Krauthammer Desperately Seeking Nail

Joe: welcome back. I dismissed Krauthammer a while back as a fatuous gasbag – is there another kind? (watch SGW coming in with a rejoinder!). Yet this man, Gerson, Kristol, Kagan and others get to belabour us with puff pieces at the WashPo. Tells one something about the quality of the discourse in the Village.

bitterpill8 – Don’t forget George Will and good ol’ Fred Hiatt himself, as well as Robert Novak until fairly recently.
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Not to mention the horrid reporting of one Ms. Shailagh Murray. And to think the paper is still considered some kind of horrible lefty screed paper by most right-wingers.

I had a bit different take on his trip, Joe, but I do agree with you. It won’t be an overnight success, the effort to rebuild America’s image in the wake of Bush’s serial fiascos.
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On Afghanistan, didn’t they promise some 8,000 troops (including 3,000 police)? While not a lot, and I’m not sure they are going to put them in harms’ way, like we are, this move relieves us of having to police the domestic side of things as well. Not a bad thing, by any means.
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On the economic policies, his approach is to manage globalization, not just accept it as “inevitable” and do nothing – which was why Europe was happy with the old arrangements.
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Like China, they thrive on those massive trade deficits, and any sane individual would want to see that money pipeline stay open.
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And, of course, with only 37,500 troops in South Korea (along with our current entanglements) war over a missile launch is even less sensible than it was before.
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Those neocons are just puffing smoke in your face, Joe. They want to be noticed!

Klein I have one and only one comment. You could only wish to hold a candle to Krauthammer’s intelligence and journalistic abilities. Go play in the Daily Kos sandbox, that is where you belong.

“Obama admitted past U.S. misbehavior!”
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How many republican columns were written complaining about President Clinton apologizing? 1000? The one form of conservation they seem to believe in is recycling.

Rusty,
Go play in the Stormfront sandbox. We all know its where you belong.

A more tedious, predictable and wrong-headed Zionist ideologue than Krauthamer? There certainly aren’t many, though bitterpill mentions a handful who are in contention on the roster of the liberal leftist socialist Washington Post (On an aside- after 10 years of subscription I am finally done with the Washington Post. Liberals are ascendent, Democrats control the White House, Congress and the majority of state houses, and you take this time to hire of all people Bill freakin’ Kristol who has never been right about anything in his entire life? Feh.)

How is the recruiting going for you at NAMBLA, Dirks? Getting many boys to play with?

I think Rusty should hitch his horses to Krauthammers’ wagon.
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It’s already sinking, so, in effect we kill two birds with one stone.
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Hmmm. Wait a second. Now just how many metaphors did I slaughter here?

I wouldn’t know Rusty, I don’t link to such places…..

when will krauthammer get the position at Mickey D’s he deserves?

The Washington Post is now the ghetto of op ed contributors. Its great to see somebody of Joe’s stature call the Kraut out for his neocon hawkish bullsh*t after all these years. He is held up as some kind of gold standard of conservative thought when the truth is he is just another war cheerleader coward who has probably never been in let alone won a fight in his life. If you want to know what the people think about such fatuous gasbags (thanks bitter) check out this clip from CSPAN of a caller straight PWNING them for continuing to have neocons on to push nothing but war. Rich Lowery gets the gas face and so does the Kraut
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Neo-conservatism is based on a foundation of false fear and projecting or posturing competence. Reality doesn’t play a role in their world. If you pretend to know what you are talking about, and appeal to emotion, there is a possibility of getting away with it, irrespective of the facts. That hope is all they have left to cling too.

In case anyone doubts Rusty’s Nazi tendencies…..
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/03/02/shocking/#comment-47333

Our local daily (yes, we still have one) recently started carrying K-Hammer (his street name) regularly. The local reaction was “It’s garbage, but at least it fills that vast ideological gulf between George Will and Cal Thomas.”

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s only two modes of Joe Klein: general, yet grandiose, statements heavily flavored with ideology and hit-and-run pieces on random “neocons,” coincidentally also weighted with heavy ideology. If you keep going long enough, you might turn into a parody of yourself.
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1: You imply that endless apology is somehow a sign of renewed strength. Not so. Asking Iran to return to the state of relations we “enjoyed” thirty years ago…e.g. a couple of hostage crises? Right.
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2: You tell us that the Euros are unwilling to help in Afghanistan because they were left to “fend for themselves?” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAA…ahh…that’s not funny. Leaving aside the fact that Americans have always been the majority presence in the country, since it kind of IS an American war, or that they had to cope with milquetoast “troops” who refused missions obviously beyond their capacity, such as fighting at night, the Euros left Iraq too. I would guess that’s not for a lack of American leadership or support. I would guess that’s because the Euros are JERKS.
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3: Rampant capitalist corruption during the Reagan-Bush era (shouldn’t that be Reagan-Bush-Clinton?? After all, he WAS in between those two) is now a reason to oppose an act of socialism by a lefty administration? You really are rich.
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4: Yes, those idiots in North Korea are totally harmless even as they continue to kidnap and hold Japanese citizens and build ICBMs. Just like the winbags in Iran who want us to believe they’re building a peaceful nuclear reactor totally unrelated to a nuclear bomb of any sort to provide energy even though their country is oil rich. Yes, continue apologizing for them, by all means. No, that’ll never be a cause for concern.
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Actually, I may or may not cross to your side on the missile defense system, but what I can’t stand is your endless torrent of apologetic ramblings for practically any jerk on the world stage who possesses some or all of the following qualities – nuke-desiring, dictatorial, extremist, communist, or an enemy of America. Just saying.

yoshi:
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I don’t think you are even old enough to know what a real communist or socialist is.
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In addition, maybe you need to wake up and acknowledge that the last eight years actually did happen. After all, the “gambit” of blaming Clinton is starting to get old.

yoshi
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From Joe Klein’s piece re your #4
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The real North Korean threat, created by George W. Bush’s first-term ineptness, is the nuclear fuel that was produced in the past six years–fuel that the wildly impoverished North Koreans could sell to terrorists or rogue states (as they sold their nuclear plant design to the Syrians).
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How you got out of that that Joe thinks the North Koreans are harmless is beyond me.

An act of socialism……
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Hmmm, the mind reels. What could that mean?
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I find it fascinating to watch words get utterly drained of meaning by their overuse.

53_3
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Most “conservatives” wouldn’t know socialism if it bit them on the ass.

Hell, Yoshi, I don’t think you even know what you mean when, and if, you were to mouth the word ‘liberal’…

Dirks go shove it where the sun don’t shine buddy. You simply prove how stupid you are when you post former links, and then they follow to the article and see that your comments are totally made up.
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But this is the new democrat strategy to feebly attempt to discredit someone using MoveOn.org tactics of smear and lies, when in fact nothing of the sort is true.
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Talking about GPS again Dirks?
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http://phd9.blogspot.com/

Canada now has a Conservative leader who hasn’t even attempted to dismantle their “socialist” healthcare and wouldn’t.
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Europe which has had Conservative leadership in Tony Blair still has socialized medicine.
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Just what “socialist” acts are being attempted by the Obama administration? Really inquiring minds want to know. And we have all day to wait for a response.

It is actually quite simple, the 2nd American Revolution. Be very afraid little liberals.

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Definitely sounds like a threat to me Paul Dirks. I can imagine what us “little liberals” should be afraid of in the context of the 2nd amendment, can’t you?

sg
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I’ve been around since the missile crisis. I was old enough to hear about it, but not enough to really embrace it. Saw the rise and fall of the ‘domino theary’. I saw Russia rise as a serious threat, I saw the Prague ‘spring’. Saw the rise of the ‘solidarity movement’ in the ’70s and how it eventually became the first brick to fall in the Soviet empire.
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Reagan was just a baffoon with a loud mouth taking advantage of a situaion developing long, looooong before him. Gorbechev knew his empire wasn’t tenable and he took enormous risks – and lost control.
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But these ‘conservatives’ (as you put it), only know the Cold War from the School of Reagan, and what they hear from some would-be historian bent on revising history.

Apparently I need to spell it out.
here’s the target of Rusty’s first link:
http://www.altermedia.info/civil-rights/american-gun-stores-running-out-of-ammo_704.html
Here’s the adjacent article.
http://www.altermedia.info/civil-rights/the-problem-with-whites-by-prof-kevin-macdonald_689.html
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No revolution was ever accomplished without some martyrs. The revolution that restores the legitimacy of white identity and the legitimacy of white interests will be no exception.

They’re getting restless, and potentially a big, big problem, sg. It is something to worry about.
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/09/pa.shooting.suspect/index.html
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I remember the rabidity of the GOPers prior to the bombing of the ERM building in 1995, and I worry that the threat of domestic terrorism at the hands of people like Rusty could become as urgent an issue than Al Queda.
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Terrorists are terrorists…

I suppose the current line of attack is to point to TARP and other government interventions in the economy that happened under Republicans, then say that I’m unfairly tarring Obama with the brush of socialism. Actually, SG, you’ve already done that for me.
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I don’t dispute any of that (except, of course, the unfair part). TARP and other initiatives for government to regulate and control the economy all have a modicum of socialism in them – some more than others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The US has existed as a capitalist-socialist blend for a long time. Unfortunately, we seem to be moving towards more and more government intervention in the economy – which is to say, more socialism.
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Please don’t drag this into silly word games about whether Obama is a “socialist” or not. The fact is, he has initiated and is trying to enact more socialist-leaning policies. All of these should be judged on their merits. They are not necessarily bad because they are “socialist.”
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Re North Korea, SG, I admit that I was unfair to Klein in that remark. I still stand by the rest of my objections, however. And I will also note that Klein implicitly defines North Korea as being neither a rogue state nor a state supporting of terrorist activities by his omission of the word “other,” a curious statement.

sg
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Like Social Security here, in Canada and Europe, UHC is the ‘third rail’ for them.

“I suppose the current line of attack is to point to TARP and other government interventions in the economy that happened under Republicans, then say that I’m unfairly tarring Obama with the brush of socialism.”
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Only if you want to ignore this, Yoshi:
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/11/24/the-real-bailout-cost-7-4-trillion.aspx
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Or this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30148372/
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And didn’t I mention?
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I just got my first paycheck with Obama’s tax cut today.
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Not a lot, but around 10% of my total taxes…

You see, Yoshi, the world really is different than how you percieve it.
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It’s not FOXworld, after all…

Yoshi,

Trying to have any discourse with the likes of 53_3, sgwhite, and Paul Dirks is like trying to debate the definition of a terrorist with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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Ahmadinejad sees terrorism as the basis for his existence. It is not terrorism, but jihad in his mind.
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Same goes for the secular progressives. They want socialist anarchy to be the rule of law in our country, not democracy.
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This I think explains well what the Democrats also know as secular progressives want for our country;
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“Another thing in our favor is that a future socialist movement should have less trouble with reformism than the old movement had. In times of political crisis, it is the enemy within that diverts people from revolution.

Reformism has already undergone a considerable decline and hopefully this will continue. This weakness stems from the fact that it is hard to get excited about marginal changes to welfare programs or to how the government goes about its business. In the past this was very different. There were many reforms to get exited about – universal suffrage, the introduction of old age pensions, workers compensation, union rights, fighting to raise wages above starvation levels, the basic welfare safety net, ending racial and gender discrimination, and so on. It was also possible to paint socialism as a reform that could develop under capitalism – state ownership, economic progress and more equal distribution – rather than as a fundamental rupture with the existing order. The line between revolution and reform became very blurred, and reform offered an immediately more promising basis to build a movement than radical rhetoric .

That statist vision has lost so much of its shine that even the militant opponents of economic liberalism don’t have the gumption to call for wholesale nationalisation, they just whine about attacks on existing statist arrangements. Their vision splendid is a return to the 1950s. This fake left also resents the way that the major labor and social democratic parties ‘betray’ reformism and think they are being very radical in militantly upholding it.

The fake left and the greens should pose little problem for a new movement once it has found its feet. While the fake left is a lingering sickness that discredits socialism and revolution, it is tiny, shrinking and ineffectual. And the greens have seen their best days. While they have successfully spread their pall of doom and made it part of the popular consciousness, they have no credible alternative and are mainly sustained by electoral niche politics and the lifestyle needs of a section of the middle class.

So what about the chances of a modest socialist movement emerging from the dust? A big problem is achieving critical mass and this is where the Net can be important. If you only have a handful of people expressing certain interesting ideas it does not get very far. However, if the handful is just a tad bigger, it triggers an explosion. The key thing, of course, is having the interesting ideas that strike a chord. You may not take the world by storm but you should attract a small minority who, for various reason, are amenable to such ideas.

A slight resurgence could also be helped by the business cycle going nasty. At the moment, the good times keep rolling on. A dramatic change in that department would provide more fertile soil.
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There is more here…. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dmcm/Articles/Prospects2.htm
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Yes indeed, Barack Obama has an agenda, and it reads and smells like Socialism plain and simple. Everything the “Progressives”, “Liberals”, or “Socialists” all point to the same place. The total destruction of the United States of America as we know it today.

“The total destruction of the United States of America as we know it today.”
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Rusty, your “America” died the day LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.

The trolls grow fat.

53, did you read my whole post? Crying wolf about the Republican bailouts is not what you should be going after.
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Please don’t drag this into silly word games about whether Obama is a “socialist” or not. The fact is, he has initiated and is trying to enact more socialist-leaning policies. All of these should be judged on their merits. They are not necessarily bad because they are “socialist.”
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Btw, the reason that 2008 didn’t have a 7 trillion deficit was because the Fed was printing money. As far as I can tell.

” They want socialist anarchy to be the rule of law in our country, not democracy.”
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Would someone deconstruct that for me? Thanks.

Joe Klein:
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The Euros didn’t buy Obama’s plea for a stimulus plan? Perhaps that has something to do with the rampant corruption that has marked US-style capitalism during the Reagan-Bush era.
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Aren’t you forgetting the role that Bill Clinton’s economic team (along with Alan Greenspan) played in legitimizing and institutionalizing cronyist and corrupt practices in banking and finance?

Economic record and the 2008 global financial crisis
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Upon Rubin’s retirement, Clinton called him the “greatest secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton.” “During his tenure as Treasury Secretary,” Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said, “Bob was an ideal public servant who put policy before politics.” [8][dead link]
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In 1997, together with then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives, when such regulation was proposed by then-head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brooksley Born. Overexposure to credit derivatives of mortgage-backed securities was a key reason for the failure of US financial institutions Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, and Washington Mutual in 2008.
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Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has said in explaining Rubin’s strong opposition to the regulations proposed by Born that Greenspan and Rubin were “joined at the hip on this.” “They were certainly very fiercely opposed to this and persuaded me that this would cause chaos.” [9] However, in Mr. Rubin’s autobiography, he notes that he believed derivatives could pose significant problems and that many people who used derivatives didn’t fully understand the risks they were taking. [10]
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According to the New York Times, “In November 1999, senior regulators—including Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Rubin—recommended that Congress permanently strip the CFTC of regulatory authority over derivatives.”[9] This advice was accepted and derivatives were kept clear of regulation by the CFTC.
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On 9 January 2009, Citigroup said that Robert Rubin had resigned as a senior adviser and would not seek re-election as a board director. [11] Press reports noted that Rubin had drawn criticism for his role in the bank’s recent problems that drove it to seek federal assistance.[12]

How is it that you managed to miss nearly an entire decade of special interest and laissez-faire ideologue dominance of government policy under Clinton, Joe Klein?
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Your selective memory on this topic does you no credit whatsoever. Why did you need to carve out the Reagan-Bush era from the entire record? Unfortunately, you sound like the desperate Krauthammer now.
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Please don’t treat your readers like drunken, bleacher-bound fans in the hot sun, Joe Klein. We’re not exclusively here to cheer wildly for our side nor to throw beer at the visiting side. It’s not false equivalence to note the almost complete concurrence of corporatist Democrats and rightist Republicans in bringing about economic disaster over the past three decades. If the whole truth doesn’t help your case against Krauthammer, perhaps you should just concentrate on what honest case there is against his silly, compulsive, rightist rants.
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Thanks so much for reading and considering this, Joe Klein.

Rusty:
That is an interesting read, and perhaps represents the inner thinking of a good many DailyKos/HuffPo schemers operating today, but I have to disagree with the objective being the total destruction of the United States. Increased socialism in the Western context has been shown to burden, not destroy, countries. I also note that on the subject of the Reinvestment Act discussion, I had a fairly polite conversation with SG.
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Nevertheless, I agree there will be consequences. How vast they are depends on what Obama does in the long remainder of his presidency.

“Btw, the reason that 2008 didn’t have a 7 trillion deficit was because the Fed was printing money. As far as I can tell.”
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Riiiight, technically, it isn’t a case of Republicans ‘bailing out’ by anything like including it in a budget.
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But exposing our country to what eventually will become a severe inflation risk while handing money out the back of the Treasury building is somehow, uh, ‘better’?
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I’d rather see it in the budget, where it really belongs.
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And actually, I wasn’t trying to drag anyone into a debate over whether Obama is socialist. He’s not, and my contention is practically none of you even know what being a ‘socialist’ is.
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Or, for that matter, whether it is even that important.
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You see, Yoshi, when I pledge Alliegence to the United States of America, I am not pledging alliegence to unrestricted, corrupt, and unregulated free enterprise.
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We have seen ample proof that that economic ideology simply didn’t work.

Krauthammer doesn’t mention, and Klein only implies, that a majority of Americans and the MSM and the Congress, fully embraced the philosophy expressed in the article and it failed so miserably and completely that Obama was overwhelmingly elected.
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Krauthammer, in true Bush spirit doesn’t just insult Obama, but about 75% of the current American opinion, and the whole, vast, rest of the world.

Guys, why is anyone taking Sg seriously. Besides his cheerleading for racially motivated assaults, he thinks that they speak Austrian in Austria. He’s a moron. You know, SG, Obama was a dummy for saying that–but you are twenty times dumber. Obama at least has the excuse of speaking extemporaneously; you actually looked it up.
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pwned!

Shhhh!
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Rusty and Yoshi are discussing what we supposedly think.
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Like they even know that…

sponge bob:
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Have you noticed that the axes you are grinding are very old and not even relevant?
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We all know what you think of Obama, so vote for Palin in 2012.
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That is, if the Republican party still exists…

yoshi
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I asked for specific “socialist” acts that the Obama administration is trying to enact. I didn’t say you called him a socialist or play petty word games. I am asking for specifics, if you have them that is.

yoshi
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I am all for polite discourse when its honest as yours is and was. If I hear the same arguments over and over that have nothing to do with the subject at hand THEN I dismiss the messanger as a troll and either dismiss or ignore them. I tend to enjoy debating rational people but have no interest in arguing with someone who will never take a moment to mull over the fact that they might be wrong.

Yoshi:
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On that subject, I didn’t jump between you and sg.
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I was responding to both Rusty, and your comments at 10:56 am.

That’s a laugh SG. Polite discourse, I did not think, included the cheerleading of racially-motivated assaults.
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Nor does it include your “BWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” over “Austrian” without an admission that you were dead f’in wrong.
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pwned

53, you’re flailing. You don’t want Obama to be characterized as a socialist (which he may be not – instead, perhaps a heavily socialist-leaning capitalist), but you characterize your opponents as holding allegiance to “unrestricted, corrupt, and unregulated free enterprise.” That’s extremism.
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In case you haven’t noticed, although they have failed us sometimes, we still have regulatory financial agencies. Indeed, the FDIC will still insure your bank account – now to the tune of $200,000 under Obama, if I remember correctly. These are somewhat socialist, of course, but they make sense.
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You’re not going to catch me in hypocrisy by providing examples of the Republican bailouts and asking “what now?” I thought you would have figured that out two or three posts ago, but apparently you haven’t. In any case, the Fed is a nonpartisan agency and Bernanke was a very highly regarded academic who, once in power, acted on lessons learned from the inception of the Great Depression. I doubt that a chief employed by a liberal president would have done differently.

Does anyone really listen to what Krauthammer says?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

SZ, I’ve been outta town on a getaway…just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and in depth response to my question about the Wapo article you brought up.

SG, one of the most prominent socialist extensions the Obama administration is supporting is the power for the Treasury Secretary to seize non-banking financial institutions, which we have already discussed in a previous thread. This carries faint reminders nationalization and a command economy. Another socialist action was impressing GM’s CEO to leave. Yet another example of socialism is the entire concept of Keynesian logic, which Obama deployed in a manner that can only be called exuberant with the stimulus bill.
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Pro or con on any of these, they are examples.

Eating their own.
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http://www.politico.com/blogs/anneschroeder/0409/Karl_Rove_accosted_by_ex_GOP_Chief_of_Staff.html

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/04/09/the-king-and-the-queen/
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Funny take on Obama’s bow.

“but you characterize your opponents as holding allegiance to “unrestricted, corrupt, and unregulated free enterprise.” That’s extremism.”
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Actually, it’s not. It is part of the philosopy of the GOP, and not to be rhetorical, Rush Limbaugh seems to think so. There are literally tons of links out there to Republicans who ascribe to the Greed is Good philosphy, and the Neocons themselves, aren’t shy about it either.
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The deregulatory atmosphere that pervaded the Bush Administration, and their inept handling of it, along with K street and other ad-nauseum (if I bothered to list them) incidences of corruption on the part of that administration are what lead me to state that.
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It’s not extremism, it’s observation. On the other side of the coin, I could brand your outlook as ‘myopy’.
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But what’s the point here? Even the Fed doesn’t act independently of Administration policy. I do think you are, if not hypocritical, at least blind to the excesses that were at times, even proudly on display during the last Administration.
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I was, of course, meeting you rhetorically head on when you commented at 10:56.

Yoshi, the more you speak the clearer it is that you’ve redefined the word socialist into unreconizability. The policies you are describing are not socialist. But by redefining what used to be uncontroversial liberal policies as ‘socialist’ the right wing gets to piggyback on all the demonization that word carries due to our Cold-war antipathy to the Soviet Bloc and the untenebility of Communism as a system.
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As I’ve argued before in other places, Free Market capitalism has many virtues but there are some specific tasks for which it is unsuited. That simple fact is considered a heresy within the Church of Reagan.
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Misuse of the word socialism is a symptom of a larger pattern of denial that we are going to have to overcome, if we, like the Soviets before us aren’t undone by our refusal to note when an experimant fails.

_He [Krauthammer] is held up as some kind of gold standard of conservative thought when the truth is he is just another war cheerleader coward who has probably never been in let alone won a fight in his life._
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Krauthammer has been in a wheelchair since he sustained a spinal cord injury while in medical school. I’m no fan of his, but fair is fair.

Rustydog:
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With respect to:
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No revolution was ever accomplished without some martyrs. The revolution that restores the legitimacy of white identity and the legitimacy of white interests will be no exception.
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Will you please just go ahead and condemn (and reject!) this Aryan Nation sh*t?
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The pieces to which you’ve linked when providing sources contain some extraordinarily vile, racist dogma, Rustydog. I’m not saying that you are to blame for the National Socialist tendencies of those on the right, but if I linked to a source in which there were accompanying pieces by Farrakhanists excoriating Jews with horrifying anti-Semetic conspiracy myths, wouldn’t you rightfully demand a clarification from me?
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Please clarify, Rustydog, by making clear your condemnation and rejection of absurd, neo-nazi rubbish like that in “The Problem With Whites” by Kevin MacDonald, in which he (seriously) states:

In managing the eclipse of white America, one strategy of the mainstream media is to simply ignore the issue. Christopher Donovan (“For the media, the less whites think about their coming minority status, the better”) has noted that the media, and in particular, the New York Times, are quite uninterested in doing stories that discuss what white people think about this state of affairs.
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It’s not surprising that the New York Times — the Jewish-owned flagship of anti-white, pro-multicultural media — ignores the issue. The issue is also missing from so-called conservative media even though one would think that conservatives would find the eclipse of white America to be an important issue. Certainly, their audiences would find it interesting.

This is a huge problem for your credibility, Rustydog. You provided this forum with links to this racist dreck, and Paul Dirks is perfectly right to remind us of who you believe is a trustworthy source for information.
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When you commiserate with Yoshi and spob over the changes that are happening to our nation, Rustydog, do you all believe as Kevin MacDonald does that “conservatives would find the eclipse of white America to be an important issue“?
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Please set the record straight once and for all, Rustydog, so that we can get on with a real debate about what “socialism” in America means without National Socialism being an issue.
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Yoshi and spob: Are you aware of Rustydog’s record of linking to neo-Aryan Nation polemics in support of his claims?

PD:
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I think that the free market is the way to go too, but I really do not think that corporations should have the same rights as individuals under the constitution (is this the interpretation or was this actually written into law? Someone link or comment, please?).
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The free market is not capable of handling social issues. And of course, any social issue could be construed as ‘socialist’, but in reality, our country is a very strange mix of both.
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On one hand, we pride ourselves in having a ‘classless’ society, or at least we aspire to it. We love the underdog and we dislike giant corporations beating up on the little guy, or pushing small business out. On the other hand, we value our captains of industry, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, etc etc etc.
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Until GOP ‘revisionists’ came around, FDR was revered as one of our brightest shining stars. He still is, despite ridiculous attempts by GOPers to tarnish it.
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Like I said:
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When I pledge Alliegence to the United States of America, I am not pledging alliegence to unrestricted, corrupt, and unregulated free enterprise.

yoshi
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I will start from the bottom. John Maynard Keynes was not a socialist and thoroughly denounced Marxism and Communism. He was just an economist who knew his sh*t and was right almost all of the time.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
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It is not socialist to attach conditions by which the government will provide any more bailout money. It happens everyday when there are hostile takeovers of one company by another. Wagoner didn’t have to resign if he didn’t want the money but it was entirely appropriate to turn off the spigot if GM wasn’t doing the things that needed to be done to become viable. I thought you were against bailing out failing institutions. And I can tell you this much, for investor confidence in GM Wagoner who oversaw their collapse had to go.
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The proposed bill doesn’t allow the Treasury Secretary alone to decide to take over non banking financial institution. Instead it has to be signed off by the Fed as well as a Congressional panel. This is indeed mirrors what the Fed does in being able to wind down a company and then sell it off. Again I fail to understand people who are against bailouts opposing this measure. The whole reason for the move is so that we don’t have too big to fail institutions anymore that eat up taxpayer money. The only other option would be more regulations to restrict non banking instutions from conducting banking functions. But I am sure THAT would be framed as socialist as well. So the question is how would YOU ensure that we never have another AIG threating the global economy should it collapse?
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By the way what that is isn’t nationalization, its receivership which is what the FDIC also does. The difference is with nationalization the government takes cocntrol with intent on keeping control indefinitely or forever. Recievership is taking control solely for the purpose of cleaning up the books to sell it back out into the free market. One is socialist, one isn’t.

Rusty:
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Finally!
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What SZ said!

PD:
I forgot the nationalizing of AIG, which has bookended the administrations of 43 and 44. You don’t think the government dismissing the head of a (formerly?) privately owned company is socialist? You don’t think the government seeking to gain the power to promptly nationalize financial firms is socialism?
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A good lot of our policies that create an “equal and fair” playing field are somewhat socialist. It’s just the way it is. Softening corporations’ falls is a big one. We just have to suck it up and admit that the US is not an entirely capitalist country by any means whatsoever.
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53, it is not the philosophy of the GOP, or else there would be calls for the abolishing of the SEC, etc. Republicans actually called for more regulation of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac a couple of years before the crisis. Would it have stopped it? No. But it just shows that Republicans are not entirely beholden to deregulation first and foremost. Social Security remains a socialized institution. Who’s calling for abolishing that?

That should be “mirrors what the FDIC does” not the Fed in the 3rd paragraph.

“Does anyone really listen to what Krauthammer says?”
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The question ought to be, why does he still have his opinions printed in the Washington Post? I could also ask why Bill Kristol, another major agitator and cheerleader for Iraq, still gets a well-paid perch with which to share his opinion with millions? In a corporate press that had the slightest degree of journalistic ethics and accountability, these men would be shunned. You’re industry is broken, Joe Klein, just like Wall Street.

somepeoplelikeit
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SZ, I’ve been outta town on a getaway…just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and in depth response to my question about the Wapo article you brought up.
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I very much appreciate you having taken the time to consider my responses, somepeoplelikeit. Thank you for the compliments.

I don’t think I’ve responded to anything Rusty has said. I don’t subscribe to Buchananistic ideas that whites are more American than other Americans. All I have ever asked is that we get rid of racial double standards in the media.
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If worries about “white America” are off base, then comments such as “typical white people” need to be off base too. Unfortunately, they are not.

Yoshi
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I am sorry but I am tired of seeinng that lie about Fannie and Freddie. Explain to all of us how if the GOP wanted tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie that they didn’t put a bill to the floor, pass it, and have it signed into law by the President? Now I will DEFINITELY wait all day on this one because its the zombie lie that won’t stop. President Bush wasn’t the first to push Fannie and Freddie to make loans to pad his homeowner stats but to say he didn’t do it is the height of revisionist history.

yoshia, I look at the dismissing the head of GM as fascistic more than socialistic. Fascism (in the economic sense) is about government control vice ownership of the means of production. In any event, the whole things is silly. Socialism in common parlance means a massibe leveling of results with respect to income and cradle to grave social welfare. By many standards, Otto von Bismarck was a socialist.

