RE: Daily Howler comment -- code words

Hmmm.

Would you criticize Anna Quindlen for writing "biological
self-determination" or George Will for "the nanny state"? Code-phrases
(spinsanity calls them "jargon") are the stock-in-trade of most
columnists. They are vague but suggestive cliches that most people do
understand, if imprecisely.

Besides, are you sure that you are not using code yourself when you
write "Nor do we understand the murky but pleasing phrase, 'relativizing
good and evil'"? "Nor do we understand" is frequent Op-Ed shorthand
for, "what a whacked-out idea".

Lastly, I can't resist pointing out that when you call journalists
fawning, blow-dried bubbleheads (because that's what many of them are),
you are applying an objective standard, which puts you (at least
temporarily) in the class of people do not "relativize good and evil".
Congratulations!

Sincerely,

-ME



-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Somerby [XXXX]
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 8:36 AM
To: ME
Subject: RE: Daily Howler comment


Actually, that was the problem with Brooks' column. Columns shouldn't be

written in code words.

>From: ""
>To:
>Subject: Daily Howler comment
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:21:56 -0800
>
>
>Tuesday, November 30
>
>re: the Monday Night Football incident.
>Yes! You totally rock! Thank you!
>
>re: Brooks on John Stott
>You profess not to understand a few things:
>
> Stott "doesn't believe that truth is plural?" We don't
>really know what that means. Nor do we understand the murky but
pleasing
>phrase, "relativizing good and evil." And Stott doesn't believe "that
>truth is something humans are working toward?" We especially don't
>understand that claim.
>Stott is using codewords standard among people of faith, particularly
>Catholics. If you so request, I will try to explain them.
>
>Great site--gotta go, now,
>
>-ME

Daily Howler comment

Tuesday, November 30
re: the Monday Night Football incident.
Yes!  You totally rock!  Thank you!
re: Brooks on John Stott
You profess not to understand a few things:

Stott “doesn’t believe that truth is plural?” We don’t really know what that means. Nor do we understand the murky but pleasing phrase, “relativizing good and evil.” And Stott doesn’t believe “that truth is something humans are working toward?” We especially don’t understand that claim.

Stott is using codewords standard among people of faith, particularly Catholics.  If you so request, I will try to explain them.
Great site--gotta go, now.

FW: Remember the good ones, too...

(From Belmont Club):
Although battlefield ethics are not always simple, people intuitively understand that not all behavior is lawful. The Boston Globe describes this incident in Fallujah and most readers will agree that a war crime had been prevented, yet what distinguishes it from the shooting of a wounded enemy combatant in a mosque is hard to encompass in so many words.

Salehma Mahmoud, 43, and her four daughters fled Fallujah on Tuesday after her husband was killed fighting against the Americans. They walked 4 miles only to be confronted by Iraqi soldiers who insulted and harassed them, grabbing at Mahmoud's oldest daughter. "He grabbed Fatima's hand and tried to kiss her. I was trying to stop him with all I had," she said. "He beat me and pushed me to the ground, and his friends were laughing at us loud. He tore the right sleeve of my daughter's dress and lay her on the ground."

To Mahmoud's surprise -- because she had been told that US troops would beat and rape her -- a US patrol rescued them. An American soldier pulled the Iraqi soldier away and yelled at him. Mahmoud's daughter, who speaks some English, told her that the American called the Iraqi names and said, "If you had really come to save the people of this city, you would not have done such a thing."

On church/state separation, here (http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/11/communism-of-21st-century-cardinal.html) , I have not seen any commentary on the wisdom of the Establishment Clause (EC): that Congress shall not establish a religion nor prevent the free exercise thereof.From my point of view as a Catholic, the EC is a great compromise, if one takes the word "establish" at face value. Viz:

1) Manger scenes on the city hall lawn are not establishment, because nobody makes you come out and worship them, nor even pay for them. If they are popular and not "too sectarian", they should stay. (E.g., although I am a Catholic, I don't think a statue of the pope should be on the city hall lawn in a town with a lot of Protestants.)

2) "Christianity" is too diverse a religion to really be "established" by law. One Christian denomination could be established, but only at the expense of others and only at risk of endangering "free exercise". My interpretation is that this is what the EC prohibits.

3) It is not "establishment" to say in the U.S. Constitution that the rights of a U.S. citizen begin with his (or her) conception. This is not a religious statement--in fact I first came to this position early in my atheist years!

4) City hall is not congress. While city hall does not get to "establish religion" either, it should have the right to reflect local religious sentiment to the extent that it can be done without inflaming the passions of other _local_ religions, and to the extent that it does not advocate anything illegal (e.g., a call to establish the Caliphate in Phoenix.)

All that stuff about separation being in the Gospels or part or not part of the Puritan worldview is irrelevant. We have the beautiful, all-purpose Establishment Clause. We just need to know how to read it!

John, Edwards, Trial Lawyer and Buffoon

This, from msnbc (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6351667/)

About the missing conventional high explosives missing in Iraq, which Kerry/Edwards say were "lost" by coalition forces, but U.S. military says were not there when they first arrived:

Sen. John Edwards: We know that these explosives were
there. We know that the Bush administration was notified they were there … they needed to be secured. We know that they weren't secured and we know that they're now missing. So, those are the facts and the facts are pretty powerful in this case.

