“…I don’t need to be subliminabable..”
Bush- Orlando, FL, Sept. 12th, 2000.
Bush- Orlando, FL, Sept. 12th, 2000.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
He said today that the Patriot Act had closed intelligence gaps. Too bad there’s that big gaping hole where his frontal lobes ought to be.
Lorraine? They’re closed, too.
If you haven’t stopped by the Welcome Wagon Diary, check it out. It’s a great site tradition and hopefully one that will continue as the numbers grow around here. Welcome everyone!
Link: Welcome Wagon Diary – Part 11
Please Recommend! You can find all of the Welcome Wagon Diaries via Diane101’s diary page, she has been our gracious host for a long time. Oh, and make sure to drop some mojo to the newbies. Paz
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050609/bolton_the_fixer.php
Don’t have time to diary this article, and sent to Susanhu but don’t know if she saw it
Speaking as one, myself, let me pass on a mighty fine suggestion from CabinGirl last night: please click on BooMan’s ads so we can show the advertisers how much we love this place. (Cool purses at Hippy Chix!)
thanks Kansas. People can also be supportive by adding this site to your blogrolls, and spreading the word to your friends.
Sometime soon, I will be offering coffee cups (the community voted for them in a poll).
T-shirts will come after that. My friend who runs TeePad sporting goods is setting it up for me. He has baby strollers, frisbee (disc golf) equipment, bike trailers, and other stuff at his store. His handle is Wolverine Writer, but he is so busy these days that he rarely finds time to post.
How about a license plate frame with Boomantribune.com? I’m going to have to replace the one I have.
deano does a newbie jig.
And of course, anyone who wants to put an ad here for all of us to click (and shop!) should check out the advertising link in the upper right corner!
There’s a pie ad there! Maybe Hippychix will offer a bulk discount to pie war veterans on the “make pizza not war” T’s?
http://store.yahoo.com/hippychixshop/mapinotwar.html
I know you want to put it all behind you, BooMan, but I’m in another state of confusion. Did you delete the diary by Armando and all the comments that it generated, or have I finally sunk fully into fantasyland?
deleted it. And Soj deteted her diary.
I have not deleted anything.
Good to hear. I do think there’s a real problem, though, with a diarist being able to delete the diary and all the comments that follow it. In this case, the total thought and effort that went into the comments far exceeded what went into the original diary. So why does that output have no standing, while the original diary has total control?
Personally I’d be inclined to a “you started it, you don’t own it” view once there are comments. Does it seem fair that someone gets a lot of flack and gets to disappear everything, other peoples’ work an all? Seems to hit and run to me, AKA not taking responsibility for one’s actions.
I came to blogs after starting with forum-type setups like Salon and Utne, and never did quite adjust to the lack of longer-term discussion ability in the blog format. Maybe this is just another case of that, but I think I’ll be less inclined to put much effort into comments, especially if I disagree with the diary. Given the (to me, way excessive) yearning to paper over serious differences around here, maybe that’s the idea?
but in these two cases we have something a little unusual.
For Soj, the first sentence of her diary said that she would delete it if was deemed inappropriate. It was, so she did.
Armando decided to cancel his account, and he erased everything he had written. Not much I can do when someone decides to quit the site.
I don’t remember any other deleted diaries in the entire history of the site.
I believe one of his first comments was something like “I’m not afraid of a fight” – but when things weren’t going his way he took his ball and ran home.
Sorry Booman, I know you don’t want to reopen this.
got that right. He apologized for his mood yesterday, and I accept his apology.
I don’t know that anyone should get to use a copout clause to run to if they get flack for what they write. I’d remind you that commenters don’t have that option. I don’t know, I guess I don’t relate to the deadly heaviness that some attach to online text. It’s just a lot of words by people you’ve never met (mostly). I mean what was gonna happen if an “inappropriate” wordchunk got by? Booties would run amuck and hurl inappropriate invective at innocent strangers? If so, I’ll try to remember not to expect much progress in resisting the very, terribly real and deadly treachery emanating from the White House. Warriors need to keep their hearts in their chests, not on their sleeves.
In the case of Armando, his quitting really isn’t relevant to letting him erase a whole bunch of other peoples’ work. (How many comments were there, anyway? I seem to remember almost 100 last time I looked.)
