Pangloss

That's another perfectly reasonable opinion (or so it seems to me), and thanks for acknowledging my response. I am giving some further thought to the issue and may break this off to a separate thread. You've peaked my interest a bit, and in particular I'm wondering how deep the CTR-GOP connection goes. Some other interesting connections have come to mind in thinking about this thread, such as Neal Boortz co-authoring a book with John Linder. Part of the problem here is defining "extreme". But I think we'd better move on before somebody pummels me over the head. Quite right, and you're correct to raise the Weather Underground (or ELF, as bascule brought up in the General forum the other day) in response to Mokele's point. But as you say they're not Democrats, and it's even hard to characterize them as "liberals", but the same could be said about abortion clinic bombers -- they're not like any conservatives I know or associate with, and they're certainly not authorized by the Republican party. But I think the real point, the place where Mokele and others seem to have reasonable grounds, is that these groups may be closer to mainstream conservative politics, and may be larger and more organized (and more of them) than liberal extremist groups. I don't know if that case has been conclusively made, or if it's just a product of exaggerated analysis about the influence of religion on politics during the Bush administration. In short, are we observing a real phenomenon, or are we just casually lumping in the creationists and prayer-in-schoolers with the much smaller abortion clinic bomber group? But again, I can't say that they're wrong. Not without a lot more info.

Just to clarify my two posts above, I'm just providing those pics in response to the demands that I do so. On the larger issue I have to agree with Padren that the GOP has been deliberately associating with extremists, and that it's in excess of what the Democrats are doing. He's made his case, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't think it was ever his point that the Democrats are angels. I just think you have to make the case to conservatives that the CTR demagogues are extreme -- some of them get it, but not enough. I thought they were starting to get it a couple of years ago, but the election of Obama seems to have set them back a step or two. At least that's how I see it. I can tell you that most of my conservative friends think Rush Limbaugh is an idiot and don't watch Fox News. But I know a few who say that and do it anyway. It's like some sort of closet deal, they'll say it and then later they'll drop a Fox News or Newsmax link on their Facebook page about something stupid and I'll roll my eyes and ask them again what they're doing on weekdays from noon to 3pm (then they get defensive and I have to drop it). Two steps forward, one step back, rinse and repeat. We'll get there eventually, IMO.

Moore stumping for health care with SF mayor Gavin Newsom:

This one's from the 2004 DNC, with the Carters sitting next to him: The pic above was taken at an official event held by House Democrats, and you can see Kucinich, Conyers, and others in the image. There's a story on the 2007 event here: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=38091 This one is from the Oscars, I think:

This may even be accurate. I'm just not sure it tells us anything useful. What would we do with the revelation that (and I know this isn't your claim) Democrats are saints and Republicans are sinners? What do you feel this would tell us? As I said, it's just an opinion; I didn't claim it was an objectively accurate analysis. But are you saying that the moderate left rejects Michael Moore as a crackpot? Who do you feel goes to his movies? Only extremists?

It wasn't an assertion.

I agree that Michael Moore is not as directly tied with elected Democrats as Rush Limbaugh is with elected Republicans. From what I've seen Michael Moore is not portrayed as an extremist by the moderate left. He's portrayed as a hero and savior, with his flawed arguments regularly glossed over and/or ignored (though not here, of course). Pretty much exactly how the moderate right views Rush, et al. But yes, I agree that too many Republican elected officials are "embracing" (to a larger extent) right-wing antics and (especially) misinformation at the moment. What I don't think is that that's an unusual thing for members the opposition party to do in this country. I.E. I don't think this comparison informs us about Democrats. It only underscores what Republicans are doing. And I'm not sure how useful that really is, in terms of appealing to the right for change. CTR demagoguery has become (tragically) part of the fabric of modern conservative society, in much the same way that anti-war protests and rock music were to the progressive movement in the late 1960s. Back then it was pita bread, flip-flops and long hair. Today it's church on Sunday, Rush Limbaugh on Monday, and soccer practice after school (it's no coincidence that Rush goes off the air at 3pm). The really amusing part is that it's often the exact same people.

You're certainly welcome to think so, and I'm sure you'll find a great deal of support for that position amongst this left-leaning crowd. I agree that the right is being more ridiculous at the moment than the left, and Republicans have done some stupid things recently. But they don't own a monopoly on the ridiculous behavior franchise. All it takes is a brief step back in time to revisit some of the anti-Bush antics of the past 8 years, or a brief look at Michael Moore's recent career, to remember what the Democrats used to embrace.

A bit of an interlude here, but since it's on the same subject I thought you guys might find this amusing. I just copied and pasted this text below from the official White House Facebook page: Watch the President's Full Speech to America's Student's

I think you can make that point without perfect-hindsighting the people who had to make that difficult call. You make some good points, but so did they, and IMO it's too easy to dismiss the points made by those on that side of the argument. In the end what matters is not that we positively judge them to have erred, but that we do everything we can to prevent it from happening again. That means recognizing that they had valid concerns too, as I think you mostly have (except when you dismiss it as being like Iraq).

I'll check him out, I just grabbed a few free-first-chapters for Kindle. Thanks for the recommendation.

I disagree. I think that's like that statement that "money is the root of all evil", which is obviously countered by the fact that it's what people do with money that's evil, not the money itself. Similarly I think with capitalism people can certainly do evil things, but the concept itself is not good or evil or anything else. It's what people do with it that becomes good or evil.

