrong.

You can see the difficulty in reaching across real divides and having any effect.

I find many on the right - and a few on the left - regularly unable to accept facts which contradict their partisan views. I see big differences in world views which result in an absence of any communication, at each shouts at the other over their inability to see the obvious.

Sometimes, this gets worse, as with Mona's sad decline to the argument that her opponents dislike America. It's a false, cheap argument which reflects poorly on her, in contrast to her other good content.

Each side can construct arguments why the other dislikes the nation, by pointing out their opinion on how the others' policies will hurt the nation, therefore they want to hurt the nation. It's wrong and poor for discussions. I see it done far more by the right.

Some on the right support a blind patriotism - any criticism of the US is seen as unpatriotic, as hating the country - 'my country right or wrong' is not especially offensive to them. Many on the left want the US to be the best country it can be, which means pointing out its flaws to they can be improved. Often their doing so is constructive; sometimes it's not. Liberals are responsible for most of the positive change in society; they're also sometimes guilty of opposing a wrong without having a better alternative available.

As Chesterson said, "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."

On the 2000 election, I saw a couple things. One was posting some information that said what I said as evidence that I was wrong; and I also saw some false information posted.

I'll summarize here.

There are three main areas I'm aware of which affect Gore winning Florida in 2000.

1. If all the votes where voter intent could be measured had been counted sttewide, he won.

2. Various problems such as the state illegally suppressing the legal votes of many people who had committed felonies outside of Florida andmoved to Florida; the creation of a 'felon purge list' of tens of thousands names with a very high error rate; and some high rates of disqualified ballots.

3. The butterfly ballot problem.

Each of these three can be clearly proven to be nearly certain as to costing Gore the election.

But we're discussing #1, so here's some info which should clarify the facts, and some discussion.

First, the MSM, represented by the Washington Post, reporting the two key findings I mentioned:

"At one level, the efforts of a consortium of news organizations to revisit the election controversy yielded a simple, even sensational, revelation: If there had been some way last fall to recount every vote -- undervotes and overvotes alike, in all 67 Florida counties -- former vice president Al Gore likely would be in the White House...

If Gore had gotten everything he asked for last fall -- if every ballot his lawyers were asking to be recounted in the final days had been recounted -- he still would have lost to George W. Bush, according to the consortium's ballot analysis."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12604-2001Nov11?language=printer

Ironically, here's Matt Drudge accurately reporting the same:

"A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election

commissioned by the nation's main media outlets shows Al Gore edged ahead of George W.

Bush "under all the scenarios for counting all undervotes and overvotes statewide," the

DRUDGE REPORT has learned...

Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Gore, but Gore could

have "reversed the outcome -- by the smallest of margins -- had he pursued and gained a

complete statewide recount,"...

Under any standard that counted all disputed votes in Florida, Gore erased Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes.

Gore followed a legal strategy that would have led to his defeat even if it had not been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to one interpretation set for publication.

Gore sought a recount of a small number of disputed ballots while the review indicates his only chance lay in a course he advocated publicly but did not pursue in court -- a full statewide recount of untallied votes!

Gore took a 171-vote lead when the consortium tried to recreate how each county said it would handle a court-ordered statewide recount, and a 42-vote lead under what was called the "Palm Beach standard"."
http://www.drudgereport.com/mattv.htm

The media, shortly after 9/11 when this came out in November, were in no mood to undermine Bush, who was at about 90-95% approval ratings. I've seen quotes, though I can't link them, from media saying this affected how they reported the story.

I saw one editor who commented, presumably tongue in cheek but still tellingly that they might need to wear bullet proof vests after reporting the story.

