I have a bookmark category called "proofs" which is lengthy. They really aren't proofs, they are evidences, arguments, and explanations. They sit there until I need them to provide evidence in an online discussion. Usually, I forget they are there and don't bring them out when I should.
They probably shouldn't just sit there. I saved them for reasons that seemed good to me at the time, and some especially seem to call for another look. Thus, I bring them forward, these items from the past. I will do ten at a time and spread them out over a few months. Maggie's, Instapundit, and other sites do this better, and I should probably stick to my strengths. Which I will, whenever I fully identify them.
Internet Surveillance Law: Oren Kerr. Late 2002.
The Patriot Act wasn't new. Basically, we ate that banana ten years earlier.
The Last Word on the Iraq War: Norm Geras 2004.
Well, it cost lots more than projected, we gave victory away in 2010, and we didn't find the WMD all the best people assured us were there. They were trying, but hadn't the skill. Yet some of these points still stand.
The Bush "Guard Memos" are Forgeries. Joseph Newcomer, 2004
Remember those? September Surprise? Some people still believe they were real. The posting starts off in real time, during the first hours when Rather brought them out, and multiple challenges to the accusation of forgery were raised. All were refuted, yet people wave their hands vaguely and say they heard it was all proved. Numerous updates over the next few years.
CNN Election Results: Demographics, 2004
Mildly interesting now.
Profiles of Typology Groups. Pew Research 2005
Pew does this every few years, breaking our political groupings down into finer categories. Here is their most recent, for 2017.
Bowling With Our Own. City Journal 2007
Robert Putnam, who wrote Bowling Alone, did not want to release his subsequent research, because of its implications and feared misuse. Not to worry. Since then, the uncomfortable information has been largely ignored, and those who still refer to it are called bigots.
Dissecting Media Bias: The case of Eric Alterman. Oliver Kamm 2007.
Common theme. Still interesting.
The NYTimes Editorial from July 2001, The Declining Terrorist Threat.
Oh my. Whatever could have happened to the page?
The Power of Because. Tyler Cowen 2008.
Still interesting research.
Who Lied About Iraq? American Thinker, 2008.
It is fair to counter that many people believed that the Bush Administration was making the larger claims, and this influenced their opinion. But looking at the actual record, now that history has been successfully rewritten, is always interesting.
8 comments:
Regarding the 2004 election demographics, I found this to be one of the more interesting pieces on voter demographics in 2016by Sean Trend from RCP. It's the conclusion of a series (I didn't realize that) and makes some interesting points about the changing demography of the Democrat and Republican parties. The tie to 2004 - Hillary didn't suddenly lose rural/small town voters. They were already leaving the Democrats in the 1990s.
Those "Guard Memos" were the thing that introduced me to the blogosphere way back when. My boss sent me an email with a link to a Little Green Footballs post, which IIRC, linked to the Joseph Newcomer post above. That this was a forgery was clear to me since I had worked as a typesetter/proofreader/layout flunky for newspapers during the early 70s. While "cut and paste" is what it's called now, what we actually did was "cut and wax". Hot wax, nasty wax, but it wasn't permanent like paste.
Then in the later 70s, I did some legal secretary work using some of the 'latest' in word processing -- Wang, Lanier, etc. Lanier was popular with lawyers and my knowledge of it got me temp jobs with older law firms well into the 1990s.
So, even though MS Word existed in 1972, it wasn't widely used. It certainly wasn't used by the military.
As for Little Green Footballs... ???
I haven't paid attention to LGF for years. My recollection was that it was take-no-prisoners conservative with some really vicious commenters, but run by bright people.
Really vicious commenters indeed. Some of the posts were interesting, but never ever click on the comments. I gave up on it after a little while and so can't testify myself, but I was told later that "conservative" wasn't a good description of the host, or at least not for long.
AVI, that's an accurate assessment for a certain slice of time -- and then it flipped to take-no-prisoners progressive/leftist/whatever. I haven't been to LGF since... early 2006, I think. My question marks are wondering why and how the dickens that happened. Perhaps it's one of those cases where they went so far right they ended up left? If I really cared, I'd go see if it still exists. Turns out, I don't care.
There are some other blogs that I cared about more -- a few of them now part of pjmedia. One (not pjmedia) is where I found you in the comment section years ago. That site is active and was/is never left/right, but now it's often so off the wall that I'm uncomfortable there. I still check it occasionally, but haven't commented in years. Unlike when we commented there years ago, disagreeing opinions are not quite so equitably considered now.
And that's one of the reasons I read and comment here. I can disagree with you and you will consider my opinion without making fun of me. If you discard said opinion, you do it ever so gently. That has resulted in me changing my mind about a few things. (OK, very few... but, still, you made me think.)
Another reason I read here is that I look forward to what you'll post next. I like surprises and I've learned that even some of your sports posts are OK. But... dancing pianos? Heavens to Betsy!
(who the hell is Betsy?)
@ James - that sounds familiar, now that you mention it, but i can't remember the details.
@ Donna B - I'm betting that the phrase is American (the Brits tend to use "Bess" or "Bet" for Elizabeth), over 100 years old, and there is no known specific Betsy.
The NYTimes Editorial from July 2001, The Declining Terrorist Threat.
Oh my. Whatever could have happened to the page?
Turns out the NYT didn't deep six it, which is what The Independent did to the "Snowfalls are a thing of the past" article. It's still there.The Declining Terrorist Threat.
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