So it turns out that if you fire up a Large Hadron Collider it doesn't create a black hole that envelops the Earth. What happens is that everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes and ten seconds. Gee! Robert Sawyer's SF novel FlashForward is coming to TV this fall. According to this Wikipedia article it'll be on ABC in the US and something called "Five" in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashForward Might be good, though it's kinda sad to see these things come at the expense of good science. I'm a huge fan of Lost, which is also very cringe-worthy from time to time. I'm always happy to see new SF shows, though. Anyway, I pasted a preview video below. 25kXHgWg938

I am an Eagle Scout so I might be somewhat biased on this matter. It does sound a bit over the top. We were allowed to carry things like Swiss Army knives and cooking-related knives. Large knives like Bowies required permission from the Scoutmaster or another adult leader. There was also training on knife use, and some merit badges dealt with knife safety. One thing about the article kinda bugged me: This is a distortion of the first law of scouting, perhaps due to a misunderstanding by the reporter. In the US scouts rail off a litany of single words that begins with "trustworthy"*, but in the original Baden-Powell book it was actually written as "a scout's honor is to be trusted". As the one-word version suggests, he didn't mean that scouts should always be trusted. He meant that scouts should behave in a manner worthy of trust. The law is aimed at scouts, not those leading them. It does not mean that scouts receive some sort of automatic trust. They don't pass out bazookas at scout meetings and just assume the best. * ... followed by loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. I'm afraid I never was too cheerful about reverent, but I obediently did my cheerful best. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI remembered after I posted the above that not all troops are the same. There are a lot of different kinds of situations that scout troops exist in. Some of them require different rules. When I was an older scout I spent some time (at my father's insistence) working with an all-black scout troop in downtown Atlanta, less than half a mile from the Techwood Homes housing project. To say it was an eye-opener for this suburban kid is an understatement, and the main thing I remember about it was the complete and utter poverty of the typical scout. Anyway, they weren't allowed to have knives of any size or type. Given the environment, this is perhaps not too surprising. I wonder if the central scouting authority in Britain (which I believe is a completely separate organization from the US version, btw) decided that the risk outweighs the benefits because of some incidents or something.

Sure, it's possible that Michael Moore has produced a film that has no bearing whatsoever on any aspect of modern politics and economics, and that he's just attacking the academic principle of capitalism, and not the actual practice of it that we experience in the United States. Perhaps his preview can give us some insight on the matter: -YuxAYnX_jY

I wonder if it would be best to reserve such comments until after[/i'] viewing the film so his comments can be discussed in context. Just a suggestion. I'm not prejudging him -- this was a direct quote from the conclusion at the end of the film: That's pretty direct. He says he doesn't approve of the current economic system, and that regulation can fix it. He says it has to be replaced with a different system. I'm not seeing a lot of room for interpretation here, but maybe the reviewer misunderstood the audio track or got his notes confused. You never know. I'll keep it in mind. I agree. I love "Roger & Me" -- from a pure film-making point of view, it's a documentary classic. Practically (really) a work of art. But part of what makes it so great is that, as you say, it's thought-provoking. Not thought-ending. Not thought-replacing. Asking questions is a good thing. Replacing one set of ideological beliefs for another is not asking questions, and it's not thinking. There's been a lot of criticism leveled over the years about how he takes only one point of view, leading to responses along the lines of "he's not obligated to be objective". This challenge-and-response misses the key point: Accuracy and reality are more convincing than closed-minded, narrowly-focused opinions. Stick with what makes people think. Stop short of telling people exactly what to think.

We don't have pure capitalism, CaptainPanic. Never have. And it's my impression that Michael Moore is criticizing our current system, not some hypothetical extreme. He's not exactly an academic -- he wants people to see this movie and act on it. Bear in mind that the same system that fuels tobacco and insurance lobbies also fuels EFF, ACLU, Greenpeace and NOW. Also it's worth keeping in mind that pure democracies have their problems too -- what the majority wants is not always a good thing. But yes I agree with you about the influences of small groups. Even if "capitalism undermines democracy", it also inflates and motivates democracy. I don't think we would have democracy today without the capitalist side of our economy. I also think we wouldn't have democracy today without regulation. It's the balance of the two, the compromise approach, that makes it work, in my opinion. Michael Moore doesn't seem to agree with that point of view. In fact he explicitly rejects the concept of regulation in the quote I posted.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/09/director-michael-moore-now-wants-nothing-less-than-the-complete-overthrow-of-the-modern-capitalist-system--from-reuters-in.html Kind of an obvious contradiction, isn't it? Capitalism is very democratic in nature. I haven't seen it yet, but if these indications pan out as reported I think Moore may lose a lot of his moderate-liberal support on this one. He has a lot of support from left-leaning libertarians who like to watch "Sicko" and then blog to all their friends about the incredibly travesties they've just discovered in the health care system (as anybody with more than a dozen Facebook friends can tell you), and they did similarly after Fahrenheit 911. But I don't know if this position will carry anything like as much weight with that crowd. What do you all think?

That's new? I thought it was old/familiar.

Posts 20 & 21 merged in from another thread.

Is it? I don't watch Fox News -- can you fill me in on how this news network has increased its social commentary offerings? My dim recollection is that they used to offer Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity through the old Hannity and Combs (sp?) show, which I've read is now just Sean Hannity, and I've learned from our discussions here that they've added Glenn Beck to their lineup somewhere. What else is there?

I'm confused... is he actually trying to say that Rockefeller was actually a communist because he paid for some public art? Or is it more along the lines of "he wasn't really an evil capitalist because look at all the left-leaning artwork he paid for"? Or is it just the drunken ramblings of a crazed man they found in Central Park who happens to look and sound like Glenn Beck? Please tell me this is a joke along the lines of Phil Hendrie or Stephen Colbert.

Cute.

Well there's a classic example of quote-parsing if I ever saw one. Thanks for pointing that out.