Here's a typical example, from CNN, of the reporting, with headlines focusing on the scenarios where Bush won, and language biased towards emphasizing the scnaerios where Bush won, even though the stories did have the fact that Gore would have won if all the votes were counted:

Note the headline: "Florida recount study: Bush still wins"
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html

I can hardly blame the people here who get it wrong with such coverage. The right-wing media did even worse, with direct lies claiming that Bush won all the scenarios, for example, the WSJ editorial page and Bill O'Reilly:
"[F]or the record, Mr. Bush won the last election under every single vote recount, including those painstakingly run by the media."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200406230010

"At least four organizations analyzed the Florida vote in 2000, Mr. Cuevas, and all concluded Bush would have won no matter what."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200407200008

Here's some discussion with additional links on the topic:
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/12263

And one more summary of the various recounts:
"Had limited recounts of undervotes been completed last year, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency. However, if both undervotes and overvotes were recounted statewide, Gore would have had enough votes to carry Florida."
legacy.poynter.org/centerpiece/110901_recount.htm

BTW, re: the comment on the Bush-hating MSM, it's another area we'll agree to disagree on. It's a propaganda victory, not a fact that stands up to rational analysis. Read Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" for good info, or if you just want a link for a sample of the issue:
http://media.eriposte.com/4-6.htm

Briefly on McCarthy, I agree with the comments generally that there was a real problem, and that the left has not been entirely accurate about that in the past, understating the problem. But that does not justify the excesses, any more than the fact that child abuse is a real issue justifies the abusive and hysterical prosecutions we saw for a period of innocent people. Showing that there were real abuses does not answer the excesses.

Here are some more names for McCarthy victims:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccarthyism.htm

Mona, you confused the issue of the KOS 'screw them' comment about the killing of mercenaries who were killed with the beheadings of others. You go on to make an analogy with the Dresden bombings and an American who might react to a German beheading an American in response.

It's not that apt an analogy; the nature of the wars was different (Hitler versus our choosing, on false pretenses, to go after a horrific dictator we'd put in power and armed with WMD); Americans did not understand a lot of what happened in WWII at the time; Americans were very caught up in the passions of the war (imagine the different responses to an American who suggested the Japanese internment camps were wrong during the was, versus the US government apologizing for the camps later); and much more. How about comparing how Americans felt about the Native Americans killing Custer at the time - when mentioning that he was out to slaughter their men, women and children would have been seen as traitorous - versus now, when many can see the Native Americans as more 'justified' for some of their violence, as being more comparable to the Iraqis killing armed mercenaries who have been widely reported to be responsible for a lot of trigger-happy innocent Iraqi killings. This does not mean agreeing with the terrible fanatics who want to do wrong in the Middle East. I suspect KOS was expressing frustration at the one-sided views of the value of human life.

You dismiss all killings of innocent Iraqis as fully justified and 'for a good cause', while any killings of mercenaries must only be seen as a wrong, evil act. Your morality appears based on whose ox gets gored, and what type of weapons do the goring.

"The Dresden bombings killed a lot of civilians, too, but removing Hitler was necessary. One can only imagine how the nation would have reacted to a U.S. citizen celebrating the Nazi's beheading of a U.S. civilian -- and to someone who would defend such a thing by claiming the celebration was no different than silence about air raids on Der Fuhrer's homeland. The nation as a whole might have questioned the patriotism of such individuals."

You know, the warped views you hold are revealed by your twisted phrasing of a citizen "celebrating" the beheading. How about a US Citizen who suggested that maybe the Native Americans were not entirely unjustified in scalping Custer, considering he was there committing genocide on them?

Can you conceive of that situation where the public might scream out in offsense against the person, and yet the person migth actually have a point, or are the only examples you have ones the other direction, where you twist the person who says "wow, look at this, the US was trying to provoke Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor" into the person "celebrating" the casualties there?

You see the right wing use the argument that we're 'better than' the enemy, as if that's the standard - and as if they're in any even fair about that low standard, defining terms to fit their own side.

The right drags the US down by doing so, while the left has the balance to both support the defense needed AND to avoid becoming yet another immoral power, pursuing power for its own sake, with the usual self-righteous excuses.

I had this sit for a couple days waiting for me to add additional points and editing, but I'm not feeling the investiment has much chance of useful discussion as a payoff on the larger issues, so I I'll post the draft as it is.