And that's the way it is.

Hollowpoint notes that Greenwald is right to some extent -- one can't claim that the comments on a blog are indicative of what the actual blogger believes.

Well, yeah-- but Greenwald set up a straw-man argument there, because that was NOT what was being claimed. The right wasn't claiming that that Arianna Huffington was saddened by fact that Dick Cheney escaped assassination; the right was claiming her readers and commenters were doing that, by and large, which is demonstrably true.

At least it was demonstrably true before she began deleting all the evidence.

It's not that blogger is responsible for the comments so much as the comments are, in fact, indicative of the beliefs of the left.

Greenwald isn't just saying bloggers aren't responsible for their comments -- he's also saying (slipping it in there real fast in his preferred mode of argument, the ipse dixit) that the comments *do not reflect the beliefs of the left at all.*

He offers no evidence as to this. Or even suppositions as to why this should be the case. Suppositions like, "People who comment on blogs are angrier and more impulsive than the general population on the left, and hence comments on blogs are not representative, randomly selected samples of the greater population, and hence without statistical validity."

Not only is there no evidence for such a claim, but the left CAN'T claim that, since they're so busy simultaneously arguing the netroots are the real face of the Democratic Party and should be treated as such.

Do such comments prove that everyone on the left is like this? Of course not. But given that fact that 20% of comments were pro-assassination, *and there were few commenters slamming them for their venom,* we can say, absent contrary evidence, that these comments DO represent a significant, if not majority, position on the left, and certainly the majority of the left is unwilling to rein in these people. They either quietly agree or else feel that political solidarity trumps the imperative to not engage in pro-assassination hate speech.

Furthermore, comments really are indicative, to at least some degree, of what is tolerated in a blog's comments. Few people make such comments here, even as jokes, because they know I have a hard-on about this point.

Apparently the Hufftards know that it's a, errr, free-fire zone for assassination talk over there.

Bloggers can, must, and do patrol for comments they think are simply out of line, hateful, irresponsible, and which reflect badly upon themselves. Do they do so so thoroughly as to scrub out/deter such comments? No, of course not. One can't be reading and writing stuff all day while simultaneously reading every damn comment on a popular blog, deleting offensive posts, issuing warnings, arguing with readers, etc.

It's impossible to do that, and probably undesirable to do so. I'm sure commenters wouldn't appreciate a heavy-handed thread-nanny watching over every word they wrote.

However, certainly a blogger can make it known, broadly, that he doesn't want hate speech in his comments, and those who find such a policy too constraining can find another blog more latitudinarian on death threats, hate-speech, etc.

The Daily Kos and Huffington Post -- and Glenn Greenwald himself -- cannot afford to deal too roughly with their anti-semites, racists, and assassination fantasy circle-jerkers.

Because those people aren't "a few bad apples." They're their core audience, and they are, in fact, the majority of the Angry Left.

More On Gleen: At Protein Wisdom.

Still, give the guy some credit: his self-righteousness these days is so freakin' pure you need to cut it with corn starch just to keep it from killing you during that first warm hit.

By the way, given that Gleen does nothing but engage in apologism for the pro-assassination left, and slam the pro-American right, can we drop the silly piffle of a lie that he's somehow "indpendent" or "libertarian" or a (apologies to P-Town Boy) "true conservative"?

Home is where the hate is.

Allah notes that DKos was worried he had so many "Truthers" on his site they would discredit him, and thus enacted a strictly-enforced no-9/11-conspiracy-theory policy.

It works, by and large. They're mostly Truthies over there but they're cautious about saying so directly. (They just "raise questions.")

So: Why hasn't Arianna had a no-assassination-solicitation policy beforehand?

Does she plan on having one going forward? Will she threaten to ban posters who engage in such dark, irresponsibile, potentially lethal talk?

I doubt it. It will all be swept under the carpet... until next time. And one thing we know from the left: There always is a next time.

Posted by: Ace at 03:09 PM | Comments (118)
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Oh, wait, I got that headline wrong. Muslims chant "Allah is great" while beating a director for displaying the barbaric practice of "honor" killings.

So easy to make that mistake, you know? I mean, it's hard to keep track of which religion it is murdering people this week. It's always changing.

Anyway, they rioters claim that the director misrepresented the region they came from by depicting it as filled with "honor" killings and general "honor" violence.

Chanting "Allah is greatest," a group attacked the set of the Yaralı Yürek television series, and beat the director and his assistant with clubs and stones.

...

Most of them were bearded. They shouted "you've soiled Şanlıurfa's honor."

These fucking primitives are driven by poverty, all right. A poverty of irony.

Can we start irony-bombing these fucking neanderthals?

No?

Ah well. We'll have to content ourselves with the real ones.

Thanks to headline for both the link and the headline.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (15)
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Well, I guess that's one way to get the media to report on the stock market and economy, huh?

A harbinger of the coming recession, we'll now be told.

Coming recession?

Last time I checked the media was still permitting Democrats to claim we're currently in a recession without any sort of challenge, fact-checking, or truth-squading.

And so the media's reporting will go precisely as I said. The new business cycle, at least when a Republican is President, is recession -- (guilty whistling) -- contraction -- recession.

