Author: pyrrho

From MLW, Greetings Booman Tribune

…

Bonus: sxephil, greg kennedy

We are part of a mighty exodus of the exiled returning home… the land of our freedom, a land of potential, America, yearning always to be free, awaits us now.  These last years we have marched back to her, and the way is long and grueling. Along the way we have picked up refugees, those that trusted the Republicans, who didn’t recognize their state of exile as readily as we. Now they are we. They’ve realized.

Together we march Back to America. We reach the gates tomorrow, November 7. Yes, it’s true, they have built a gate where citizens used to pass freely, and we will reach there tomorrow, our long journey to the gate is nearly complete. If we reach the gate and are rebuffed… we will not relent nor lose, victory will still be ours and shortly. We will still go forward, a mass of exiles stands before the gate and history says the gate will yield.
But — hello! — there is reason to expect the gate will be open, and if it has any keepers, they will be our Democratic allies who will let us through and march with us the rest of the way to the heart of America, back into the America we love and require to survive as Americans must. They may not get us farther than that, they may not take us to the America of the Future which we know lays on our future paths, this a strong and free America which makes itself a modern and sustainable America… be vigilant but assured they will continue our march with us to the heart of America.

Our destination is near, the Heart of America where there is yearning to be free, the thirst for knowledge, the ability to know reality. We head back to an America that does not torture its enemies, an America that looks after its health, an America not at war with the world, an America about fair play, an America that is lead by sober leadership.

Fear nothing, this land is our land.

(from MLW)

(from mlw)

Kos writes on John Cole’s disillusionment… John still thinks of himself as a Republican in some nominal sense, and hates turning on “his party”… Kos sympathizes, having hit a similar transition around 1993, leaving his days as devout Republican youth behind, sort of.

Cole will obviously have to figure out for himself where he goes from here. He can decide to fight for his party and hopefully restore some sense of sanity in those quarters. He can join us. He speaks approvingly of Jim Webb. He can help us find more Jim Webbs (who has admitted, quite openly, that he would not exist as a candidate if it wasn’t for the netroots). They are out there. He can tune out. Or become a dispassionate, “independent” observer of the political process.

I’m sorry, I know of no other way to read that.  More Jim Webbs. More Jim Webbs? Are out there? Come on in, the Jim Webbs are in here? The way I read, this is an admission that kos is part of a conservative wave we are seeing not only come to the Democrats for refuge, but coming also to turn it into the party they need refuge from. They want us to be the party the Republicans should have been! They don’t understand the Republican illness is the failure of conservativism itself. Conservativism will lead to the same problem in any party endorsing it.  Stupid wars, a poisoned economy, environment.

Conservativism is not as it claims! It is a self contradictory lie… “low tax me-ism” leads to what you see in the Republian Party. Respect for authority leads to abuses like this!

Question Authority! That’s not a conservative ideal, my man, but it’s what we need.

That is a goal that will fail, again, know why?  Because the problem is people like Webb… the problem is conservative ideas themselves. They suck. They are not good for the nation. They claim to be about XYZ, but are really about death, self-destruction, and potholes. It wasn’t really just that Stalin didn’t get a chance to really try his ideas, Stalinism was bad!  It isn’t that the Republicans have fallen off the golden path illuminated by the glowing footsteps of Reagan, it’s that it FOLLOWED that path, and it leads to ruin, emotional and material.

The paragraph quoted above is followed by this:

I could be flip and say, “come on in, the water’s fine on our side!” But first of all, it’s not like our party doesn’t have its own problems. And more importantly, partisan fealty (especially for us political junkies), like religion, goes much deeper than the intellect. It cuts to the very core of who we are, of how we define ourselves. That’s why for many of the disillusioned, it’s simply easier to tune out or become “independent” than it is to jump in bed with the other party.

WRONG, right here, this is conservative thinking if you adopt my personal definition of conservative by which dogma is a conservative ideal. I speak of “partisan fealty”… that does not RUN deep, it may FEEL deep, it may have you emotionally by the small hairs, but it’s shallow as hell.  Partisan fealty in politics is like enjoying politics the way you enjoy NFL football. Team loyalty in sports may feel deep, but it’s not, it’s circus.  I love circus and crappy movies, but they are not “deep”.

Listen, the Raiders are my team… when they lose, I want them to win, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t chose another team to feel like a winner, because I want THEM to win, that’s that, the whole shallow point of the game.  In politics, honestly, I want fucking national healthcare, I don’t ACTUALLY care who wins.  Unlike in sports, where I care who wins and it’s not important, in politics, I don’t actually care who wins, and it IS important.  What I care about is getting Nationalized Healthcare (et cetera)… and winning is in the service of that depending only on the actual individuals that win. For the Raiders, they win whomever the team is. For me, I only win if the team does something “after they win” because the point is not “winning an election” and “scoring well in the election”… it’s what you do, not with the “victory” but with the POWER.