I’m not interested in blaming you or anyone else for how things went. But now the unforeseen has happened, and I think the outcome was highly unsatisfactory. This is a site policy question that requires discussion and a clear rule that Booties can either buy into or go elsewhere.
I would say that the only appropriate reason to delete a diary is if the community thinks the diary should not have been written in the first place. Maybe it is only one line, or it is just a link with no analysis, or it is offensive.
There may be comments that say “this diary sucks” that get erased, but normally no one will mind.
Technically, it would be a pain to figure out how to get around that. But I could put it in the FAQ that serial diary deleters will be banned.
Rather than creating a rule curbing diary deletions I think people posting comments should be aware that any diary they participate in can be deleted by the diarist.
Of course, the thing that yanks my chain is that I had just finished responding to Armando’s diary and my comment failed. I finally figured out why. He must have deleted it just when I had finished the final touches. I mean it was a freaking long post too. I worked hard on it.
The fact is blogs are more like conversations. Sometimes the conversation ends before you jump in (like what happened to me) and sometimes the conversation is inappropriate and should be concluded abruptly and forgotten.
It was a damn fine post that I didn’t get to post, too.
IMHO, diarists should have a right to delete their diaries if they feel it’s necessary. I occasionally purge old (conversations) diaries at DK when the mood strikes. It’s always a chance you take when you engage in conversation with anyone. They can simply walk away. That’s how I view deleted diaries. I’ve contributed to five or six diaries that had been deleted, and even though it’s annoying it’s not really that big a deal in the long run.
There are just too many reasons people delete diaries and some are justified. As much as people contributed to the discussion with the diary yesterday, I wasn’t really sorry to see the diary erased. It didn’t seem to be really generating anything but a lot of bad feelings, unfortunately. Even though the erasure happen just before the long post that I worked so hard on went up. Damn it.
Diary deletions are a chance you take with blogs. If I were forced to leave my words up when I wasn’t proud of them for any reason I probably wouldn’t write them. I think twice whenever I put up a comment because I can’t delete a comment. Sometimes that’s not even enough.
End of long post that I worked very hard on that’s nowhere near as brilliant as the one I didn’t get to post yesterday. <g>
A blog is just code. It wouldn’t take much to tinker in the innards and add a line of code that prevents anyone but an admin from deleting a diary. A one or two line fix should do it. A few more to remove buttons and clean up the UI, but that’s hardly necessary.
Of course, that still lets the diarist edit all the content of the diary itself, and maybe that’s plenty of power right there.
I can also see when a diarist wants to remove a diary from their list of diaries. I don’t know that destroying all the associated commentary is an appropriate price to pay for that bit of housekeeping.
I agree that posting a comment is like participating in a conversation. But if a conversation goes poorly for me, I’m free to forget it. I’m not free to “undo” the conversation for anyone else involved.
I’m all for disabling diary-delete. Heck, I feel strongly enough that I’d go do it myself (or tell someone exactly how/where to edit to do so) if I had access to the sourcecode to figure it out.
(and this is an issue I care about in general. If Booman had decided to nuke the Armando dairy, I’d have no beef with that. Letting Armando make the call is no different to me than any other diarist — they own their contributions, not mine, not anyone elses in the community.)
I just can’t get too upset about it because I consider it par for the course.
As far as editing, I once put up a diary that was so messed up that attempting to edit in in DK was a waste of time and effort (accidentally hit “post” instead of “preview”). I deleted it immediately before any comments showed up and re-worked it offline. It would have been a major pain tracking someone down and asking them to delete it and by that time I’m sure I would have been flamed for the mess I accidentally posted.
What about the people who accidentally post the same diary twice? I’ve seen this happen a few times. I wouldn’t want to have to wait for someone to clean up my messes, and in the meantime I’m getting slammed for gumming up the recent diary list, when I could immediately fix the problem.
There are so many reasons for diaries to be deleted, not just because someone didn’t like the way the discussion was going. BTW, I’m against deleting comment-laden diaries, but if it’s just a few comments I have no problem with it whatever the diarist’s reasons. Especially if it’s a bunch of comments asking them to delete the diary.
If administration wants to take on that task that’s fine, but in the meantime the poor diarist, stuck knowing there’s nothing they can do to fix the problem while comments are accumlating, is the one who has my sympathy.