Campbell Brown: But they could have disappeared before coalition forces got to that location. [see recent links on www.belmontclub.blogspot.com -- wrecktafire]

Sen. Edwards: But the answer is … we knew about it. We
knew we were supposed to do something about it. We didn't do
it. But there's a chance they were gone before we got there? I mean, that's basically what they're saying. They had a responsibility to secure this material. It was important for securing Iraq. It was important for the safety of our troops. It was important to keep that material out of the hands of terrorists and what we know is they didn't do it. We know that.

Beautiful. In my auditing days, this is what we called a "non-responsive response." I suppose we should have asked Saddam to secure it. Oops, it looks like that's what he did.

Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time?

What happened?

makes ya think...

Prez Debate #3, Canada drugs

Kerry said we should allow people to bring in American prescription drugs from Canada. What moron advised him to say that?

If he thought about this for two minutes (OK, maybe ten minutes), he would realize that the Canadiens' deal is contingent on the drugs not coming back into the U.S. The language is in the purchasing contracts signed by the Canadians. Major U.S. drug manufacturers have announced that they will withdraw their low price deals if their drugs find their way back here.

From Harvard Econ professor Robert J. Barro:

Another point is that drug companies sell at 50% off in Canada only
because they can reasonably well isolate the Canadian market
from the U.S. one. Policies that facilitate reimportation of drugs make it harder to separate those markets. If the leakage to the U.S. became large, as it would if
reimportation were fully legal and convenient, drug companies would be unwilling
to sell in Canada at 50% off. The companies would insist on 100% prices or
else would not sell there. Thus, Canada has the greatest self-interest
in preventing massive reimportation of drugs to the U.S.

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/bw/bw_04_0830.pdf

Kerry (and others) are asleep at the switch on this one.

David Broder's recent column excusing Dan Rather's unprofessionalism in the Killian memogate scandal got me to asking myself what sort of standards I held myself to in the handful of articles I wrote for my college newspaper at USF. One in particular was a detailed, point-by-point review of an abortion debate. One of my professors took the anti-abortion side, one from UC Berkeley took the other side.

The debate was at least an hour, so the article was pretty long and took a long time to write. I had taken pretty good notes scoring the debate, and I was quite familiar with the arguments of both sides. I thought I was being fair when I gave all but one of the roughly 20 points to the anti- side, and one for the "choicer". In short, it was a complete rout of the pro-choice arguments presented that evening, and I said so in the article. What was interesting (and why I am writing this) was the reaction of various students and faculty.

Some of my staunch pro-life activist friends criticized me sharply for the one point I gave the other side. "The rest of the article was good, but you really blew that part", was a typical reaction of my most conservative friends.

A few people said I was biased towards the pro-lifer, as the debate was not really as one-sided as I had made it sound. They pointed to my pro-life work and the fact that the pro-life guy was my professor. They ridiculed the idea that I could be objective. One young woman said to me, "of course you would say the pro-choice person lost!", and she rolled her eyes.

A small handful of people said that they had read the article very carefully, and that they agreed with me on everything, and thought it was brave of me to write that "our guy" (who was easily one of the most popular professors on campus) had stumbled on that one point in the debate which I gave to the lady from Berkeley.

There were some who said that they had seen the article, read the first few paragraphs on page one and decided not to read the rest when they saw that the rest of the article was about a half a page. A friend of mine told me, with a smile, that my article was "way too long", and asked me if I couldn't have made it a lot shorter. Then she winked, and said, "lighten up!"

Maybe it is true that if you get blasted from both sides that it's an indicator that you're not too far off the mark.

It's really pretty easy, isn't it, Alan?

Last night on Fox's Alan Colmes show, Colmes said approximately this about Iraq and WMD: the WMD's were not found, somebody has to be accountable. The administration deserves to be fired.

Wow. And I thought this stuff was complicated!

McAuliffe's Folly

This story just keeps getting better:http://littlegreenfootballs.com...

It's too funny; I almost can't stand it.

Rathergate

Today I emailed CBS affiliates to tell them to keep Rather on board. He serves as a "Scarlet Letter" for mainstream media--a continual reminder of the way the media worldview pollutes the news. Whatever they do, they must not fire him.

Bush's TANG Service

I love the left's obsession with GW's Guard Service...he is vulnerable on so many other things, yet they choose to pound on this issue, and marvel at why they can't get any traction.

The irony here is that the left is criticizing someone for avoiding Vietnam. Has nobody else noticed this? They are the ones who burned draft cards, went to Canada, and inflicted bodily injuries upon themselves so that they would be unfit for service. What's more, GW actually said he didn't want to go to Vietnam, "so I chose to better myself by learning to fly" rather than "blowing out my eardrum with a shotgun".

Hey Dems, get it? He admits he didn't want to go. He does not admit he did anything illegal or unethical. Every night before bed, I would bet that Bush thanks God for the Dems' foolish obsession with his military service.

Iraq prison scandal

It seems that most governments of the world are strangely quiet about the goings-on at Abu-Ghraib prison. I daresay that the only government which does not reserve for itself recourse to these techniques is the one at Vatican City.