Letters to the Editor
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drunken hitchens
McLame is a short tempered warmongering philanderer, a belligerent bellicose bully, and a man without any ethical grounding whatsoever. A Phoenix pissant. Straight talk in the men's room of a segregated whorehouse.
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To: Jebbie/LWM/Mooser, etc.- re: Hitchens on McCain
I believe you may have read Hitchens statement incorrectly, although he certainly could have phrased it better...
I believe he meant to say - I'm not sure that a guy, like (in the California Valley Girl sense), that volatile (shall we say) should be president of anywhere...
IOW, he thinks that McCain, although likeable, etc., is too volatile to be president.
Regards,
LWM Mooser
-- Jebbie
I think you translated inaccurately from the Australian and Gin.
This from THE website to keep track of the Hitch and his numerous inebriations - The Hitchens Watch:
[Hitchens in the Daily Mirror]: "Only one of these men has any poetry about him. John McCain, the white-haired old lion in winter, embarking on his last hurrah, quixotically indifferent to money or polls, can still bring a lump to the throat. Stubbornly loyal to his comrades in uniform, adamant for victory in Iraq, he commands a certain respect of the kind that professional image-builders can only dream of. This may not turn out to be the year for old lions, but it’s nice to know, amid all the moisture and bogus emotion, that the country can still produce them."
Hitchens seems to admit that McCain has no chance, and, in any case, Hitchens' imprimature is usually the kiss of death to any serious (or frivolous) candidate, as past experience shows.
However, for the moment, it would seem to be Hitchens for McCain.
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/hitchens-shock-switcharoo.html
And what have we here? From a short scroll farther down the piece:
The background to this is simple: Hitchens loves McCain because almost all American journalists love McCain. Despite his self-proclaimed iconoclasm, Hitchens, generally speaking, simply follows the journalistic herd. As the excellent Glenn Greenwald puts it: 'The media is uncontrollably in love with John McCain (because) McCain gives them unfettered access, so they love him. Everything is about them, and whichever politician flatters and charms these adolescent, coddled narcissists is the recipient of their uncritical love. (that explains much, though not all, of their profound failure in covering the Bush campaigns and administration)....Those preferences -- all based in their own petty personal desires -- couldn't be more obvious in the media narrative spewing forth. Dancing around like munchkins in Oz, they proclaim that the wicked Clinton witch is dead and McCain is surging with a miraculous, glorious comeback.'
However, just to make clear, I would be the last person to accuse Chris of being an 'adolescent, coddled narcissist'.
The last person.
You can't argue with that but it has never prevented some from trying.
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/hitchens-shock-switcharoo.html
Regards
KB4Hire Mooser and Ernestine
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Timberman wrong again ...
"... L.W.M. could be happy there, too, until Bucky called the cops." -- William Timberman
Jebus Timberman, you know lwm could never be happy. The performance tonight is proof. You also know I would never call the cops, that would be people just like you.
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Timberman has done his job ...
"(Enough with the thespian exertions for this evening. Time to retire. Until the morrow, then -- and flights of angels sing the lot of you wonderful dramatis personae to your rest.)" -- William Timberman
Yes William, you and your little crowd were able to help the war machine by destroying another thread about same. I hope you get you just reward.
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-- nuf said / -- NewLeft
"My thoughts exactly." -- nuf said
"It's very disappointing to see some of the more educated readers/commentors on the 'net reduced to 24 pages of "hey! you're using TWO screen names!" and "no, he's not, you big jerk!". -- NewLeft
"Mind that your comments be both relevant and entertaining. Otherwise, the hook you now profess to wield may prove just as uncompromising in the hands of another." -- William Timberman
I see you fellows got the Timberman welcome. You see, the disruption of the topic of stopping war always seems to suite WT. It is one of those mysteries for us all to contemplate.
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@DClaw1
I am definitely aware of the libertarian/anti-libertarian pissing matches, I do what I can to avoid them.
This is unfortunate because it is an oversimplification of the dynamic and this really is the locus of the debate about almost every important issue we discuss here related to individual Liberty and the State and all that entails. Many different factions claim the mantle of libertarianism and as Mike Huben has wryly observed, attempt to: "Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc."
I don't want to get into that pissing match here but before you can designate any given "pissing match" on the subject as "libertarian/anti-libertarian" you first have to define libertarianism and decide who is and who is not a libertarian. They have been having this debate on the libertarian right and left long before I or Ron Pauliac (a play Howard Deaniac) arrived. I'll just say this: It is a good starting point for a debate about these issues. It is not a viable political party or coherent, cogent and sound ideology any more than Marxism is.
Sinnard asks rhetorically: "Or does the conversation just naturally flow to discussions about how prominant[sic] Libertarians and Paeoconservatives [sic} are bigots/racists/jerks/etc. whenever the L word is brought up around here?"
He willfully chooses to deny the racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic roots of both paleoconservatism and certain factions on the right that claim the libertarian mantle.
This is just the Homophobia of prominent paleoconservative Pat Buchanan:
Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded "bigots" by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle.
-- Pat Buchanan, September 3, 1989
Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family.
-- Pat Buchanan, 1977
Gay rights activists seek to substitute, for laws rooted in JudeoChristian morality, laws rooted in the secular humanist belief that all consensual sexual acts are morally equal. That belief is anti-biblical and amoral; to codify it into law is to codify a lie.
-- Pat Buchanan, Wall Street Journal, January 21, 1993
The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.
-- Pat Buchanan, discussing AIDS in 1983
With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.
-- Pat Buchanan, in his syndicated column, October 17, 1990
AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature.
-- Pat Buchanan, during his 1992 presidential campaign
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/buchanan.htm
Mona and I have our differences. We also agree on some things. I don't claim to be a "true libertarian" because none of us are sure what it really is. It changes from day to day, depending on situational exigencies.
And since defining terms is an important first principle in any meaningful debate, here is the exposition of the various behaviors known as internet sockpuppetry, and some notable examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet
Neither Ron Pauliac or myself have made the cut.