No, take away my ability to delete and I simply won’t post a diary. Murphy’s Law has it in for my diaries and I like having the ability to fix my mistakes myself whenever possible.
by hitting the back button when I was nearly done. So now I usually do most of my draft work in a text editor. Unless I’m just tossing a one-liner, I usually save my longer comments in a file on my own computer, with a sufficiently descriptive name that I can figure out what I was writing about.
I don’t keep everything that way, but it helps.
.
I can relate to this event, only I got the whole blog yanked away while I was posting a comment. You do get freaking mad. Strange events have been sighted over at Daily Kos. But I’m sure in due time, Markos, Armando et al. will straighten matters out. Their treasure will be lost though.
Offering some WELCOME support from across the pond, the Netherlands. The World diaries are a wonderful part of BooMan Trib [BMT].
Oui aka @dKos as creve coeur and new creve coeur
WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooTrib aka lost treasure of dKos
Whoa. That would have freaked me out. I’d probably spend a lot of time wondering if it was something I did.
I’m part of the continuing cross-posters group. I could see legitimate points on both sides of the issue beneath the hurt and anger and harsh words. This is certainly the worst I’ve seen at DK, but the upside is other communities will rise from these ashes and it looks like this wonderful community will continue to flourish. Still lots of great people at both places. The more liberal websites there are, IMHO, the better.
Been lurking here at Booman’s since close to the beginning, but scaled back on both places because I like sunshine and being outside too much. I guess that makes me a foul weather blogger.<g>
Sunshine beckons. And I gotta put up some apricot jam tonight.
A whole blog? Whoa. 🙂
.
@dKos, there is a safety build in through a box that needs to be checked, for the delete button to be enabled.
On several occasions I nearly hit the delete button, when I was editing part of my diary late at night. A useful suggestion?
Oui aka @dKos as creve coeur and new creve coeur
WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooTrib aka lost treasure of dKos
Repub Presidents have a long legacy of malapropisms”
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
Gerald R. Ford
I tend not to make too much of public malapropisms by politicians, whatever party they happen to belong to. Public speaking is harder than most people realize, and using the wrong word or saying something that sounds dumb out of context isn’t really all that remarkable. Bush and his unindicted co-conspirators have said and meant plenty of things they can be criticized for saying. Things like the little quote at the start of this thread have, I suppose, a little humorous schadenfreude value, but little else.
public speaking is half the practice of politics.
–In a democratic form of government that is.
The fact that Republicans can be poor speakers shows that attracting and motivating voters isn’t especially important on their side.
Clementina Cantoni, the Care volunteer in Afghanistan, who worked tirelessly for the past three years with Afghan widows was released by her kidnappers approximately three hours ago.
Clementina was kidnapped last May 16th.
Officials deny that there was a ransom paid or an exchange with Afghan prisoners.
This is good news. I know a couple of people (I don’t remember who) said they knew her personally… which doesn’t make a difference of course, but it just brings it a little closer.
Glad to hear she’s been released.
It was khyber900 over at DKos. lapin has just put up a diary there. I think he’s here too.
Thanks, I couldn’t remember the name. Will read lapin’s diary, and thanks for the update.
There’s a good timeline with photos of the release up at la Repubblica for anyone who reads Italian.
Anyone hear Gary Sinese on Morning Sedition this morning? The guy’s doing good, USO tours and his campaign to send school supplies to Iraqi children. Good stuff.
But he really surprised me with the whole argument that the media nevers reports the “good news.” He said something like, if soldiers are giving out beenie babies on one side of the street and a hum-v is blown up on the other side, they always will report the hum-v.
Is it me?
A big problem I have is that people like him have Can’t-See-The-Big-Picture-itis.
Isn’t it obvious that there would be even MORE good stuff going on if the humvees weren’t being blown up all over the place?
It’s not that hard to figure out.
That’s like saying if someone in New York City helps an old lady across the street and the bank on the corner is robbed at the same time, the bank robbery makes the evening news. Well, yeah.
and I do, but not completely.
If Gary is involved in good efforts, and knows of other good efforts, and wishes those efforts would get more publicity, I really can’t fault that.
Democrats are in a similar situation in the Government. They try to do good, we cheer their minor victories, and we wish they would get more coverage too.
Big picture:
I wish there was more coverage of everything in Iraq.
