As long as I get top billing. 
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- Edit 1Before modification by Joel at 03/04/2010 12:10:39 PM
Oh, Coulter has had some very excellent points both on McCarthy and the Scopes Trial, but her actual books are much more detailed and thoughtful, when she does interviews or Human Events Articles I think she's really just advertising the books by taking a deliberately confrontational stance. I've never really fact-checked Moore myself, I know that I won't be able to make it through his movies based on my response to Fahrenheit 9/11, so I simply list him as controversial and avoid his work. I'd not be surprised if both were very accurate in their facts. But they sell outrage, I've no problem with that but I know better than to watch Moore and I don't advise liberals to read coulter. Every choir needs somebody to sing to them. Coaches rallying their team aren't known for being especially accurate either "I want 110%, we will win this thing!" vs "I want you to go out there and give a slightly above average performance compared to normal which may increase our odds of victory"
Their fans actually treat them as reliable sources though (which they complicate by actually including facts from time to time and then tainting them with contortions; it sucks when Michael Moore raises a decent point first, because it becomes worse than useless for anyone else. ) It's the worst form of populist demagoguery, and if it hasn't yet reached the level of a Beer Hall Putsch or Bolshevik Revolution, we may thank God for it, but the day ain't over yet.
They add NOTHING to the political equation, and subtract a great deal. Heaven forbid someone get the base outraged about something legitimately outrageous. 
Those kinds of sensationalist tactics may motivate the choir, but few choirboys need motivation to show up on Sunday, and the rest of us get the idea that if that's the "best" argument they have, maybe they don't have any argument at all.Each dangerous though, particularly the ones clearly promoting purely political agendas under the cloak of religion. Honestly, the right wing takeover of the Southern Baptists has done more damage to the Church than to the nation (and the damage to the latter is significant. ) I'll send you an article on how it began later, if I can keep it in my head long enough; it happened to be in my hometown so I've got a special edition of the Chronicle printed for the week long Southern Baptist Convention that turned into a political sideshow with enduring consequences for the whole country. These people are a threat to the country and to the Church, which makes them doubly inexcusable to me.
I'd hesitate to call it damaging or dangerous, I nominally consider the left-wing takeovers of civil rights and environmentalism less than ideal but not exactly cyanide in the veins of liberty.
Left wing "takeovers"? Since when were civil rights or environmentalism conservative issues? Maybe in the muddled world of Tom DeLay, where the Federalist Papers argue against the strong central government they only EXIST to defend, but in few others. Even in the days just before and after the Civil War when the Republican Party was synonymous with abolition that was a progressive impulse; the "conservative" brand of US politics were very much the old guard Democrats, apologists for slavery in the South and collaborators in the North. It's a crying shame for the country the Republican Party couldn't have stayed that way, even if the adoption of pro-industrial (and thus anti-agrarian slavery) interests did spell political success.
Having dealt with THAT, when were Suffragettes, labor activists or desegregation forces conservative? Liberal Democrats didn't "takeover" Civil Rights in the '60s, and many long time New Deal Dems like Strom Thurmond never embraced it, while others like Robert Byrd took decades to do so: The Republicans abandoned Civil Rights when they adopted the Southern Strategy. What part of "I just lost the South for a generation" sounds like a liberal TAKEOVER of Civil Rights?
At any rate, just a few years after people were kicked out of their "church" for refusing to vote for Bush, after Bill Frist et alia launched nationally simulcast rallies from "churches" where they accused me of being godless and anti-Christian because I'm liberal, I'd say that's a real threat to the country. When people advance the notion that Christianity is contingent on a particular party ideology, that's dangerous to Christians. How many leave or never enter the Church because they actually BELIEVE those lies? I mean, sure, maybe slandering God costs a few million their immortal souls, but as long as it advances a POLITICAL agenda, what's the harm?
No win situation; believe it or not, Dukakis was attacked for a non-emotional response to the prospect of his wife being raped and murdered. Of course, if he goes off in a justifiable rant at Bernard Shaw he's equally screwed. "Governor, did you beat Kitty again last night?" I don't think asking Bush about Quayles qualifications was out of bounds, though the manner was pretty over the top. But then, I was always in the camp that believed Bush only picked Quayle as a running mate who wouldn't overshadow him, since, at the time, he was widely seen as a weak candidate (at least until he decided to "fix" the "wimp problem" by lashing out at Dan Rather in an interview, the start of a feud that would ultimately end Rathers career after what I strongly suspect was a setup, but that's a whole other debate I'd prefer not to reenter. )
I don't think asking Bush about Quayles qualifications was out of bounds, though the manner was pretty over the top. But then, I was always in the camp that believed Bush only picked Quayle as a running mate who wouldn't overshadow him, since, at the time, he was widely seen as a weak candidate (at least until he decided to "fix" the "wimp problem" by lashing out at Dan Rather in an interview, the start of a feud that would ultimately end Rathers career after what I strongly suspect was a setup, but that's a whole other debate I'd prefer not to reenter. )I view both as poor debate questions, though I'd say the one aimed at Dukakis was worse. I think he could have answered the question in a way that would have scored some points, but it would take a very good delivery thrown together on short notice, of course, I would have been expecting that style of question on any POV I held that was unpopular so I'm not too sympathetic for him. If you can't prepare a decent defense for an unpopular stance, it's an indicator it's a bad stance, at least politically.
