Regardless of the other issues that got attached to the entire Edwards blogger debacle, I strongly suggest that people step back and see the big picture, which is that right wingers are trying to create divisions on the left, knowing that if we don't stand together, we'll hang separately.

The more things change...

Thank you from me, too, for talking to us, and giving us some insight into your experience.

And, hey -- watch that language, you hear? :-)

Dissent Protects Democracy.

i was impressed. You do ideas very well. You don't need to do blue.

Thank you and good luck.

Ron Byers

Dare I hope the tone of your post indicates you are looking around for something else to write about here?

And about that "right wing smear campaign against Melissa McEwan and myself"-- though it's fair to say the right put you in a bad light, I thought it was clear the smear campaign was directed against Edwards, with you as its unwitting tools.

One thousand percent agreed.

That is a very perceptive article, and they have it exactly right.

It's also somewhat analogous to Donohue getting Mara Vanderslice and Rev. Peterson fired back in 2004. Both of them were in charge of religious outreach (for the Kerry campaign and DNC, respectively), and they became targets not because they said or did anything offensive but because Donohue (the Republican hack) wanted to create division within the Democratic party.

They know that we have a bad habit of attacking each other when we should be pulling together to fight them, and it's one of their most potent weapons. In light of which, your last two paragraphs should be required reading for every Democrat. We can't afford to tear each other apart.

I find this idea that categories like "right winger" and "Left" need to be clearly and precisely defined to be novel and curious. You are aware, are you not, that human group identification does not work in a cut-and-dry way like, say, identifying which element an atom is?

I still don't agree that there's a huge master plan. They might have exploited, or tried to create, a perceived weakness, that might have the effect of trying to separate bloggers from campaigns, but I think that they're playing the bullshit conservative card here. That card is that in campaigns, everyone puts on this show of being Mr. and Mrs. America, of being more conservative than they actually are in real life. By exploiting this hypocrisy they're trying to stop reality from manifesting itself. Fuck them. Let's break into their campaigns.

"You know, you can be Al Gore, or you can be Gore Vidal, but there is no constitutional right, or reasonable expectation, that you can be both."

That's about my take on it. I'm a liberal, a pretty flaming one in fact. I'm also a Christian, and I found your remarks on Christian beliefs to be vile, offensive, and nauseating. That's fine, of course: you have a right to post what you think, and I have a right to respond as I think.

The problem comes when you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to be a smirking, trash-talking blogger, the coolest of the cool, outraging and ridiculing the dumb middle-class Christian folks like me. But then, you want to play with the big guys, to be taken seriously by people who have to talk persuasively *to* the dumb middle-class Christian folks like me. I'm not surprised it didn't work.

It's a good thing for Edwards' campaign that you had the courage to resign. *Of course* the right-wing would have viewed your continued position there as manna from heaven -- why not? Don't we pounce on their stupidest blunders, like "macaca," and ride them into the sunset? It's called politics, and it's one hell of a lot harder than blogging.

If there's something contructive to be drawn from all this, it's that we're in the early skirmishes of two power structures: the long-established right-wing model, based around small 'foundations' that exist for the benefit of one or two prominent wingnut pontificators, against the loosely-structured liberal blogosphere.

The kerfuffle over Frank Gaffney this week led me to glance at the Form 990 of his 'Center for Security Policy'. The numbers are very similar to Donohue's League: one well-paid wingnut and a few underlings, fuelled by a few million dollars of tax-deductible donations.

If there's a time to take down the wingnut welfare system, or at least this aspect of it, it's now: because every two-bit operation that survives into 2008 will be participating in Swiftboat 2.0.

Donohue has done us all a service.

Campaigns should not take bloggers aboard. Bloggers are or should be undisciplined free spirits; campaigns are tightly managed marketing enterprises. The twain should never meet.

Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab Blab... Don't you have someone at home to bother?

~OGD~

Thanks for that one J. Jonah Jameson. I enjoyed it. 

Remember: The run on the bank scene in "It's a Wonderful Life."

Amanda:

I heard from a second cousin, who knows the brother of a person who maintains the offices of the dean of student's at a major university (and is a close associate of Brad Exley, cousin of Zach) who overhead a janitor who's next door neighbor said that his wife had spoken with a woman from Rhode Island who loves to call people "pez brain" who had heard from her kids that you were probably placed as a fox in the henhouse as a troll planted deliberately to make the Edwards campaign toxic.