Just covering the bombings isn’t news anymore. So lets see the whole picture. Lets see the efforts to bring in school suppplies, and the bombs outside the schools. Lets see the surviving schoolkids go home, whether to unemployed parents, or ones who work in the green zone, or those who try to carry on as they did before the war.
Lets see homes without electricity, without decent water or sewage. Lets see how normal life is inside the green zone, and how it isn’t elsewhere.
Lets see the kids with their new school supplies get free beenie babies from one patrol of soldiers, and be harrassed by another.
Lets talk with the schoolgirl getting an education, with a female politician about womens roles before Saddam, during Saddam, and during the occupation.
Lets talk with a little boy who’s dad was taken by American troops and never returned.
Iraq is more than $$$ and torture and bombings and lies.
Its a nation destroyed. And until Americans really see what is going on, and what all the little details of reconstruction really are, and just how big a task we face …
… well, it’ll just be bombs and $$$ and when can we bring the troops home.
Which is all very, very true. But it fails to convey the depth of the current situation, and the failings of the current approach to solving it.
Yes, exactly. This was my thought too… glad you wrote it out, and so well ;).
The real problem is that reporters can’t tell any of those stories, because it’s too dangerous.
But, just cause I wasn’t really clear in my description, he wasn’t talking about HIS efforts getting more good news. He was talking in general.
He gave an example about armor for the troops. He said, well that’s perception. I know a guy who supplies Marines with that stuff, I talk to him everyday. And when I read him the reports, he said it wasn’t true. He gets his troops the armor they need.
He did admit that it was one story, but he went on to use it as proof in his argument. But it’s not proof — it’s one story, and missing the big picture.
(Besides isn’t it really an Army problem re: armor, and not Marines?)
Back to your point, though. Yes, if we had more reporting, it would be terrific. But it’s just so crazy there, they can’t.
get the reporters out of the green zone, its just not safe enough. But my comment was getting so large I didn’t get to that point.
IF we covered all the good things, or tried to, the reporters would amazingly come to the conclusion it just isn’t safe enough.
And they might just report that.
I don’t doubt that some want to, but they’re probably told by the bosses that no one wants to hear it.
Instead, if all the folks who wanted to hear good news actually got what there was to give, it’d further bring down the facade of what’s going on over there.
Now I’m sure eventually they could find 3 or 4 kids whose parents aren’t there to hide them from our troops (being near armed soldiers isn’t the safest place in a “war zone”), and the cameraman would get some close ups of smiling kiddie faces, hands cradling beanie babies, and tight shots on the soldiers that don’t reveal any unit affiliations or give away their location or expose the condition of the neighborhood.
But unlike politicians, field reporters can’t just deny the bullshit around them. They can choose not to comment on it, they can be edited back home, but I have more confidence that given an opportunity and encouragement to speak out, when the time comes, they will.
Well, we can’t have deaths usurping important beanie baby news. Must be the damned liberal media at it again.
Seems like decent sort of folks around here. Think I’ll set a spell.
Well said. n/t
We need a member meter here booman so we can see the numbers rising. BTW what is the current number….
1413.
On what date was “ding, ding, ding! 1000”?
June 2nd.
And again.. wow. lol.
And way cool, this is like Christmas… all these new things (voices, people, diaries, etc) to see and hear all at once.
It is REALLY cool, but it’s making it hard to get my real work done! :^)
lol, don’t I know it. I keep telling myself I’m going to take a break and peek in “just for a minute”.
Yes, well… who says a minute can’t last an hour, anyway?
BooMan, great Bush quote. Why does W hate sublimation?
Man Eegee’s Thoughts on the Frog Pond diary, if you will. It gives a bit of nice information and history for new members, and it’s fading off the list now.
Thanks.
/end commercial break
Is anyone here a travel agent? My friends and I want to go to Tuscany next year and I think it would behoove us to use a travel agent to get information, maybe look at various tours, and/or make hotel/flight arrangements.
I know the internet is a wonderful tool, but this seems like a daunting task to plan. Gone are the days when I just had my “Let’s Go” book and grabbed a Eur-rail pass.
http://www.moveonpac.org/tellthetruth/index.html
Go to this link to sign conyers petition….
The Justice Department budget has been calendared.
Hinchey and Rohrabacher will introduce an amendment forbidding use of funds to raid or prosecute patients in States with Medical Marijuana laws.
Take Action link c/o Drug Policy Alliance
Newsie’s Entries: