Is there ever a good time for Justin Webb? A man so far up his own arse he can taste his hair gel when he coughs.
From Chickyog on Twitter. Prog Gold of course made its opinion of Justin Webb clear as long ago as 2006.
Comment of the Day
First It Twisted My Brain, Then I Laughed Like A Drain
At Making Light, Kid Bitzer comments on South Park’s depiction of a certain well-known prophet wearing a bear suit :
ah, but maybe the idea is that “depicting as” is an act of the will which does entail a “depicting”.
like so: suppose i say, i hereby depict mt. everest as a caret: ^
i expressed the intention to depict mt. everest as a caret, or to depict it by means of a caret. and even though it’s not a very illuminating depiction, there’s some sense on which i have, indeed, depicted mt. everest as a caret.
and that’s still true even if i replace the caret with any other mark. (i would have depicted it as an asterisk, but the aerial view costs more).
now suppose you have the further thought that by depicting mt. everest as a caret, i have ipso facto depicted mt. everest. “depicting as” is just a way of depicting, and the qualifier can be dropped salva veritate.
if there were a prohibition on depicting mt. everest, then one might conclude that i had violated it, just by expressing the intention to depict it, even as something else.
i don’t endorse any of the steps in that argument, of course. but i do offer it as one possible reconstruction of the crazy.
and to the extent it is right, it shows that what they want to prohibit is the intending itself. it’s almost like what they want to control is people’s thoughts.
Sweet.
QotD: a template for a simple right-wing philosophy
An pseudonymous commenter takes Chris Bertram to task (unjustified) on a Crooked Timber thread and manages to come up with a template for a simple right-wing philosophy:
Those designated to be on the receiving end of the violence will surely be intimidated and desist, no matter what their ideology. This is because they are thought of primarily as physical objects. And those designated to be on the delivering end of the violence will be judged primarily on their good intentions, quite apart from the actual effects of what they do. They are thought of as people with spiritual nobility. Two kinds of people. That’s the philosophy, in a nutshell.
Though jdw is too harsh on Bertram, there is a kernel of truth in their more general observation. You can see this philosophy in action with Tony Blair when he explains how because his intentions were pure, he can’t be held accountable for the War on Iraq…
CotD: do not be too proud of Obamacare
HTML Mencken provides a reality check:
I’m feeling a replay of the 90’s in the sense that, then, many liberals made the mistake of claiming Bill Clinton was an awesome president because he was victim of constant, retarded right-wing attacks. This attitude soon morphed, in practice, to lumping all the attackers together, left and right, on the ultimately Stalinist grounds that leftwing critics of Clinton gave “ammo†or “cover†to the enemy. This is immoral and stupid from a liberal perspective in itself, but what’s more it completely ignores that strategery thing liberals (eleventy-dimensional chess!) like to think they are good at. It’s true that unlike Obama, Clinton lacked a mandate for serious reforms. Similarly, the only thing FDR lacked a mandate for, until Pearl Harbor, was involvement in WWII (he had a huge mandate for the New Deal and unlike Obama, proceeded to use it forcefully). Both Clinton and FDR told leaders to their left the same thing regarding policies they all wanted, but public opinion was against — “you have to force me to do this, even though I want to do it anywayâ€. Remember Clinton’s exasperated “where the hell were you?†comment to David Obey? Obama had and has a mandate for the public option; he didn’t need to be forced to combat public opinion because public opinion was with him all the way. Yet he still fucking dithered. So, correctly, he was attacked from the left in order to force him to do what the American people wanted and what liberal fans claim Obama personally wanted all along. But the left — FDL, Corrente, “Chomskyitesâ€, DFHs, pro-choicers, you know, the democratic base — are, somehow, the assholes in all this! So here’s Pelosi to save his bacon, Obama is rapidly accruing all the credit for HCR, and the Sensible Liberals are even more convinced they were right all along. I’m glad HCR passed but this center-left coalition can’t hold when it’s all center and no left.
QotD: Laurie Penny on the Digital Economy Bill
The Digital Economy Bill is a typical New Labour product, a hideous mixture of Mandelsonian pandering to business and Labour’s usual authoritarian impulse. It won’t work, it can’t work, but it will have dramatic side effects. Laurie Penny puts it best:
Suppression of free speech isn’t just about direct censorship – it’s about creating a climate of cultural orthodoxy in which certain ways of behaving and sharing information are suspect, and then putting power in the hands of intermediary regulating authorities [ISPs, for example] to enforce that suspicion.