Does there happen to be any thruth in this?

~OGD~

Your argument will have genuine power when you stop using a pseudonym and start posting in your real name.

Right now your rant reminds me of Dick Cheney's support for the war fighters in Iraq. He is behind them one hundred and ten percent. Way behind them. As in so far behind them he invented new ways to stay out of the Vietnam war.

In short, at least Amanda has the balls to put her real future on the line. Why don't you?

Sorry if that seems a little harsh on all the self-absorbed, self-censoring, intolerant, anti-religious ranters hiding behind "handles," but there you are.

Ron Byers

--deleted--

Misplacement of comment.

~OGD~ 

This is my legal name. It was changed to protect the innocent, my family.

It figures.

You are right, swiftie didn't have an argument, he just had a rant.

Of course, I posted my comment before the story about Jim Zumbo. It seems a long time hunter, gunowner, and television personality was turned on and destroyed by the NRA for saying he found using assualt rifles for hunting distasteful. It seems he called them "terrorist rifles." The NRA crushed him like a bug. It was shameless.

Maybe you and Swiftie are right. Hiding behind a handle is the safer course. All the more reason to admire people like Amanda.

Ron Byers

BTW Ron...

Have a nice weekend ... It's time for the dog to walk me.

~OGD~

Now, now, OGD. Don't be baiting Lyndon from RI (she might show up!). You fascist Stalinist fundamentalist censor, you. Oh wait, that was me. Sorry.

What this has shown us is that the leftist extreme blogosphere is as bigoted and possessed of a blind lust for power as the right wing. They are as unethical and corrupt as the right wing as well.

Bloggers and forum owners like Kos, Jerome Armstrong might have blogs, et al, that have accumulated a large number of registrations, but you don't see a large representation of those large numbers participating or even reading the blogs or forums. I have no doubt that over the years many were attracted to the blogs/forums, but many left and never return. Over the past few years, the only ascendency has been the hostile attacks against democratic leaders not paying Kos/Armstrong's protection money.

All one has to do is spend some time reading the rants there. The majority of the number of number of members claimed left because they couldn't stand the insanity of Kos's blind, unfair attacks. Others left because they found when they disagreed openly, they were attacked and slandered, even if they had been around for a long time, they were labeled trolls. Then if they didn't take it laying down, they were banned or censored.

MyDD is not democratic, they refer to their forum as my direct democracy, but direct democracy is not truly democratic. It's a parasytical system that denies people the right to have power and control over government. Merely typing posts in to a forum doesn't equate to free speech, nor do Jerome and his cronies allow dissent.

They pretend to higher numbers so as to sell promises to candidates. They slander candidates who won't pay for play.

They, like Bush's corporations are trying to profit by duping you, using you. Don't drink their poisoned kool-aid.

All she's doing is fanning the flames of partisanship. It's a waste of everyone's time. She isn't a martyr, she's just saying a lot of provocative things that don't solve problems. You call that courage, and I don't. Those sending threats are just the other side of the coin, albeit, if those reports are true, they can and should be prosecuted for it. But why waste precious energy and time on that kind of dynamic in the first place?

An expert speaks .... effluviating?

Now there's a $5 word out of a 10 cent brain ...

With that out of the way ... I'm always glad to have the opportunity to speak openly, without fear of Mike Woodson twisting my words in a lubricious attempt to oppose the visceral views of 98 percent of the nation's citizens. Let me get to the crux of the matter: My dream is for tired eyes to open and see clearly, broken spirits to find new energy, and weary arms to find the strength to bring strength to our families, power to our nation, and health to our cities. The facts are, succinctly, these: First, the use of long run-on sentences, bad metaphors, and inappropriately placed $5 words like "effluviating" does not help his cause at all. Second, whenever Mike announces that his recommendations are not worth getting outraged about, his underlings applaud on cue and the accolades are long and ostentatious. What's funny is that they don't provide similar feedback whenever I tell them that Mike has stated that he can make all of our problems go away merely by sprinkling some sort of magic pink pixie dust over everything that he considers picayunish or foul-mouthed. One clear inference from that statement -- an inference that is never really disavowed -- is that propagandism is a viable and vital objective for our nation's educational institutions. Now that's just fickle.