That whole "expansion" part never gets reported on, until it's over.

Corrected: I wrote "over 500" originally. I thought that's what the information was at the time, but perhaps I misread.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (30)
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An admission from the perp. I was pwnd. Kinda-sorta.

Damn, I hate that.

Via Hot Air, linking that story about Generation Y'ers, pumped up full of themselves thanks to the "self esteem movement," about to get a cold splash of bracing reality as they enter the real world and discover it doesn't quite revolve around them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (9)
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"Better luck next time!"

"If at first you don't succeed...!"

“What a different world we would be living in today if they had succeeded.”

LGF also notes that lefty bloggers get the vapors when right-wing bloggers suggest that perhaps enemies of America, like Iranian mullahs and nuke scientists, ought to be assassinated. But when it comes to assassinating American leaders, suddenly these leftwing bloggers engage in nothing but apologism for their fellow travellers who jerk off over thoughts of dead presidents and vice presidents.

Gleen, of course, claims this "proves nothing." Nothing. The Huffington Post actually had to close down threads to prevent the tidal wave of pro-assassination comments, but it proves "nothing." Nothing at all about the left.

And certainly nothing at all about leftwing bloggers, which, Glenn Greenwald insists, are not responsible for their commenters.

Allah notes the sweet irony -- Gleen, who has a rich history of actually being a psuedonymous commenter on blogs, is claiming that comments have nothing at all to do with bloggers.

Rick Ellensberg, Thomas Ellers, Wilson, and Ellison might want to have a talk with him about that.

Incidentally, Gleen also dismisses the right's mention of racist, hate-filled emails from unhinged lefties as evidence that there's a lot of racism and hate on the left. He links Michelle Malkin dismissively as an example of this. (I didn't even bother clicking on his link; I know who he's talking about. She's all they ever talk about.)

Those emails also don't mean anything, he says.

And yet I seem to remember the entire left of the blogosphere being pretty upset by the "hate-filled" emails sent to Marcotte and MacEwan.

Those emails, of course, very definitely proved something.

Michelle Malkin's? Not so much.

A Tribute... to the angry Hufftards, from Protein Wisdom.

Allah has a good digest of the attack. And wonders how the Taliban knew Cheney was in Baghram, when in fact he was scheduled to be there yesterday, and was delayed by bad weather.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (63)
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Hollowpoint tips me to this. Her explanation about her sheepskin Uggs:

I'm getting rid of our Uggs - I feel so guilty for that craze being started around Baywatch days - I used to wear them with my red swim suit to keep warm - never realizing that they were SKIN! I thought they were shaved kindly?

Hollowpoint writes:

WTF? Is she saying that she thought "sheepskin" (the most descriptive term EVER) actually meant "wool"? Did she think there was a humane way to skin a live sheep?

Maybe she just thought they waxed the skin off them, then let the sheep, now gleaming wet and red with exposed viscera, "kindly" grow their skins back.

I know one thing: It would be hard as hell to administer a Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test on Pamela. She'd keep testing false-positive as an android.

DEKKARD: A boy shows you his butterfly collection, the butterflies' wings pinioned out by sharp pins.

PAM ANDERSON: Awwwww!!! I love butterfiles!

DEKKARD (checking equipment): That's weird... no reaction at all. Even Nexus-3's showed some delayed response.... anyway:
You see a puppy by the side of the road. It's been hit by a car, and it lays twitching in a pool of its own blood.

PAM ANDERSON: Puppies are cute! Can I keep him?!!

DEKKARD: Please wait for the end of the prompt. The pupy dies in your arms.

PAM ANDERSON: You're not going to let me keep him, are you? I can tell from your tone. You're not a nice man.

DEKKARD (tapping retinal scanner): Is this thing on?
Continuing: You're sitting in your den when a beautiful woman comes in and takes off all of her clothes. She walks up and embraces you, kissing you hard on the mouth.

PAM ANDERSON: Is this test to determine if I'm an android, Mr. Dekkard, or a lesbian?

DEKKARD: Actually that wasn't really a question. I was just kind of thinking out loud for a moment.

PAM ANDERSON: Well, if that happened, I guess I'd make out with her for a while. And then, maybe, spank her ass with my enormous breasts?

(Dekkard stares at her in glassy-eyed lust)

PAM ANDERSON: Is that the right answer?

DEKKARD: Ahem. Yeah. Uh. It's an, um, acceptable response. Back to the test:
You're in a moutain cabin when a tortoise crawls in from outside, and then dies.

PAM ANDERSON: What's a "tortoise"?

DEKKARD: It's, uhh, like a turtle.

PAM ANDERSON: Oh... What's a "turtle"?

DEKKARD: Oh, forget it. I can't tell if you're a replicant or just a retard. The V-K just doesn't seem to be picking up any readings from your brain.

PAM ANDERSON: Oh. What's a "brain"?

DEKKARD: Let's go back to that question about the naked woman kissing you. That seemed like something we should explore further.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (46)
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and is doing so for all to see. Isn't this a violation of public indecency laws?