I think I’m suffering from “Socialist Exhaustion.”
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From the “Hammer”: And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country?
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Admitting mistakes is denigration? So by that logic this country is either incapable of making mistakes or when one is made, acts like it wasn’t a mistake at all and everybody else is the fool for thinking so.
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Why conservatives want their country to behave in a fashion that they would punish their kids for is interesting. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe when lil Bubba steals a cookie and is confronted he says “there was never a cookie in the first place idiot!” and the parent beams with pride.

Yoshi, see my comments on America to PD.
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Unfortunately, the calls for greater regulation amounted to nothing more than a weak countercurrent.
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Witness the fact that under the Bush Administration, it never happened.
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I think my motivation is that this president has been in office only a few months, and has been left an enormous mess that was not caused by Bill Clinton (a rhetorical tongue in cheek rebuttal), as so many GOPers like to claim. I think, in a baseline sort of way, that it might be wrong for me to hold the GOP responsible for everything.
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I’m trying to make a point clearly that for the most part Obama’s hand in things, including the ‘handouts’ or whatever, have not even hit the floor yet. Therefore, until I actually see things that really be laid in his lap, I’ll defend his agenda.
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Hence my link to that MSNBC story about the slow pace that Obama’s stimulus package is taking.

Quick question, was it a Republican or liberal Democrat who said “We are all Keynsians now”?

Damdifino.

Socialism in common parlance means a massibe leveling of results with respect to income and cradle to grave social welfare..
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No that’s called Democracy. Anytime rich folks are severely outnumbered by poor folks who can vote, then a desire for redistribution is a natural consequence. Of course the fact that government interferes with every facet of the economy no matter who’s in charge and that many of the rich get that way gaming the system is quietly swept under the rug.

Actually, I think it should be much more widely known, and further, acknowledged but Republicans that income redistribution is what keeps rural America, along with urban America, great.
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I make this point with emphasis because I am one of the ‘givers’ in this exchange. I do not mind one bit that I am.
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It must be remembered that in any region where the tax base is too small to maintain their infrstructure, their water supply, their medical facilities, their police, their electrical grid, their telephone communications systems, and indeed, many of their jobs, income redistribution is the primary means of leveling the playing field.
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I point this out with some ferocity to make clear, once and for all, that there are some ‘socialist’ mechanisms that exist within our entire system that if removed, would relegate large portions of our population to punery, and drop us back into the crowd as far as national status is concerned.

…acknowledged by Republicans…

SG:
I didn’t accuse Keynes of being a socialist. Not many people in this country are true socialists. But to call most of the people in this country – or our government – capitalists is missing a heck of a lot of nuance. If we were to be realistic, we would say that the United States is a capitalist country qualified by tinges of socialism in the way the government relates to the economy. It doesn’t necessarily mean what we’re doing is right or wrong – it doesn’t mean that we’re turning communist. But this fact isn’t often mentioned because the word “socialism” is a complete buzzkill in politics
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With respect to GM, I understand the analogy with hostile takeovers. Yet, just because this is a common practice in the business world doesn’t mean the government is effectively the same as a business in such a deal. Remember, this is taking place with taxpayer money. What it does mean is that the government has increasingly less inhibitions for stepping into the private market in increasingly large ways. We are bothering with GM because we want to control its behavior. (we, the people, through the government) When one party is the government, the situation is no longer in the realm of any sort of “free market.” It may follow corporate practices, but the parties are no longer the same and the interests at stake diverge.
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Your point in regards to nationalization and receivership is right, and I accept that distinction. Yet, just because the takeover is temporary does not mean that it is not, to some degree, a socialist move. (especially when we have no idea when we will “pull out” of companies like AIG, which is a quagmire of “temporary” and “indefinite”) The more the government steps into the free market, the more socialist it is. Again, we shouldn’t be afraid of SAYING that word.
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Finally, in regards to the bill, the WaPo article defined “consultation” with the Fed. If we could clarify, that would be nice. Also, I am still against bailing out institutions. To my knowledge, I haven’t contradicted that. Letting AIG fail doesn’t look like too bad of a prospect, so I disagree with the central conceit – “too big to fail.” And finally, which I believe is the most important point in this discussion – this crisis did not come about for lack of tools. This crisis came about because regulators were asleep. Adding more tools is just like throwing money at the situation – it won’t help and it’ll further entangle us down the road.

Just wanted to point out what passes for Krautie Logic:
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1) Is outraged at the “farce” of Obama allowing North Korea to get away with ignoring massive U.N. displeasure and running wild with missile tests.
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2) Is not outraged at the “farce” of Obama allowing Israel to get away with ignoring massive U.N. displeasure and running wild blowing Palestinian kids up in Gaza.
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But it just shows that Republicans are not entirely beholden to deregulation first and foremost. Social Security remains a socialized institution. Who’s calling for abolishing that?
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You do recall Bush’s attempts to privatize it and thus dismantle it? Or that McCain resurrected and supported the idea later during the campaign?

53 – I [i]totally agree[/i], in principle. Socialist policies are not necessarily bad, to a certain extent.
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PD:
Socialism by democracy. Redistribution is about as textbook socialist as you can get.

Aww, darn, my italics tags didn’t work. Somebody help? Heheh.
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viciousmaniac:
Please visit factcheck.org to check out the extent of Social Security privatization under McCain, which was not at all a dismantling of the system.

Yoshi, this is my point, and why I think I can safely label those who pump up the ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ fearmongering as hypocrites.
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Without, however, trying to trample on your discussion with sg, I think that ones’ ideology might play a part in deciding whether a financial institution is ‘too big to fail’ or not.
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I work with someone who is a Libertarian, and to him, the dislocation and suffering that would take place if we did nothing is acceptable.
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At which point, I think I can safely point over my shoulder to the election results and comment that most Americans really do not want to be dragged into such a social experiment, regardless of the consequences for the future.
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At least with the future, we have more time to work with it than the present…

But redistribution in which direction? Is it socialist when Raytheon and Boeing get billions of taxpayer dollars to manufacture wepaons systems that are already obsolete before they’re delivered to counter threats that dissilved 10 years prior? Is it socialism when capital gains taxes are cut in order to provide manufacrturers with the capital they need to automate output and displace workers. Is it socialism when Credit Card companies are artificially protected from the possibilty of lendee’s bankruptcy and are therefore motivated to further string people out, lending them money at terms they have no hope of repaying.
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That STINKS of socialism if you ask me…..

Yoshi:
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Use these:
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”
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”

woops, Yoshi, use left and right carats instead of brakets.
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They are the caps of , and .

Please dude.
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McCain voted for Bush’s SS scam in 2006.
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He’s on record as saying: “As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.” That was March last year.
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BTW, did you know Bush believes his failed attempt at gaming SS for the oligarchy was his greatest domestic policy achievement?
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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/13/mccain-denies-his-record-of-supporting-social-security-privatization/
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/05/bush-social-security-accomplishment/

PD:
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You have a really good point.
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Rush Limbaugh is rabidly for letting the CEO’s party on the funds they got from the bailout, which I might point out, were not the funds Obama has supplied (see MSNBC link to slowness of Obama’s bailout).
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I fail to see why we have to throw so much money at the rich when their incomes have increased by a factor of 10 over the past 30 years. It really does not make sense at all, unless, of course, one still ascribes to trickle-down, which has been thoroughly discredited.

Also, if you are trying to use html tags, like italics or bold, use the symbols and not brackets.

spob:
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If worries about “white America” are off base, then comments such as “typical white people” need to be off base too.
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Of course you are correct, and I appreciate very much the clarification.

Yoshi
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You do understand that GM came to the government for help and not the other way around right? You do realize GM could tell Obama too get bent and refuse the money and keep Wagoner right? Its not the government stepping in willy nilly to private enterprise. Its private enterprise rolling out the red carpet to the government so they can get access to tax payer funds. Thats the part that seems to be missing from your argument over GM. They asked for the money we didn’t force it on them and if they want it then its actually important that the government put conditions on it to safeguard OUR meaning the taxpayers’ investment.
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As for AIG and other non banking institutions I again ask what would YOUR suggestion be? Everyone acknowledges that regulators were asleep at the wheel but the truth is AIG and others played within the rules as they have been set forth specifically with respect to credit default swaps and CDOs. You may believe that AIG wasn’t too big to fail but the facts don’t bear that out. Had AIG gone down the market would have collapsed just like it almost did with Bear Stearns and many of the banks that AIG owed money to would have gone belly up sending a ripple effect through the rest of the financial system. It is what it is.

Whoop, guess the website considered the symbols a tag themselves (even though preview didn’t).
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Trying again, hopefully this will work. Use the > and < symbols to enclose the tag.

Sg, if you cannot figure out what language they speak in Austria, why should anyone take serious anything you have to say about more complex issues?
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pwned

Yoshi
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use then close with

yoshi, here’s a link to an HTML cheat sheet. Look for “physical codes” section about half-way down for italic and bold. It also shows how to do in-line links (yes, you too can be as cool as stuart zechman – haven’t tried it myself yet, though.)
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http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_quick.asp

ok that didn’t work. let me try to spell it out
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less than symbol then the characters “em” then greater than symbol at the beginning. same thing butt “/em” to close.

53, thanks a bunch. I have more to post on the subject, but suffice to say, it seems that most of the losses (“haircuts,” apparently) would be confined to the masters of the universe we despise.
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PD:
The key word is control.
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Anyway guys, it’s been nice discussing things with you. I gotta go now though – things to do.

Unfortunately, the brackets for HTML codes – greater-than/less-than signs – are defeating most examples so far to do “show and tell” here on the blog itself.
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It took me months to put a toe in the water, but now it’s pretty effortless.

Yoshi:
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This crisis came about because regulators were asleep. Adding more tools is just like throwing money at the situation – it won’t help and it’ll further entangle us down the road.
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While I largely concur with many of your points in this cogent response, this is not a terribly accurate description of the causes of the current crisis.
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Regulators were not “asleep”, they were tied up, had their mouths duct-taped shut, and were locked away in closets by Congressional deregulation legislation promoted incessantly despite regulators’ warnings by Bill Clinton’s Treasury and Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve.
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Regulators did not lobby for, pass or sign into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 that created the financial products monster that’s eating all of the real productive wealth of our nation for the next decade:

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999, is an Act of the 106th United States Congress which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited a bank from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services.
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The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate. For example, Citibank merged with Travelers Group, an insurance company, and in 1998 formed the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking and insurance underwriting services under brands including Smith-Barney, Shearson, Primerica and Travelers Insurance Corporation. This combination, announced in 1993 and finalized in 1994, would have violated the Glass-Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act by combining insurance and securities companies, if not for a temporary waiver process.[1] The law was passed to legalize these mergers on a permanent basis. Historically, the combined industry has been known as the financial services industry.

It is not lazy or unconscious regulators who were responsible for legalizing the framework for financial institutions to gorge themselves in a decade-long orgy of debt. It was Bill Clinton and his cabinet, the imbecile Phil Gramm and the ideologue Greenspan who allowed this all happen by taking government regulation out of the picture. At this point, adding more “tools” isn’t actually enough to kill the monster’s gluttony. It is only a return to a Citigroup-less world that will ensure that Americans’ wealth will not pay the trillion-dollar gambling debts of the politically powerful financial services cartel forever.
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It was a Republican –Teddy Roosevelt– who first came to power promising the reform (breakup) of oligopolies who were too big to fail, i.e. big enough to force the government to act first in their interests. If Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist, and trust-busting by the government on behalf of taxpayers is socialism, then so be it. Don’t you agree, Yoshi?

Isn’t it funny how allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire on the campaign trail is defined as “socialism” but when the campaign is over and you have to rebuild your cred as an economist you sing the opposite tune?
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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/10/holtz-eakin-bush-tax-cuts/
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Though economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin spent the 2008 presidential campaign advising Sen. John McCain to defend the Bush-era tax cuts, he now thinks they should be allowed to expire on Dec. 31, 2010 due to “the prospect of an Argentina-style fiscal meltdown.” Said Holtz-Eakin: “If you ask: ‘Who pays the taxes?’, it’s the first step toward not having the answer be: ‘Our kids.’

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One day hopefully soon the Republican base will notice they are being lied to, but I won’t hold my breath.

FT:
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as cool as stuart zechman
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You mean to say “as in need of a visual distraction from tedious verbosity as stuart zechman“, don’t you?
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I hope that you profit from the contemplation of Christ’s resurrection as much as I will, FT.

Obama’s critics find everything they can to dislike him ignoring the 16 years of our previous alcoholic Presidents and the associated greed and stupidity of our Congress and ignoring the fact that he has inherited the messes that face our country rather than being a cause of those problems. The common link to almost all of Obama’s critics is pure emotional personal dislike of him.

The real symbolism of Obama’s Passover Seder in the White House is that difference between Obama’s supporters and Obama’s critics is that his critics are likely descendents of Slave Owners.

[...] 10, 2009 · No Comments joe klein walks the company line: And there was–oh. my. God.–the failed North Korean rocket launch. The [...]

I don’t know how many people check out the WaPo chats but David Broder got his ass handed to him today on the subject of investigating BushCo
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/04/08/DI2009040803043.html
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It seems we the people aren’t having it from the Villagers this time.

Apocalypticism
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Thank you Mr.klein for a burst of sanity among the Neocon drivel that is generally coming out of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. I am no psychologist, but from what I have read some of these gentlemen sound like they have serious sexual performance issues which they compensate for by bluster and braggadocio.

Michael Steele doesn’t think we are in a recession.
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It seems we the people aren’t having it from the Villagers this time.
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Nobody makes David Broder into a stubborn old fool more than his own words in pixels.

[...] in Daily life, GOP, Media, Washington Post at 11:32 am by LeisureGuy Excellent blog post by Joe Klein: Charles Krauthammer, the ultimate bleating-heart neoconservative, is all atwitter [...]

Here’s another fun thread I have to miss because of work. I’ll make this short. If it p!sses off the right wing, it makes me happy. Repairing America’s reputation is going to take time. It was Obama’s first trip. When the RW starts in about how bad it was, we know the President is on the right track. The very idea of Obama possibly succeeding where Bush failed is driving them nuts. Let them clutch their pearls and wail. I’ll grab my jewels and shake them at them.

What gets me is that with all the long winded complaints around Obama’s actions made by the neocons and their faithful followers, none of them EVER offer up a better solution. Can you imagine the national and international stage if McCain was president? We’ve already gone that route and quite obviously it didn’t work. In 2000, I was shattered when Bush became our president, but as a citizen I had to swallow my pride and hand him the reins. It would be so much more productive for our country if the current smear campaign on our own president would stop. It’s a sad sad day for America when we spend so much time fighting with each other over who won the election rather than channeling our collective energy into solving the myriad problems we face.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/04/023292.php
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Food for thought . . . . . . . . .

For some reason, however, the Obama administration’s continuation of the program has drawn no similar protests.
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For some reason Powerline is a forum of liars.
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For some reason, however, the Obama administration’s continuation of the program has drawn no similar protests.
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Keith Olbermann’s scathing criticism of Obama’s secrecy/immunity claims
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Feingold’s full statement is here.
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The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin, who says there “there is something utterly un-American” about Obama’s position
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have requests in to numerous key Democratic members of Congress who vehemently opposed the Bush version of the state secrets privilege — including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, as well as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse — for comment on what the Obama DOJ is doing.
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Linking to liars…….par for the course…..

Paul Dirks
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Let me help you out with your list
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http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/obamas-campaign-web-site-still-blasts-bush-legal-tactic-obama-is-now-using/
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_consensus_obama_aping_bush_on_state_secrets.php?ref=fp1

The government’s intervention in GM is “socialism” only if bankruptcy law is also socialism. When a company goes bankrupt, the court intervenes and has to approve the restructuring plan. The administration’s actions on GM are a kind of pre-bankruptcy version of bankruptcy.
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If GM doesn’t like it, they can pass on the bailout money and go into real bankruptcy (or shape up without doing so, which seems unlikely).

sg
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I think given everything else, Micheal Steele is busy blowing the Great White Whale right now, and it really is very hard to understand what he says.
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I still can’t get over just how bereft he is of self respect and dignity.

Wait im not done…
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http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/07/the-latest-state-secrets-claim/
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http://insidecablenews.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/rachel-maddow-interview-7/

Paul Dirks I am still not done helping to make your point about lying wingnuts
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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/7/15548/97017
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http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=19800

dextropteracyberiid cf. damndifino Bennett 2007

You see Paul Dirks its not even a question of if the left aren’t protesting the assertion of states secrets like Bush did. The question is are there any big lefty blogs that AREN’T taking him to task for this. I can’t personally think of any.

Oops. How could I. My Linnaen diagnosis sucks.
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Dextropteracyberiid cf. damndifino, Bennett 2007

53_3
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re Michael Steele’s self respect and dignity, thats an easy one.
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He’s a Republican.

I knew Broder was an inept clown, but dear lord:
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David S. Broder: I’m not familiar with what the Brits are doing or if they have their own Abu Ghraibs to investigate.
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David S. Broder: I don’t know Josh Narshall’s argument so I can’t judge it.
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David S. Broder: Dear Bemidji: Your hockey team did you proud, even though they came up short last night.
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David S. Broder: I hope you are right. I am no expert, but I too have heard that Wells Fargo is a well-managed bank.
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This is on top of his usual douchebaggery, too. He is a bumbling incompetent and should have rotten tomatoes delivered to his face daily.

sg, I read all the way to the end of that chat with Broder you linked to earlier. Didn’t want his response to this last question to disappear.
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What did he really say?: I’m honestly trying to piece together what Obama really said in Europe (versus what pundits on both sides said he said) and the only thing I saw was Joel Achenbloch’s post, which was very funny but perhaps only showed one side.
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Can you point me in the direction of someone who is a critic of Obama’s behavior abroad who can similarly support his views with the president’s actual words?
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David S. Broder: You might try Charles Krauthammer
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He is never going to get it.

Ivy_B
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I am pretty sure that Broder and the Kraut hang out and have drinks a couple of nights a week. You see in the Village thats what passes as credibility. If its a guy you can have a beer with then surely he knows what he is talking about and wouldn’t lie just to try to make a point. The question is other than Eugene Robinson on Occasion and EJ Dionne who out of all of WaPos opinion writers is worth reading?

On the next additon of the Hate America Tour, will Obama include Somalia on one of his stops? The pirates of Somalia should enjoy hearing Obama denounce the United States as much as those adoring crowds of America-haters in Europe did. Maybe someone can pass word to Obama that preaching hate of the United States should stop at the waters’ edge and should not be taken to foreign soil. Obama should probably keep that hate confined to his and Jeremiah Wright’s church. Right?

Joe Klein alleges: “The point is that Krauthammer’s nonsense–the whole neoconservative project–proved an utter failure during the Bush years and now exists well outside a vast, stable, liberal-moderate consensus on foreign policy that includes most Democrats, the Bush 41 realists and the leading strategists of the U.S. military.”

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The “leading strategists of the U.S. military”? ROTFLMAO! How long will Klein continue to allege, with no evidence, that “the United States military” shares the views of the anti-military left? Does anyone at Time magazine know what evidence is?

I want everyone to read this blog post by Rick Moran about Glenn Beck who I don’t agree with on much if anything when it comes to politics.
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http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2009/04/08/glenn-beck-and-the-radical-right/
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Then go back and read the comments and tell me that Glenn Beck isn’t dangerous.

If textee really laughed his ass off there’s be nothing left of him.
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OK, folks, that’s it for today. Our next troll feeding will be tomorrow morning.

“rustyreturns” stands up for Krauthammer’s intelligence, thereby demonstrating the very limited capacities of his own….

Anybody who ends up watching Hardball tonight will see a segment about a report that General Odierno said we would escalate in Iraq instead of withdraw. I asked Spencer Ackerman about this and he said the Times of London report that tries to make this claim is pretty much just putting a bogus frame around what the General actually said.
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http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/04/10/not-guilty-yall-got-to-feel-me/#more-2505

I know it simply causes what is left of the primordial brains of the right-wing nutjobs to explode in their Neanderthal shaped heads every time the phenomenal outpouring of love and respect that President Barack Obama commands, both in America and around the world, is displayed for all of humanity to see. In their lunacy, the raging and rabid Obamahaters go “foaming at the mouth” crazy each time he is shown receiving the well deserved affection and devotion that any rational citizen, or group of citizens, would give an intelligent, articulate, attractive, confident, courageous, spectacularly insightful and boldly visionary world leader. Especially one whose strategic leadership skills are urgently needed in this desperate hour to rectify and repair the massive destruction perpetrated upon our nation and the entire world by the Cheney/Bush dictatorship during the nightmare of the last 8 years.

Because of their self delusion, and the fanatical, irrational hatred that they harbor against our beloved President, they are unable to understand the grateful adulation of our nation, and yes, of the whole earth, bestowed upon President Obama as our liberator from the long, dark night of the Cheney/Bush Reich. They bitterly resent the fact that he was handed an electoral mandate by an inspired and uplifted population to lead our nation out of the darkness spawned from ultra-conservative extremism and into the dawn of a dramatically new day, and was elected by the largest number of voters ever recorded in US presidential history. To their everlasting horror, and the horror of their political and philosophical bed partners (white supremacists, skinheads, militias and KKK groups) he even won several of their precious and unwinnable “Red” States, including the capital and cradle of the Confederacy, Virginia. It is still inconceivable to them that Virginia, the native land and ancestral home of southern hero General Robert E. Lee and other slave owning Confederate leaders, would cast its statewide vote for a Black man as President of the United States. Like an unreachable and unremovable fish bone, the unmitigated fact of a “President Barack Hussein Obama” presiding over this country, and exercising full authority as it’s Commander-in-Chief sticks perpetually in their bigoted craw.

They remain self deluded and deceived regarding the dangerous and corrosively destructive nature of the previous regime, and the effect of the draconian Republican tyranny that oppressed our country, and which sought to dismantle our constitution, destroy our environment, and stamp out the very spirit of our democracy. They fail to understand that that is why people by the thousands, across America and around the world, spontaneously poured into the streets in an unleashing of extraordinary and incredible joy on that unforgettable and momentous night as it was announced that “Senator” Obama had won the election. People from every walk of life joined in sublime rejoicing, and literally danced in the streets. To this very day, those scenes of national exuberance and global unity baffles them. Clearly, they do not understand the extent to which the vast majority of the nation and the world loathed and detested Bush and his fascist policies of arrogance and ignorance. Policies which ultimately:

- killed almost 5,000 young US service men and women, and irreparably maimed and wounded over 70,000 others in a 6 year war and occupation conducted with astonishing stupidity under Rumsfeld’s direction, and founded upon presidential lies, fraud and deception;

- overstressed our armed forces to the point of breaking, and drastically reduced our military’s capacity to respond effectively to other national or global emergencies; to say nothing of the shameful and unconscionable mistreatment of injured war veterans and their families, who paid, and will continue to pay for the rest of their lives, an unthinkable price to indulge the warmongering folly of the Cheny/Bush/Rumsfeld triumvirate;

- murdered over 200,000 innocent Iraqi civilians under the false guise of “liberation” but which was, in fact, a misguided lunge at American hegemony in the Middle-East;

- abandoned a major American city (New Orleans) to a watery grave, and sentenced, by criminal dereliction, other metropolitan areas to urban rot, blight, and decay;

- polluted our air, contaminated our soil, poisoned our water, and eliminated essential oversight mechanisms which protected our food sources and kept our medications safe for consumption;

- raped the US Constitution in their zealous and incessant efforts to corrupt and circumvent justice, suppress patriotic voices of dissent and to illegally spy on and imprison innocent US citizens;

- spoiled our precious national natural resources and land preserves and handed them whole-scale over to the oil magnates and robber barons of industrial mega-companies (many of whom were actually allowed to dictate and write national policy and legislation during secret meetings under Cheny’s sinister and Machiavellian oversight);

- sold the US Treasury into the greedy, thieving, overcharging hands of Halliburton, Blackwater and other defense and security contractors who exploited their ongoing and financially reciprocal relationships with Cheney and Rumsfeld;

- woefully neglected our crumbling national infrastructure i.e. roads, highways, bridges, electronic grid, dams, waterways, etc.; and carried out an insidious and systematic campaign to eradicate the American farmer and the American family-owned farm;

- stained the soul and conscious of America with the foul and pathologically sadistic sexual abuses of Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were sodomized, raped, genitally mutilated, tortured and even murdered; with many of the same Nazi-like practices being duplicated at the Guantanamo facility and other illegal secret prisons operated by the CIA in foreign countries;

- betrayed centuries-old alliances with friendly nations and international bodies, ignored binding treaties with others, and banished diplomacy from the halls of American foreign policy with an “invade first” mentality;

- fomented intense and visceral hatred of our government among moderate Muslims and peace loving people of other faiths and cultures, who had traditionally been our friends, or at least, not our enemies; thereby creating far more individual terrorists and breeding grounds for terrorism where young men and women are susceptible to recruitment than heretofore known, leading to mass global destabilization and far less homeland and border security than we have ever had before in our history as a nation;

- eliminated America’s moral standing and leadership in the world as the preeminent model of a free society and the global guardian and defender of freedom;

- savagely eradicated the practice of true science and the free expression of scientific and medical theory from our nation’s government, in a barbaric effort to promulgate and maintain adherence to a primitive, restrictive and religiously tailored political ideology;

- wiped out, with blinding speed and in squandering fashion, a trillion dollar surplus inherited from President Clinton’s monumentally prosperous and successful administration; and which, when coupled with the massive and unsustainable tax cuts for the wealthiest elite of the population, and the trillion-plus Iraqi war bill, served to create the largest deficits on record; saddling our nation with withering debt, and forcing the next President to make difficult choices and take drastic measures in order to jumpstart the economy and rebuild our prosperity;

- expedited the wholesale collapse of the American economy, and brought the world economic system to the brink of utter destruction; escalating a loss of global wealth so epic, so unimaginable and so indefinable that it is almost of biblical proportions.

Yes, this was the well documented and indisputable policy agenda of the Cheney/Bush regime. Yet, the nutjobs remain unwilling to admit the deeply personal and intrinsic effect those policies had upon our daily lives and the lives of every living being existing on the planet for almost an entire decade. They remain unwilling to accept the fact that the Cheney/Bush era was, by far, the most regressive and repressive period of modern American history – eclipsing even the Nixon saga, and that the Cheney/Bush legacy is one of abject failure and ruin. The havoc wrought by the previous administration upon this country threatened the very fiber of our existence as a functioning democracy, and will take generations from which to recover. They remain unaware that there is no doubt or equivocation regarding this matter, that George W. Bush will be judged, both currently and in the annals of history, as the worst and most destructive president to ever sit in the Oval Office, and during his tenure he presided over the systemic decline, dismantling and diminishment of the nation; almost eradicating in 8 years the glory and majesty and illumination of American nationhood that took over 200 years to build. It was an unspeakable tragedy, which even now boggles the mind.

So it is with great dismay that the right-wing nutjobs watch our glorious President, as he delights and enraptures the world and captures the hopeful imagination of millions in this country and around the globe. They will never understand, that as the undisputed leader of the free world, and the most beloved, powerful and popular Head of State of any nation on the planet, he can confidently afford to be generous and magnanimous toward the royal ruler of an archaic desert nation, and politely, with great grace, style, class, and sophisticated elegance simply acknowledge his presence and age with a respectful bow of greeting. A small and charitable gesture extended to a longstanding ally (who Bush would often actually hold hands with and kiss, and with whom he maintains extensive family financial holdings) which, by the way, conceded nothing in American standing or honor.

Our bitter and sorrowful right-wing friends have no understanding of international protocol among world leaders, and therefore are unaware that everyone in that room where President Obama greeted the king of Saudi Arabia, knew for certain, without any need for outside display or show, who was the most powerful leader present, as well as whose unpretentious presence commanded every inch of space there. They deferred to him with the deep respect usually accorded an Elder Statesman, and treated him with the affection reserved for a beloved and favored family member. Every person present in that room had no doubt that President Obama was the “Alpha Leader” among them. That is why they all desperately and constantly sought to be in his shadow. Why, even the Prime Minister of India, the world’s largest democracy, asked for our President’s autograph. True leadership – that embodiment of certain innate qualities, which are sometimes indescribable and intangible, but you know it when you see it. They all saw it, and they all felt it…all of them.

The whole world saw it, and felt it as well – the majestic power of integrity and honesty, compassion and confidence, combined with an unparalleled intellect and a compiling vision of hope for the future, not just for the rich and wealthy, but for the common man as well. We all were watching, and we all saw it, and felt it, although for most of us it was not our first time being touched by the strength and beauty of his leadership, as our President stood with great dignity before the world and spoke eloquently on our behalf. It was our leader on that stage, our representative, our collective voice charting a course for a future of world peace and prosperity. It seems like a lifetime since an American President was treated with such respect and adoration by Heads of State and foreign citizens alike. Crowds of thousands cheered and thronged him throughout his trip. Bush’s last act on the international stage involved having shoes thrown at his head. After 8 long years of presidential embarrassment and derision, we finally have a Commander-in-Chief we can beam with pride for. There’ll be no shoe throwing under President Obama’s watch.

