Asymmetrical Information

For more wonderful rants from the Left, see Left at the Altar (the string of words with links), which starts as a commentary on Liberal Larry's take on Liberal Angst.

The Republicans did not win because they are bullying abusers, they won because Bush is a good Christian man and as such he is God's representative on the Earth. (When the Pope kicks off then he will be the most powerful Christian man on this planet.)

Unlike Democrats who are godless, pinko commie faggots who not only want to let gays married but want to put Sadaam back in power and let him and OBL to best friends again. Sheesh, it is so simple. Only elitist liberals would not get this point. Also lets just forget about all this nuance crap. You just make decisions. After all our President knows what is right, does what is right, and does not dilly dally over the details. Why, because he is a Christian and God's representative for the United States of America!

God bless us all. Don't forget to pray for him.

Why do I think "j swift" is pulling someone's leg, if only his own?

George Bush was elected because he received more votes from the electoral college. This is not the end of the world, it is not some nutty Christian conspiracy, and history goes in cycles.

The Democrats, in some form or another, will be back. History teaches us that - as bad as Michael Bolton is he even made a comeback.

Of course I am, but if you were to look for how many believers in the abuser theory there are, how many would you find?

How many of the true believers of the type I described (admittedly exaggerated)are out there?

The truly scary part is I am not sure that I am that far away in my description, nor do I know how many of them there are.

I was not kidding about the prayer request.

Wow...that was some analogy. I'd hate to see that writer placed in a truly-terrifying situation! Because honestly, if the re-election of GWB is the worst thing that's ever happened to her, I bet there are many, many people who would be willing to trade places.

Jane:

"where she would have seen families in desperate fear for their lives, not their tax code or farm subsidies."

And here lies the great divide. It's overblown to liken Bush supporters to a domestic abuser; it's fair to compare them to people who don't mind if we remove the protections for women from domestic abuse. I note the following data points:

1. The Padilla assertion that the government can label an American citizen an "enemy combatant," deny him counsel or a hearing, and detain him indefinitely. I think it's a horrific blot on claims of American Exceptionalism that this wasn't an issue, and that Bush actually gained votes in the face of it. (I think, though I'm not sure, that even the FDR was punished in mid-term elections for his court-packing threat). As to how bad it is, I'll quote a post from Jack Balkin, since he's a Constitutional scholar at a pretty good school: ""That is to say, Padilla has been denied all of the basic protections that the Bill of Rights affords citizens of the United States, which are designed to prevent overreaching by overzealous government officials. Remember, even Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh, who masterminded the Oklahoma City bombing, were given the protections of the Bill of Rights. "

2. According to Prof. Bainbridge, the Bush Administration is thinking about making Justice Thomas the Chief Justice. Balkin, again, on Thomas re: Padilla: "Clarence Thomas shows, once again, that he has no conception of what constitutional freedom means. Thomas swallows the Administration's strongest claims hook line and sinker. If the Executive determines that an American citizen is an enemy combatant, that is all the process that is due. Courts have nothing to say. This is an outrageous position for a Justice who purports to defend the American Constitution." Read "The Bretheren," the bits on the Berger Ct., on why who is Chief Justice might matter.

3. This Administration will get to name, at a guess, at least three Justices. Rehnquist is gone, O'Connor apparently wanted to leave, and Stewart (the best on the Ct.) is in his mid-eighties. Recall that one of the reasons that GHWB (whom I consider a really good President) was considered "not really a Republican" by the base was that his appointment, Souter, is considered soft and leftist. Recall also that one of the lessons the present Administration purportedly learned from GHWB's experience was to keep close to the base. It might not matter to Bush (who can't run again), but it will to Rove, if he's to convert the Republican Party into the dominant political party for the foreseeable future.

4. One of the people that the Administration is purported to be considering as a replacement Justice is Alberto Gonzales, who is White House Counsel, and who signed off on the torture memos.

5. John Yoo, who wrote the memos, was, AFAIK, basically in hiding at Berkeley - I think he wrote one Op-Ed (for the LA Times) justifying the memo, and then stayed quiet. He is now rehabilitated - I saw him discussing the Justice Dept.'s likely changes on Fox a couple of nights after the election. The anchor asked him if he might be the next Attorney General; I think he just laughed.

6. This Administration is not precisely known for its willingness to consider consensus beliefs about what is just; rather, they seem to strongly believe in what they believe. There are any number of examples of this, though Iraq policy is the most obvious.

7. One of the great strengths of the American legal system is that the courts are courts of equity - it matters what people think of as "fair" at some base level. Brown v. Board of Education was a difficult decision to justify, but it was also the right decision, and it worked out well that a generation of law professors made their name defending it.