Anyway, ABC News has published an opinion piece today from some blogger I never heard of polishing the knob of a man I wish I had never heard of. (Damnable prepositions..I will not rewrite my sentence. You don't own me!)

Check out these laugh a minute excerpts from Ostroy's article:

Make no mistake: Former Vice President Al Gore will be our next president.

Make no mistake...this should clue you in as to how deluded this editorialist is.

I am as confident about that assertion as I am that George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst president ever.

Really? Worst. President. EVAH? Finally, Andrew Johnson can catch a break. And is that the sound of a sigh I hear eminating from Plains, Georgia?

Make no mistake...I think this guy's attention span and sense of historical perspective is probably limited to whatever was on before the last commercial break on "Oxygen". Or "E". Whatever is gayer.

At Sunday's Oscar ceremony, Gore took home the coveted prize for best feature documentary for "An Inconvenient Truth," his scorching red-flag raiser on global warming.

Quick, America! Name 3 people (and I'll spot you Gore and Michael Moore) who have ever won the "best feature documentary".

Make no mistake...you probably can't.

Hardly a barometer for guaging public popularity, I would say.

On stage he was graceful, poised and presidential. And it didn't hurt his hipness quotient any to be getting a little Leo DiCaprio love either. That's right, Al Gore is suddenly cool.

Umm...on stage he was also very, very, large. Ginormous, even. Are the Taft bathtubs still in the White House?

And since when is being associated with Leo DiCaprio cool?

Make no mistake...when people's fondest recollection of your biggest movie role is seeing you drown in a field of icebergs and ship debris, your "hip" factor is probably pretty low.

Except to 12 year old girls, I suppose. Or Andy Ostroy.

It gets even better.

Umm..not really.

In October, Gore will also likely be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for being the planet's biggest advocate in the fight against climate change. His prestigious nomination in this exclusive club puts him in the company of such independent thinkers, statesmen and activists as Dr. Martin Luther King, President Jimmy Carter, Elie Wiesel and Mother Theresa.

And Yasser Arafat. You wouldn't want to leave out the mass murdering, anti-Israel, terrorist leader. Might diminish your award a little.

Oh wait...you did include mass-murdering, anti-Israel, terrorist leader, apologiser Jimmuh Carter. So, I guess it was diminished by your list.

My bad.

Now let's talk chops. Gore's an enlisted Vietnam vet...

Make no mistake...Al Gore served his country bravely as a Stars and Stripes reporter who was assigned personal bodyguards by his Senator father. Just like all those other GI's.

Hell...even John Kerry didn't have personal bodyguards on his three month tour of duty in the 'Nam. So, thanks for being the only veteran alive who makes Kerry look positively butch, Al!

...who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, two terms in the Senate, and eight years as vice president in one of the most successful administrations ever...

Most successful administrations EVAH?

Make no mistake...besides raising a lot of money in Buddhist Temples, what exactly was Al Gore's biggest accomplishment in the Clinton Administration? Was it not getting impeached, or not getting indicted?

...Let's not forget that he won the popular vote in 2000, and as many say, the Electoral College as well.

Ahhh..Florida 2000 much?

Make no mistake...many say Ostroy writes like a BDS-addled douchenozzle. I guess that means it's a valid criticism.

So wait, he's hip, he's brilliant, he's highly experienced.

You do realize this column is about Al Gore, don't you?

Must be that whole attention span issue I noticed earlier.

I even have the perfect campaign slogan for Gore: "Imagine how it would've been."

Heh...John Lennon as political campaign spinmeister. Is there anything he couldn't do? Besides duck.

I think I'm going to take a page from Ostroy's book and imagine I didn't read his ridiculous article.

After all...this kind of ankles-grabbing punditry is much more suitable for, I dunno, Wonkette's site, I think.

Then again, I think she does get more hits than ABC News, so that may explain why they ran this abomination.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:54 AM | Comments (102)
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Yeah, I'm having trouble comprehending those words used together myself. But it's true.

Tucked away here at the back of HotAir's video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali smacking down Darrell Issa's stupid revisionist Islam-has-always-been-tolerant history -- which is, frankly, oversold, as she doesn't say much you haven't heard a thousand times -- is a very funny overdub of a heated argument on Al Jazeera.

Quite frankly, I suspect that the comedy bit is really what Allah wanted to post, but didn't want to give Bill Maher credit. So he claims it's for Ali's brief statement about dhimmitude.

Definitely worth watching.

Posted by: Ace at 10:31 PM | Comments (26)
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No wonder so many liberals are stupid.

It makes hectoring, didactic, masochistic liberalism so much easier a regime to live under when you're too dumb to realize you're violating its precepts left and right.

I guess I could be a liberal, maybe, but for the fact that God gifted me with this damnably clever brain of mine.*

* A moronbrain, to be sure, but a fairly advanced one by moronbrain standards.

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 PM | Comments (46)
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You can vote Vmultiple Vtimes.

Vthanks to Vmesablue.

PS: MKH is just barely edging Amanda Congdon.

No problem -- I imagine JackM. alone can now generate enough votes to win this.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 PM | Comments (26)
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