Yes, the right-wingers are simply unhinged. They rant and rage about the “so called” lack of accomplishments of our President during his trip, and stupidly suggest that the tour was a failure. Of course, their blithering ignorance beggars belief, in that they have not even a minimal understanding of how international diplomacy and consensus building works. Nor do they have the faintest clue about the judicious and strategic use of national power and influence. How could they, when those concepts did not ever exist in US foreign policy during the Cheney/Bush reign of terror? If it were not so sad, it would be laughable. Apparently they are so void of understanding that they fail to realize this was a reconnection and rebuilding trip. It was foundational in nature, one whose purpose was to redefine and reestablish American interests and goals, and to reposition our role from that of despised confrontational aggressor to that of unifier and collaborative leader. The Cheney/Bush effect on the world was so destructively toxic and pervasive that it will take more that one overseas visit to divest its poison from the global community’s consciousness. President Obama knew this trip would be just the beginning of the long, hard process of reestablishing America’s place of prominence at the table of nations, and that it will require time to heal the wounds and repair the extensive damage wrought upon our image and relationships with the rest of the world. But, clearly he was up to the challenge, and being well prepared for the task at hand he was able to plant the vital seeds necessary to reap a harvest of long-term international strategic cooperation and mutual understanding. After the 8 year Cheney/Bush debacle in foreign affairs, even our remarkably talented and charming President can’t recover it all in one tour. But the work will continue under his very capable hands.

No, these are unhappy days for the right-wing nutjobs. They just don’t get it. Nor will they ever. But it’s too late, the deal is done and for the next 8 years they might as well make themselves content. Or establish a colony on the moon because, whether they accept it or not, the facts are inescapable and will remain the same. Let’s review a few.

1. AMERICA’S YOUNG WOMEN AND MEN IN UNIFORM ADORE THEIR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. They can’t get enough of him. You see it in their eyes and in their body language. You see it in the way they connect with him and reach out to him; the way they cheer and lovingly greet him when he enters the room. That type of heartfelt and genuine response cannot be staged or manufactured. Not from American military personnel it can’t. Anyone who says or believes that our brave and courageous service men and women, who have faced implacable enemies head-on and stared death in the eye, can be coerced into showing some sort of fake, bogus, or phony emotion for a man they don’t respect or admire dishonors the very spirit and soul of our military. It soils and sullies the very uniform that they wear. It is a shameful reproach to even imply such a thing about our heroic boys and girls on the front line, and any coward who makes false statements like that hates the military and could never be considered a true supporter of our troop. He represents their best hope and they know it. Deep inside themselves, they instinctively know he cares for them and their families, and will spare no expense to protect and provide for them. They know he values their lives above all else, and will only put them in harm’s way when there is no other recourse. They also know the defense and security of America is his first priority as President, and that he will not hesitate to destroy any enemy who endangers the nation or its resources.

2. THE NATION ADORES THEIR PRESIDENT. Nothing the Limbaugh-led republican party has been able to say about him, or do to him, including their weird conspiracy theories regarding his birthplace and their false and malicious labels of socialism, has had any affect on his overwhelming and consistent national approval ratings. His numbers are higher for this period of his term than any other president in recorded history…and they are still climbing. Even the republican party’s ridiculous attempt in the US Congress to collectively reject his Stimulus Plan by voting en masse against it didn’t affect the measure in which the American pubic supported both the Plan and the President. I know this drives the nutjobs insane, but that’s just the way it is. The republicans had 8 years to rule America (longer if you count the years they controlled the Congress during President Clinton’s administration), and they brought it to devastating ruin. We don’t want them in charge now, and we don’t want their dangerous and insidious ideas for American life implemented anymore. We’ve had enough of their malicious and hypocritical control. At this stage of the game, any half-cocked notion or whimsical plan of the President is better and more effective any day, than the entire republican platform and conservative national agenda. The nation trusts our President, and believes in him, and is willing to follow his example of confidence, patience, service and sacrifice. In just a short number of days he has proven himself to be the most energetic worker to ever occupy the White House. His achievements during this very limited period of time have been nothing less than stunning. He has accomplished more for the redevelopment and betterment of the country in less than 100 days, than Cheney/Bush ever accomplished, or could ever have hoped to accomplish in the entirety of their ill-fated term. So rest assured, by the help of God, and with the support and assistance of the American people, he will prevail. He will recover our decimated economy, he will lead us out of the Cheney/Bush quagmire in the Middle-East, and he’ll provide for our security and keep America safe. And help him, we will. We’ll pay more taxes if we have to, work longer and harder for less, and reach out to our fellow citizens with a helping hand, or what ever else it takes to rebuild America again, and restore the wonder that was the realization of the American dream.

3. HE WILL NOT FAIL. I know they don’t want to believe that. The thought of a successful Obama presidency is the right-wing nutjob’s greatest fear and most terrifying nightmare. It’s what makes them sh-t their pants and piss on themselves. Well, they’d better get an industrial supply of “Depends” because it’s destined to happen. All the ill wishing in the world will not change what is about to occur in America in the coming days. Go ahead and fall out, have hissy fits, go into convulsions, foam at the mouth, pull your hair out, bite your fingernails down to the quick, rip your clothes off, scream till your tonsils fall out, commit ritual mutilation, or hold your breath until you turn blue or black in the face…there can even be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, it will avail you nothing. Barack Obama is still the duly elected President of this nation and his success will be astounding. Get used to it. It matters not what treasonous pranks you pull, your seditious plans, plots and schemes. Have all the “Tea Parties” you want. Conspire against him at your pleasure. Sadly for you, it will be an exercise in futility. His success is guaranteed. And, by the way, have you noticed how his beautiful, young, vivacious, and stylish wife (an ivy league educated leader in her own right) has found her calling as she works by his side, and has captivated the world with her strength, compassion and intelligence? And, aren’t those two precious daughters of theirs, Sasha and Malia, just simply angels? So lovely, intelligent, well mannered and behaved? What a classically gorgeous American family they make, and America just loves it! President Obama is among the smartest men to ever occupy the White House, and has ingeniously engaged some of the brightest minds in America for his executive team. He is renowned as one of the most profound and effective orators of our day. A devout Christian, he humbly seeks divine guidance in prayer, and demonstrates in his daily life the multi-faith principles of love and compassion for your fellow man, justice and equity for all, mercy for the repentant, and protection for the most vulnerable among us. The fact that he is the first and only African American to be elected president only enhances his legacy. His success is an already a predetermined fact, and the full manifestation of it is only a matter of time.

I know just how you feel, ye olde nutjobs and Obamahaters. Millions of us felt just the same way about your misbegotten hero, Bush. We have been there where you are, and quite frankly, we know it’s a hellava tree to climb. Your feelings of pain, despair, impotence and helplessness improperly channeled can really get to you. So, take it easy, chill out. Step back from the edge. Breath. Yeah, I know, the most powerful man on the planet is a Black man…. A Democrat…. A Community Organizer…. The President. Maybe if you say it out loud you’ll feel better. Come on…say it with me now…. “President Obama”…..try it again, take a deep breath and say, “President Obama”….one more time, “President Obama”. There you go. Isn’t that better? Now get over it. Because Barack Hussein Obama II, the 44th President of the United States of America will go down in history as one of the greatest and most admired and beloved presidents of all time. Go ahead, don’t believe it if you wish, it won’t change a thing. His election to the presidency was once thought to be totally impossible as well. Millions said it would not – could not happen. By the grace of God, Obama proved all the naysayers wrong. He will do it again.

Great video on media responsibility

Thank you for a great article. I want to say you have come a long way in the last year. You have begun to say what you really feel instead of the conventional wisdom. I enjoy listening to your ideas when they are your ideas, so keep up the good work. I hope to continue to be an avid follower of your blog. Thanks again.

It kind of amazes me the stuff that gets political attention. The U.S. should be doing way more to address the Millennium Development Goals. The plan to end world hunger has been getting seriously ignored.

$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.

$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget.

(source: borgenproject.org.)

tenisci
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How much do you get paid by the borgen project. Hell if its more than minimum wage I might just sign up.

I have to say that I didn’t know much about Glenn Beck before, but after reading nuthouse and a couple of other peices, he certainly does seem to be “fractured” to say the least.
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Here is one from Times, in the ‘entertainment’ section:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1890174,00.html

Well now! The GOP, instead of actually trying to make it’s ideology somehow relevant, has chosen instead to try to find someone who is both GOP and likeable by America at large!
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/04/10/1889007.aspx
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At least right now, I would say the two are mutually exclusive, and I most heartily recommend that they adapt the Bar None Sockpuppet as their spokesman.
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Bar None!

Rusty, from your comment at the top I thought you only had one thing to say, but I’ve spotted at least ten reply posts from you.

Anyway, whilst I think that Joe goes a little bit too far in his attack on Cabbagehammer the salient points are correct. The neo-con, absolutist, “my way or the highway” diplomacy of 43 is best forgotten. If you take the absolutist position in a negotiation the only chance the guy on the other side of the table has to save his own face is to reject your argument. The concept of pride and dignity in the cultures of many countries we’re referring to here is very important, so they’re never going to humiliate themselves at our feet.

If we can give them an opportunity to save face, whilst achieving most of what we want to, I think we get a lot more done than continuing the battle of cultures that we’ve seen over the last eight years. It might not offer POTUS the opportunities to make defiant, patriotic soundbites, but it’s more likely to lead to progress via diplomacy rather than war.

Rusty, apologies, but I was wrong in saying that you made 10 posts in follow-up; there are in fact only 3, but one of them is very long.

With Bush and the GOP, the “war on terror” had, as it’s ground-floor philosophy ‘our criminals are better than your criminals’.
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On the other hand, Obama knows which side of the bread the butter is, in the realm of terrorism:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890462,00.html

This is real fun..one ignorant journalist questioning another..Every country gets the politics,leader,journalist and suckers it deserves..People leaving on credit cards, buying houses they can’t afford..choosing presidents like lottery…Journlist who get week in the knees instead of using brains to report with any honesty.

Bow in front of saudis,while chinese/russians kicks your ass from behind..and a bearded joker journalist getting orgasm over it..

I spent three days working in Kabul and have to say that Karzai is a joke: corrupt and incompetent. Don’t give the Europeans a drubbing because they refuse to work in lockstep with us Yanks. There is a horrible internment camp outside Kabul and no Euros want to be associated with it. We have a bunch of “terrorists” in there including 3 who are 11 years old. Nuff said. So I don’t have much sympathy for the Krauthammer gang.

Wow, a liberal columnist bashing a conservative columnist and then people arguing about which side they like more. Score one more for the good ol’ American way of life and freedom of the press!!!!

I think we have long mistaken the right of free press as being synonymous with “good” press. What a waste of bandwidth! With classy journalism like this, I don’t understand why newspapers are closing up shop all across the country. Perhaps if all of you “great” journalists will just blog the same quality material that we see here at Swampland (et al) you can ruin a lucrative medium like, oh I don’t know, the internet just like you killed the printed page.

Joe Klein is not a liberal columnist.
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He’s a centrist columnist who is rethinking his former distaste for the word “liberal” enough to compliment others by referring to them as “liberal moderates”.

[...] Why anyone would find Charles Krauthammer even remotely credible is a mystery to [...]

Reading through Yoshiattacks responses, which I generally thought were pretty good, there was one thing I noticed, which I think Paul Dirks also seized upon (forgive me if it was someone else). Yoshi has redefined socialism as any and all government intervention in the marketplace.
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Technically, shouldn’t be socialism be defined as the theory that government’s most important role is to take care of the basic needs of the people (as in welfare, health care, consumer protections, worker protections, etc), even where those needs might conflict with the free flow of capital (thus necessitating things like taxes, regulations, etc)?
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Yet I fail to see how many of the policies that Yoshi brands as socialist (even as he strenuously objects to the idea that he is necessarily trying to unfairly tar those policies with a loaded term) are even socialist at all as socialism ought to be defined. Not all government intervention in the marketplace is socialist. Only government intervention with the specific aim of providing for the needs of the general population (as opposed to a corporation or rich upper class) should be defined as socialist. As another poster already pointed out (was it sgwhiteinfla or 53_3? I can’t remember), the ouster of GM’s CEO could probably more correctly be defined as fascist.
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Anyways, bottom line is that government interventionalism is government interventionalism. Trying to conflate that with socialism in all cases is innaccurate. And it would suggest that it’s disingenuous and even dishonest in America’s modern political climate, because what is really a fairly innocuous and common-sense idea (that governments have a responsibility to protect and provide for ALL their citizens, not just the rich and priveledged) has become something of a bogeyman thanks to recent history, and the inevitable self-interest of the rich and priveledged, and the unfortunate gullibility of the not-so-rich and priveledged.

governments have a responsibility to protect and provide for ALL their citizens, not just the rich and priveledged
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What always boggles me is the degree to which even the people who fall under the ‘rich and priveleged’ are actually harmed by our failure to provide for the general welfare. Certainly a well educated workforce and a sufficiently healthy middle class to act as markets for goods are important components of a healthy economy.
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I still like to point to the dissconnect between the the effort to sell low taxes on the wealthy as a spur to investment and job creation when much actual investment in turn is used to eliminate labor costs and to offshore jobs. And let us not even begin to discuss the parsitic nature of the Finacial industry. The Free Market is great. It’s just not god.

Stuart et al, the link I cited for the increase in Americans buying more guns and ammo was a simple statement that I find to be very true in my own backyard here in Pennsylvania. Many, no let me rephrase, most of my neighbors and friends are purchasing more firearms and ammo in case of a complete meltdown from the current direction Obama is pursuing with his policies, and a fear that an Obama Administration will take away our right to bear arms during his 4 years in office.
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Now for the denouncement of radical white supremacists. I do NOT endorse or favor any of their ideals. None what-so-ever. I never have, nor will I ever.. They are a fringe group outside of conservatism, not unlike on the far left you find leftist groups and their web-sites like Daily Kos. Which I believe to be just as extreme as you would also find the Aryan Nation groups, and their web sites.
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I have as yet to see any “proclamation” or demand from you to denounce that group. Code Pink, Nation of Islam, Earth Liberation Front, Eco-terrorists led by Al Gore, ACLU, NTA, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), MoveOn.Org, and I will add PETA to the list.
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You may want to look at this research paper, which I find exceedingly interesting and explains about all of the extremists groups both right and left so that you may have a better understanding of what extremism truly is all about.
http://ai.arizona.edu/research/terror/publications/Zhou_Domestic_MainText.pdf
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I should have cited perhaps this article from newsvirginian, which also backs up my assertion that the increase of gun and ammo sales is real, especially in rural areas of the country.
http://www.newsvirginian.com/wnv/news/local/article/virginians_stock_up_on_guns_ammunition/37913/
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Or, perhaps this one http://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/features/local_story_086103648.html
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Or, and having found this one just now and like best, http://www.toledofreepress.com/2009/03/27/area-gun-ammunition-sales-rise-amid-political-fears/
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So there you have it dear Stuart. I hope you enjoy. And I cannot wait for your “denouncement” for the far left extremists and their followers here on Swampland identified by the likes of 53_3, Paul Dirks, and sgwhite, who populate this site and others, as well.

Abbreviated Pundit Round Up at Kos:

Krauthammer: Froth. Bark. Howl. Dribble: nuff said.

Also Stuart, did you read the new socialist manifesto that I posted earlier in this thread? I find it to read as a blue-print of the Obama Administration’s current policy trend. Very scary indeed.

Actually I’m delighted that Rusty is willing to denouce violent extremism. And of course there are plenty of ‘mainstream’ figures who seem to think there is something of inherent value in their “White European” heritage. Pat Buchannan comes to mind right away as someone who fervently believes in his own genetic superiority and he’s certainly has no trouble getting TeeVee bookings. But since my own value system is rooted in the knowlege that “All Men Are Created Equal and are endowed by their Creater With Certain Inalienable Rights”, I am sensiive to tribalism in all its guises and feel an active responsibilty to call it out when I see it. Racism is certainly among the most potent examples but religious intolerance and homophobia set off similar alarm bells.

rusty: not unlike on the far left you find leftist groups and their web-sites like Daily Kos. Which I believe to be just as extreme as you would also find the Aryan Nation groups, and their web sites.
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I will happily give you that there are leftist groups that are crazy and out of control. But to compare the DailyKos with the Aryan Nation groups is just dishonest. Or maybe you think the Aryan Nation really is as benign as DailyKos, that would be scary.

It’s interesting that Rusty the Rabid Racist has now been bestowed with ‘credibility’.
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Oh, well…

And before the high-and-mighty SZ leaps in to correct me, I might point out to Stuart that Rusty’s denouncement is inconsistant with his other commentary.

53_3
Not credibilty.
But he’s not alone. When I lived in Illinois, my next door neighbor built himself a Y2K shelter. He was as pleasant as you could ask anyone to be, but he was absolutely convinced that as soon as the lights went out that Dark Hordes would be descending from Chicago to overrun small towns in search of his homegrown tomatoes and hand-drawn well water.
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I think of him every time I run into Rusty. They’re cut from the same cloth.

53_3, he clearly denounced them. Now you negroes need to leave him the hell alone!!
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His denouncement is akin to Cheech Marin denouncing pot.
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Or Dick Cheney denouncing torture.
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Or Sarah Palin denouncing ignorance.
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Or John Boehner denouncing a tanning bed.

somepeoplelikit:
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His is a “way of life”. I life of hatred and white supremist beliefs is something that makes up one’s belief system, like you or I might embrace Christianity, or an agnostic beleif system.
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To him, this is normal.

I didn’t make the list of far left extremists? The ACLU is going to hear about this.

Paul Dirks, somepeoplelikeit and 53_3
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Please understand what the troll is doing here. First of all Paul Dirks clearly showed that the troll was threatening other citizens with the specter of guns and bullets yesterday. Now because the troll if frantic for attention they come back to denounce violence after their previous advocation and cheerleading for it because they want the few commenters who aren’t convinced they are bat sh*t crazy and will still respond to them with reason on occasion will continue to engage them. Then the troll ends the comment with some dumb sh*t that they probably don’t believe but they know that the rational among us will want to correct the record. Trolls exist for one reason and that is to get attention. If nobody every notices them then eventually they go away. Its probably why they love to post here at Swampland because we don’t have an ignore feature. But you can’t win an argument with a troll and you can’t reason with them. When you really sit down and think about it who wins if you respond to a comment that a troll leaves that has no basis in reality anyway and that nobody in their right mind would endorse? Hell I respect the right of anybody on this thread to engage anybody else, BUT we have some really smart people on this board including a few from the other side like yoshi but we end up with a 100+ comment thread based on responding to idiots. Im just saying.

sacredh:
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You are so far left you’ve completely gone around the global spectrum of political beliefs. He can’t even see you from there!

sg
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If you look upthread, you will find that SZ conferred credibility on Rusty (his conferral was by questioning said ‘credibility in a long comment to him).
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But I see your point.
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I wouln’t have even commented myself except that SZ, while engaging him, inadvertantly fed him mightily, and has switched to the ‘rational and reasonable’ mode.

SG, I’m bored and at work on a Saturday…so I got the time.
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53_3, I understand completely growing up in that situation. I still have relatives that make me cringe with what they say, but also because they have no idea that they shouldn’t be saying it.
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But there should come a time when your intellectual curiosity should cause you to ask questions of yourself and the belief system you were brought up in. Plain and simple, people like Rusty lack that intellectual curiosity. It is replaced with absolutism.

Paul Dirks Says:
Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 9:51 am
Actually I’m delighted that Rusty is willing to denouce violent extremism. And of course there are plenty of ‘mainstream’ figures who seem to think there is something of inherent value in their “White European” heritage.
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So then Dirks I suppose you also oppose African Americans to have a fondness to their African origins? Native Americans (which I can also trace my ancestry to), Oriental Americans as well as Latin American heritage?
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That is absurb. And, I may add you are totally ignorant. Yes America is the great melting pot of the world. But to also loose your identity in the process is bad. We are all Americans, but we also have our heritage and ancestry as a basis of where we have all emigrated from, some of it is very good and some not so. But it is still who we are. Its unfortunate that you hide away on your Carribean Island and wish to destroy what makes this country great.

53_3
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Well SZ pretty much engages anybody and everybody and I can’t knock him for that but that doesn’t mean we have to. If you read through any thread like this one I don’t think one person acknowledging a troll does much towards lending them credibility to anybody but the person who did the acknowledging. For most of us we want to win the argument by presenting facts backed up by links from credible sources. A win for a troll is just getting more than one person to acknowledge them by name and counter their extremist comments that are illogical and factually challenged to say the least. I mean seriously when somebody lists the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extermist group among other wacky things they have said its apparent all they want is attention because its not even worth the time or keystrokes to counter such a ridiculous argument. Just keep in mind that any attempt to argue with them directly on the merits of their fantasy argument is what they see as garnering legitimacy.

53_3: Thank you. I wring my hands and cry at the slightest injustice and talk to the trees in my yard. I think Obama is the Messiah and being an atheist, don’t think for one minute that that doesn’t make my head spin. I regard raised voices and a stern glances as torture. I’m so compassionate that I buy winos Mad Dog because I can’t stand to see anybody do without. I’m such a fan of Bill Clinton that my wife’s blue dress was rejected by the dry cleaners as a health hazard. I no longer watch baseball games because bats are used on baby seals. The list goes on and on.

And, 53_3, you are the biggest troll on this site. The level of engagement you offer on this site to anyone who is not like you is to call them a racist or a wing-nut or some other rude name. I have as yet to see any discourse from you that has any worth to humanity except for the crazies on the far left. You can only wish you had half the brain of Stuart Z or any of his credibility.

Did Time’s media critic endorse date rape in a review of the movie “Observe and Report”?
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http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2009/04/time-critic-raves-for-the-observe-report-rape-scene.html

Yes, I see your point SG about trying to reason with a troll, but can we still poke them when we’re bored? I know technically attention is attention, but sometimes when there is nothing else to do I like to mock them.

Dee: Sharpen the stick and poke them, bored or not. They had their moment in the sun. The sun has set on them now. They’re angry because their philosophy has been tried and rejected. It didn’t work and isn’t likely to be revived anytime soon. They’ve been reduced to crying socialism and complaining about Michelle touching the Queen of England (although the Queen seemed to enjoy the gesture). They see the writing on the wall but don’t seem to realize that it’s an obituary. Theirs.

I found this article very good in explaining Obama’s far left extremism.
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/07/16/obamas-left-wing-extremism/
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Enjoy!!

Now let Seth Rogen be in a rape scene with old rusty here and maybe I find that crap hilarious. And no this is neither male bashing nor gay bashing because I consider rusty the equivalent of the animatronic life like doll. Perhaps the old navy mannequins might have reason to take offense though.

Oh come on now Dee, admit it that you are a lesbian man hater!! The male on male rape scene you profess is a dead give away.

Dee
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Obviously everyone can do what they want. The only thing I am saying is that focusing on trolls is bringing down the level of our discussion and discourse and it seems like its happening more and more here lately. Its bad enough that we only get maybe 3 posts on Swampland these days usually with maybe one actually talking about a serious issue. But even then it turns into a lets reason with a troll session instead of something more substantial. I am all for openly mocking and deriding them, but trying to explain to them in a serious manner why their lunatic rants are wrong is just unproductive in my opinion.

Folks: before I get to responding to Rustydog, I think I need to remind some of us that he’s not a troll. He’s a rightist.
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Being a rightist isn’t the same thing as being a troll.
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An example of troll-ism would be someone who took the time to type out fake posts like

All Americans worship their president. The stupid neo-cons want to destroy the world, instead of peacefully allowing Palestinian representation in the US Congress as Dear President Obama has proposed. We love and trust Barack Obama because he will give the world hope and equality. When Iran is equal to the United States and has the same nuclear arsenal, the world will truly be at one with President Obama’s vision of peace and equality.

I blame the low number of threads. Once we express our opinions and debate them, troll hunting takes over. The fluff nature of many of the threads are really nothing more than a chance to hijack them and turn them into anything we feel like talking about. I do agree with sgw about trying to reason with the unreasonable. It’s fun, but pointless.

Sacred — I hear that in 1933 after wrecking the country they decided to give Roosevelt anything he asked for so the country could get fixed. However, as a consequence, America made Roosevelt president for life and they remained a minority party in Congress for the next 40 years — whoa now that’s a life sentence.
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Do you think they said to themselves this time — “Guys let’s just do the opposite of everything we did last time and maybe America will trust us with the car keys again a lot sooner?”
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You know if Obama pulls this off there will be plenty of people clamoring to repeal the presidential term limits they enacted after Roosevelt.

SZ
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Sorry but most of us believe he is a troll and he has had plenty enough stupid ass, factually challenged, and indeed threatening posts to back up that assertion. You are free to classify him as you will but you aren’t speaking for the majority on this one in my opinion.

Troll or rightist. Offensive or provocative. Trouble maker or pot stirrer. Same difference.
Call me anti-semantic.

Yes indeed, Barack Obama has an agenda, and it reads and smells like Socialism plain and simple. Everything the “Progressives”, “Liberals”, or “Socialists” all point to the same place. The total destruction of the United States of America as we know it today.

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Yeah that’s not a troll’s statement. Just a rightist my ass.

SZ-You’ve got a point how about we only poke ‘em late at night so they don’t sleep well and in the AM on previous days post if the subject matter has already been exhausted?
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Rusty — bite me.
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SZ — I know you mean well but unless rightist is a euphemism for a bat sh#t crazy, fruit cake with a pension for lying with every tap of his keystroke, then trying to draw a distinction between troll and rightist as it applies to rusty is just crap. Sorry buddy but I have been the victim of rusty’s over the top personal attacks enough times to know that there is nothing reasonable about this kook. I’m pretty sure eventually he is going to show you his true nature as all scorpions are apt to do and you will feel his sting. So if I were you I wouldn’t lecture those of us who have already walked down this road.

oops the first SZ comment should have said SG

Dee: If President Obama does pull this off (I can’t help it. Every time I say Obama and say President 1st…I smile), I’ll be hoping for a repeal myself. They’re scared to death about healthcare reform succeeding because that’s the silver bullet that can kill them for a generation. Throw in changing demographics, tweaking the census, the splintering of the republican base, lousy candidates, a youth vote that went overwhelmingly for Obama and a charismatic president dealing with an economic collapse and you have the basis for a restructuring of the political landscape for decades to come. Despite what people say about not caring what the rest of the world thinks of us, that’s BS. If Obama’s foreign supports lasts, it’s going to have a huge effect on his popularity here. If Obama can’t pull it off, they have a chance. If he does, they’re going to be distrusted for years because of their near universal opposition. For them to succeed, America has to fail.

Dee
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Thats easily done. I am at the point where I just throw out some red meat for them then watch them gobble it up with like 4 posts in a row. They wear themselves out with their fury if you dare say something bad about Bush or “oh noes” Reagan so thats my poking here lately. Like I said everybody is free to do what they like. But its just frustrating reading 4 pages of comments with 75% being trying to convince an unconvincable troll that they are wrong about something.

Trying to differentiate between a troll and a rightest is like trying to differentiate between a hobo and a vagabond. Sure there may be slight differences, but there both out on the street.
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Even the ones that can spell and make sense still point to the same ridiculous arguments. How many posts can be spent on the “Socialism” accusation? We’ve been a capitalist/socialist society for how long now? But we still jump on it when they trot that out and spend way too much time on it. Sometimes I wonder who’s really tossing out the meat.

Trying to differentiate between a troll and a rightest is like trying to differentiate between a hobo and a vagabond. Sure there may be slight differences, but they’re both out on the street.
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Even the ones that can spell and make sense still point to the same ridiculous arguments. How many posts can be spent on the “Socialism” accusation? We’ve been a capitalist/socialist society for how long now? But we still jump on it when they trot that out and spend way too much time on it. Sometimes I wonder who’s really tossing out the meat.

Wow. “they’re” instead of “there”
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Rule #1-make fun of someone’s spelling and/or grammar and you will have spelling and/or grammar mistakes in your post.

SG — I can’t say that I disagree with your analysis, it does appear that lately substantive exchanges have taken a backseat to more trivial pursuits. Obviously, with so much going on lately, it seems a bit odd that the dialogue in the swamp has revolved around the TROLLS. Now, I blame some of this on KT’s limited participation, MS being MIA, although some of his better contributions has been as a pool reporter on the trip (which tends not to be substantive by definition), go figure and AS’ ridiculously unworthy contributions.
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Of course just on the off chance that Amy ever reads a comment, please note AS that you should pick a style any style and perfect your craft. If you want to be the queen of comedy fine but the second rule of comedy club is be funny, obviously the first rule is not to talk about comedy club – I mean if you have to tell people it’s a joke you’ve failed your mission.

Trollism Number 1
1. sgwhiteinfla Says:
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 10:49 am
The Washington Post is now the ghetto of op ed contributors. Its great to see somebody of Joe’s stature call the Kraut out for his neocon hawkish bullsh*t after all these years. He is held up as some kind of gold standard of conservative thought when the truth is he is just another war cheerleader coward who has probably never been in let alone won a fight in his life. If you want to know what the people think about such fatuous gasbags (thanks bitter) check out this clip from CSPAN of a caller straight PWNING them for continuing to have neocons on to push nothing but war. Rich Lowery gets the gas face and so does the Kraut
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Trollism Number 2
2. sgwhiteinfla Says:
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 11:02 am
53_3
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Most “conservatives” wouldn’t know socialism if it bit them on the ass.
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Trollism Number 3
3. sgwhiteinfla Says:
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Yoshi
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I am sorry but I am tired of seeinng that lie about Fannie and Freddie. Explain to all of us how if the GOP wanted tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie that they didn’t put a bill to the floor, pass it, and have it signed into law by the President? Now I will DEFINITELY wait all day on this one because its the zombie lie that won’t stop. President Bush wasn’t the first to push Fannie and Freddie to make loans to pad his homeowner stats but to say he didn’t do it is the height of revisionist history.
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And……….”the beat goes on”!!

Happened to watch 20/20 last night and the entire program was devoted to gun violence. Fascinating experiment with students and guns. I’m sure the NRA and Glenn Beck will be marching on ABC.
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http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7278669

Lead story on CNN.com right now, Police have arrested a Sunday-school teacher in the killing of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu
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and her name was “Huckaby”
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What does that say about the state of Christianity in this country?
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THAT is a troll statement.
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This post was for educational purposes only. The content contained herein is not actually supported by somepeoplelikeit.

Sacred — Agreed and I share your smile. Interestingly, even a strategy that hinges on America’s failure to be effective has a fatal flaw. Republicans have gambled everything on Obama making a mistake. They have opposed Obama at every turn in order to be positioned to take advantage of any misstep, knowing full well that an every Obama success is a nail in the GOP coffin. Nevertheless, the only area where Obama is vulnerable even among his base is Afghanistan, and yet tis is the one area where the GOP broke ranks.
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Think about that for a minute, their desire to continue making war is stronger than their instinct for self-preservation. OMG — doesn’t that go against human nature or something?

TIME article on 10 Most Endangered Newspapers linked recently.
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http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883785,00.html
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Column critiqueing TIME’s affliate who wrote it, 24/7 Wall Street, although article gives impression it was written by a TIME journalist.
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http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/42514382.html

Did ya’ll actually read that link I posted about the Time reporter endorsing the “date rape” scene in “Observe and Report”? I couldn’t believe that the guy wrote that sh*t let alone that editors thought it would be ok to publish. Seriously the guy has a very screwed up sense of what consensual sex is and what it isn’t. I don’t really care that its a movie because he took it out of the realm of the movie and made it a broad statement about how I guess he sees the lower class’ view of when its ok to have sex with a woman who is drunk and only semi conscious. Time magazine should be ashamed.

Ivy B:
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I watched the same ABC 20/20 program. It was unbelieveable how those kids were handling the handgun. Pointing it at thier face, looking down the barrel to see if it was loaded or not.
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But my question is, would gun control eliminate this type of risky behavior? I think not. What needs to be enacted is more harsher penalities on the handgun owner or parents who allows such irresponsible containment of weapons to occur. I do know in Texas they now hold the parent of a child as responsible as the child themselves. I believe they also showed a boy who shot a friend, while they were “playing” with the one boy’s father’s handgun. The boy was convicted, as well as the father. When parents are held accountable, you shall see a major decrease in guns being available to children. Because guns and hunting is a major past-time in my area, I learned at a very young age how to properly handle and respect weapons of all kinds. As well as ensuring that the gun when un-attended was not left alone with the potential to harm another individual by mistake.

SG – Yes I read it, are you really that surprised that the supposedly intellectually elite reserve the respect they have for one another, solely for each other? Now, that Jerry Springer has officially exposed the existence of “double wide divas” the upper-class has consigned these pink collar women to the roles that were previously reserved solely for black women.
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Of course, the media depictions of black women being raped or otherwise demeaned has become so acceptable that it barely gets noticed except by black mothers who have to educate their daughters on how to navigate such demeaning depictions. I believe the same corporation that owns Time, was also responsible for an American Express card being swiped through the behind of a young black woman — ned I say more?

SG, do you have more of a problem with the scene itself or just the critics “endorsement” of it?
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I don’t have a problem with either. Distasteful maybe, but that’s opinion. If graphic films depicting murder can be applauded as artistic then this can’t be dismissed because of how graphic it is.
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These guys (Apatow style comedies) are running out of envelopes to push with this genre.
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But an interesting question is: How much different should you treat a “date rape” victim who had way too much to drink and a drunk driver? Both knew there could be serious consequences to being that drunk.

Dee
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Frankly I am surprised. Media corporations can always pooh pooh a rap video as being parody or all in fun. This was a serious article equating the appearance of date rape in a movie to the women in the real world welcoming date rape. That was the most twisted sh*t I have seen in awhile and there really is no way for the guy to say it was misconstrued. Its right there in black and white. So what happens when some guy reads that and decides, “Yeah even if she is drunk and doesn’t know what happen she PROBABLY wants it because this Time magazine guy said so”. Someone preferrably the author should get fired behind that article.

The longest post I ever wrote just got devoured by the intertubes. I haven’t cussed this much since Bush took Ohio in 2004.

rusty, hunting is a huge pasttime in Canada too, but we have relatively little gun violence or accidental shootings. One theory is the fact that people here have got rifles but no handguns. What would you say to illegalizing handguns, as automatic weapons are. Obviously handguns are only meant to kill people, not for hunting, so it makes perfect logical sense and works for Canadians just fine.

somepeople
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But an interesting question is: How much different should you treat a “date rape” victim who had way too much to drink and a drunk driver? Both knew there could be serious consequences to being that drunk.
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So you are equating someone raping a woman who is too drunk to defend themselves to a person getting drunk and willingly getting into a vehicle then driving and endangering not only themselves but other drivers and pedestrians as well? Let me just hold my water before I say what I really want to say to that and let you respond.
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To answer your first question, because its a movie I give more leeway the filmmakers because I don’t know what their intent was nor do I know how they feel about date rape. For all I know they put the scene in to spark a conversation and get people to talking about it. Thats more of a first amendment type thing. But for the author, when you write.
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Beyond the weirdness, if you can get there, is a quick portrait of trailer-park America pursuing its urges by any means necessary. It’s clear that Ronnie, no babe magnet, will take what he can get on this night of nights, even if it’s not quite the exalted ecstasy he had hoped for; and that Brandi, who’s been in this position once or twice before, wants the sexual exercise, even if she’s not awake to take an active role in it — somewhere in her stupor, she’s feeling a rote rumble of pleasure. The scene achieves what few American movies even attempt: to pinpoint the grim compromise, the desperation, that can attend the sex act. Don’t call it love; don’t call it grand; but whatever it is, don’t stop.
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I would say that the ass hole needs to be fired and interviewed to see if they have ever committed date rape themselves.

SG — Just so you know this whole “she says no but really means yes” crap was a debate that I thought we settled after the Kennedy cousin rape trial — evidently not. You are correct in your assessment that the truly horrifying notion is this latest generation of men don’t have the inherent societal disapproval that comes with a playboy or hustler magazine hidden under the bed to give them pause before swallowing this analysis whole heartedly. Time as the validator of choice for date rape deniers — who would have thunk it?

Dee
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For all those straight men who feel that way I wonder what their position would be if there was a case where a guy got drunk and then a gay man had sex with them. I wonder if they would say it was the guy’s fault for getting drunk. Some how I bet their opinion would change drastically.

sacredh, that happened to me on this board last night. If you make a long post, copy it before you hit that submit button, so that you can still paste it and re-post in case it disappears into the ether.

Sg, So you are equating someone raping a woman who is too drunk to defend themselves to a person getting drunk and willingly getting into a vehicle then driving and endangering not only themselves but other drivers and pedestrians as well?
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No. I’m not saying anything about the person doing the raping. I’m suggesting that, in both scenarios, the person in question made the same mistake. Drinking too much. The driver obviously puts others at risk and therefore is the greater offender. But the “victim” is putting herself in a very bad position and also the person she’s with. A rape accusation is a dangerous thing and a clouded mind is more likely to confuse facts. But like I said, it’s an interesting question. Judging from your response, I think I was right.
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If two Rusty’s are playing with handguns and one accidentally shoots a friend, while the other accidentally shoots himself, who do we villify more? The same mistake was made. If you wanna say “parent” here, point remains the same.
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As to Corliss, no argument on the trashiness of the opinion piece. But it’s just that, opinion.

SG
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Absolutely their opinion would change and the mandatory sentencing for such a crime would be life without the possibility of parole. Moreover, if a guy victimized in this manner would probably not face any jail time if they were to come back later and confront their attacker with the barrel of a gun.

somepeople
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That sounds suspiciously like you are saying women should not be able to drink because if they do then they are fair game. Dude I hope you don’t have daughters or you will see just how asinine that kind of thinking is. I will of course admonish my daughter not to get sloppy drunk however by no means would that give any scumbag the right to rape my daughter. Anymore than it would give a gay man the right to rape my son if he gets too drunk. Thats about the most backwater thinking I have heard in awhile. TRULY. And the quotes around victim is pretty phucking insulting. I guess you don’t believe that a woman can say no if she is drunk, but how about the fact that she can’t say yes either. Nobody is being put in a bad position, if you see that she is too drunk to consent then you don’t try to f*ck her. How much clearer can the situation be? Damn man women have the right to get drunk and not get raped just like men do, and no woman should have to assume that if they get drunk they will likely get raped.

And somepeople, where else are women putting themselves in bad positions to get raped? When they wear to much make up? When they wear revealing clothes? Please let me know what else can a woman do to put herself and they guy in a bad position for her to be violated in such a fashion. I am sure we would all love to know.

somepeople — Here’s the problem with your thinking. What about date rape when the victim is inebriated by a date rape drug. Anyone going out and partying knows that these kinds of things happen so should we then say any woman who goes out has to take responsibility for the consequences? The bottom line women cannot be looked at as participating in their own victimhood because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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As parents we tell our children repeatedly not to talk to strangers, but when they do and are abducted do we say that these children are partly responsible because they knew not to talk to strangers?
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Rape appears to be the only crime that we seek to hold the victim partly responsible for their fate. You know its the same line f logic that the Taliban uses when they stone a woman to death for being raped, after all it’s her fault for leaving her home unescorted, being desirable, being coveted, etc.

[...] Krauthammer Desperately Seeking Nail [...]

Want to see the funniest wingnut thread ever?
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http://minx.cc/?post=285771
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So a wingnut totally makes up a story about Obama flying a guy to fix pizzas in on a private plane at taxpayer expense. About halfway in some of us DFH come in and correct the record. In the response wingnuts who were all a twitter about the false pizza story call the DFH Obamatards. Good times!

SG, my words are right there…either I said women should not be able to drink because if they do they’re fair game or I didn’t. I think you will find I most certainly did not.
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My point was about the positions people put themselves in. Drinking too much is dangerous in a variety of ways. You’re confusing me making a valid point, I think, about the dangers people put themselves in and endorsing the dangers.
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You end with and no woman should have to assume that if they get drunk they will likely get raped.
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They shouldn’t have to, but they best be advised to. What’s the alternative to that? “Go ahead and get hammered because all guys out there know that they shouldn’t touch you if you’re drunk.”
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If someone makes a mistake and is victimized because of it that doesn’t make their mistake ok nor does it justify their being victimized.

SG, And somepeople, where else are women putting themselves in bad positions to get raped?
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I mentioned purposely getting drunk and nothing else. Losing control of your faculties puts you in a dangerous position. All the other stuff you’re going on about it just that, you’re going on about it. I didn’t mention make-up or clothing. Again, you’re putting words in my mouth instead of listening to the ones coming out of it.
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Dee, slow your roll You just said I think like the Taliban and then invented a scenario that is nothing like what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the free will to go out and get trashed, nothing more. With that free will comes responsibilities and consequences. Do you disagree?

Somepeople
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Living comes with responsibilities, but I want you to note that aside from rape there is no other crime that would generate a similar conversation. Do I think you are like the Taliban? Of course not. But all thought is on a continuum, saying that a woman bears some responsibility for being raped because she was drunk may be middle of the road on that spectrum but follow that line of thought out to its logical conclusion…
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If a woman is more likely to get raped when drunk, she ought not to get drunk.
If a woman is more likely to get raped on a date, she ought not date.
If a woman is more likely to get raped outside her home, then she ought not to leave her home.
If a woman is more likely to be raped because she is a woman — then everything that happens to her for being a woman is partly her fault.
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Can you see how easy it is to get to there from here?

somepeople
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I think your problem is that you are looking at rape as a sex act. Just as the inane Time critic and this movie viewed this act as just one more way to have sex, except the problem is that rape isn’t about sex its about power. While there may plenty of masochists male and female, although I would guess a few more male because they tend to be individuals with power in the real world who fantasize about giving it up, who derive pleasure from subjugation, I don’t suppose many rape victims say things like don’t stop. Part of your reaction is that you see her drunkenness as responsible for her inability to establish and enforce her no. When in fact, ask any victim of date rape if they ever heard of the term phuck or fight?

Dee, thanks for saying I’m not the Taliban. But I think you guys are taking the anger at the crime and projecting it.
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If a woman is more likely to get raped on a date, she ought not date.
If a woman is more likely to get raped outside her home, then she ought not to leave her home.
If a woman is more likely to be raped because she is a woman — then everything that happens to her for being a woman is partly her fault.
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All of these things you mention don’t impare a womans judgement and motor skills. So, no, I don’t see how you get there. Willfully ingesting intoxicants with the purpose of being impaired is nothing like the things you mention.
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Rape sucks and it’s ugly. If the victim is drunk it doesn’t make it ok. But are you trying to tell me that getting smashed is the same thing as leaving the house? Or being a woman?
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I agree with you no other crime could create this type of conversation. It’s because of the emotion felt when thinking about the victim. It clouds your judgement.
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But just consider swapping out the crimes and tell me I’m crazy…
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If I got so drunk that I passed out on the street and woke up to find my wallet stolen, would it piss you off if someone told me “you shouldn’t have been that drunk!”?
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I think not, you might even be the one saying it to me.
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Before you say…”are you comparing getting you wallet stolen to being raped…” No. It’s just an exercise to prove a point. Take the emotion out of it.

Dee–perhaps what’s really irking you about this is the injustice of it all.
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Women have to be more careful than men. Men can get drunk without having to worry about getting date-raped. Women may have to always have that thought at the back of their mind though. There’s an innate unfairness here; that women have to be more careful than men. That the consequences of carelessness may be more serious for women than for men. And that most men seem to be entirely insensitive to that fact.
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Social ideas and institutions like justice are supposed to correct these imbalances in society, and so putting part of the blame on the woman for getting drunk seems to be getting in the way of the role of justice as the great balancer. Since women are naturally more vulnerable to the consequences of temporary carelessness, justice should be especially vigilant in protecting them to make up for that fact.
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Have I captured your feelings on this at least somewhat accurately?

somepeople
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If I got so drunk that I passed out on the street and woke up to find my wallet stolen, would it piss you off if someone told me “you shouldn’t have been that drunk!”?
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What pisses me off is that when a woman says she is raped the first question is what have you done that contributed to you being chosen for rape — in no other crime would we ask what were you wearing? What did you have to drink and how much?
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And as for what do these other things have to do with a woman being incapacitated? Let me list this ways:
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How many date rapes are the result of a woman ingesting a drug like GHB without her knowledge that impairs her ability to function or even remember the assault. Is it a woman’s for fault for drinking a soda laced with an illegal substance for the purposes of making her more mailable for her rapists.
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Do we say well you know this kind of thing that happens so when you go out you shouldn’t drink anything?
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Better yet, we know that women who go to clubs are more likely to be encounter GHB so do we now say to avoid the date rape drug don’t go to clubs and if you go to clubs don’t drink anything?
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What other crime would this even be a factor. And frankly, before GHB didn’t guys just physically overpower you and just take it. Of course then the question was why did you go back to their dorm room, hotel room etc.?

nhautomaki
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Yes to some degree. I believe that justice is often thwarted because of our tendency to want to blame the victim. No one wants to acknowledge the generally women are inherently more vulnerable than men physically. Of course, there are exceptions for very strong women (Xena comes to mind) and very slight men (well we know the type).
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But to dismiss our societal responsibility to teach our sons to behave better, we blame our daughters for their deficiencies. And it seems like every generation we have to relitigate this concept. When I was younger it was over Robin Givens and Mike Tyson, The Kennedy cousin and lastly with Coby Bryant.

nhautamaki: There’s an innate unfairness here…
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I do not disagree.
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Dee: rape isn’t about sex its about power.
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I do not disagree. But giving up your sobriety is forfeiting power.
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Again, you mention GHB and again that’s not what I’m talking about.
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in no other crime would we ask what were you wearing? What did you have to drink and how much?
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Words in my mouth again, I didn’t mention clothing. And how much you’ve had to drink is a question that gets asked on any number of crimes. You know that.
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Unless you ask me a specific question I will say no more on the issue. I know this is a sensitive issue and I hope I did not offend. I know SG mentioned a daughter, I don’t have one so I can’t pretend to know the thoughts of a parent. But, bad people will take advantage of anyone if the opportunity arises. I think I’m just pointing out one major opportunity to be taken advantage of.
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NHAU makes a good point that women just have to be more careful than men in this regard. Unfair and true.
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A woman being raped is one of the worst things that takes place on this planet. But I don’t see how pointing out that being drunk is a willfull decision that increases your opportunity to be taken advantage of is wrong-headed. As a parent wouldn’t you tell your child that being drunk around strange people in strange places increases the chances of being taken advantage of? That’s all I’m trying to say.
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Take care.

This post has taken an odd direction. Of course the subject is important. Back in Afghanistan we are waiting for Karzai to reject a law that gives a husband the “right” every fourth day (why fourth???) to “rape” his wife if she does not consent to having sex with hubby. And we want to introduce democracy there with the blood of our soldiers?

But just in case this is my last comment for the day. I will attempt to return my attention back to Joe Klein. However, before I leave this subject as I have obviously gone on and on about the delusional ways we treat rape in this country. I must first acknowledge that I don’t believe that somepople is trying to blame the victim as much as he is trying to offer what he sees as common sense tips to reduce a woman’s exposure. Unfortunately, in the context of real world events, blaming the victim whether it’s because she’s drunk, wearing provocative clothing, in a dorm/hotel room late at night, are all branches of the same delusion tree — she shouldn’t have put herself in this position. I am also acknowledging that as Americans our psyche is full of archetypes that are often self-deluded despite their good intentions. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of some myths are horrific and we are often unable to detect when our own myths are leading us astray.
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1) For example, in American a man is supposed to know what he wants and go after it. Now that’s fine if he wants to be the best basketball player in the world, just ask Jordan. He practiced and practiced until he became the best in the world. He went for it and we reward his efforts with fortune and fame. However, there is also a downside to going for it. A man who goes for it when a woman is drunk in Nike’s world may have told himself to “just do it,” but in the real world when a man goes for it when a woman is drunk it’s called rape.
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2) In America we are taught to worship our heroes. Now that’s fine as long as the heroes are comic book characters. When Clark Kent changes into superman to save a woman in a burning building the worse that will happen is that he may lose the suit he left behind in the phone booth. Unfortunately, in the real world when our firefighters allow heroism to trump safety they leave behind wives and children. Why are our firefighters more likely to die on the job than Europeans? Because we believe dying to save someone else is heroic. Now when our house is on fire we all want the guy who is going to rush in and save us no matter the cost to himself or his family. In our culture thinking is for wimps so we don’t want to first contemplate the safest way to do the job. Of course, this also means we end up investing less in the kind of training and equipment that could make this a safer gig after all its not as if these guys won’t go in the burning building anyway right — no communication, bad radios and burning trade towers, ringing any bells?
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3)Neocons — Obviously this American phenomenon is born out of watching too many John Wayne movies at an impressionable age. Surely, after September 11th Bush thought he was the Duke and Republicans have been strutting around like the world was the O.K. corral (or the Alamo pick your metaphor) ever since. What does Glenn Beck call it — the September 12th project?
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Is American mythology an important ingredient in whatever remedy we concoct to fix what’s been ailing us? Absolutely! But we ought to be honest about what these myths can and cannot do.
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The days when slapping a big uSa on our chest and declaring we are here to save the day are over. So let’s chuck the white knights, the lone rangers and the silent man of intrigue out the window and make room for daddy, coach, and welcome back Kotter so that we can lead by the powerful examples of our success when we build teams. Think about the great things we’ve achieved when we set a goal and put together the right group of people to get it done. Now, we might not want to celebrate the atomic bomb, but gosh darn if it didn’t take as much of a group effort as it took to go to the moon. We can lead by teaching and advising the grasshopper. We can lead by mentoring those coming into their own so that our hand remains firmly on the tools that shape what kind of world this will be. Yes, there are many ways to lead and we ought to not let our mythological characters determine our future reality. So Charles, please get a grip you are not Professor Xavier and no amount of mental jujitsu will allow you to make us forget that you and your ilk has gotten it wrong for the last eight years. And in being wrong you forfeited the right to call the next play.

Rustydog:
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Stuart et al, the link I cited for the increase in Americans buying more guns and ammo was a simple statement that I find to be very true in my own backyard here in Pennsylvania. Many, no let me rephrase, most of my neighbors and friends are purchasing more firearms and ammo in case of a complete meltdown from the current direction Obama is pursuing with his policies, and a fear that an Obama Administration will take away our right to bear arms during his 4 years in office.
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If that’s true, then do your own reporting and post your own experiences organized by real persons, real sales statistics and real times and dates–hopefully complete with links to Flickr photos that can provide supporting evidence.
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Linking to bizarro “preserve white America” sites doesn’t increase the credibility of your claims. It’s the exact opposite. What if I told you about the fact that the justice and health care systems in America penalize African-Americans with disproportionately disadvantageous outcomes, and then linked to a Black separatist site advertising the sale of Minister Farrakhan’s speech “Why the Blackman is God!”? Wouldn’t you first need to dispose of the question of my ideological leanings before you could take my assertions credibly, Rustydog?
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Now for the denouncement of radical white supremacists. I do NOT endorse or favor any of their ideals. None what-so-ever. I never have, nor will I ever.. They are a fringe group outside of conservatism, …
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Super. Great. I was pretty sure that this would be the case, but since your linked source is to a f*ckwad who believes in a freak fiction called “white American culture” –instead of “Confederate Stater” or “Irish-American” or “Rural American Traditionalist” or “Italian-American” or “New England Yankee” or any number of the actual cultures that are the result of people’s actual ethnicity and regional origin– it’s reasonable to ask that sort of question. I’m glad we’re on the same page, and not the page of any racial supremacists or separatists.
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…not unlike on the far left you find leftist groups and their web-sites like Daily Kos. Which I believe to be just as extreme as you would also find the Aryan Nation groups, and their web sites.
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…But this is ridiculous. DailyKos is in no way similar to neo-nazis. You obviously haven’t been to that site. They’re really hardcore Democrats over there. It’s not at all comparable to white separatists. If they were Maoists over there, that would be one thing, but they’re not. Multi-culturalists –as wrong as that can be in some extreme cases– are not even close to people who share the idea that there’s some mythical “white America” that needs preserving. People over-invested in the idea of “white privilege” –as counter-productive or even racist as that can be in its extreme– aren’t propping up the fantasy of a properly white-dominated nation a la the former South Africa. It’s nowhere close. Go there and find out for yourself what the vast, vast majority of people there think.
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I have as yet to see any “proclamation” or demand from you to denounce that group.
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Of course not. Daily Kos diarists are left-leaning Democrats, not racists out to “preserve” a dishonorable heritage from imagined Zionist conspiracies.
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Code Pink,
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They’re not evil, they’re ineffective and sad. The worst thing you can say about them is that they’re pointlessly disruptive sometimes.
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Nation of Islam,
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Done. F*ck those racist bastards. I reject and denounce them.
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Just like Barack Obama said: “If the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce,’ then I’m happy to concede the point and I would reject and denounce.”
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There. I’m with Obama on that one –and so are you, Rustydog.
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Earth Liberation Front, Eco-terrorists led by Al Gore
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I don’t actually know enough about these groups to comment, although I know that Al Gore doesn’t lead eco-terrorists. He makes films about reducing the impact of fossil-fuel consumption on global climate trends, for which he wins Nobel prizes.
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ACLU
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Go f*ck yourself, Rusty. I’m a member of the NYCLU, and the idea that you would compare the people who fight for the First Amendment rights of neo-nazis to actual neo-nazis is offensive and wrong. Either you don’t know that these people exist to defend the Constitution from Federal (NSA) to local (KKK) threats, or you hate the idea of a group whose sole purpose is to protect individuals by upholding the Bill of Rights –in which case I suggest that you move to Russia.
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NTA, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
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Again, don’t know enough about these organizations, but if they’re truly Trotskyites, I denounce them too.
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MoveOn.Org
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That’s crazy. They’re liberals, not racists. The problem I had with your sources wasn’t that it was rightist, Rusty, but that it was racist. Big difference. I want to shoot Bolsheviks on sight almost as much as I want to kill Klansmen, but that doesn’t mean that MoveOn are Stalinist scum worthy of that penalty. They’re just liberals. I don’t want to shoot CPAC, I just want to humiliate them by exposing the poverty of their ideas. There’s no reason for you to denounce CPAC any more than for me to denounce MoveOn.
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and I will add PETA to the list.
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Bizarre, but not necessarily evil. I’m up in the air on this one.
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So there you have it dear Stuart. I hope you enjoy.
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Thanks sincerely for the links Rustydog. I will check them out and let you know if I find anything related to World Zionist Conspiracy theories or “White Culture”, so you can take these off of your list.
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And I cannot wait for your “denouncement” for the far left extremists and their followers here on Swampland identified by the likes of 53_3, Paul Dirks, and sgwhite, who populate this site and others, as well.
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You’ve missed the point entirely, Rustydog. Regardless of what anybody else says, or that I think that your rightist ideology is bankrupt, dangerous and wrong for America, it’s never been about asking you to denounce your politics. It’s been about clarifying that you know that those racist scum like Kevin McDonald are evil, just like Barack Obama had to denounce and reject the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan –and ultimately express his rejection of Wright.
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As long as you link to racist scum as the source of your information, you will be rightly called upon to clarify what exactly your ideological relationship is to white separatists. The difference between you and I is that I have never linked to people who call the Jews’ religion dirty or wish to kill every last citizen of Israel. “Wipe off of the map” was a mistranslation, but even if I believed otherwise, you’d still never catch me linking to Ahmadinejad’s Facebook page as a source for Holocaust history. I don’t need to clarify, because I don’t link to people on either right or left, foreign or domestic who believe in a world Zionist conspiracy to dominate America –unlike you, Rustydog.
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I have my various arguments and debates with some of the commenters you’ve mentioned –sometimes even going so far as to question the good faith of their presentations– but none of them have ever supported the leftist equivalent of a Kevin McDonald to my knowledge.
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Anyway, it’s good to know that you denounce and reject this racist scum even though they share some of your politics, Rustydog. There is no such thing as “white heritage” to protect or defend. We’re all immigrants in this country, and nobody is more American because of where they originally came from or the color of their skin than any other citizen. If you’re proud to be Irish or Polish or German or Italian-American, then be so just as proudly as an Arab-American or a Latino should be –no more and no less so.
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Thank you for clarifying, and for reading and considering this, Rustydog.

somepeoplelikeit
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Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 12:14 pm
somepeoplelikeit Says:
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Trying to differentiate between a troll and a rightest is like trying to differentiate between a hobo and a vagabond. Sure there may be slight differences, but there both out on the street.
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Even the ones that can spell and make sense still point to the same ridiculous arguments. How many posts can be spent on the “Socialism” accusation? We’ve been a capitalist/socialist society for how long now? But we still jump on it when they trot that out and spend way too much time on it. Sometimes I wonder who’s really tossing out the meat.

I know that SG has a definition (“Trolls exist for one reason and that is to get attention.“), but I believe that this description isn’t the whole truth at all. Attention-whoring isn’t trollism, nor is simply argumentative or aggressive posting.
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Your post is confusing to me, though, so I’m not even really able to understand it, much less argue with it.
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What’s your definition of “troll”, somepeoplelikeit?

Dee, great posts. Especially at 3:43.
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somepeoplelikeit, The parallel to being drunk and getting raped is not drunk driving. Seriously, that’s like comparing smoking cigarettes to selling heroin – Women are not endangering other people when they get drunk.
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In addition, I think you are misinterpreting some of the vehemence about this subject. It’s not that the horror of the crime is clouding our judgment, or that people want to protect their daughters, or even that we’re concerned for our own personal safety. It’s that as Dee eloquently pointed out, “Unfortunately, in the context of real world events, blaming the victim whether it’s because she’s drunk, wearing provocative clothing, in a dorm/hotel room late at night, are all branches of the same delusion tree — she shouldn’t have put herself in this position.”
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Finally, it’s useful to remember that you did not end this conversation where you started it:
A woman being raped is one of the worst things that takes place on this planet. But I don’t see how pointing out that being drunk is a willfull decision that increases your opportunity to be taken advantage of is wrong-headed. As a parent wouldn’t you tell your child that being drunk around strange people in strange places increases the chances of being taken advantage of? That’s all I’m trying to say.
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And this is what provoked Dee’s and SG’s initial responses: But an interesting question is: How much different should you treat a “date rape” victim who had way too much to drink and a drunk driver? Both knew there could be serious consequences to being that drunk.
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Honestly, you should just apologize for that comment. You were holding drunk women responsible for the horrors of date rape, in the same way that drunk drivers are responsible for the deaths of their victims. That is a twisted logic. (It’s even twisted to contemplate similar treatment of drunk drivers and drunk people whose wallets are stolen when they are passed out.) The fact that you can see a parallel between date rape victims and drunk drivers shows that you are still caught in that “delusion tree” where women are responsible for rape. And you may find it uncomfortable to contemplate where that kind of thinking leads – criticisms of rape victims’ clothes, flirtatious behavior, etc. – but we need to hold people accountable for the full implications of their arguments.
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Actually that’s what stuart is doing here with rusty: As long as you link to racist scum as the source of your information, you will be rightly called upon to clarify what exactly your ideological relationship is to white separatists. I’m not comparing you to sexist scum, but since you were basing your arguments on the same deluded ideas of women’s responsibility for rape that they have, you will be asked to clarify your intellectual links with them. I hope that by challening you to do just that SG and Dee have encouraged you to rethink your views about rape. Perhaps the difference between your first and last comments on the subject is indicative of such a shift.