~OGD~

"Thruth? You couldn't stand the thruth!'

"Just the facts, maam".

(Chanelling two Jacks, only one of which could have been my uncle but still wasn't)

Short version: People are hypocrites. They hate being exposed as such, though.

In fact, fuck civility.

Go Amanda!

Hey now... I'll show you productive.

~

People generally have strong views about Mike Woodson. There can be no doubt that I do.

Let's review the errors in Mike's statements in order. First, Mike is capable of rambling off to nowhere without notice. If anything will free us from the shackles of his goofy recommendations, it's knowledge of the world as it really is. It's knowledge that you might have heard the story that Mike once agreed to help us foster mutual understanding. No one has located the document in which Mike said that. No one has identified when or where Mike said that. That's because he never said it. As you might have suspected, Mike can't possibly believe that he can make all of our problems go away merely by sprinkling that load of magic pink pixie dust over everything that he considers imperious or mad. He's funny, but he's not that humorous. As I noted at the beginning of this comment, Mike might etiolate his enemies by the next full moon. What are we to do then? Place blinders over our eyes and hope we don't see the horrible outcome? Does anyone believe his claim that governments should have the right to lie to their own subjects or to other governments?

Come on, anyone?

Shame on Mike for thinking that people like you and me are daft! One can consecrate one's life to the service of a noble idea or a glorious ideology. Mike, however, is more likely to step on other people's toes. His writing of long diatribes and weak attempts to browbeat by using big words like "effluviating" is a false front of full frontal farcicality. He then boasts about how he'll make my stomach turn within a short period of time. It's all part of the media spectacle that is Mike Woodson. Of course, he soaks it up and wallows in it like a pig in mud. Speaking of pigs and mud and barnyard livestock, honest people will admit that Mike's power is built on a gift for slinging the bull.

Concerned people are not afraid to feed the starving, house the homeless, cure the sick, and still find wonder and awe in the sunrise and the moonlight. And sensible people know that my general thesis is that it's astounding that Mike has somehow found a way to work the word "counter-expostulation" into many of his long winded writing projects.

However, you may find it even more astounding that he finds humor in trying to brainwash me. He wants me to believe that it's vengeful to institute change; that's boring; that's not cool. You know what I think of that, don't you? I think that Mike is frightened that we might test the assumptions that underlie his philosophies. That's why he's trying so hard to prevent a person who wants to get a word in edge-wise, by him laying down a carpet of meandering thoughts, so as to prevent others from understanding the long-range consequences of his words and actions. Mike exudes that faculty. He always does what he wants to do at the moment and figures he'll be able to BS himself out of any problems that arise.

I'll talk a lot more about that later, but first let me finish my general thesis:

We must lend a helping hand. Only then can a society free of insipid slogans, as comes from the mind of Mike, blossom forth from the roots of the past. And only then will people come to understand that we've all heard him yammer and whine about how he's being scapegoated again, the poor dear.

The basal fact that underlies all of Mike's aberrent double-speak is that his froward retinue is a benign and charitable agency. Translation: The federal government should take more and more of our hard-won freedoms and rights. I doubt you need any help from me to identify the supreme idiocy of those views, but you should nevertheless be aware that is the irony that underlies Mike's reasoms for being here. As the French say, "Les extremes se touchent."

Somewhere, someone, somehow has been giving Mike's brain a very thorough washing, and now Mike is trying to do the same to me. No one has a higher opinion of him than I, and I think he's a little airy in the belfrey. (ahem)

As you can see, if you read Mike's writings while mentally out of focus, you may get the sense that "the norm" shouldn't have to worry about how the exceptions feel. But if you read his writings while mentally in focus and weigh each point carefully, it's clear that the facts as I see them simply do not support the false, but widely accepted, notion that society is screaming for his practices.

I wonder what would happen if Mike really did seek temporary tactical alliances with haughty sandbaggers in order to contaminate the minds of our school children with his wacky idea of having retired Army personnel teach the art of war and combat in the 3rd grade?There's a spooky thought. To use some computer terminology, his camp would have an "installed base" of hundreds of maladroit lummoxes. The implication is that Mike is driving me nuts. I can't take it anymore!

No matter what else we do, our first move must be to educate everyone about how larcenous freeloaders have traditionally tried to piggyback on substantive issues to gain legitimacy for themselves. That's the first step: education. Education alone is not enough, of course. We must also laugh out loud at Mike for his bleeding-heart zingers.

Mike says that everything is happy and fine and good. That is the most despicable line I have ever heard in my entire life. An inner voice tells me that he asserts that he is a model citizen. But a reasonable person, however, recognizes such assertions as nothing more than baseless, if wishful, claims unsupported by concrete evidence.

Mike wants to cause one-sided shenanigans to be entered into historical fact. Is this so he can distort the facts, or is it to suborn unconscionable practitioners of isolationism to demand that loyalty to nutty flakes supersedes personal loyalty? You be the judge. In either case, if he thinks that I should derive moral guidance from his glitzy, multi-culti, hip-hop, consumption-oriented cock-and-bull stories, then he's sadly mistaken.

Some of us have an opportunity to come in contact with headstrong extremists on a regular basis at work or in school. We, therefore, may be able to gain some insight into the way they think, into their values; we may be able to understand why they want to wreck our country, derail our civilization, while not give a crap about threatening the human race with extinction.

Mike's criticisms of my comments have never successfully disproved a single fact I ever presented. Instead, his criticisms are based solely on his emotions and gut reactions. Well, I refuse to get caught up in Mike's "I think … I believe … I feel" game. I not only dislike it when people get their facts wrong, but I abhor folks who attempt to sound smarter than they really are and attempt to obscure the fact that Mike's type of cronies that he supports maintain that we should abandon the institutionalized and revered concept of democracy. I say to them, "Prove it" -- not that they'll be able to, of course, but because Mike finds it easier to discuss other people's problems than his own. For instance, whenever I hear some corporate fat cat make noises about ideas that Mike thinks are the next best thing to sliced-bread, it only brings me to wonder what the Creator's purpose was to have me put me here, to put up with that type of thinking. I could write pages on the subject, but the following should suffice.

We are observing the change in our society's philosophy and values from freedom and justice to corruption, decay, cynicism, and injustice. Others have stated it much more eloquently than I could ever dream. Mike hasn't! What kind of Humpty-Dumpty world is he living in? I could give you the answer now, but it would be more productive for me first to inform you that there is still hope for our society, real hope -- not the false sense of hope that comes from the mouths of dodgy moral weaklings, but the hope that makes you eager to exemplify the principles of honor, duty, loyalty, and courage.

There is a certain Burkean prudence that animates people like me to advocate social change through dialogue, passive resistance, and nonviolence. But even if we disregard all that and examine only Mike's declamations, this seems to me to be enough to show that if someone like me doesn't tell Mike to stop what he's doing, he will proceed with his spineless philippics, considerably emboldened by my lack of resistance. I will have tacitly given Mike our permission to do so.

It probably sounds like I'm being debauched, but Mike says that our elected officials should be available for purchase by special-interest groups. He;s said that's the way it runs. This is at best wrong. At worst, it is an unadukterated line of bull.

It seems clear to me, Mike's principles are rife with contradictions and difficulties; they're thoroughly indelicate, meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited for a supposedly educated population.

And as if that weren't enough, Mike has two imperatives. The first is to purge the land of every non-irritating person, gene, idea, and influence that bothers his little pea-picking heart. The second imperative is to expect us to underwrite his boondoggles.

In conclusion: There is no such thing as evil in the abstract. It exists only in the deeds of conniving people. Reading some of his diatribes though, you have to come to the realization that he must have some form of mystical powers of divination and prophecy. Unlike Mike, I don't live in the past, I learn from it. I don't predict the future, I dream it. And I thoroughly enjoy living in the now.

~OGD~

Of course she wasn't "destroyed." All well. But even patriarchs and or traditionalists have rights; not to do criminal, unethical or deceptive things; or high crimes or misdemeanors; but to participate and believe things different from extremists who demand their way or the highway.

She's just being the liberal Ann Coulter, and neither extreme helps anyone IMO.

Maybe in many other venues or on other things she's written she's done lots of good. I haven't followed. On what I've seen here, it seems irrelevant to moving forward in a non-partisan way to fix problems that partisans haven't fixed for decades, but which they've used to abuse the electorate again and again.