Letters to the Editor
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Zack:
Like Glenn, I “read” lots of blogs I find offensive. Just because “Ed” is on Glenn’s blogroll of “Blogs I read” does not imply an endorsement of anything he says. Glenn reads him because, on occasion, he has a momentary fit of honesty and disagrees with the more extreme views on the right, and the results are sometimes instructive.
Precisely. I think it's important to read a diverse range of blogs, and that is relatively informative and one of the few I can withstanding reading on a regular basis.
That said, however, I have to agree with you about his intellectual dishonesty. Take his supposedly “moderate” letter that repudiates Coulter: That’s dishonest. . . .
True, but the pool isn't exactly large. I also read, for instance, National Review's The Corner and that is far from a beacon of ongoing intellectual honesty, to put it mildly.
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Gator
Good heavens Glenn, all I asked you before was what exactly AIPAC or other groups had DONE which caused you to believe they were agitating for a U.S. war with Iran. You have, at long last, answered that simple question.
No, that's just not true. Other than adding a fact or two that wasn't available last time, everything I said here today in response to your inquiry I (or others) also said the last time - including the Matt Yglesias post, the references to AIPAC's promotion of the Iranian threat on its website, the NY Sun article documenting the pressure put on candidates by AIPAC. You kept insisting that there was no evidence that AIPAC was pushing the country to war and kept ignoring the very evidence that you were asking for, pretending it didn't exist.
You did the same here today. It's for that reason I reacted as I did when you showed up here today after not responding to any of that material to claim that I "refused" to answer you last time about AIPAC and refused to provide evidence ("When I asked you for specific examples of such agitation, you refused to provide any"). That just is false, which is why I concluded today that you weren't really interested in knowing the answer, but just protesting that anyone would suggest that AIPAC is agitating for war against Iran.
In any event, I don't feel like my time was wasted in responding to you today even if you want to continue to ignore that evidence or dismiss it away, because I think the evidence of AIPAC's actions with regard to Iran is important and the more people who see it, the better.
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To David re: The NY Sun article
Bombings notwithstanding, the problem is, in my view the sanctions themselves. They assume that Iran is guilty of some sort of violation of international law, which it is not. Iran's pursuit of nuclear energy is well within the specifications of the Non-Proliferation Treaty they have signed on to. Some think it is disengenuious of Tehran to claim that its program is for peaceful purposes, but the fact is that most of the country's oil is slated for export. Add to that the fact that they have no refining capacity and are forced to buy their gasoline and diesel from Europe, plus the government keeps the price of gas to its people at 40 cents per gallon. This all makes Iran a country that is oil rich, but energy poor. Their nuclear program does not violate any international agreement they've signed. They have worked with the IAEA looking over their shoulders the whole time. There has never been any attempt to on their part to hide what they're doing. The whole issue is, at heart, another manufactured crisis created by the Bush administration. The origins of the claim that Iran is "pursuing nuclear weapons" began with the Bush White House. Its supporters and propagandists picked it up from there and are trying to guilt trip the UN into putting sanctions into place. The only reason diplomacy has been proposed is because our armed forces are spread paper thin, and we don't have a draft, so there is no ready supply of warm bodies for Bush to throw at another phantom enemy.
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Glenn:
From Gator90: The whole reason I questioned you on this in the first place was that you treated the Jewish campaign to start a new war as an established fact.
I'm sure you saw it, but in case you skimmed gator's post in irritation, he's throwing out the anti-semitism charge. That by itself eliminates the rest as rational discussion.
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What's the matter with kids today?
Gawd.... Not a scruffy, bearded kid in sight, either, more's the pity. -- Timberman
Heh, that reminds me. Went to an early PDA meeting some months or a year back, William Rivers Pitt holding forth at the podium.
I swear there weren't more than three or four people there under 60. Out of close to 100 all together.
At the local DFA branch most of the participants are under 45, and quite a few are 18-25. For a while, the outfit was presided over by a 22 year old fresh out of college trying to make his way in the world of politics (amazing) and lo, soon enough he had to bid farewell to the group because a state rep hired him for his capital office.
But there's hardly a revolutionary among them, and those that are there have to meet in secret. Shhh.
Meanwhile, kudos for your organization of a Peace Rally!
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The kids are alright
Che, our cut of the Howard Dean fifty-state strategy rented us an office during the last election, and sent us a 23 year-old from Phoenix to whip us into shape. She was beautiful, of course, and smart, and every bit as full of life as 23 year-olds tend to be -- you could warm your hands on her aura -- but.... I missed the old fire.
She worked like a dog, though, and helped us turn out more Democrats in our district, by a substantial margin, than in 2004. I wish her, and all her contemporaries, the very best. (I can't believe she was almost ten years younger than my daughter. Still, when they ask you where all the flowers have gone, take a clue from clownsense: they come up every year without fail. It's a miracle....)