SZ, what’s going on? My definition of a troll would be:
Someone who posts off topic to distract.
Someone who posts something inflammatory or insulting just to elicit a response.
Someone who posts many posts unrelated to the thread that takes up room and makes it hard to sift through to who you want to read.
Sure there are other definitions or variants, that’s the basics as I see it.
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In the interests of fairness I’ll pose a question to you, who, on this site, would you specifically consider a troll?
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The point I was making is that it seems like the rhetorical “quiver” of the right has but a few arrows in it right now. “Socialism” is the favorite of the moment. Now a troll doesn’t really understand what Socialism is but he knows it’s bad and that Obama is bad for doing it. An informed rightest has a better understanding of what it is and he opposes Obama so he will trot out socialism as well.
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The slight difference I alluded to was that an informed “rightest” can point to legitimate facts to frame his argument: ie, tax increase on the rich, firing GM CEO, bank bailouts and argue those points on their merit, or lack thereof.
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The point is that they’re reaching for the same arrow from the quiver but one is a better bowsman. Neither has a legitimate point because we’ve had socialist programs for a long time here. But regardless of the subject, socialism will come out.
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Obama, far from being perfect, has the right in a tizzy right now. Seperating the crazies from the rest is becoming more difficult, it’s all starting to sound the same.
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Plus I just like the hobo/vagabond analogy.

Rose, hello, I said I was done with the subject but you have taken the time to form a well thought out post so I will respond.
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The parallel to being drunk and getting raped is not drunk driving, Seriously, that’s like comparing smoking cigarettes to selling heroin –
I don’t see a common action in smoking cigarettes and selling heroine. With drunk driving and being raped while drunk, “drunk” is the common action, so your sentence does not make sense.
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blaming the victim whether it’s because she’s drunk, wearing provocative clothing, in a dorm/hotel room late at night, are all branches of the same delusion tree — she shouldn’t have put herself in this position
I would like someone to find the word “blame” or “fault” in any of my posts as it relates to the victim. I never said it. I hate to repeat myself but it seems you guys hear what you want. Intentionally getting drunk is NOT THE SAME as: wearing provacative clothing, make up, promiscuity etc. Wearing sexy clothes doesn’t impare your vision. Please tell me what other branches on this “tree” of yours causes you to pass out, fall down and lose your inhibitions. If none of these do, how can you call them branches of the same tree. It’s just false.
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Finally, it’s useful to remember that you did not end this conversation where you started it:
Yes, let’s remember. I started it saying: But an interesting question is: How much different should you treat a “date rape” victim who had way too much to drink and a drunk driver? Both knew there could be serious consequences to being that drunk.
I pose a question that I thought was interesting and judging from the response I was right. I know we here can differentiate between statements and questions for thought. I specifically said it was just an interesting “question”.
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Honestly, you should just apologize for that comment.
Again, you say “comment” when I specified “question”. You read what you want to.
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You were holding drunk women responsible for the horrors of date rape, in the same way that drunk drivers are responsible for the deaths of their victims. That is a twisted logic
What I said was:
I’m suggesting that, in both scenarios, the person in question made the same mistake. Drinking too much. The driver obviously puts others at risk and therefore is the greater offender
Now if you don’t consider drinking too much a mistake then we’re different.But how that statement is false I don’t know.
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And you may find it uncomfortable to contemplate where that kind of thinking leads – criticisms of rape victims’ clothes, flirtatious behavior, etc. – but we need to hold people accountable for the full implications of their arguments
Both SG, Dee and now you are talking about clothing and behavior etc.
when I never mentioned any of that. You can’t take my point, follow it as you like and then blame me for where you end up. You’ve all put words in my mouth and now I hold you accountable. Is it fair, in a debate, to assume what the other person is going to say and argue with them on that instead of what they actually said? No. You’ve all not debated me fairly here.
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I’m not comparing you to sexist scum, but since you were basing your arguments on the same deluded ideas of women’s responsibility for rape that they have, you will be asked to clarify your intellectual links with them
The intellectual link is that both of these screnarios started with a mistake. I never mention other types of rape, over powering, GHB, stalking, the Afghanistan law, none of that. So to say that I’m holding all rape victims responsible is just not true.
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Perhaps the difference between your first and last comments on the subject is indicative of such a shift
Again, a question I put out there compared to a statement of belief. Not the same, not a fair comparison.
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Just to be clear again, I NEVER said it was their “fault”. What I did say was that a mistake was made.
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I know it would be nice for women to just get trashed and not worry about predators. But that’s not the case. Getting drunk is a choice and there are consequences to choices. Because some of those consequences are horrible and ugly does not change the fact. Obviously the “fault” lies with the predator, but if you choose to allow yourself to be easier prey you cannot honestly say there is zero culpability.
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I don’t believe that you guys think it’s okay to get passed out drunk. I don’t think it is. If you do many horrible things may befall you. One of those things is date rape, if you want villify me for pointing out that fact then I can’t stop you.

http://www.smartersex.org/date_rape/safety.asp
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From the page:
Avoid excessive drinking. Too much alcohol can affect your judgment
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If you start to feel strange or unusually intoxicated, seek help from a friend. A stranger who offers to help you or escort you from the event could be someone who’s slipped you a drug and plans to do you harm.
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If you are planning to drink that night, make sure you know where your friends are and how you are getting home.
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Never accept a drink from a random person. Keep an eye on your drink, don’t set your cup down to dance and come back to finish it later.
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51.8 percent of rapes occur after midnight
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Guys, it’s not safe. I’m sorry. A girl getting drunk doesn’t “deserve” to be raped. It doesn’t give a guy the “right” to rape her. But it makes her less safe!!!
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Good night, be safe.

somepeoplelikeit
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I seriously don’t get the point you are trying to make here. YOU are the one who compared getting date raped and drinking and driving. Thats a seriously twisted question that you asked. You can bring up all the numbers and quotes you want to but it comes back to your original framing. That you believe it even comes close to being the same thing to drink and drive and to drink and get raped by another human being is just unconscionable. I started to just leave it alone but you so vehemently defend your statements to the point where its truly disgusting. I can only hope that no woman close to you ever gets raped after having some drinks. While that would be the worlds best teacher for you I wouldn’t wish it on you or anyone else. Do you realize that in general most date rapes that involve drinking are with men the woman already knows and trusts? Got damn man I can’t even think straight reading through your posts on the subject. There is a very simple litmus test, if the woman can’t tell you that she wants to have sex with you then if you have sex with her you are raping her. Its that simple. Nobody said that drinking heavily was the best thing in the world to do but thats a far cry from saying “they both know the dangers going in” in comparing it to drinking and driving. Thats a bunch of bullsh*t.

SG, I can only hope that no woman close to you ever gets raped after having some drinks
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First let me say f*ck you, you arrogant asshole.
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Second, let me say you are closed minded jerk that reads what you want to read. Dispute these facts for me SG:
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1. Drinking heavily has consequences.
Disagree? Is so please elaborate.
2. Two possible consequences of drinking heavily are date rape and vehicular homicide.
Disagree? If so please elaborate.
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You seem to think I would look a victim in the eye and say “you shouldn’t been drinking, it’s your fault.” You want me to say that so you can express how outraged you are over date rape. I get it.
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But if you don’t warn your daughter not to drink excessively than you’re a fool. If you don’t tell her one of the consequences is date rape you’re irresponsible.
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And if you can’t get passed the fact that drunk driving (and all that entails) and date rape are BOTH possible consequences of drinking heavily because of the difference in severity of the two then you’re being dishonest.
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Meaning you theorized about me acting in possible date rape scenario because I stated a fact. F*ck you to say that to me.

SG, I can only hope that no woman close to you ever gets raped after having some drinks
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First let me say f*ck you, you arrogant a$$hole.
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Second, let me say you are closed minded jerk that reads what you want to read. Dispute these facts for me SG:
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1. Drinking heavily has consequences.
Disagree? Is so please elaborate.
2. Two possible consequences of drinking heavily are date rape and vehicular homicide.
Disagree? If so please elaborate.
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You seem to think I would look a victim in the eye and say “you shouldn’t been drinking, it’s your fault.” You want me to say that so you can express how outraged you are over date rape. I get it.
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But if you don’t warn your daughter not to drink excessively than you’re a fool. If you don’t tell her one of the consequences is date rape you’re irresponsible.
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And if you can’t get passed the fact that drunk driving (and all that entails) and date rape are BOTH possible consequences of drinking heavily because of the difference in severity of the two then you’re being dishonest.
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Meaning you theorized about me acting in possible date rape scenario because I stated a fact. F*ck you to say that to me.

I’m done with this for tonight, I think you crossed a line talking about those close to me being raped as being a “teacher” to me. F*ck you again, I still can’t believe you said that.

Here is the part YOU are missing ass hole. You can get drunk all you want to and you won’t just end up driving a car. You have to willfully take your keys out and get behind the wheel after driving. That is not the case with a woman getting date raped after getting drunk. You can get pissed off all you want but your words are posted on this comment thread in perpetuity for all to see. You can try to run from what you said but obviously it wasn’t just me reading it exactly the way you posted it. Rose asked for an apology but I guess none is forth coming is it?

I guess you have a reading comprehension problem so I will quote what I said earlier.
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I can only hope that no woman close to you ever gets raped after having some drinks. While that would be the worlds best teacher for you I wouldn’t wish it on you or anyone else.
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Now you can go back to defending comparing date rape to drunk driving.

SG, You can get drunk all you want to and you won’t just end up driving a car.
A more foolish statement would be difficult to find.
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You have to willfully take your keys out and get behind the wheel after driving
Does this make sense to you?
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your words are posted on this comment thread in perpetuity for all to see
Which statements of fact are you referring to that are not true?
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Rose asked for an apology but I guess none is forth coming is it
Rose and Dee too, I’m honestly sorry if you mistook my blunt observations as malicious. I mean no ill harm and if you go through my posts, on this thread and others, I don’t think you can say that I’ve been mean in the past. I’m sorry again.
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SG, go f*ck yourself.
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I was a liar. I was not done.

As to your last post, you talking about someone close to me being raped. If I spoke about someone close to you being murdered would that be cool? Why is that ok for you to say? Because afterwards you say I wouldn’t wish it on you or anyone else.
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Well no offense, but you’re a f*cking idiot.
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It’s cool because I said no offense first.

This is getting really ugly really fast. That’s too bad.
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Hey, I’m just curious SG:
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Do you think that somepeoplelikeit is sexist scum who thinks that women who are raped have it coming to them? Or do you think that somepeoplelikeit said something that sounded wrong to you, and you got pissed off really quickly, and shut yourself off to any other explanation than that this person must be horribly wrong?
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Just curious…because if this actually is a misunderstanding, that would be a lot better to acknowledge, instead of having needless ugliness between us political allies here. Maybe.
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I could be wrong, though.

Rose, I’m also curious:
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You mentioned “you were basing your arguments on the same deluded ideas of women’s responsibility for rape that they have“, and then somepeoplelikeit replied that the question merely resembled that old, horrible weapon of patriarchy since the concept of womens’ agency was introduced for exploratory purposes.
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Is that unmitigated denial and thorough explanation enough for you to assume that somepeoplelikeit was simply talking about a complex topic without feeling the need for a defensive preamble about rape always being the fault of the rapist?
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Or do you truly believe that anyone who raises the complex topic of agency in the context of rape and binge drinking is either secretly or unconsciously harboring a dangerous, patriarchical concept of women, and seeks to punish women for independence via rape tolerance?
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Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m not making a point, I’m truly interested in you honest response.

somepeoplelikeit, both smoking cigarettes and selling heroin involve dangerous substances that kill people. That’s the parallel. It’s a weak one, like your drunk driving/drunk date rape victim parallel.
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Both SG, Dee and now you are talking about clothing and behavior etc.
when I never mentioned any of that. You can’t take my point, follow it as you like and then blame me for where you end up. You’ve all put words in my mouth and now I hold you accountable. Is it fair, in a debate, to assume what the other person is going to say and argue with them on that instead of what they actually said? No. You’ve all not debated me fairly here.
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Okay, I think Dee and I have made this quite clear but I can imagine this is difficult so I’ll try to explain it once again. The key concept here is responsibility. Once you compared drunken women who get raped to drunk drivers, you were attributing responsibility to the rape victims. Perhaps you disagree with that last sentence, in which case that is the CORE disagreement here. Our point is that once you accept the concept of rape victims’ responsibility you end up with clothes, flirtatious behavior, etc.
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And no one is suggesting that you personally would blame a rape victim because of the clothes they wore – we really aren’t putting words into your mouth. But part of a fair debate is looking at the IMPLICATIONS of peoples’ arguments.
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You can’t take my point, follow it as you like and then blame me for where you end up. See, actually we can point out the obvious implications of your argument and then point the problems with those implications. That’s one of the functions of debate. You can’t blame us for the fact that your argument is based on a truly dangerous principle of holding rape victims’ responsible.

stuart, those are interesting questions and I’ll try to answer them tomorrow. But I will quickly say that there is a difference between agency and responsibility, IMO. Personally I’m a careful, prudent person – somepeoplelikeit wouldn’t see any parallel between my behavior and that of a drunk driver – and I would definitely strongly discourage binge drinking around strangers (and in general actually). However, I don’t think that somepeoplelikeit was merely exploring the concept of agency.
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BTW, I also regret how ugly this has become between somepeoplelikeit (we need to find an abbreviation for that handle…) and SG. But I think this is a substantive and significant difference, not one of our usual manufactured weekend disagreements.
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somepeoplelikeit, one other clarification occurred to me… Drunk driving is illegal, regardless of whether the driver is involved in an accident. Getting drunk is not illegal.

somepeoplelikeit:
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My definition of a troll would be:
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Someone who posts off topic to distract.
Someone who posts something inflammatory or insulting just to elicit a response.
Someone who posts many posts unrelated to the thread that takes up room and makes it hard to sift through to who you want to read.
Sure there are other definitions or variants, that’s the basics as I see it.
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Thanks for your response, I appreciate it very much.
I agree that all of these are indicative of trollery, but it seems to me that you don’t name the most important characteristic of it: one knows a troll by its clear intent to destroy the value of the forum.
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This means that your characteristics need this qualifier as such:

Someone who posts off topic to distract everyone from a valuable exposition.
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Someone who posts something inflammatory or insulting just to elicit a response with the goal of ruining discussion.
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Someone who posts many posts unrelated to the thread that takes up room and makes it hard to sift through to who you want to read so as to destroy the value of the forum.
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Someone whose goal when interacting is solely to kill the blog’s commentary for their own perverse reasons by taking advantage of anonymity and the predictable gullibility or serious good faith of its honest participants.

That’s the definition of a troll. The question of intent is what makes determined, effective trollery so hard to expunge from quality commentary. A true troll is a master at getting people to stop intelligent discussion, and start pointless bickering. The goal is to damage the forum, either for amusement or political objectives.
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In the interests of fairness I’ll pose a question to you, who, on this site, would you specifically consider a troll?
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Quite a long time ago, trolls started to spoof other commenters’ handles, and posted inflammatory comments during intense debates. A troll appeared with the handle ” stuart_zechman” (putting a space character before the name characters), who then posted absolute sh*t like “I hate Obama so much, don’t you formerlyjames? I remember that you said that when you also mentioned that you can’t stand Paul Dirks, because he’s a homosexual.“.
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Here’s a link to a troll spoofing my handle on another forum at which I’ve never actually even posted (CNN’s political ticker), just to destroy the conversation:

stuart_zechman July 15th, 2008 10:11 am ET
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If I had wanted to draw a cartoon that more accurately portrays Obama and his wife, I would have drawn the same cartoon the New Yorker did but have the pair of them surrounded by Kos Kids and Obamabots on their hands and knees worshiping them.
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CNN will be too chicken to post this heresy against The Chosen One!

I obviously did not post that, but someone who wants bad things to happen to the discussion did.
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That’s a good example of trollery.
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The point I was making is that it seems like the rhetorical “quiver” of the right has but a few arrows in it right now. “Socialism” is the favorite of the moment. Now a troll doesn’t really understand what Socialism is but he knows it’s bad and that Obama is bad for doing it. An informed rightest has a better understanding of what it is and he opposes Obama so he will trot out socialism as well.
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No, I don’t think so. The rightists we’re dealing with have no arrows because they are used to more than a decade of a reality-free talk radio echo chamber, and a frightened centrist media that acted on the principle that the left needed to be marginalized much more than the right. It’s not “right now”, other than that their governance has been empirically proven to be a catastrophic failure. This evidence doesn’t mean anything to them –Dick Cheney and Glenn Beck still say that Al Qaeda was conspiring with Saddam– because the rightist base is not reality based. They have no arrows because they never did, apart from the one arrow they used to convince the centrist political establishment that they were inevitable starting in 1994. “Inevitability” was all they ever really had…but to the political class that controlled our discourse prior to the internet’s dominance, “inevitability” was everything. George W Bush won his nomination because of “inevitability” and a 5-4 court.
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A troll isn’t an uninformed rightist. Most rightists are uninformed, because they live in an alternate information universe. A rightist who calls a liberal Democrat a “socialist” is doing so because the definition of “socialist” has ceased to be anything other than “liberal Democrat” to the non-reality-based base.
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It doesn’t have anything to do with trollery –they’re just badly wrong about everything, and are out to spread their version of reality outward from talk radio or the White House, whichever they have the capacity to occupy. Richard Perle said that the Iraq war was going to be paid for with Iraqi oil money, and would be over very quickly. He’s pretty darn well informed, and yet would be considered a troll by some folks’ DailyKos-oriented definition if he showed up here and told us what his version of reality is, i.e. that Iran is going to take over the world by exploiting Obama’s weakness.
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Part of the problem comes from the fact that there are so many trolls who infect places like DailyKos with rightist stupidity just to see some of the more stupid and/or new and/or easily offended people in the more righteous corners of the liberal blogosphere lose their minds.
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The rightists who start arguments with liberals who get ludicrously offended by “insensitive” language at the first opportunity can really wreck a place for liberal Democratic organizing like DailyKos, so they are correct to call rightists trolls over there. Since the forum isn’t for the purpose of discussion between left, center and right –only left and left– it’s legitimate for them to ban rightists looking to argue, and to name that pointless disruption as trollery, whether the rightists are honestly looking for real debate or not.
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We’re not DailyKos, therefore that special definition doesn’t apply here.
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So: If the rightist’s goal is to damage the forum by calling Obama a socialist, then they are a troll, and should be ignored. If the rightist’s aim is to tell others about their sincere belief in idiotic talk radio fantasy by calling Obama a socialist, then they’re just a rightist.
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Does that make more sense, somepeoplelikeit?

I probably have no business commenting on this, but it’s an interesting conversation for observers of this thread to ponder. While I don’t think somepeople meant any ill-will toward women, a few of his comments fall into a worrisome realm. The fact of the matter is drinking alcohol – especially in excess – can make anyone more vulnerable. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, getting sh!t faced drunk impairs your ability to make choices. Having said that, no person EVER has the right to aggress upon another, no matter how impaired the victim may be. Point blank, a woman could be passed out on a park bench in a mini-skirt, and that still wouldn’t give ANYONE the right to touch her. A crime against her should be treated exactly the way it would be if she was sitting up, completely coherent, in the middle of the day. The wallet argument posed by somepeople does not fly, because if a man was passed out on the street and someone took his wallet, it would ONLY be the fault of the robber, and in NO WAY the fault of the man. Yes, the man would feel guilty – and he might struggle with those feelings of guilt for the rest of his life, but just like a woman who feels guilty for being raped, the fault is not in ANY WAY hers, it falls ENTIRELY on the part of the aggressor.

I’m with stuart_z–way too much anger here. From reading how this all went down, it really looks to me like certain individuals were spoiling for a fight and looking for any excuse to get into one.

Sorry, that should have read “George W Bush won his nomination because of “inevitability” and his Presidency because of a 5-4 court.”

Rose:
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stuart, those are interesting questions and I’ll try to answer them tomorrow.
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I look forward to hearing from you when you get the chance. If not, I understand that life is busy, and that there are other things to accomplish!

…if a man was passed out on the street and someone took his wallet, it would ONLY be the fault of the robber, and in NO WAY the fault of the man.
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Really?
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Hmmm…I’m thinking about this.
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You mean to say that, if that man were me, and I came home to my wife the next day after passing out on the street, and if when I explained to my wife that our money was gone she became angry with me for being so drunk as to pass out on the street and thus give the opportunity of stealing our money to any malevolent passerby, I then told her not to blame me, but to blame whoever took my wallet because I read online that “it’s ONLY the fault of the robber”, she would be wrong to further reprimand me?
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Do you believe that my wife would agree with this idea?

Seems to me that Krauthammer got a lot of nails of good quality ready and you are handing him some more solid stainless steel ones in this Post, plus boxes full being brought in by Obama supporters in your other Post on the kow-tow-bow.

And if I read the latest Human Events email on all the legal action on hand regarding birth certificates [there are some very good heavy duty nails in there] then I think there’s going to be a lot of work for the Hammer, and a lot more duck-and-dive necessary on your side.

SZ – your wife could be justifyably angry at you because your actions made you more vulnerable, but she would not be justified in saying the crime was your fault. You passing out did not make the crime occur, somebody else’s actions did. Therefore that person is 100% responsible for the crime.

This debate reminds me of the gun control debate where stuart pointed out that supreme court ruling that ultimately absolved the police of all responsibility for failing to protect innocent people that had called them asking for help, and said that innocent people have got the responsibility to protect themselves. It seems like a similar kind of logic, to blame women for getting raped. I find it repulsive in all cases.
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And I still feel like the critical point here is the unfairness. If a man gets falling down drunk, he’s not going to get date raped. But if a woman does, she might. Society (ought to) exist expressly for the purpose of defending the rights and freedoms of all people equally. If a man can get falling down drunk without having to worry about getting raped, then dang it a woman should be able to as well. There should be the same legal repurcussions, and, just as importantly, there should be the same moral repurcussions for the rapist, regardless of what the woman did or failed to do to protect herself.
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No matter what crime is committed, there are always things victims could have done to protect themselves better, but it sure seems to me like we focus on those things a lot more in cases of rape than in other crimes.

stuart thank you for your response in the earlier comment above, I think.
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stuartzechman Says:
Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 1:18 am
“Since the forum isn’t for the purpose of discussion between left, center and right –only left and left– it’s legitimate for them to ban rightists looking to argue, and to name that pointless disruption as trollery,”
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But, please tell me how you can write this drivel, after making the above comment?
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ACLU
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“Go f*ck yourself, Rusty. I’m a member of the NYCLU, and the idea that you would compare the people who fight for the First Amendment rights of neo-nazis to actual neo-nazis is offensive and wrong. Either you don’t know that these people exist to defend the Constitution from Federal (NSA) to local (KKK) threats, or you hate the idea of a group whose sole purpose is to protect individuals by upholding the Bill of Rights –in which case I suggest that you move to Russia“.
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This truly makes absolutely no sense to me at all. I might be more open to understand if this had occurred in two separate threads, but within the same thread? Come on Stuart, you are better than that!
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Perhaps you need an ACLU refresher course.
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And, for the likes of 53_3, SG, and Paul Dirks, my only point with those Three Stooges was it seems they love to attempt to call people out when they have disagreement which in and of itself is fine. But, how they do it with 3rd grade playground name calling just illuminates how “little” they truly all are.
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When my only defense for my opinion comes down to just calling you a “far left liberal lunatic” or a “socialist” with no back up as to why I have named you such, then I should be called out and ridiculed. I am not innocent, and will own up to it with the three of them. But having tried to have a conversation with them almost always ends up with “rusty the racist” as the basis for their defense. Again, totally childish, and what I have experienced to be the truth when debating most democrats.
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And, Happy Easter everyone, may the love of Jesus Christ fill you all.

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somepeoplelikeit: But if you don’t warn your daughter not to drink excessively than you’re a fool. If you don’t tell her one of the consequences is date rape you’re irresponsible.
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Ya know, I’m too lazy to go through all 240-odd comments and see what exactly started this sh*tstorm among otherwise sensible people, but what’s stated in the snip above should in no way be offensive.
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Yes, in an ideal world my daughters could drink and should not need to worry about being assaulted sexually…or take a walk down a dark alley in a crime-infested part of town, or go visit someone they met on an internet chatroom. But we’re not there yet.
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The point is that I’d like to make sure that no harm comes to my family in the first place, hence the warning…That’s part of my job as a parent, keeping my family safe. There’s no blame on my kids’ heads (and I have two boys as well) if they become the victim in any of the above scenarios.
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I understand that a woman having a right to determine what she does with her body is a concept that many men (and some women) have some difficulty with…and that difficulty needs to be overcome. However, I can’t control other people’s epiphanies, so they only thing I have left is to encourage my kids to make good choices.

may the love of Jesus Christ fill you
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You too, Rustydog.

Ya know, I’m too lazy to go through all 240-odd comments and see what exactly started this sh*tstorm among otherwise sensible people, but what’s stated in the snip above should in no way be offensive.
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g_crush, I basically agree. Which leads to…
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stuart, I think one has to focus on that first comment of somepeoplelikeit’s to understand this conversation and its level of vehemence. Here it is again: But an interesting question is: How much different should you treat a “date rape” victim who had way too much to drink and a drunk driver? Both knew there could be serious consequences to being that drunk.
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First, there is an obvious implication there that society should treat date rape victims (the quotes there were needlessly antagonistic, BTW) more like drunk drivers. Let’s actually think about what that involves. These women have gone through an incredibly traumatic and painful experience that puts them at risk of PTSD and other mental disorders. They need to be tested for STI’s. They have to either obtain a morning after pill (which are not widely accessible to everyone) or wait to find out the results of a pregnancy test. The only problem these women are unlikely to have is being ignorant of the consequences of behavior like getting drunk around strangers. Seriously, we do not need to tell rape victims to be more careful in the future – The real concern is that they will seclude themselves. This is obviously another key difference with drunk drivers: Often they re-offend multiple times and basically don’t care about endangering other people.
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If as somepeoplelikeit suggests, and I would too, there is a lack of awareness about the dangers of binge drinking culture, men and women who haven’t been raped will disproportionately be the ignorant ones. Frankly, this is all common sense. You don’t need to be a genius (or a woman) to figure out that there is in fact no societal problem with rape victims refusing to modify their dangerous behavior. This problem is about as mythical as those re-education camps Obama is planning to create. So why suggest that date rape victims should be treated more like drunk drivers? There is an obvious suggestion that drunk women are partly responsible for the horrors of rape. That is very disturbing. That’s not just SG, Dee, me, etc. imagining things.
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This is a good time to point out once again that’s not where somepeoplelikeit ended up. If he has changed his mind – which is what it looks like – it would be great if he admitted that so we could all move on.
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You mean to say that, if that man were me, and I came home to my wife the next day after passing out on the street, and if when I explained to my wife that our money was gone she became angry with me for being so drunk as to pass out on the street and thus give the opportunity of stealing our money to any malevolent passerby, I then told her not to blame me, but to blame whoever took my wallet because I read online that “it’s ONLY the fault of the robber”, she would be wrong to further reprimand me?
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Well what if instead of having your wallet stolen you were raped (it’s incredibly rare but not absolutely impossible) or beaten brutally? What if you were afraid, had been violated in the most personal and awful way, and in physical pain? Yes, reprimanding you would be wrong.
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And let’s go back to the original hypothetical of the stolen wallet. Would any reprimanding in that scenario approach the anger directed at you if you endangered other people’s lives by driving drunk? No. It’s not in the same stratosphere. That goes back to my initial parallel of smoking cigarettes and selling heroin.
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Is that unmitigated denial and thorough explanation enough for you to assume that somepeoplelikeit was simply talking about a complex topic without feeling the need for a defensive preamble about rape always being the fault of the rapist?
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As I’ve shown, I don’t think that’s what somepeoplelikeit was doing when he started this debate. But that is close to what he ended up doing, although by then he was using the defensive/explanatory preamble.
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Or do you truly believe that anyone who raises the complex topic of agency in the context of rape and binge drinking is either secretly or unconsciously harboring a dangerous, patriarchical concept of women, and seeks to punish women for independence via rape tolerance?
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I’m DEFINITELY not suggesting that somepeoplelike it is “secretly or unconsciously harboring a dangerous, patriarchical concept of women,” or wants to punish women. This is a blog. I can’t possibly know what kind of person he is judging from a few bizarre posts. But his (initial) ARGUMENT is part of that same delusion tree which “seeks to punish women for independence via rape tolerance.” That’s the problem.
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I think we’ve all advanced arguments only to reject them when other people pointed out the full implications of our arguments. For example, I’ve changed my views about censoring comments on Swampland after you pointed out some of the problems with that line of thinking. It would certainly be unfair of you to suggest that I harbor totalitarian views about censorship just because I thought QH should be banished after his horrible comments about Ted Kennedy. But it was perfectly fair (and actually helpful – I really am trying to be helpful here) to point out the disturbing implications of my argument. I ended up changing my mind and admitting it. I hope somepeoplelikeit does the same.