Now, abridgments of the most basic rights of that attend being an American may not matter to you directly. People in your (and my) socio-economic cohort are unlikely to be victimized; the American Taliban - from Marin, CA - got a very good lawyer immediately, while Padilla got to see his lawyer long after he was detained. But if likening the Bush backers to an abusive spouse is "risible," so is pretending that what is worries some Democrats is "their tax code or farm subsidies."

(I hope this comment sounds civil; I tried to make it, and meant it to be, so).

1) He hasn't actaully been elected yet, the electors don't go to DC for a while yet...

2) What's a whinge? ("looney whinging")

Who is Justice "Stewart"?

Oh my lord, is this what the left wing has come to? They would rather label the other side abusers before admitting that the crap they are selling no one wants to buy? Man, I just don't understand why no one wants to buy my bag full of smelly shit? I bet my competitors are saying bad things about me and scaring off my customers.

This person needs a good smack in the head with a 2 by 4 and maybe then they will understand what abuse is.

"The only time Kerry was able to get his message out unfiltered was during the debates--and his poll ratings soared. So what was wrong with his message? Nothing.

What was wrong was that the media war against him went on nonstop after the debates."

Personally I think this quote's the funniest of the lot. There was about as much mainstream media bias against him as there is support for a war with Canada.

Joe:

Sorry - Justice Stevens. There was a Justice Stewart, also a Republican appointee, and for some reason, I often confuse the two names.

Be careful, SCM-Tim... for a moment there, I thought Bush had given Jon Stewart a recess appointment to the Supreme Court -brrrr-

One of the problems many of us have with the loonier left is the "Bush=Hitler" theme. In order to scare us with one, they trivialize the crimes of the other. Hitler truley was a monster. Bush is merely one more X=Hitler bugaboos the left doesn't like.

I hate how so many democrats seek the role of victim in the face of adversity. The democratic party has to quit catering to single women, they have no place to go, and the whole anything aggressive or confrontational is bad politics attitude, is not going to work post 911. We let the reps make the people believe that the cheerleader was tougher then the Vietnam vet. We let the reps make the American people think the ability to prosecute a war was better indicated by a Senate voting record on defense spending, then by Bronze and Silver Stars won in combat. I hate the fact the dems went hands off 911, that issue alone could have won this election.

But I also hate the republicans current dualing mantras of "We won because your out of touch with the values of middle America" and todays, "We won because the American People trust us on terror". I guess the White House is already distancing themselves from the evangelicals, or maybe they finally realized what they were admitting when they said "values" were more important then 911, WoT, war in Iraq, and the economy in this election.

You know, it'd help a lot of this divide if we didn't all go around attributing individual actions or opinions to a monolithic "right" or (far more often 'round here) "left."

I'm still trying to understand this Red State post.

Was that (pre-election) post also written by "j swift"? Or, was she actually serious? Did she know it was loony, but she was just demagoging?

To see similar posts, simply look through the archives at polipundit.com (especially those from Lorie Byrd (sp?)), blogsforbush.com, comments at command-post.org, and various other places. "j swift" is not that far off from posts and comments that certainly appeared to be serious.

-- "Don't blame me, I wrote-in Tancredo"

And, this post is just too weird. Thankfully, that mindset has been satirized so you don't have to.

This one doesn't match up, but it's notable for the attempt at gaining votes through putting people in a trance state.

Floating a bit lower in the barrel, we have this and this.

If anyone's upset by the links above, say the Bush Pledge and you'll feel all better.

At last, something I can agree with Begbee on. The Dems do indeed have to stop playing victim when things aren't going their way, if they want to survive as a party.

Steven: well said about the "Bush=Hitler" thing. That's exactly it: comparing Bush to Hitler, comparing conservatives to the Taliban, comparing losing an election to domestic abuse - these are irresponsible metaphors that are profoundly disrespectful to the people who actually suffered/suffer real horrors.

Ironically, this is just about the only place where the left could reasonably claim that conservatives use moral relativism, and where conservatives could reasonably claim that "progressives" (in quotes because I don't get where they're progressing to) deal in moral absolutes. We conservatives believe down to the depths of our souls that because Bush is not ordering people's hands cut off or sawing their heads off on video or shuffling citizens off to concentration (or internment?!) camps, therefore he is not a monster, even if he does wish Roe v. Wade had never happened. To the left, apparently, being pro-life is equivalent to being pro-rape (vis. Cameron Diaz's enlightened comments). The left seems to see infinite shades of gray for ol' Mumia, yet a fourth-week D&C is the same as partial-birth abortion. To the left, an American woman whose seniority is threatened by the fact that she left the workforce for some period to have and raise children is as oppressed as a girl recovering from a clitorectomy, but free elections in Afghanistan in which women voted by the millions do not constitute a victory for women's rights. The left is able to ignore or even to roll their eyes indulgently over Clinton's Oval Office shenanigans, not to mention the long history of credible accusations against him by women other than Monica, yet Bush's DUI in 1976, followed by his entire eschewing of alcohol, is a sign of his core immorality. Or maybe Teddy Kennedy's driving adventures would be a closer parallel.