I still think whatever he says gets him in trouble; he's either too emotional for the high stress Presidency if he lashes out or too cold and unfeeling if he keeps his cool. It's wrong to personalize an issue like that; asking about the death penalty for rapists/murderers is one thing, but it's wrong to conjure the image of someones brutalized and murdered spouse just to see their reaction.
Necessary evil; if you're going to ban something from the schools you better be able to justify the law. That's one of the things the courts are for, y'know, and the best way to expose and draw attention to a bad law is to get someone prosecuted for doing the right thing. Which is why the ACLU ran ads in Tennessee papers looking for a teacher willing to teach evolution. Not the point though, my point was that Darrow and Bryan were very much on the opposite side of THAT issue, but had a life long friendship built around all the other populist issues for which they fought long and hard together.
I think the ACLU stepped over the fine line encouraging someone to break the law. But I certainly agree, there's nothing wrong with two advocates taking opposing sides on an issue and being cordial, so long as it doesn't interfere with their case, and there is a school of thought that says it does.
Part of civil disobedience is knowingly breaking the law and taking your lumps when you do; often a very accurate gauge of how much a law needs reform is the willingness to do that. Jim Crow was bad enough people were willing to face attack dogs and water cannons to get it reversed; abortion protesters are willing to go to jail to save the lives of the unborn.
I don't know that the lefts fringe is all that out of control nationally; they certainly haven't floated anything like a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage or banning late term abortions they already got banned. The last one is kind of impressive, really; the far right wouldn't let a little thing like already getting their way on an issue keep them from using it to lure uninformed voters to the polls. Sure, the fringe left has gotten out of control in local areas where they aren't considered "fringe" but on a national level I can't really think of much. The Assault Weapons Ban, maybe? Bush took care of that one though, so Kalashnikov owners everywhere can sleep free and easy.
Both sides have people who use BS to gather votes, note all the dems who told endless sob stories that wouldn't really fit normally into the current system, the proposed one, or the GOP alternative. By and large though, the sudden appearance of proposed unnecessary kneejerk laws tends to be more weird, IMHO, from the left. Right-wing ones tend to be formal banning something already illegal or favoring something previously legal, so we already know what the fallout is going to be. A constitutional ban on gay marriage - which I do not favor - is very predictable in it's consequences, banning salt or adding a cap and trade tax are not.
Yeah, and guess which one of the three has more national momentum? Cap and trade was declared BEFORE arrival; a salt ban/tax isn't even on the table, nor likely to be. Meanwhile, efforts to ban late term abortions already banned by federal law and reinforce DoMA by making it a Constitutional amendment continue apace.
I'd be happy to see some real federal insurance regulation, but I'm not holding my breath and don't think it would do a darned thing to expand coverage. Of course, long term, neither will this bill, because without effective cost controls health insurance will ultimately become too expensive for the government to afford, too (as is already happening with Medicare, just not at the rate of private insurance because Medicare is single payer. ) The bottom line is that no industrialized nation can let the price of things everyone needs to survive be set by market forces alone, because the one (and only) time suppliers set prices is when they're supplying something without which people can't live.
Well, I don't believe the evidence supports that statement about price controls, I must object to the fundamental assumption that price controls on a universally needed commodity are necessary. I do favor limited regulation but there are a number of items which are life necessities and by and large operate fine under levels of free market and regulation well below what is already in place on health insurance. Food, clothing, etc ll have little to no price controls on them, in terms of federal regulation. Milk, juice, shoes, coats, these are all necessities whose price is almost entirely controlled by free market, the gov't can step in, and should have the power to step in, if a wrench is tossed in to the gears but it's actions when stepping in are not necessarily preferable. "Obamacare" and healthcare reform are not synonymous, anymore than mammal and cat are, and a lot of times gov't attempts to fix blips and muck ups in the free market amount to milking a cat and sending a cow to hunt mice.
The evidence nicely supports my statement that no industrialized nation can let the market alone set the price of essential goods and services. That's why most are regulated in most such countries (American health insurance being a glaring exception) and we have things like Section Eight housing and AFDC, not to mention various charitable programs that are hardly market driven even if they aren't necessarily government run or funded. There's WIC, there's SCHIP; there's a plethora of government regulation and even government provided goods and services, and they weren't created just to give government employees something to do, but because of real need. You concede that on the heels of saying the evidence doesn't support my contention that the market alone can't be allowed to set prices in an industrialized nation. What we're debating isn't whether government should play a role, but what and how large that role should be. Which is the proper debate, I grant, not whether we should get "big government" out of our lives completely. There are a lot of people in prison who'd agree fervently, but I'm not convinced that makes abolishing government the proper basis OF government.