I guess what is key to this discussion and has fueled much of the passion in many of the responses is the context in which these event take place. I suppose much in the world has changed, but so much so that we have forgotten the difficulty women once had of getting date rape charges taken seriously? I remember clearly, the debates raging across college campuses that date rape was a diminutive form of rape or “not really rape,” precisely because of questions about a woman’s culpability. In my mind it does not really matter whether this perceived culpability is derived from an increased vulnerability due to a woman’s choice to drink excessively, or any other factor that her choices may have engendered, including promiscuous behavior, wardrobe decisions, being out after midnight or clubbing in an establishment that exposes one to GHB.
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The shared critical factor in all of these scenarios, including somepeople’s inartfully constructed example of drunk driving, is an increased vulnerability. The bottom line is that most women, because of physical differences are more physically vulnerable to rape than most men. Therefore using the logic introduced by somepeople, women by definition are somewhat culpable to the crime because if they choose to leave their homes or invite anyone in because they are aware of their increased vulnerability in a physical encounter with a man.
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Now as a practical matter I agree with somepeople assessment that we should tell our daughters not to binge drink because they will be more susceptible to alcohol poisoning than a man consuming the same amount of alcohol, as well as more likely to get raped. But not because they are partly culpable but because excessive drinking will impair their ability to recognize a predator and engage their fight or fight response.
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Somepeople, one of the reasons that you think that some of us have put words in your mouth is because we were all focused on the concept of increased vulnerability as the shared factor of culpability. And using this language we are within good debate form to substitute any example of increased vulnerability to see if your hypothesis holds up. If we were in civil court suing someone who committed date rape a finding of even partial culpability would mean a decreased award proportional to the degree of the woman’s culpability. Perhaps in that context you will see why some of us objected so vehemently.
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For others I would suggest that you read the thread before you pass judgement on the motivation for some of passion that has been expressed.

I was at work (4-12) and missed the street fight but I still want to weigh in with my opinion. Whether you’re a man or a woman and you get so drunk that your judgement is impaired or else you’re so drunk that you actually pass out, rape is a violent criminal act. Period. The criminals might be able to rationalize it to themselves with some faulty logic, but any excuse is only that, an excuse. There is no excuse for committing rape. How the woman is dressed, how much makeup she had on, how much she had to drink or whether she was flirting at a bar in no way constitutes a justification for rape. “She had it coming”, “she obviously wanted it” or “she shouldn’t have been in this part of town” is in the mind of the rapist. Exercizing poor judgement on the part of the woman is a mistake. It’s not a criminal act. It’s not a green light that says “I’m fair game”. If my wife, sister or one of my nieces ever had the tragedy of rape befall them, I could only hope that the authorities got to the rapist before I did. I love my freedom but would have to hope that a jury would view my actions as temporary insanity because the rapist would be minus the equipment that made rape possible.

[...] Joe Klein, in an excellent put-down of Charles Krauthammer, writes: [...]

Thanks for the response, Rose. I really do appreciate it.
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Unfortunately for the (now getting back to rational and in good faith) discussion, I am about to go and do some previously planned activity with Lovely Bride, so I will not be able to ask you a few more questions that have arisen from your response.
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I think that these issues (there are many, actually) are more complex than your analysis suggests, and it seems that you are unaware of certain factors that are influencing your arguments in a way that is somewhat different than with other subjects of debate. I think that if you were to be questioned in good faith about some of your arguments, the answers you would be forced to consider might not change your understanding of the facts, but you might expand the scope of the issue beyond what could be certain self-imposed limits.
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I’d like to share these questions with you when I return, if you had the time and opportunity to continue the discussion.
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Thanks again for taking the time to explain your ideas, Rose.

SZ
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Maybe you should read the thread before asking me questions about how I view somepeople. If you notice I didn’t start the name calling this time HE DID. You would also notice that before I got on his case I asked him to clarify his statement. What he said only made it worse in my eyes. For people who have actually had someone close to them be date raped (which I have) everything he said to try to justify comparing getting date raped to driving junk was beyond offensive. If you actually do have the occasion to go back through the thread you will notice that early in this argument I said that of course I would caution my daughter against getting sloppy drunk but that doesn’t give any scum bag license to rape her. PERIOD. Now aside from calling somepeople an ass hole I haven’t gone into why he has a misguided opinion about date rape other than the fact that he is obviously uninformed. Like I said last night, what he said and what I said is all there for you to read. There really is no need to speculate. I made my views very clear from the moment he made the analogy. Perhaps Stuart you agree with somepeople that women who get date raped are akin to drunk drivers, I don’t know, but whether you do or not that is one of the most dangerous notions out there when it comes to women. The clear implication is “she had it coming to her”. Which mirrors the mentality of date rapists that if she gets that drunk then I can do what I want to. Thats what the argument here is all about and somepeople still endorses that analogy. I don’t apologize for a word that I said. I meant every single keystroke and he and you can take it however you want to.

Perhaps Stuart you agree with somepeople that women who get date raped are akin to drunk drivers, I don’t know
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LOL
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…and now the veiled accusations start.
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“Maybe you are sexist scum too, I don’t know, but obviously since you don’t jump up and down pointing your finger at the sexist scum over there like the rest of us righteously enraged good people, maybe –I’m not saying definitely– you’re sympathetic to what’s most awful in the universe that we all must hate with all of our might! Well? Are you or are you not scum? Don’t you think you open yourself up to these kind of questions? You’re not agreeing with everything (I am) we righteous folk are saying…so it’s entirely possible that you’re that sort of horrible person I’ve been accusing others of being, too. Defend yourself now, without ever questioning my righteous statements, or stand accused of not being properly outraged by rape.”
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Do you ever listen to yourself sometimes, SG?
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I merely asked you to question your own immediate anger, and you then direct your anger at me.
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Does this follow a pattern for you, do you think?

First of all to Rose and Dee I want to say my apology was real. I also want to point out some instances where I think you guys debated me unfairly and get your response.
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Rose, both smoking cigarettes and selling heroin involve dangerous substances that kill people. That’s the parallel. It’s a weak one, like your drunk driving/drunk date rape victim parallel
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Rose, please be honest with me here. In my scenario the two people engage in the exact same activities. Is this a weak parallel? In your scenario the people engage in different activities. Is this honestly the same? Rose, this statement of yours would not hold in a different context.
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See, actually we can point out the obvious implications of your argument and then point the problems with those implications.
Rose, how can me pointing out the FACT the both drunk driving and date rape are possible consequences of being drunk obviously implicate that I also believe provacative clothes, promiscuity, make up etc. are valid reasons for a woman to be raped. Or that I believe they “deserve” it somehow. You’re taking alot of liberty with my words on a very touchy subject.
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On this “tree” you guys keep mentioning I asked you to tell me what other branch impairs your vision, decision making and motor skills. Nobody answered. Clothes don’t make you stupid, make up doesn’t make you fall down, acting flirty doesnt make you pass out. These are not branches of the same tree. If you disagree please explain.
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If I can make some implications, are you saying that women who get drunk bear no responsiblity for anything that happens to them afterward?
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Google “responsibility and power” and you will find many people think they are linked. Do you agree with power comes responsibility, with responsiblity comes power? If so, what happens when you take resonsiblity out of this? Does the power stay?
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You guys wouldn’t make these thin arguments on another subject.
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Nobody asked SG to apologize for saying somebody close to me being raped would be a “teacher” for me. This is the most inflammatory thing said on this thread. Nobody missed a beat. Because he’s on your side, the anti rape side. Guys, we’re all anti rape. SG, keeps saying go look at my words and I encourage you to do so. Nobody has brought to my attention a statement of fact that I made that was untrue.
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The wallet argument posed by somepeople does not fly, because if a man was passed out on the street and someone took his wallet, it would ONLY be the fault of the robber, and in NO WAY the fault of the man
Astonishing.
I wish you were around to explain this concept to my parents and a few police officers I’ve come across.
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To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite orators, I think you guys are “using an axe when a scalpel is necessary.”
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I read this blog for quite a while and assumed there were more surgeons, not loggers.
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This is complex, but we’re all on the same side. I’m sorry if anybody reading my posts here think that I feel drunk woman “have it coming”. I most certainly do not.

SZ
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Again you can twist my words all you want to, but they are there for everyone to read. I can’t control how you take them, I can only control what I said. Maybe you should start looking in the mirror a little more in between your comments.

SZ — I concur with SG’s suggestion that you read the thread. The mere fact that rose and I are on the same side of an issue ought to signal the unlikelihood that there will be any reasonable justification for somepeople’s argument. Now, while I don’t conclude that this error in judgement makes somepeople an evil person, I do believe he violated the first rule of debate club — when in a hole the correct response is to stop digging.
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In my mind, somepeople seems to have fallen victim to the human propensity to want to be right. And to be right has lost sight of the fact that this line of thought, be it posed as a question or statement is first and foremost a line which has points along the spectrum that are so reprehensible that it renders the entire concept egregiously offensive.
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I would suggest that if somepeople would step back momentarily and imagine the deep wound sustained by those who have a personal connection to the act or the aftermath and imagine the pain that ensues from ripping off a scab this large, then perhaps there would be a greater understanding of why the discussion became so heated. And lastly I leave you with these words on the subject. If all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing, what kind of leg up do we give evil when we give it intellectual support?

somepeoplelikeit: I haven’t had a chance yet to read the entire thread and possibly some of the things you mentioned like “had it coming, makeup, clothes and flirting” were in other posts. The post I made mentioned all of those and concerned only my viewpoint without regard to whatever someone else had posted. I do believe that a woman getting so drunk that she can’t fend off a rape is immaterial and that the woman bears no part of the blame. A criminal act is a criminal act. Bad judgement on the part of the woman (getting sloppy drunk) in no way makes her responsible for a violent act a criminal commits. I can see some logic in the argument that a person should know better than to put themselves in such a situation, but ultimately, we’d have to live in an impregnable plastic bubble if we wanted to remove ourselves from social interactions that prevented harm from coming to us.

My new friend sacredh speaks great sense in his closing sentence “because the rapist would be minus the equipment that made rape possible”. I say Bravo! Amen! to you good Sir. See, we can be on the same side when it really matters. And please tell all the other folk to stop the street fight. It’s getting real ugly for onlookers from outside. Nice hearing your voice.

The wallet argument posed by somepeople does not fly, because if a man was passed out on the street and someone took his wallet, it would ONLY be the fault of the robber, and in NO WAY the fault of the man
Astonishing.
I wish you were around to explain this concept to my parents and a few police officers I’ve come across.
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Being vulnerable (no matter what made/makes you vulnerable) is not equivalent to “asking for it” nor does it make a crime being committed against you partially your fault.
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Do your parents or those police officers think that a homeless man, regardless of his responsibility to try and not be homeless, is partially at fault if he gets beaten or robbed?
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Simply put: Being drunk or vulnerable is not a crime. Rape, stealing, and drunk driving are crimes.

253 comments?
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What’s the record? Something like 400, right?
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My input into a rather nasty exchange:
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Rape occurs whenever a woman says no and the man refuses to stop. No matter what situation. No means no, drunken, etc or not. No extenuaties!

BTW, off-off-off topic:
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CNN broke news that 3 of 4 pirates were killed and the captain freed!

Ike: I really do believe in the rule of law and having the courts handle criminals, but rape, child abuse, animal cruelty and a couple of other things send my rationality on vacation. Family is everything to me and a crime committed against a member of my family is a crime committed against me. I know that makes me little better than a criminal or a vigilante, but that’s the way I think and how I was brought up. Even a bleeding heart like me has a little bit of Bufford Pusser in him.

Story:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/12/somalia.pirates/index.html

Rose, please be honest with me here. In my scenario the two people engage in the exact same activities. Is this a weak parallel? In your scenario the people engage in different activities. Is this honestly the same? Rose, this statement of yours would not hold in a different context.
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somepeoplelikeit, Yes, it honestly is the same parallel. The key point here is of course that being drunk and drunk driving are NOT the exact same activities – I’m actually surprised that you could see them as the same. I’ll try to clarify. Both smoking cigarettes and getting drunk are legal activities that endanger personal safety. Both selling heroin and drunk driving are illegal activities that endanger others’ personal safety. And all four activities involve dangerous substances that can be fatal.
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Rose, how can me pointing out the FACT the both drunk driving and date rape are possible consequences of being drunk obviously implicate that I also believe provacative clothes, promiscuity, make up etc. are valid reasons for a woman to be raped. Or that I believe they “deserve” it somehow. You’re taking alot of liberty with my words on a very touchy subject.
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First, I NEVER said that you believe clothing, behavior, etc. “are valid reasons for a woman to be raped.” Now you are putting words in my mouth. I was pointing out the common foundations of your argument and arguments that do blame rape victims. That’s very different. Just to clarify, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I don’t think you’re soft on rapists. I just don’t think you’ve fully thought through your arguments. This isn’t some kind of personal attack.
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On this “tree” you guys keep mentioning I asked you to tell me what other branch impairs your vision, decision making and motor skills. Nobody answered. Clothes don’t make you stupid, make up doesn’t make you fall down, acting flirty doesnt make you pass out. These are not branches of the same tree. If you disagree please explain.
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I’m going to quote Dee again: The shared critical factor in all of these scenarios, including somepeople’s inartfully constructed example of drunk driving, is an increased vulnerability. The bottom line is that most women, because of physical differences are more physically vulnerable to rape than most men. Therefore using the logic introduced by somepeople, women by definition are somewhat culpable to the crime because if they choose to leave their homes or invite anyone in because they are aware of their increased vulnerability in a physical encounter with a man.
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I sincerely believe that you don’t support your argument when it reaches its logical conclusion of holding rape victims responsible. We (okay, maybe not SG) are just pointing out the problems with your argument, not with your character.
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I’d like to share these questions with you when I return, if you had the time and opportunity to continue the discussion.
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stuart, of course.

53_3: The pirate story is terrible news. How did they miss the 4th pirate?

Just FYI this conversation began on page 4 of the comments towards the middle. Here is the comment from somepeople which drew my first protests after I asked him to clarify what he said about drunk drivers and a woman being date raped.
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.No. I’m not saying anything about the person doing the raping. I’m suggesting that, in both scenarios, the person in question made the same mistake. Drinking too much. The driver obviously puts others at risk and therefore is the greater offender. But the “victim” is putting herself in a very bad position and also the person she’s with. A rape accusation is a dangerous thing and a clouded mind is more likely to confuse facts. But like I said, it’s an interesting question. Judging from your response, I think I was right.

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emphasis mine
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Thats what where my responses came from. Now I guess I could have confused what quotes around the word victim meant. I guess I could have also misunderstood how a woman who is drunk is putting the guy she is with in a bad decision. I suppose I also could have been off base with the assertation that a drunk woman might get her facts wrong when “dangerously” accusing someone of rape. But I don’t think I did.
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There is a reason why date rape is by far the most underreported kind of rape in this country.

53_3
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I am sure this will surprise no one but the conservative blogs were making the hijacking into a political argument.
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http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTc3NjU4NGU2YzQ4MDNhMTZjNmU4NTdmZjNmZWU4OGI=
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http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/04/jihadi-piracy-press-conference-the-ship-is-a-crime-scene.html
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Don’t click the links unless you are prepared to be very offended.

sacredh
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I would think they wanted one pirate alive to question him about how the pirates are getting their intel and carrying out these attacks.

I waded through the last few pages and had one reaction..
Get a Life, will you people?

You’ve taken a hideous analogy used by somepeople and turned it into a collossal waste of time!

I don’t think anyone on this blog with two notable exceptions (spongiform robert and iron oxide boy come to mind) believes that a woman is culpable for getting raped. The fault lies entirely with the rapist.

However, I think the point is to what extent do we expect people not to be stupid? Drinking to the point of inebriation is a dumb thing to do, regardless of the consequences. Walking into a crack house neighborhood in the middle of the night with gold chains around your neck is dumb. That’s not to say you deserve to get mugged, robbed or beaten, but that you aren’t being smart about your decisions or taking responsibility for your own safety. This is what conservatives complain about in the so-called nanny state. People need to be somewhat responsible for their own actions and the consequences of those actions.

I’m suggesting that, in both scenarios, the person in question made the same mistake. Drinking too much. The driver obviously puts others at risk and therefore is the greater offender. But the “victim” is putting herself in a very bad position and also the person she’s with.
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somepeoplelikeit, perhaps you have a very different idea of drunk driving than we do. Maybe that’s partly responsible for the disagreement. I would never say that the mistake drunk drivers make is drinking too much – and I’m so not a binge drinker. I think binge drinking is stupid and dangerous. But binge drinkers and drunk drivers are not making the same mistake, IMO.

sgw: I hadn’t thought of that. It makes perfect sense though. Hopefully, they get some information from the surviving pirate. My own opinion is that there are so many pirates operating in the area that few individual groups are aware of the actions or plans of the others.

sacredh
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I don’t know. It seems to me like some how some way these pirates are coordinated. I mean supposedly they use smaller boats but then how do they know which boats to try to hijack? For that matter when you are out in that much water how do you even spot the boats? Do they have gps or just sail around until a boat happens by. It just seems like they are a little too successful right now. I wonder if there is somebody training them to hijack these ships and if so where is the training happening? That might be the key to shutting them all down.

s_z: I saw your response to rustydog a page or two back, and I wanted to ask: do you think you’re doing anything but legitimizing him with that response? Do you think that he’s going to learn anything, or even temper the drivel he spouts here?
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All that happens when you respond to him like that, I feel, is that he learns he can get under your skin.
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Or, to condense my rant: don’t feed the trolls.

Only one more comment from me in here for sacredh then I am getting out. I am pleased I met you big guy and I enjoyed it where you refer to “Bufford Pusser” in you. Try stop the street fight in the Blog!

sgw: I work on a dam and river traffic routinely announce their exact positions over the air so that other tows are aware of their location, heading and speed to avoid any mishaps. In a heavily traveled area like they have over there I would assume that they follow the same routine. A marine radio and a GPS would be all they really need. I thought they were literally attacking any ship they could get to.

sacredh
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I don’t know enough about how many pirate attacks there have actually been but it seems to me from the reports I have seen that either one of two things happen. Either the ship attempting to be hijacked has defensive capabilities like water hoses and the turn back the pirates before they make it to the ship. Or the pirates make it to the ship and successfully hijack it. Maybe there are low tech ways to find the ship but it still seems to me that these pirates must be highly trained. And evidently they are ALL highly trained because of what seems to be their success rate once they get to a ship. Obviously I am just speculating but to me that kind of points to coordination, at the very least on tactics and training. I know if I decided to go hijack a ship I wouldn’t know what the hell to do and it would be an abject failure. But these cats are good in a way that just makes me wonder.

Colleagues: can we move on? It was a good if heated discussion; but we started with the hammer and his need for a nail. Today I saw WaPo with a James Kirchik piece: another younger neocon of the Marty Peretz stable at TNR. And, boy, its the same old dung. Krauthammer has yet another buddy at WaPo. I am cancelling my sub to WaPo tomorrow. Enough is enough.

sgw – If you have time for a fairly long article, this is a good one. It was in the April issue of Vanity Fair . The pirates do use GPS, but that’s about the only high tech thing they used. It will amaze you what they were able to do with very little resources. It also surprised me how relatively civil they were – they truly didn’t care about harming anyone – their only interest was getting the money.
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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/somali-pirates200904

sgw: You make some good points, but I’m pretty sure that regular cargo ships don’t carry weapons or have personnel trained to repel hijackers. There have been hundreds of hijackings. Military vessels announce their positions also. As large as the area is that has to be patrolled, I would guess that hijackers just go where the military isn’t. There’s an interesting about this in either this week’s or last weeks Newsweek. Heigh ho, heigh ho…it’s off to work I go.

Ok guys, Rose, Dee, Sacred…I don’t want to continue. You guys said you don’t believe me to be a bad person and I’ll accept it. This went way to far. I value your opinions and hope to debate less sensitive issues with you in the future.
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I’m sorry.

SZ, I want to continue the discussion but I’m blogged out at the moment. I’m going to watch my Dallas Mavericks, drink my beer and enjoy my time with my girl.
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I hope you guys have a happy Easter.

Been off talking to my brola about the hijacking.
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I heard that the captain sometime about 5 or 6 hours ago rolled off the lifeboat while the 4th pirate was on board the Navy ship. That gave the Navy sharpshooters the opportunity they needed to poke several holes in aformentioned individuals.
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People don’t live very long, really with an excess number of holes poked in ‘em, so three of ‘em died.
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The fourth was arrested. My brola was giving a listen on FOX, I’ll see later from him what they said.
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sg
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preparing to get offended…

Um, sg:
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“Standing Athwart Wahsington Liberals Yelling Stop!”
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Isn’t this a rather odd twist on the good ‘ol bf?!?! Is that what they’re saying?
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Anyway, looks like far from being offended, they are best classes as comedy peices now!

Cliff:
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Thanks you. I’ve been tangling with SZ over being corrected when I state that something, or someone, is a racist.
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Basically, SZ needs to realize that despite his appearantly exalted position in the heirarchy of life, he does not know enough about White-on-Black racism to understand.
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I think he has a good understanding of homophobic and antisemitism, but this is one area where he needs to toss it in with his inane attempts to correct those who are far more knowledgeable than him!

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Dee in Columbia MD: Therefore using the logic introduced by somepeople, women by definition are somewhat culpable to the crime because if they choose to leave their homes…
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Change the word ‘culpable’ to ‘susceptable’, and the statement excerpted above is perfectly true, yes?
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soempeoplelikeit: ..are you saying that women who get drunk bear no responsiblity for anything that happens to them afterward?.
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Depends on the consequence, and for civility’s sake I’d like to remove rape as one of the consequences…
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A drunk driver ramming a car and killing a family is responsible for his actions…decision to gt drunk, impaired decision to get behind the steering wheel. A passed-out drunk getting her purse stolen? You might say that she is not responsible for the commission of the crime – not ‘asking for it’ – but she has some responsibility for being in the circumstances that allowed the thief to commit the crime…not being in control of her situation due to a poor choice.
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I think that I get the larger point that – to some extent – making personal choices mean that we bear some responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in…but not the crimes committed against us.
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And with that, I have an Easter dinner to eat. Pleasant day, everyone.

dundedweller
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Thanks for the link. That seemed like some major league coordination going on in that particular hijacking. Hell the pirates got a re up in food and supplies from their buddies while the French Navy was right on their tail. Man the whole thing is crazy. Especially when I guess that particular waterway in the story is one that has to be travelled for commerce. I guess the question comes down to how do we stop this more than just reacting everytime a hijacking happens? Hopefully the survivor can give some kind of insight into how these pirates operate.

On an unrelated front, I have IE, and my computer, as I comment, keeps getting slower and slower. I think something is slowing it down, some unknown background process, because the CPU usage slowly climbs while I comment.
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Anyone have suggestions?

Thanks you. I’ve been tangling with SZ over being corrected when I state that something, or someone, is a racist.
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Basically, SZ needs to realize that despite his appearantly exalted position in the heirarchy of life, he does not know enough about White-on-Black racism to understand.
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I didn’t even catch that part of the conversation. And no, I’m not going to wade through six pages of comments to pick up on it.
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Does anyone really think that Rusty (or at least his screen persona) isn’t a racist?

FYI and wildly off topic.
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Did anybody else notice that Rick Warren bailed on “this week with George” today? Guess he didn’t want to answer questions about flip flopping and lying about Prop 8. Word is other evangelicals are reading him the riot act for saying he wasn’t leading the charge against prop 8

sgw – yes, it was astonishing that all the navy resources the French could muster had no power because the pirates had 30 hostages.
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somepeoplelikeit – last night I knew I shouldn’t get involved because it was not my discussion to begin with. Please know that my questioning a few aspects of your comments does not reflect my opinion of you. I just wanted to make sure there was a clear message out their for the public who may have read the thread, that a victim (no matter how responsible they are for their own vulnerability) should not be blamed or feel responsible for a crime committed against them. That is precisely the reason so many victims don’t come forward to prosecute, and until we make it plain as day (even at the expense of momentarily taking Swampland to a 5th grade level) it’s worth it. So please enjoy your Easter and cheers!
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I will now go back to my mimosa, and watching Phil Mickelson charge for the lead…

Statement from President Obama
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/12/obama-statement-on-richar_n_185999.html

I think this settles the 3 AM phone call issue once and for all…

Well I don’t suppose the press was ready for the American crew to call them out for publicizing sensitive info and putting the ship and the captain’s life at risk.
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Now for all the smack the wingnuts were talking I bet they don’t have nothing to say about Obama now.

I liked this on the pirate rescue from George S at ABC
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/04/obama-approved.html

They won’t give him credit, and they’ve stayed true to form on FOX, but who cares.
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Everyone knows the C-in-C is Obama. These wingnuts get more and more irrevelant(!) every passing day.

With no intention of wading into Date Rape-Gate here at Swampland, one comment stuck out to me and I would really like to see it clarified:
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“The mere fact that rose and I are on the same side of an issue ought to signal the unlikelihood that there will be any reasonable justification for somepeople’s argument.”
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Is there some way to read this other than the way I am interpreting it: that when Dee and rose agree (this is some sort of rare occurrence?), then there are no other opinions that would have any likelihood of being valid? Its hard to believe anyone who at other times seems reasonably sensible could offer up such an arrogant statement, so maybe you could explain what you meant.

piper1
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I won’t speak for Dee as to what she meant but I can confirm that she and rose83 don’t agree on much and argue quite frequently.

Dee
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The going meme in wingnut world is that the Navy Seals went against President Obama’s orders to save Captain Phillips. And no I am not kidding.

Now at the news briefing they are saying the Captain didn’t jump overboard again.

piper
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Don’t take offense, I really was just injecting a little ironic levity between me, rose and stuart. As SG commented me and rose are usually at odds and in the past stuart has been in the position of trying to arbitrate the heated discussion between us. Any opinions you or anyone else may have is obviously welcome.

The green light came from President Obama, confirmed by Vice Adm Gortney.

And is there a difference between having standard orders to take the shot if the captain is in eminent danger and the president being on the phone at the actual moment saying take the shot?
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In my mind yes, if there was a standard order then President Obama didn’t try to micro manage his commanders in the field, As usual, Obama set the mission and then trusted his people to do their jobs.
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Of course the wingnuts are going to use this info to say that Obama had nothing to do with it and it was only the commanders on the ground.

Thanks for the clarification, Dee.

“Of course the wingnuts are going to use this info to say that Obama had nothing to do with it and it was only the commanders on the ground.”
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They are playing that angle. They are playing the ‘waited too long, indecisive’ card, the ‘he’s going to spin this to his advantage’ card, and of course, the ‘the Navy SEALs did it against his orders’ card.
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They are just totally, totally, totally out there…

Oh yeah now its because we acted and the pirates are going to shoot first next time around so we now have to go in on the ground and take them out. Because the pirates aren’t stupid they are just going to escalate the violence.
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Anybody think that in the future the pirates just might learn to avoid American flag ships so that they avoid the US Navy?

Dee:
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Maybe it’s not over yet…

They are playing that angle. They are playing the ‘waited too long, indecisive’ card, the ‘he’s going to spin this to his advantage’ card, and of course, the ‘the Navy SEALs did it against his orders’ card.
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*Sigh*I guess this throws the right wingnuts as being experts in all things military under the bus. SEALs do not act without orders. EVER. They are very highly trained and brutally efficient at their jobs, but they are not wacko “Kill em all!” crazies. In fact that goes against the ethos of the SEAL brigade. If a recruit shows any tendencies of going off half-cocked they are rooted out of training fast. They moved when the order came down period. But as they say, facts have a liberal bias.
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On an off-topic note, can we get another posting please? I think we’re about to wear this one out!

yutsano — now you understand why I have been challenging rusty and spob lately. They say things that I’ve never heard any military personnel say about civilians they are assigned to protect and the commander in chief. I think there’s a lot of wingnuts out there whose military experience can be summed up by looking at three GI Joe dolls and a set of Tom Clancy novels.

piper1, yes that was a joke. It was actually quite funny if you got it… Although in truth Dee and I probably agree 90% of the time about gender-related issues. OTOH, when we start agreeing on income tax errors hell will freeze over.
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Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it!

The White House has made it official.
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/12/Meet-Bo-the-First-Dog/

Rose:
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stuart, of course.
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Do all forms of non-consensual sexual activity constitute rape?

Prediction: AS’s new thread will be over run with wingnuts expressing outrage over Rev Wright sometime in the next hour.

SG:
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I won’t comment in Amy Sullivan’s threads anymore, and I won’t even read them.
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Are you predicting that the rightists will be driven insane over the fact that President Obama has proven to be no “Jimmy Carter” in an international hostage situation, and has proven decisive and effectual with American lives on the line?

SZ
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No, AS has a new thread up about where the Obamas went for Easter Sunday. And she mentioned their old church Trinity in the posting. I really think this time she is just doing so to provoke people to comment. I am not going to say anything when the usual suspects go over there and bloviate about Rev Wright though.