Some perspective, please.

Jamie:

I never realized how forgiving conservatives were. Just to follow along - no chopping of hands + no cutting of heads + no internment/concentration camps = not a monster. You're right, we are more judgmental on the Dem side. For example, I thought the priests who abused little kids were fairly monstrous, but you apparently don't. You may be more religious than me, though, and inclined to give the priests a little slack. Or better at forgivness than me.

This is, however, further evidence in favor of my theory that Republicans are the new hippies.

For example, I thought the priests who abused little kids were fairly monstrous, but you apparently don't.

Er, where did Jamie say anything remotely resembling this, Dim? Cutting things out of whole cloth again, are we?

"Bush=Hitler": old and busted.
"Bush=Pedophile priests": new hotness.

For example, I thought the priests who abused little kids were fairly monstrous, but you apparently don't. You may be more religious than me, though, and inclined to give the priests a little slack. Or better at forgivness than me.

I should have become a hay farmer. Who says you can't get rich quick in agriculture?

Now that is comedy, "we must call the other side abusive." Yeah, that'll probably work just as well as calling us stupid.

The Bush to Hitler BS is based on one submitted commercial idea to Moveon.org, and even a Bush hating, bomb throwing, liberal like me never embraced it. Comparing Saddam to Hitler wasnt as wrong as comparing Bush to Hitler, but it was still a case of reach far exceeding grasp. In everyday life, most of my relatives and some of my friends are Republicans, and they never accepted the Swifty garbage. The election is over, most liberals never compared Hitler and Bush, this is just inflammatory BS at this point..So let Adolph rot in his bunker.

OK, I feel like my comment has further diverted this thread down a fairly stupid line (for which I apologize), which was not my intention. I meant to suggest (in an admittedly snide way) that the bar Jamie was holding up was a fairly low set of standards, and that people could think that Bush is a very bad President or a stupid President (and even an immoral one (I don't)) without thinking that Bush is as bad as Hitler or Hussein. That is, there are (I pray) many gradations between Good and Hitler, and (I hope) we can ask our leaders to be significantly better than "not Hitler."

I don't think that many people on the Dem side believe or say that Bush is comparable to Hitler. I'd be shocked, for example, if you can find more than a few examples of it in the comments to this site. So I'm not 100% on what the point is in arguing that Bush is not as bad as Hitler, or Hussein, or the head-cutting terrorists. Cripes, if that's really the policy victory you're looking for (Bush is not Hitler or Hussein, and therefore a vote for him was a good one), we are in substantially more trouble than I thought. And I'm ... less than fully hopeful.

SCMTim -- Did pedophile priests vote for Bush? I must have missed that part of the exit polls.

Notary:

Not what I was trying to say. But I assume, as priests, they go to church at least once a week. As I understand it, that group broke pretty heavily for Bush.

SCMT writes:

"This is, however, further evidence in favor of my theory that Republicans are the new hippies."

I agree, there is a cultural movement afoot here. The pendulum is swinging back to the right and you know what...

George Bush is going to be its JFK.

Is that disturbing or what!

Goodness, how'd we get onto pedophile priests? Here's an interesting link for Bush/Hitler comparisons: http://semiskimmed.net/bushhitler.html (I hope I'm following correct protocol in just giving "cold" links). While I'm sure it's true that only a tiny minority of Dems actually made that comparison in their own minds, I'm basing my statement on the ABB movement (which, while it may not explicitly compare B&H, does certainly imply by its very name that, say, Zsa Zsa Gabor would do just fine as an alternative to GWB), the outside edge of which seems to be guilty of the direct comparison. (Sheesh, was that elliptical enough?)

But my point, which had nothing specifically to do with Bush/Hitler, was that losing the presidential election is not of the same order as being beaten up by someone who's supposed to love you, and it takes a distinct lack of perspective to pretend that it is.

However, next time I'll do my posting when I feel less rendered inarticulate by Bath Night for the thundering herd that lives in my house. Apologies for any misunderstanding I may have caused. (None for any misunderstanding I didn't cause.)

Incidentally, American Catholics do indeed have a problem with some amoral priests committing crimes against their children, while realizing (as the media sometimes seems not to) that Catholicism is not in fact at fault in these crimes. The Catholic hierarchy is decidedly at fault for covering up the crimes for so long, but Catholicism itself has obviously never condoned this horribleness.

The American Catholics who "broke for" Bush might well have done so, don't you think, because Bush is publicly and programatically pro-life and Kerry apparently isn't sufficiently so. Note too that not all Catholics are as pro-life as Bush is.

The American Catholics who "broke for" Bush might well have done so, don't you think, because Bush is publicly and programatically pro-life and Kerry apparently isn't sufficiently so. Note too that not all Catholics are as pro-life as Bush is.

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