Prediction: AS’s new thread will be over run with wingnuts expressing outrage over Rev Wright sometime in the next hour.
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And I will now officially be careful what I wish for. We could just ignore what she wrote and continue the pirate discussion over there.

sgwhiteinfla Says:
Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 7:58 pm
SZ
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No, AS has a new thread up about where the Obamas went for Easter Sunday. And she mentioned their old church Trinity in the posting. I really think this time she is just doing so to provoke people to comment. I am not going to say anything when the usual suspects go over there and bloviate about Rev Wright though.
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I’m very proud of myself, I didn’t say one word about Rev Wright on Amy’s new blog about the Obama’s going to “church”.

Hi Joe:
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I do not know what significance Easter has in the Jewish faith, but happy Easter!
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Your words, as quoted here:
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“Rectifying the Bush 43 embarrassment will not be easy and it will not come quickly. There are no Krauthammers and nails when it comes to diplomacy. But Obama’s effort to show the rest of the world that the US can be trusted to lead once more is precisely what is needed right now.”
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seem more apt than ever, given the outcome of the pirate standoff, and the rescue of the capain.
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Wonder what Krauthammer will have to say come monday?

I do not know what significance Easter has in the Jewish faith, but happy Easter!
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Other than the Last Supper was a seder?

Check out David Gregory and all his wingnut friends this morning.
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By the way, I don’t know how many of you realize it but Afghanistan repealed that law that allowed men to rape their wives after we pressured Karzai on it. Its been way underreported and here is Gregory, a supposed “serious” pundit, still not acknowledging it.

Do all forms of non-consensual sexual activity constitute rape?
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stuart, Yes, with the caveat that people can define “sexual activity” differently. Actually that’s pretty much the definition of rape.
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Are you going somewhere with that question?

Rose:
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First of all, I was wondering how you felt when you were considering your answer…How did you feel? Also, what were your thoughts, perhaps in sequence?
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Second, if it could be demonstrated that some non-consensual sexual activity was not rape, would that imply to you that there was something of a “spectrum” of non-consensual sexual activity, in which one extreme end was the genocidal form of the brutality, and the other was…something else?
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Third, after considering that last idea, are you more or less interested in my opinion of somepeoples’ relating of (as was put earlier) “date rape” and drunk driving?
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Fourth, is there a difference in your mind between the patriarchists’ assertion of “responsibility” assigned to the victims of rape for the imaginary “provocation” (their word is “temptation”, I believe) of men, and womens’ responsibilities to themselves, their families and other women to reduce as much as possible their exposure to harm –at least enough to consider the former as a distinct line of thought from the latter?
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Fifth, was that last line of questioning inherently political, i.e. is the outcome dependent on the potential social result of the inquiry, and not an independent set of truths to be evaluated without respect to their impact on the problem of social acceptance of the brutalization of women by men?
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Sixth, do you think that having a conversation like this is in any way damaging to anyone? What if we used pre-approved language that had been selected for its lack of ambiguity with respect to condemnation of rape and support for rape victims…would that be a safer discussion to have? Would we be better people for doing so?
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Seventh, what are your thoughts on “Yes means yes“?
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Eighth, what do you think of this video? What were your impressions of it?
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I really, really appreciate your thoughtful responses, Rose (if you have the time, patience, opportunity, etc.). Thanks so much for helping me to understand what’s in your mind.

First of all, I was wondering how you felt when you were considering your answer…How did you feel? Also, what were your thoughts, perhaps in sequence?
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stuart, well at the risk of exposing my inarticulateness, my first thought was “Duh.” And I admit I was also surprised that you’d ask such a question, not because its subject was uncomfortable but because it had such an obvious answer. Then I thought, well maybe there is some gray area depending on how you define “sexual activity.”
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Second, if it could be demonstrated that some non-consensual sexual activity was not rape, would that imply to you that there was something of a “spectrum” of non-consensual sexual activity, in which one extreme end was the genocidal form of the brutality, and the other was…something else?
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I’ve tried, but I can’t really get past the premise of the question. “Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.
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Third, after considering that last idea, are you more or less interested in my opinion of somepeoples’ relating of (as was put earlier) “date rape” and drunk driving?
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The same. I’d be interested in what you have to say. But to address the somewhat related issue of agency, I never understood the date rape and drunk driving parallel. I’m starting to think that actually the issue is more about drunk driving than rape. I see drunk driving as a horrible crime that is only tangentially related to alcohol abuse. If you asked me what the roots of drunk driving are, binge drinking would be really low down on my list. It might not show up at all.
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Fourth, is there a difference in your mind between the patriarchists’ assertion of “responsibility” assigned to the victims of rape for the imaginary “provocation” (their word is “temptation”, I believe) of men, and womens’ responsibilities to themselves, their families and other women to reduce as much as possible their exposure to harm –at least enough to consider the former as a distinct line of thought from the latter?
.
I don’t really think women have a “responsibility” to avoid behavior that increases our risk of being raped. It makes sense to avoid getting drunk around strangers, etc. but “responsibility” isn’t the right word. For one thing, if we reduced as much as possible our exposure to rapists, we’d live horrible lives. We’d stay home all the time and never walk on side streets. We CAN’T accept the idea that we have responsibilities to ourselves, our families and other women to do everything possible to avoid being raped because then we’d end up envying the freedoms of Betty Draper. Women pay whatever price we can manage to reduce our risk of becoming the victim of a violent assault. Every woman makes different choices and takes different risks and precautions. It’s not something that one can judge. I know I’m not fulfilling some responsibility to prevent rape by never binge drinking around strangers.
.
Just to give you a really practical example of the choices we face, I’m looking for an apartment. I will live there when I’m going to grad school. I want to live someplace inexpensive because then I will have less debt to pay back and I can take a lower-paying job in an area I’m more interested in and that gives me more opportunity to contribute to society. The cheapest apartments are (of course) basement and ground floor apartments. And if I were a guy I’d rent one of them. But I’m not and I’m going to pay more for a safer place, and therefore be a little less likely to take that lower-paying job when I graduate. I will be reducing my own exposure to risk and giving myself fewer long-term options, and perhaps – not to be overly egotistical – deprive society a little in the process.
.
Fifth, was that last line of questioning inherently political, i.e. is the outcome dependent on the potential social result of the inquiry, and not an independent set of truths to be evaluated without respect to their impact on the problem of social acceptance of the brutalization of women by men?
.
I don’t think it’s possible to talk about rape in a vacuum separated from the real world, because it is inherantly a real world problem, but I do think it’s possible to discuss that last line of questioning without thinking about its “impact on the problem of social acceptance of the brutalization of women by men.” The real world must impact the discussion, but the discussion doesn’t necessarily impact the real world. BTW, one can’t say the same of a Seth Rogen movie released on over 2,500 screens.
.
Sixth, do you think that having a conversation like this is in any way damaging to anyone? What if we used pre-approved language that had been selected for its lack of ambiguity with respect to condemnation of rape and support for rape victims…would that be a safer discussion to have? Would we be better people for doing so?
.
I don’t think this particular conversation is damaging to anyone, but perhaps neither of us is the best judge of that. There are a couple of feminist bloggers I occasionally read, and I might ask if they would comment on our discussion. As for the langauge, I would say there already is effectively a “pre-approved language” and we’re using it.
.
Since I’m writing this in order, I’m afraid I don’t have time to answer questions seven and eight now. I’d be happy to later tomorrow though if you’re still interested.

Totally off-topic, but I finally ready the Krauthammer op-ed. (I wasn’t going to visit the WaPo link, but Seattle Times carried it in the dead-tree edition.)
.
What a tool. Now I understand why he always looks like he tastes something sour … it’s his own bile.

Thanks so much for the response, Rose.
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I’ll wait to see if you have time to respond to the last two, since they are crucial.
.
Since you’re under constraints, I’ll circumvent part of the purpose of my asking number seven by clarifying that I meant this Yes Means Yes, not this Yes Means Yes.

stuart, I’m afraid I can’t talk much about the last two questions because I haven’t read the book and I don’t speak the Slovak language (did you perhaps mean to link to another video?). To be honest, I don’t feel particularly well-qualified to talk about rape culture and how to address the continuing rape crisis. Luckily my life has been about as untouched by rape as any woman’s and I haven’t researched the subject in any significant depth. I just understand the obvious things, like rape victims and drunk drivers shouldn’t receive similar treatment, and as a woman I don’t have a responsibility to do everything I can do to prevent rape. This isn’t that complicated.
.
I was able to read an excerpt of Albury’s book, but nothing I read really relates to what we’re talking about here. I understand her observation about debates among feminists about modes of female sexuality – I’m happy that Andrea Dworkin and Kylie Minogue are not our only options – but I don’t believe that’s relevant to a discussion of somepeoplikeit’s misguided drunk driving/date rape parallel. And any relevance that may have has already been examined by Dee, particularly in her discussion of the delusion tree.
.
There is a danger in over-complicating simple moral precepts because it fosters the acceptance of ignorance as a legitimate excuse for immoral behavior. One doesn’t need special knowledge or personal experience to know that non-consensual sexual activity is rape. Or that somepeoplelikeit’s parallel is misguided. Ignorance isn’t the issue here. Thoughtlessness and the sexism diffused throughout society are the root problems.

Rose:
.
maybe there is some gray area depending on how you define “sexual activity.”
.
No, I’m pretty clear that forced sexual activity is rape. If a man threatens a woman with a gun, and demands that she perform a sex act upon him, that is rape. I am not at all suggesting that an act that isn’t “sexual enough” or doesn’t conform to the usual self-selected activity of the victim is not rape: if a man coerces a women through force or the threat of force into donning the latex gloves that he fetishizes, that is still an act of rape, even if it may not reach the legal threshold of the term.
.
I’m really trying hard not to get into TMI mode, but here it is:
.
I can’t really get past the premise of the question. “Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.
.
I think that the problem here is that you may not be making a necessary distinction between non-consensual sexual activity and coerced sexual activity. There is a potentially significant difference between sexual activity to which the woman has not consented, and sexual activity which is to which the woman has not consented and is solely the product of force or the threat of force.
.
We can’t possibly imagine a scenario in which the latter does not constitute rape. Even female rape fetishists are consenting to be “raped”, and are therefore not truly rape victims. Non-consent plus coercion necessarily equals rape.
.
But what if there is no coercion, and yet there is non-consensual sexual activity? Is that always rape? Is it possible that there are circumstances in which the activity, while non-consensual, is absent violence or threat, and is not rape?
.
The answer is that, even if you weren’t able to imagine it, non-consensual sex that isn’t rape is possible:

Sleep sex or sexsomnia is a form of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnia (similar to sleepwalking) that causes people to engage in sexual acts while they are asleep. The proposed medical diagnosis is NREM Arousal Parasomnia – Sexual Behaviour in Sleep, and is considered to be a distinct variant of sleepwalking/confusional arousals (ICSD 2).
.
Symptoms
.
The first research paper that suggested that sexual behavior during sleep may be a new type of parasomnia was published in 1996 by three researchers from the University of Toronto (Dr. Colin Shapiro and Dr. Nik Trajanovic) and the University of Ottawa (Dr. Paul Fedoroff) [1]. Later, several papers were published describing the problem and suggested that problematic forms of sleep sex are medically treatable “conditions” (see external links). The condition was defined in a paper called “Sexsomnia — A New Parasomnia?” published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in June 2003. The first doctor to coin the term “sleep sex” was Dr. David Saul Rosenfeld, a neurologist and sleep doctor from Los Angeles, California.
.
In some cases, sufferers are aware of their behavior for a long time before they seek help, often because they lack information that it is a medical disorder or for fear that others will judge it as willful behavior rather than a medical condition. However, the reality of sexsomnia has been confirmed by sleep disorder researchers who have made polygraphic and video recordings of patients with the condition while they are asleep and observed unusual brain wave activity during the episodes similar to that experienced in other NREM arousal parasomnias. It is a mind/body disconnect that occurs during sleep. The treatment has commonalities with other NREM parasomnias, and also involves specific interventions. By avoiding precipitating factors and ensuring a safe environment, the condition could be brought to a high level of control with minimal effort.
.
Sexsomnia is not always problematic or extreme for those who experience it or for their partners. There is a great variety in both the frequency and levels to which people are affected by this disorder.

What is much more common than that pathology, however, is sex between partners that is initiated when one of the partners is asleep. It happens all of the time, whether the partner initiating is actually asleep or not.
.
If you follow that last link, you’ll see this:

Should I wake him up with sex in the middle of the night…?
.
Okay so I once had sex with him in the middle of the night (just thought I’d be racy and try it!) and although he seemed to like it, the next morning didn’t really remember much… except that he had a really good dream and he couldnt remember much else.
.
Being a girl, I am worried (lol) – does this mean he was dreaming about someone else? If so, does this mean he is more attracted to someone else than me, or am I just overreacting?
.
ALSO – should I give it another go? There’s something so sexy about waking him up in the middle of the night like that…

.
I can’t even tell you –literally, I don’t know for sure– how many times (given that I used to be a professional touring musician) that the latter experience has happened to me, Rose. I didn’t once give my consent to someone –even sometimes a person that I barely knew, was myself quite inebriated, and woke up to find that something I hadn’t anticipated was happening –or had apparently happened. I’m really not into TMI, Rose, but this isn’t just a theoretical thing.
.
So when you assert ““Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.“, that’s demonstrably not a true statement, Rose. Therefore I think that, in the interests of a full understanding of the whole, complex truth, you might consider returning to question number two (if you’re interested, that is):

if it could be demonstrated that some non-consensual sexual activity was not rape, would that imply to you that there was something of a “spectrum” of non-consensual sexual activity, in which one extreme end was the genocidal form of the brutality, and the other was…something else?

.
The same. I’d be interested in what you have to say.
.
For the record, I don’t see any connection between drunk driving and rape. The only connection to be had between drunk driving and binge-drunken non-consensual sex is that both situations involve the deliberate abandonment of self-control and needlessly endanger the participants.
.
I thought that somepeople’s question wasn’t very well formed, since the scare-quoted “date rape” wasn’t clear in its reference to sex during which the woman hasn’t clearly enunciated nor withdrawn her consent due to substantial self-induced inebriation. Date rape that doesn’t involve coercion can be in some limited circumstances indistinguishable from non-consensual sex –even for the victim. This makes the matter far, far more complex than we have good faith language skills to confront (at this time) and understand, especially with the (sometimes political) requirement to eradicate rape from modern, civilized humanity –as we have effectively done so with respect to cannibalism.
.
I don’t really think women have a “responsibility” to avoid behavior that increases our risk of being raped. It makes sense to avoid getting drunk around strangers, etc. but “responsibility” isn’t the right word. For one thing, if we reduced as much as possible our exposure to rapists, we’d live horrible lives. We’d stay home all the time and never walk on side streets. We CAN’T accept the idea that we have responsibilities to ourselves, our families and other women to do everything possible to avoid being raped because then we’d end up envying the freedoms of Betty Draper. Women pay whatever price we can manage to reduce our risk of becoming the victim of a violent assault. Every woman makes different choices and takes different risks and precautions. It’s not something that one can judge. I know I’m not fulfilling some responsibility to prevent rape by never binge drinking around strangers.
.
I disagree, Rose.
.
I strongly believe that the road to ending rape as we know it lies through women’s acceptance of a “protector” role that is similar to men’s concept of themselves, although not identical. I think that there’s more to it than that, although I’m having a slight bit of trouble at the moment finding a link to the best source I’ve found that expresses this idea.
.
When you say “This isn’t that complicated.“, I think that it is, in fact, that complicated –more so because patriarchy has robbed you and the rest of your gender of the cultural skills and strategies ubiquitous to men, without which you have been essentially terrorized. I’ll get back to you with more on this later.
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I don’t speak the Slovak language (did you perhaps mean to link to another video?)
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No, I meant for you to watch this. I found out about this tradition through my Slovak wife. Every Easter, men gang up to “water” women, who are expected to scream and resist –but not too much. They are also “beaten” with pretty, bow-tied whips made of sapling branches. My wife found this for me in the Slovak online newspaper “Sme” (“We”), and put it through Google translation:

BRATISLAVA. Tradition and watering VELIKONOČNÍHO šibania know all the Slavic countries. Comes from the pre-period. Pre TASR to uviedla etnologička Katarína Nádaská. The TASR indicated ethnologically Katarína Nádaská.
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“What we now call Easter holidays were in the so-called pre-period. Solar holidays, which reflect respect for the sun,” explained. Mean the end of the winter sun, which symbolized the cold, darkness, and sometimes hunger. “In the spring all the putsch, on the contrary, a new life, and just act šibania boys and men, underlined the magic of fertility of girls and women,” said.
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In our tradition and culture is natural that the plodnostnej Magic always expected from the activity of the male tribe. Since girls and women are then expected reproductive role, thus bringing new life into the world. “To the girls now perceive it as something degrading and flurry, why is let mali boys’ otĺkať ‘, should be under the magic touch in the past of great importance,” ethnologically spell.
.
Touch of fresh vŕbového wand, which was swelling sap, transmitted to the young man the girl all the positive effects of newly rozvitého wand. This act was to ensure that the young lass and wife, flexible, fresh, fruit – just like all prebúdzajúca nature. “Hovorievalo even that old woman that left lace, rejuvenate,” said Nádaská.
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According ethnologically relic was in the past in the small matter of the Community social prestige and status. “It would be a great shame if a lass was vyšibaná,” she said. Therefore spinster able to give the young man relic beautiful hand-decorated Easter egg, in which the ornaments were often encrypted confession of love. “The eggs were in the past, a symbol of love, but also fertility. Although the young man could learn that the lass wearing it in the heart,” explained.
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K šibaniu belonged to watering. “Water is a cleansing according to the tradition of ‘purification’ of a touch of fresh running water guarantees juvenescence girls. Polievali Girls are water from wells or hádzali into the river. Not to make them evil, but because to maintain health , beauty and youth throughout the year, “clarified Nádaská.
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Watering in the east due to the enlargement of the so-called. východného obradu, ktorý je mystickejší ako západný a voda v ňom hrá dominantnú úlohu. Eastern, which is mystickejší Western and water as it plays a dominant role. Svedčí o tom napr. Illustrated by the example. aj tzv. the so-called. posväcovanie vody na Nový rok. posväcovanie water on New Year’s.
.
According Banskobystrického ethnology Vojtecha Majlinga glazed with girls in the creek we can meet even today particularly in the villages under the idiosyncratic Tatrami to Liptov, Orava, Spiši whether Horehronie.
.
Using the string is more matter in the past, the villain of freshly cut off the divine. “Braided string and was a matter of prestige and honor of each of the young. Boys learn their butt from their fathers,” said ethnologically. For the young man received a relic from the lass on each string and ribbons according to their number, the evening at a dance jamboree determine “the young king.”
.
In the past, the relic and the spontaneous nature of the whip chodievalo from house to house all the girls and married women. Today is reduced only to visit close friends and kindred families.

You must understand, Rose, that Bratislava is 40 miles from Vienna in the middle of Europe, not in Borat’s Kazhakstan.
.
I asked my wife in horror how women continue to deal with this nightmare. She shrugged, and said “We expect it. It’s not that awful, and it’s kind of fun when you’re young. Everybody just does it. It’s part of Easter. American men aren’t as aggressive.”
.
I say this to you because I think that you need to be aware of how different patriarchy is here than in the rest of the world, and to suggest a relationship between your denial of this “responsibility” (a responsibility that male culture cultivates and enforces) and the socialization of a certain “natural” role stamped into your gender by way of real patriarchical cultural forces.
.
I’m now experiencing a lag-time of 10 seconds per character, so I’ll cut this off, and try to find that source to the “solution to the problem of rape”…thanks for reading this far, Rose…

Super. This horrible forum just ate my last post. I’ll try again in pieces:
.
Rose:
.
maybe there is some gray area depending on how you define “sexual activity.”
.
No, I’m pretty clear that forced sexual activity is rape. If a man threatens a woman with a gun, and demands that she perform a sex act upon him, that is rape. I am not at all suggesting that an act that isn’t “sexual enough” or doesn’t conform to the usual self-selected activity of the victim is not rape: if a man coerces a women through force or the threat of force into donning the latex gloves that he fetishizes, that is still an act of rape, even if it may not reach the legal threshold of the term.
.
I’m really trying hard not to get into TMI mode, but here it is:
.
I can’t really get past the premise of the question. “Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.
.
I think that the problem here is that you may not be making a necessary distinction between non-consensual sexual activity and coerced sexual activity. There is a potentially significant difference between sexual activity to which the woman has not consented, and sexual activity which is to which the woman has not consented and is solely the product of force or the threat of force.
.
We can’t possibly imagine a scenario in which the latter does not constitute rape. Even female rape fetishists are consenting to be “raped”, and are therefore not truly rape victims. Non-consent plus coercion necessarily equals rape.
.
But what if there is no coercion, and yet there is non-consensual sexual activity? Is that always rape? Is it possible that there are circumstances in which the activity, while non-consensual, is absent violence or threat, and is not rape?
.
The answer is that, even if you weren’t able to imagine it, non-consensual sex that isn’t rape is possible:

Sleep sex or sexsomnia is a form of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnia (similar to sleepwalking) that causes people to engage in sexual acts while they are asleep. The proposed medical diagnosis is NREM Arousal Parasomnia – Sexual Behaviour in Sleep, and is considered to be a distinct variant of sleepwalking/confusional arousals (ICSD 2).
.
Symptoms
.
The first research paper that suggested that sexual behavior during sleep may be a new type of parasomnia was published in 1996 by three researchers from the University of Toronto (Dr. Colin Shapiro and Dr. Nik Trajanovic) and the University of Ottawa (Dr. Paul Fedoroff) [1]. Later, several papers were published describing the problem and suggested that problematic forms of sleep sex are medically treatable “conditions” (see external links). The condition was defined in a paper called “Sexsomnia — A New Parasomnia?” published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in June 2003. The first doctor to coin the term “sleep sex” was Dr. David Saul Rosenfeld, a neurologist and sleep doctor from Los Angeles, California.
.
In some cases, sufferers are aware of their behavior for a long time before they seek help, often because they lack information that it is a medical disorder or for fear that others will judge it as willful behavior rather than a medical condition. However, the reality of sexsomnia has been confirmed by sleep disorder researchers who have made polygraphic and video recordings of patients with the condition while they are asleep and observed unusual brain wave activity during the episodes similar to that experienced in other NREM arousal parasomnias. It is a mind/body disconnect that occurs during sleep. The treatment has commonalities with other NREM parasomnias, and also involves specific interventions. By avoiding precipitating factors and ensuring a safe environment, the condition could be brought to a high level of control with minimal effort.
.
Sexsomnia is not always problematic or extreme for those who experience it or for their partners. There is a great variety in both the frequency and levels to which people are affected by this disorder.

What is much more common than that pathology, however, is sex between partners that is initiated when one of the partners is asleep. It happens all of the time, whether the partner initiating is actually asleep or not.
.
If you follow that last link, you’ll see this:

Should I wake him up with sex in the middle of the night…?
.
Okay so I once had sex with him in the middle of the night (just thought I’d be racy and try it!) and although he seemed to like it, the next morning didn’t really remember much… except that he had a really good dream and he couldnt remember much else.
.
Being a girl, I am worried (lol) – does this mean he was dreaming about someone else? If so, does this mean he is more attracted to someone else than me, or am I just overreacting?
.
ALSO – should I give it another go? There’s something so sexy about waking him up in the middle of the night like that…

.
I can’t even tell you –literally, I don’t know for sure– how many times (given that I used to be a professional touring musician) that the latter experience has happened to me, Rose. I didn’t once give my consent to someone –even sometimes a person that I barely knew, was myself quite inebriated, and woke up to find that something I hadn’t anticipated was happening –or had apparently happened. I’m really not into TMI, Rose, but this isn’t just a theoretical thing.
.
So when you assert ““Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.“, that’s demonstrably not a true statement, Rose. Therefore I think that, in the interests of a full understanding of the whole, complex truth, you might consider returning to question number two (if you’re interested, that is):

if it could be demonstrated that some non-consensual sexual activity was not rape, would that imply to you that there was something of a “spectrum” of non-consensual sexual activity, in which one extreme end was the genocidal form of the brutality, and the other was…something else?

I’m getting screwed here by this idiotic forum. OK, I’ll try smaller pieces.
.
Rose:
.
maybe there is some gray area depending on how you define “sexual activity.”
.
No, I’m pretty clear that forced sexual activity is rape. If a man threatens a woman with a gun, and demands that she perform a sex act upon him, that is rape. I am not at all suggesting that an act that isn’t “sexual enough” or doesn’t conform to the usual self-selected activity of the victim is not rape: if a man coerces a women through force or the threat of force into donning the latex gloves that he fetishizes, that is still an act of rape, even if it may not reach the legal threshold of the term.
.
I’m really trying hard not to get into TMI mode, but here it is:
.
I can’t really get past the premise of the question. “Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.
.
I think that the problem here is that you may not be making a necessary distinction between non-consensual sexual activity and coerced sexual activity. There is a potentially significant difference between sexual activity to which the woman has not consented, and sexual activity which is to which the woman has not consented and is solely the product of force or the threat of force.
.
We can’t possibly imagine a scenario in which the latter does not constitute rape. Even female rape fetishists are consenting to be “raped”, and are therefore not truly rape victims. Non-consent plus coercion necessarily equals rape.
.
But what if there is no coercion, and yet there is non-consensual sexual activity? Is that always rape? Is it possible that there are circumstances in which the activity, while non-consensual, is absent violence or threat, and is not rape?

(continued)
.
The answer is that, even if you weren’t able to imagine it at the moment, non-consensual sex that isn’t rape is very possible:

Sleep sex or sexsomnia is a form of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnia (similar to sleepwalking) that causes people to engage in sexual acts while they are asleep. The proposed medical diagnosis is NREM Arousal Parasomnia – Sexual Behaviour in Sleep, and is considered to be a distinct variant of sleepwalking/confusional arousals (ICSD 2).
.
Symptoms
.
The first research paper that suggested that sexual behavior during sleep may be a new type of parasomnia was published in 1996 by three researchers from the University of Toronto (Dr. Colin Shapiro and Dr. Nik Trajanovic) and the University of Ottawa (Dr. Paul Fedoroff) [1]. Later, several papers were published describing the problem and suggested that problematic forms of sleep sex are medically treatable “conditions” (see external links). The condition was defined in a paper called “Sexsomnia — A New Parasomnia?” published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in June 2003. The first doctor to coin the term “sleep sex” was Dr. David Saul Rosenfeld, a neurologist and sleep doctor from Los Angeles, California.
.
In some cases, sufferers are aware of their behavior for a long time before they seek help, often because they lack information that it is a medical disorder or for fear that others will judge it as willful behavior rather than a medical condition. However, the reality of sexsomnia has been confirmed by sleep disorder researchers who have made polygraphic and video recordings of patients with the condition while they are asleep and observed unusual brain wave activity during the episodes similar to that experienced in other NREM arousal parasomnias. It is a mind/body disconnect that occurs during sleep. The treatment has commonalities with other NREM parasomnias, and also involves specific interventions. By avoiding precipitating factors and ensuring a safe environment, the condition could be brought to a high level of control with minimal effort.
.
Sexsomnia is not always problematic or extreme for those who experience it or for their partners. There is a great variety in both the frequency and levels to which people are affected by this disorder.

What is much more common than that pathology, however, is sex between partners that is initiated when one of the partners is asleep. It happens all of the time, whether the partner initiating is actually asleep or not.
.
If you follow that last link, you’ll see this:

Should I wake him up with sex in the middle of the night…?
.
Okay so I once had sex with him in the middle of the night (just thought I’d be racy and try it!) and although he seemed to like it, the next morning didn’t really remember much… except that he had a really good dream and he couldnt remember much else.
.
Being a girl, I am worried (lol) – does this mean he was dreaming about someone else? If so, does this mean he is more attracted to someone else than me, or am I just overreacting?
.
ALSO – should I give it another go? There’s something so sexy about waking him up in the middle of the night like that…

.
I can’t even tell you –literally, I don’t know for sure– how many times (given that I used to be a professional touring musician) that the latter experience has happened to me, Rose. I didn’t once give my consent to someone –even sometimes a person that I barely knew, was myself quite inebriated, and woke up to find that something I hadn’t anticipated was happening –or had apparently happened. I’m really not into TMI, Rose, but this isn’t just a theoretical thing.
.
So when you assert ““Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.“, that’s demonstrably not a true statement, Rose. Therefore I think that, in the interests of a full understanding of the whole, complex truth, you might consider returning to question number two (if you’re interested, that is):

if it could be demonstrated that some non-consensual sexual activity was not rape, would that imply to you that there was something of a “spectrum” of non-consensual sexual activity, in which one extreme end was the genocidal form of the brutality, and the other was…something else?

.

(continued)
.
The same. I’d be interested in what you have to say.
.
For the record, I don’t see any connection between drunk driving and rape. The only connection to be had between drunk driving and binge-drunken non-consensual sex is that both situations involve the deliberate abandonment of self-control and needlessly endanger the participants.
.
I thought that somepeople’s question wasn’t very well formed, since the scare-quoted “date rape” wasn’t clear in its reference to sex during which the woman hasn’t clearly enunciated nor withdrawn her consent due to substantial self-induced inebriation. Date rape that doesn’t involve coercion can be in some limited circumstances indistinguishable from non-consensual sex –even for the victim. This makes the matter far, far more complex than we have good faith language skills to confront (at this time) and understand, especially with the (sometimes political) requirement to eradicate rape from modern, civilized humanity –as we have effectively done so with respect to cannibalism.
.
I don’t really think women have a “responsibility” to avoid behavior that increases our risk of being raped. It makes sense to avoid getting drunk around strangers, etc. but “responsibility” isn’t the right word. For one thing, if we reduced as much as possible our exposure to rapists, we’d live horrible lives. We’d stay home all the time and never walk on side streets. We CAN’T accept the idea that we have responsibilities to ourselves, our families and other women to do everything possible to avoid being raped because then we’d end up envying the freedoms of Betty Draper. Women pay whatever price we can manage to reduce our risk of becoming the victim of a violent assault. Every woman makes different choices and takes different risks and precautions. It’s not something that one can judge. I know I’m not fulfilling some responsibility to prevent rape by never binge drinking around strangers.
.
I disagree, Rose.
.
I strongly believe that the road to ending rape as we know it lies through women’s acceptance of a “protector” role that is similar to men’s concept of themselves, although not identical. I think that there’s more to it than that, although I’m having a slight bit of trouble at the moment finding a link to the best source I’ve found that expresses this idea.
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When you say “This isn’t that complicated.“, I think that it is, in fact, that complicated –more so because patriarchy has robbed you and the rest of your gender of the cultural skills and strategies ubiquitous to men, without which you have been essentially terrorized. I’ll get back to you with more on this later.

(continued)
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I don’t speak the Slovak language (did you perhaps mean to link to another video?)
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No, I meant for you to watch this. I found out about this tradition through my Slovak wife. Every Easter, men gang up to “water” women, who are expected to scream and resist –but not too much. They are also “beaten” with pretty, bow-tied whips made of sapling branches. My wife found this for me in the Slovak online newspaper “Sme” (“We”), and put it through Google translation:

BRATISLAVA. Tradition and watering VELIKONOČNÍHO šibania know all the Slavic countries. Comes from the pre-period. Pre TASR to uviedla etnologička Katarína Nádaská. The TASR indicated ethnologically Katarína Nádaská.
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“What we now call Easter holidays were in the so-called pre-period. Solar holidays, which reflect respect for the sun,” explained. Mean the end of the winter sun, which symbolized the cold, darkness, and sometimes hunger. “In the spring all the putsch, on the contrary, a new life, and just act šibania boys and men, underlined the magic of fertility of girls and women,” said.
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In our tradition and culture is natural that the plodnostnej Magic always expected from the activity of the male tribe. Since girls and women are then expected reproductive role, thus bringing new life into the world. “To the girls now perceive it as something degrading and flurry, why is let mali boys’ otĺkať ‘, should be under the magic touch in the past of great importance,” ethnologically spell.
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Touch of fresh vŕbového wand, which was swelling sap, transmitted to the young man the girl all the positive effects of newly rozvitého wand. This act was to ensure that the young lass and wife, flexible, fresh, fruit – just like all prebúdzajúca nature. “Hovorievalo even that old woman that left lace, rejuvenate,” said Nádaská.
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According ethnologically relic was in the past in the small matter of the Community social prestige and status. “It would be a great shame if a lass was vyšibaná,” she said. Therefore spinster able to give the young man relic beautiful hand-decorated Easter egg, in which the ornaments were often encrypted confession of love. “The eggs were in the past, a symbol of love, but also fertility. Although the young man could learn that the lass wearing it in the heart,” explained.
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K šibaniu belonged to watering. “Water is a cleansing according to the tradition of ‘purification’ of a touch of fresh running water guarantees juvenescence girls. Polievali Girls are water from wells or hádzali into the river. Not to make them evil, but because to maintain health , beauty and youth throughout the year, “clarified Nádaská.
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Watering in the east due to the enlargement of the so-called. východného obradu, ktorý je mystickejší ako západný a voda v ňom hrá dominantnú úlohu. Eastern, which is mystickejší Western and water as it plays a dominant role. Svedčí o tom napr. Illustrated by the example. aj tzv. the so-called. posväcovanie vody na Nový rok. posväcovanie water on New Year’s.
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According Banskobystrického ethnology Vojtecha Majlinga glazed with girls in the creek we can meet even today particularly in the villages under the idiosyncratic Tatrami to Liptov, Orava, Spiši whether Horehronie.
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Using the string is more matter in the past, the villain of freshly cut off the divine. “Braided string and was a matter of prestige and honor of each of the young. Boys learn their butt from their fathers,” said ethnologically. For the young man received a relic from the lass on each string and ribbons according to their number, the evening at a dance jamboree determine “the young king.”
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In the past, the relic and the spontaneous nature of the whip chodievalo from house to house all the girls and married women. Today is reduced only to visit close friends and kindred families.

You must understand, Rose, that Bratislava is 40 miles from Vienna in the middle of Europe, not in Borat’s Kazhakstan.
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I asked my wife in horror how women continue to deal with this nightmare. She shrugged, and said “We expect it. It’s not that awful, and it’s kind of fun when you’re young. Everybody just does it. It’s part of Easter. American men aren’t as aggressive.”
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I say this to you because I think that you need to be aware of how different patriarchy is here than in the rest of the world, and to suggest a relationship between your denial of this “responsibility” (a responsibility that male culture cultivates and enforces) and the socialization of a certain “natural” role stamped into your gender by way of real patriarchical cultural forces.
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I’m now experiencing a lag-time of 10 seconds per character, so I’ll cut this off, and try to find that source to the “solution to the problem of rape”…thanks for reading this far, Rose…

I can’t even tell you –literally, I don’t know for sure– how many times (given that I used to be a professional touring musician) that the latter experience has happened to me, Rose. I didn’t once give my consent to someone –even sometimes a person that I barely knew, was myself quite inebriated, and woke up to find that something I hadn’t anticipated was happening –or had apparently happened. I’m really not into TMI, Rose, but this isn’t just a theoretical thing.
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So when you assert ““Non-consensual sexual activity that is not rape” is an oxymoron.”, that’s demonstrably not a true statement, Rose.
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If there wasn’t an understanding beforehand (e.g. in the partner examples above, or between friends/acquaintances), that’s rape. Especially in the post-AIDS world, given the links connecting rape, loss of body control and health. Of course if this becomes a pattern, and one doesn’t have a related psychological disorder, that suggests there is indeed an understanding.
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I strongly believe that the road to ending rape as we know it lies through women’s acceptance of a “protector” role that is similar to men’s concept of themselves, although not identical. I think that there’s more to it than that, although I’m having a slight bit of trouble at the moment finding a link to the best source I’ve found that expresses this idea.
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I’m very curious to know precisely what this “protector” role would be. I don’t see how it can be based on physical self-defense – and I’m a young, athletic albeit petite woman. (I do of course support self-defense training; I just can’t see it playing more than a complementary role) And of course Dee and I have written a lot about the problems of modifying our behavior to avoid rape.
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I say this to you because I think that you need to be aware of how different patriarchy is here than in the rest of the world, and to suggest a relationship between your denial of this “responsibility” (a responsibility that male culture cultivates and enforces) and the socialization of a certain “natural” role stamped into your gender by way of real patriarchical cultural forces.
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I’d like to hear more about your concept of responsibility before talking about the video, just because my comments would probably be more productive.
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In addition, I should probably make it clear that I don’t see rejecting any notion of responsibility to prevent rape as being passive. Not at all. Rejecting any one-size-fits-all model of “rape-avoidance behavior” is instead an affirmation of women’s right to choose the kind of lifestyle we want. We don’t want to be defined by our potential victimhood.

My post disappeared. I’ll wait and see if it reappears.

Rose:
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If there wasn’t an understanding beforehand (e.g. in the partner examples above, or between friends/acquaintances), that’s rape.
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How so? Why isn’t it non-coercive, yet non-consensual sexual activity? Why isn’t it unforced, yet undesired sexualized contact between relative strangers? What if it’s sexual activity in the absence of the opportunity for consent? Is this really rape, or is it something like rape? Must we call it rape to know that it’s probably wrong?
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How is that sort of transgression identical in character to an actual, brutal, knife-at-throat rape?
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What does “the post-AIDS world” have to do with it? What if there were an unimaginable HIV/STD vaccine discovered tomorrow that was miraculously able to be distributed into the earth’s atmosphere, thus protecting every human being on earth from the adverse physical consequences of unprotected sex (beyond insemination, that is)…would that change anything? Would that then not be rape, if those consequences were removed?
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I’m not being obtuse here, I’m suggesting that, instead of “rape” constituting every conceivable non-consensual sexual event, there is a spectrum upon which “rape” falls. I think that you’re denying the validity of this idea, and I still don’t understand what your rationale is –even though I’m pretty certain that I’m fully capable of that sort of comprehension, and I’m trying very hard.
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It’s not simply that you think it might be effective at stopping non-consensual sexual activity to get society to call the activity “rape”, right? It’s not merely a matter of essentially politicizing language, am I correct Rose?
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I don’t see how it can be based on physical self-defense – and I’m a young, athletic albeit petite woman.
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Gah.
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Let me find the piece in question (written by a woman, by the way), but it involves weapons, firearms and the consistent conscious (at first) practice of women demonstrating that violence will be met with violence, so as to change a majority of male perspective on the consequences of f*cking with women, and on women’s capacity for aggression. I’m so sorry, I’m going out of my mind trying to find this. It’s not obscure, I’m just searching for the wrong phrase, because I have the title mixed up in my mind. It was up at Talking Points Memo two years ago…Gah.
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Thanks again for following up on this, Rose. If at any time it becomes tedious for you, I have absolutely no problem dropping the subject. I’m trying to express and understand something here, but the topic may have more limited value for you. Of course, I believe that all men should give this as much thought as I have –probably in school, as part of something more organized. Or not. I’m not sure.

How so? Why isn’t it non-coercive, yet non-consensual sexual activity? Why isn’t it unforced, yet undesired sexualized contact between relative strangers? What if it’s sexual activity in the absence of the opportunity for consent? Is this really rape, or is it something like rape? Must we call it rape to know that it’s probably wrong?
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stuart, I truly cannot imagine not calling that rape. I’m not making a “policy” argument that is motivated by a desire to not lose ground in the fight against rape by ceding away the scope of the term. I just sincerely cannot imagine saying, “Oh, I had sex last night with some guy and I was passed out drunk so I couldn’t express my consent or refusal. But it wasn’t rape.” What other word would I use? If it’s non-consensual, it’s rape. Either way, the choice is taken away from you, through not being asked or being forced. And not being asked and being forced are essentially the same thing. If someone doesn’t have the opportunity to truly consent – either because they’re too young (statutory), unconscious, asleep, too inebriated, etc. – they are still being raped. I find it hard to believe that you completely disagree with this. If you heard that coma patients were raped, wouldn’t you agree that they were actually raped? Sure there is no explicit threat of an “or else” and there is no opportunity for consent, but it’s still rape.
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If you saw the incident in Observe and Report – before her unrealistic quasi-consent – wouldn’t you call the Rogen character a rapist?
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What does “the post-AIDS world” have to do with it?
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You know after I posted that I thought, “That was really unclear. You should clarify that.” What I meant is that rape is even more obviously rape in the context of its victims being exposed to the risk of contracting AIDS without consenting to that risk, because the physical violation inherent in rape is reinforced by the physical violation of exposing people to a serious medical risk without their consent. It just makes the rape more like a cliche rape of the knife at the throat variety.
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I think that you’re denying the validity of this idea, and I still don’t understand what your rationale is –even though I’m pretty certain that I’m fully capable of that sort of comprehension, and I’m trying very hard.
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I’ll try to articulate this as best as I can. If someone has sex that they didn’t consent to, they were raped. Lack of consent = rape.
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Let me find the piece in question (written by a woman, by the way), but it involves weapons, firearms and the consistent conscious (at first) practice of women demonstrating that violence will be met with violence, so as to change a majority of male perspective on the consequences of f*cking with women, and on women’s capacity for aggression.
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I really don’t want to buy a firearm, or learn how to use one. Nor do I like the idea of vigilante violence. (And encouraging rape victims to use firearms is also risky in light of the links between rape and depression and PTSD, and firearms with impulse suicides.) That said, it’s quite possible that I would resort to violence if I or someone near me were raped – I certainly stand my ground here on Swampland! I would have a hard time condemning any rape victim who made that choice. But I don’t think that would solve the general problem. Also, some women – like some men – would just be bad at using firearms and violence. What if you’re a single mother raped by the father of your children? Or what if you’re just really bad with guns? Violence is not a reasonable option in these scenarios.

That said, it’s quite possible that I would resort to violence if I or someone near me were raped – I certainly stand my ground here on Swampland! I would have a hard time condemning any rape victim who made that choice. But I don’t think that would solve the general problem.
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Actually the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it’s impossible to address the problem of rape while undermining the rule of law. Or the problem of rape would be addressed at too high a price. In addition law in general aids women, so undermining the rule of law seems counterproductive.

Rose!
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I really don’t want to buy a firearm, or learn how to use one. Nor do I like the idea of vigilante violence.
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Finally!
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I found it!
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Let’s give up the debate over “non-consensual” vs “rape” for the moment, because the far more important issue is the strategy for ending the role of men as “protector” and therefore the modern rape epidemic.
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This essay called Rape as a Weapon of War by Claudia Card best expresses my ideas on how to eradicate rape. Even though its focus is primarily on the phenomenon of martial rape, I beg you to read the whole thing. This series of passages are the heart of my argument for armed, dangerous women as the guarantor of rape’s destruction:

Women who lack martial training are an easy mark for those who would communicate the message of domination. Women in patriarchies are commonly unarmed and untrained for physical combat. Perpetrators need fear little direct reprisal. Where there is concern about reprisals, the only troublesome witness is easily eliminable. This suggests that strategies of resistance would have women become armed and skilled in the use of weapons and in other methods of defense and self-defense, not only by martial arts and other civilian classes (perhaps funded by the state) but also by infiltration of the military at every level. Not only do females need to be able to call on skills when attacked (for which conventional military weapons may not be helpful) but the social meaning of female needs to be changed so that it no longer connotes victim. Perhaps females would do better to construct independent military organizations. At any rate, the long-range goal would be to terminate both domestic and international protection rackets and thereby change the symbolic meaning of rape at the same time as that of female.
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A major long-range aim of resistance to martial rape would be to eliminate patriarchal and protectionist values. One good way to begin is to reject the idea that women should not be armed and skilled in weapons use. The idea here is not simply to equip females for self-defense against rapists but to equip females generally to need no more protection than males. Just as the domestic protection racket must be dismantled for us to be safe in our homes during times of so-called peace, the transnational protection racket, where men on all sides claim as their reason for going to war that they are fighting to protect their women, must be dismantled as well. One way to undermine it is for women to have the same access to weapons and to military training as men have presently. Probably the best all-around training in combat at the present time, certainly the most expensive (supported by general taxes), is in military institutions, although even military institutions might be encouraged to give more attention to rape resistance, incorporating relevant attitudinal training from feminist self-defense practices. Suppose the response to martial rape were not for men to reject wives, mothers, and daughters, nor for women and girls to commit suicide, run away, or hide, but rather for those raped to get abortions, if pregnant, and for women generally to become informed, armed, trained, and fight back, as Alexandra Stiglmayer reports (1993, 91-93, 98-99) that Hatiza and Razija did after they were raped in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Suppose women entered military institutions in large numbers, at every rank, in every department. There would be, first, fewer civilian females to be raped, although there would still be children, the old, the sick, and their caretakers. But what is the likelihood that males would rape in war if they fought side by side with equally trained and armed females and under the command of even more powerful females, in a society in which this phenomenon was not exceptional? Gang rape is an unlikely instrument of heterosexual peer bonding. All-male armies might still treat female soldiers of other armies as Achilles is reputed to have done with the Amazon Penthesilia during the Trojan War, but female soldiers would not be easy targets.5 It seems unlikely that rape could continue to symbolize dominance if women could dominate as well as men.
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Many, not only extreme pacifists, will object to this strategy of resistance as a perpetuation of values that we should wish to replace rather than instantiate.6 Is it possible to participate in military institutions without succumbing to martial values? Without getting so caught up in supporting military practices that we lose sight of the goal of dismantling protection rackets and instead come to enjoy participating in the rites and rights of the masters?
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It may be possible to participate to a greater extent than most women in the United States do today in some military institutions without succumbing to indefensible values. What counts as participating in military institutions? Those who pay taxes without withholding a portion that would support military institutions already participate. Yet one may feel ambivalent about that, regarding it as, at best, a questionably tolerable evil rather than something to be expanded. More important from a feminist point of view is the example of the women’s self-defense movement. Since the 1970s major cities throughout the U.S. have been sites of martial arts training of women by women for the purpose of both physical skill acquisition for self-defense and attitudinal change with respect to options of resistance involving uses of violence. Such relatively informal individual training for one-on-one encounters by acquaintances or civilians has been important in saving and transforming individual lives.7 Yet it puts only a small dent in protection rackets in a world in which formally organized violence, such as war, is an ever-present possibility. We may need to be able to rely on each other in a more organized way than the women’s self-defense movement has recognized so far, not simply on our individual raised consciousnesses and on our readiness to defend ourselves as lone individuals. If it makes good sense to be prepared to defend ourselves as individuals, why does it not also make sense to be prepared to defend ourselves as communities? When wars of self-defense are fought not primarily by those who enjoy war but primarily by those who hate it and are inclined to do it only under grave duress, there may be significantly less likelihood that military values will come to dominate the societies of those who participate in the fighting. This is one reason to prefer a universal draft to reliance on mercenaries or exclusively on voluntary enlistment.

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Please, please read and truly, deeply consider these ideas, Rose, even if they are foreign to you, and seem bizarre. These are not strange ideas to men, believe me, except in as much as they could be applied to women. We men live these concepts –as we have for centuries, and maybe so should you, in an appropriated form. At least consider what the world might be like if women were socialized into aggression and defense for protector roles equal to those of men.
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Thanks again for indulging me, Rose.

Also, if you watched Maddow tonight, you would have seen in the last 2 minutes of the show a reference to a Polish holiday…in which there’s buckets of water dumped on girls, and they’re beaten about the legs with willow sticks by boys…just like Lovely Bride showed me exists in her country.
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Maddow & Co. are laughing at it, but it’s real. Patriarchy-enforing tradition is more subtle here in America because we’re divorced from centuries-old customs, but it’s just as real, and it’s about the exact same things being acted out every day.

stuart, I’ll read the whole essay tomorrow. I have two real disagreements so far. First, and less importantly, women can’t “dominate as well as men.” We’re smaller, we’re vulnerable to pregnancy, etc.
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These are not strange ideas to men, believe me, except in as much as they could be applied to women.
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I would love to get some more input from men on this. In my experience, I don’t think (young) men are actually so different from (young) women in the protector roles they take on. (Generational aspects are also a factor. I’m from a generation where sports were a common activity for girls) Men face the risk of (typically non-sexual) assault too, and they usually don’t adopt vigilante violence or carry guns around. They fight back as well as they can without any special effort or preparation, as women do too. The difference is more that women face greater risks, not that we’re worse at protecting ourselves. Admittedly, the cliche gender roles are very different from this reality I’m describing. Men are supposed to be brave, and kill their enemies with their bare hands or awesome guns. But most of them don’t. And women are supposed to cower helplessly in the face of violence, and yeah most of us do. As do men. (In relatively gender-neutral violent attacks like school shootings, men and women seem to react similarly.) However, a lot of women do fight back. I’m very aware that I can out run most people, especially over slightly longer distances. I suspect that if a man snatched my purse, I’d pursue him (only along crowded streets – I know I’m not Jack Bauer) because I’d have a pretty decent chance of catching him. But I wouldn’t have a responsibility to run after a thief.
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However, I may be suggesting that our differences here are bigger than they are. I agree with this: Patriarchy-enforing tradition is more subtle here in America because we’re divorced from centuries-old customs, but it’s just as real, and it’s about the exact same things being acted out every day. In addition, I agree that the very presence of these cliche gender roles of men as dominating protectors and women as helpless victims illustrates the continuing efforts to make physical force solely available to men. BTW, the widespread use of steroids among young boys and men with body image problems indicates how detached from reality this idea of men as dominating protectors is.
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One recent cinematic example of this I saw recently was a scene in Ironman. Gwyneth Paltrow was alone in a room with (spoiler alert) villainous Jeff Bridges, and we the audience were supposed to be terrified for her. Well, Jeff Bridges is kind of old. And overweight. While young Gwyneth Paltrow apparently exercises two hours a day six days a week. And she looks it. In reality, I’d bet on Paltrow in a fight (and not just because she could bore him to death with the faux-wisdom she shares on her website). By presenting Paltrow as helpless, and Bridges as far more powerful than he really is, Ironman was reinforcing these cliched gender roles that don’t reflect the reality of men’s and women’s physical capabilities.
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Finally, I should clarify my unwillingness to use guns. I believe they are dangerous and are far more likely to trigger a fatal accident than to protect me. I would not live in a household with a gun. It’s not a gender thing. I would probably be fine with a gun personally, in the sense that I’m confident I could learn how to shoot it and I wouldn’t use it rashly. In fact I believe I would handle a gun better than most men, with my combination of physical and mental characteristics. With my steady temperament and hands, I’m almost like the ideal gun owner! So my opposition to making firearms an integral part of an anti-rape effort does not reflect a personal lack of confidence in my ability to correctly use a firearm. I just believe that personal firearms cause more violence than they prevent.
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And BTW, when the topic of a draft came up recently, I argued that women would have to be included in a 21st-century draft. I also loved the idea of HRC as Secretary of Defense… I absolutely agree that male dominance over the military and war is a serious problem. And the increasing reliance on technology in the military makes the old arguments about women being physically incapable of playing an active role in the military even more obsolete.

…the increasing reliance on technology in the military makes the old arguments about women being physically incapable of playing an active role in the military even more obsolete.
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We probably have to suspend, but I’d encourage you to compare that statement with:
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We’re smaller, we’re vulnerable to pregnancy, etc.
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Just because this is true does not mean women have to teach girls that they’re the protected class, and boys are the protector class.
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Getting pissed off at the insensitivity of a Seth Rogan character in a Hollywood film doesn’t do crap about protector vs protected, which is the cause of the phenomenon of male-female rape.
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Something about how humans operate changed from the time that we were cannibals to the time that we weren’t. We can contemplate thermo-nuclear war and genocide, but cannibalism isn’t really a part of those calculations, even though humans did it, and it’s rather natural –more natural than rape, really. Mass cannibalism didn’t break out in Rwanda –rape did, though.
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Women’s physical characteristics aren’t anything to do with their vulnerability; it’s cultural. East Asians are of smaller physical build than Scandinavians, but we don’t see anything like that phenomenon between ethnicities of greater or lesser physical stature/structure. Remove men from the role of protector (owner, responsible for physical safety) of women, and women from the role of protected (owned, not responsible for their own safety), and we will see the end of rape as we know it.

Message to my new friend sacredh. One of your comments prompted me to do something especially for you. It is funny [and clean I promise] but I am not an Internet Junkie and it includes a photo that of the old Granny that forms part of the Post. I have had to learn to place photos but so far the only place I have managed it is in my Blog at WordPress.

Please go there and leave a comment for me if you wish; that way I will know you have seen it. Here is the Url.

http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/aussie-law-enforcement/

It goes you well, my friend.

stuart, I don’t think you’re fully understanding what I’m saying. I don’t think men are protectors; that’s just a myth that many guys like to believe about themselves. It doesn’t reflect reality. Only a small proportion of women AND men would actually consider vigilante violence to retaliate against a physical assault.
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Just because this is true does not mean women have to teach girls that they’re the protected class, and boys are the protector class.
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Sure, but who is suggesting that? Yes, the filmmakers of Ironman are doing that. But I’m not. Looking at the phenomenon of personal firearms though an empirical lens and deciding that I don’t want one doesn’t mean I think I’m part of a “protected class.” I don’t think owning firearms is a wise choice for men either.
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Remove men from the role of protector (owner, responsible for physical safety) of women, and women from the role of protected (owned, not responsible for their own safety), and we will see the end of rape as we know it.
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Ending this unrealistic model of “protector” (of women, vague ideals, capitalism, religion, etc.) masculinity that the vast majority of men are incapable or unwilling to fulfill would obviously be a wonderful thing for the world. But I believe this is something that is much more of an issue for men than women, simply because traditional female gender roles are way more realistic and reasonable for all people, especially since they’ve been modified for women of my generation. Just to clarify, I don’t believe women are better (i.e. kinder, inherantly more reasonable and less violent) than men. But our assigned gender roles are. And in the last 40 years, the distinctions between the roles men and women have actually assumed – as opposed to the ones that society tells us to assume – have significantly blurred, which is probably partly responsible for many wonderful developments such as Obama’s election. I have a perfectly reasonable attitude towards physical force that is probably very similar to that of most men my age, with a similar degree of education and similar socioeconomic backgrounds. The reality of men’s and women’s gender roles does not correspond to the sharply divided protector vs. protected model.
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The tension between what men are supposed to be and what they actually are is so great that it undoubtedly contributes to the problems of violence and poor academic performance among young men and boys. And that in turn is undoubtedly linked to rape. I find any suggestion that men’s and women’s cultures are equally responsible for the problem of rape to be implausible and not reflective of reality.
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Getting pissed off at the insensitivity of a Seth Rogan character in a Hollywood film doesn’t do crap about protector vs protected, which is the cause of the phenomenon of male-female rape.
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Actually I believe reasoned criticism about pop culture can be productive (of course it’s so not about “the insensitivity of a Seth Rogen character”; the problem is that they attempted to sugarcoat rape.). In addition, it sounds like the film missed an opportunity to expose the problems and lack of realism in the protected vs. protected model: the Rogen character sees himself as a protector, which links very interestingly with the rape incident. It’s unfortunate that the filmmakers wanted to make his actions in the scene “okay,” as Rogen explained. In reality guys like that rape and their actions are uncomfortable to watch and not okay.
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The core problem is that violence is tied with dominance. It doesn’t have to be, and certainly the extent of the links between violence and dominance has varied greatly among different societies and historical periods. Like cannibalism the links are not inevitable; violence and dominance do not have to be virtually interchangeable.

Almost all of what you’ve asserted here I vehemently disagree with –down to the characterization of the film incident as “rape”– but I’ll let you have the last word, Rose.
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Thanks so much again for this excellent discussion.

[...] called it More Bleating from the Neoconservatives and said: Where most rational observers saw Barack Obama’s foreign trip as a significant U.S. [...]

Almost all of what you’ve asserted here I vehemently disagree with –down to the characterization of the film incident as “rape”– but I’ll let you have the last word, Rose.
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Thanks so much again for this excellent discussion.
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Yes we need to end this before we reach an eighth page! I’d still like to know the answer to this question sometime though, just out of curiosity: If you saw the incident in Observe and Report – before her unrealistic quasi-consent – wouldn’t you call the Rogen character a rapist?
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That way I can know how vehemently I disagree with you!
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As an aside, this discussion is an interesting example of the internet’s potential as a site for discussion and debate. I can guarantee you we would not have had this conversation in person. And perhaps more importantly, I wonder if actual rape victims would feel more comfortable contributing to an online discussion. In previous centuries many intellectuals working in literature, politics and the sciences shared their ideas through letters. The nature of written communication encourages deliberation and a sense of distance that can add something to certain discussions. This is perhaps one of them.

SZ, I thought that somepeople’s question wasn’t very well formed, since the scare-quoted “date rape” wasn’t clear in its reference to sex during which the woman hasn’t clearly enunciated nor withdrawn her consent due to substantial self-induced inebriation
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God, I should just let this go…but much has been made about my quotes around “date rape” on this comment. This started with a discussion about the character Ana Farris played in the Seth Rogen movie. I was speaking about her specifically and although I have not seen the movie I was going off of Corliss’ description of the scene. He made no mistake about the fact that he thought she was no victim at all. Thus the quotes.
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Don’t want to continue, just clarify.

Don’t want to continue, just clarify.
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Clarification understood. It’s a little funny that we were all focused on you and then stuart went way more extreme (not that extreme is necessarily wrong, although in this case it is) than you after the thread died… You too could have joined a chorus of righteous indignation if the timing had been different!

[...] Oregon, pending trial after a federal judge ruled he did not pose a flight risk.http://www.cnn.comMore Bleating From the Neoconservatives (Time Magazine)Where most rational observers saw Barack Obama’s foreign trip as a significant U.S. triumph, [...]

[...] Krauthammer Desperately Seeking Nail [...]

I hope the street brawl is now over so that we can get back to the point that Joe Klein stated as the issue in this Post where he said: “over Barack Obama’s foreign trip. Where most rational observers saw a significant U.S. triumph, the … “

All the infighting in comments in this Blog and the other one on:

http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2009/04/10/why-obamas-saudi-bow-was-not-a-kow-tow/#comment-1324

The protracted discussion on male rape, the snide references to Number 24, and the attack on jacoblues …. Well it was fun but when someone attacked my support for jacobblues having presented some well-researched comments, I realized that it is Time [no pun intended] to do my Post on relevant URLS to find the “significant US triumph” that Klein refers to.

See my Blog at

http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/the-time-rag%e2%80%99s-joe-klein-desperately-needs-a-hammer/

[...] Krauthammer Desperately Seeking Nail [...]

[...] More Bleating From the Neoconservatives [...]

[...] More Bleating From the Neoconservatives [...]