50 states worth of Jim Webbs (they are in every state, I assure you) is therefore not something that sounds great to me.  A democratic party with a lot of Jim Webbs is the opposite of victory.

Kos’ introspection notable here, I hope he sees what he’s said… though frankly I doubt it, this politics-as-sports thing cuts away the intellect, as kos said… but he should also realize that as a result it makes us stupid and shallow in our thinking about politics… if we let it.

A bunch of people that have not thought through the consequences of their conservativism want to try to draw those consequences on the Democratic Party as well. They cannot face the consequences of the failure as shown them in the Republican party failure, which reaches back decades at least, they can see with their own eyes if they would look, but instead they think they just need a new team… the same old conservative pipe dreams, sometimes called “libertarianism” inaccurately, and with them they plan to bring the old game plan, and insist on it.

This new team is supposed to play the Reagan/Webb play book, just do it much better.  That’s not the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

What a crock! And only those with eyes can see, what injustice.  The blind must see!

The sad thing is people that believe trying “competent conservativism” on for size suits those that hold real power in the Democratic Party… and they also do not see that it is an oxymoron, it cannot ever be realized.  Instead, what happens, Democrats do not use the progressive policies they need to succeed, and the voters go back to the actual conservatives to see if THEY have gotten “competent” yet.

Conservatives want to feel at home in both parties, and then wonder why progressives are unimpressed.

Ok, I’m prone to idle (um, long term) philosophical questions, but this isn’t one. This question is philosophical but also quite practical.  The question has material implication.

I’m curious, there is a “kos boycott” of Fox, a sort of hopeful idea that if no progressives go on fox then it goes away or is less damaging to Democrats somehow. This is kos’ policy, and I believe that of many, if not all (I don’t know) dKos front pagers. I don’t know Atrios’ policy, or that of other prominent bloggers.

Not everyone feels this way, I personally am sure they will merely hire actors to play “Democrats” if they have to.  They will promote their own Holmes’ All Star Democratic Celebrity League.

But who here is willing to appear on Fox?  Are you a well respected liberal blogger?

Update [2006-2-27 16:9:17 by pyrrho]: To be clear, and I’ve mentioned in a comment, I really am interested to know WHICH of you would consider it, and which are in on a boycott, from the point of view that saying you would consider it means you MIGHT BE ASKED.

I didn’t emphasize this to begin because no, I’m not a fox producer, I’m not asking you, I am not in charge of booking, HOWEVER, it’s that close and real, you may be asked. Fox is going to stay around, blogging is getting bigger and bigger, and other conservative outlets are going to want a piece of you too.

Booman, you will be asked if you have not already.

further: At dkos there is some objection to the idea of using the term “boycott”… which I am using loosely, or “policy” which again, I did not mean technically. Surely there is some term to decribe the status of this, eh, “feeling”?
Further, who do you think is prepared for that sort of challenge?

Of course implicit in my question is the whole debate on if it’s a good idea or not… feel free to slog through that again if you like but personally I think it’s a personal decision and the more valid question is just “well, which of you are which, which believe it’s ok to engage the right on their territory, and are willing to, and which are not?”

ALSO POSTED at dkos

It has long been my belief that you could not convince anyone online of anything. That’s extreme, the sort of rule that admits a lot of little trivial exceptions, but in general it holds. The rise of the popular use of online communication and of the political blogosphere pretends to threaten my theory, and frankly, I don’t know its real status — but from what I see things are unchanged and I suspect they will remain so for it is not a feature just of the net.

A great philosopher once made the point that he could not, in fact, really enlighten his readers, for the readers would not understand anything he said except that which they had already more or less formed in themselves. If he spoke an idea that made a reader think, “aha! yes!”, that was a matter of him having expressed something such that the reader recognized his own belief.

But this is not to say that people don’t change as a result of their reading and conversation, not at all, it’s to put the emphasis on how and why they change and who does the changing, people change themselves.

“People never change” is a popular cliche, and yet, people do nothing but change, the actual truism is “people never stay the same”, and what is really meant by “people never change” is, “I couldn’t change her” and similar.

If we are open to changing ourselves then the information we get from others, their facts and opinions, their arguments and refusals all inform that process of change. You may owe someone thanks, but not for changing you, rather for helping you change yourself. If it seems a subtle difference, think again, there is a world of difference between doing something for someone and helping them do it for themselves.

I believe if we all knew it was really the latter that we were doing online, it would change our approach because building a house and expecting someone to move into it is different from helping them build their own house.

(also posted at MLW)

I’m not into having a War on “Terror”.  I don’t object to war on a feeling per se, (well I do, but that’s not it), it’s just that I see it as a police matter, a global and serious police matter, but not like a “war”. I’m trying to get to a part of history where war plays less and less a role, not a world where it’s a metaphor for every project we tackle.

So I think we want this to be about “a global struggle against extremism” because it suits progressive goals in the matter. For one, it conveys the message right away, people know you are talking about this fight against terrorism, and yet the emphasis is on extremism.  It’s a secret way to also say… “and we are not forgetting our own extremists”.

It emphasizes that we are not fighting a religious sect, we are fighting “extremists”, which are to be found in any religious sect in some number. It emphasizes what we really struggle with (or “fight against” if you like)… namely intolerance, namely the sort of dogmatic fantasies that lead to extremism. The lack of realism and a refusal to be reality based is behind extremism, and that is what we would be fighting, rather than dispossessed people, oppressed peoples. We would with rhetoric be bound to also fight the extremism of others (e.g. of the Saudi government, or the former Shah of Iran, etc) which provokes further extremism.
Fighting against “global extremism” reminds us that extremism like theirs is on the list of things to address, whereas a term like “terrorism” can just be applied to those that scare you, that terrorize us.

Who doesn’t know our government has become extremist..? on a lesser scale of extremes, but undeniably, on that scale, our government has become extreme, and if it’s a more mild extremism than al queda’s, fine and good, then our struggle against it is also more mild, but still extant. We still struggle against it, though we don’t even have to mention that, every time someone says “we must fight extremism” it’s implicit that this includes our extremism.  A fight against terrorism allows the assumption that, of course, -our- violence isn’t terrorism, however extreme. (“Gee, Wolf, I expected more from ‘shock and awe'”… “Yeah, me too!”)

I think global extremism has run and ruined the world of man for centuries and millenia, so now so I am ready to see it finally end.

I despise elitism, and who doesn’t?  Who endorses elitism? No one, practically, elitism in the closet currently, isn’t it? It’s traditionally NOT an American value, and yet, in reality, and in America, it flourishes around us like… something flourishing really well. Elitism is ubiquitous. So there must be some concept which is propping up elitism.

Some might say that those in power, the “elite” are merely holding onto power, and the people no longer believe they are actually, legitimately “elite”… that elitism has been beaten but they have momentum.  But no, elitism is alive and well and belief in it is spread far and strong, even among progressives.  It’s ubiquitous, it needed only find some other terms, other framing, in order to survive the assault.

Elitism lives in the myth of meritocracy.
In ages past it was elitism pure and simple, the assumptions were that the elite would exert itself, maybe God would take care of it, and you could find those that praised elitism and class stratification based on elitist ideals that everything has it’s place and everything should stick to it’s place. But now, that argument is shelved — why not the phenomenon itself?

Meritocracy

Take an idealized merit based system… a singles sport like golf and singles tennis. You prove your merit directly by winning by the rules. The rules are fairly clear, and they are generally fair. When you win a game, you prove your merit to, for example, play on into the finals. If you have won by a fluke, over time the chances of that recede and one average you have a system which selects for tennis-merit.

But add “-cracy”, power over a culture or group, power to decide things for others, and you have a difficult premise even in this clear and artificial case of sport. Merit as a tennis player doesn’t mean you are the best person to head the USTA. It doesn’t even mean you would be the best teacher in your sport… skill is like this, mastering a skill doesn’t mean mastering teaching, it doesn’t mean mastery of everything related to your skill.

Ok. Now.

I’m a free market advocate, but the free market faithful, the type that confuse capitalism and free markets, they believe in an invisible hand that comes and turns the chaos of an unregulated market into what..? a meritocracy!  They don’t concern themselves overly with those left out, those at “the bottom”, those that do not climb the ladder allegedly created, because it is a meritocracy, and when worth has been proven, of course, OF COURSE, you will concern yourself with gifting those who have proven their ability to use their gifts well, and subjecting yourself to their will and power. Indeed, the framing we all accept is that these people are at “the bottom” of something, when in fact they are “left out”, not at the bottom.

Some think the blogosphere itself is a meritocracy, that once again, “the cream has risen to the top” (classic example of framing by the way, as shit also floats… and quicker). Indeed, they feel the net is an egalitarian publishing system where finally those thinkers kept out of the previous non-meritocratic methods (like, journalism school I guess) can be appreciated and get their due… it’s purpose, practically, is to put us in contact with those merit-ful writers that were unknown.  But as with the tennis example… the process of “rising” in blogging is still a game with rules, and merit related to those rules cannot be generalized. If you are a compelling writer that people want to read… that may be shown on the net, but that won’t make you a great thinker, it won’t make your prognostications true, your strategy sound, it cannot prove your worth to -decide for communities-, it can’t.  Nothing can, there is no legitimate right to rule other, and there never ever will be. STOP LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT MERITOCRACY.

What I seek is not a meritocracy but another elusive goal, which so far is unproven, which may not exist, which may turn out to be as phantasmal and intangible as meritocracy should already be known to be… I seek a way for people to rule themselves. I seek a way for people to collaborate ideas directly into the material world, rather than be forced to seek meritocracy and layer upon layer of representation by the meritocraticly chosen.

That’s what netroots meant to me, it was a step on an evolution I’ve watched for some time as the internet showed us there was a lot we could yet do in terms of collaboration, in peer-to-peer power, in collaboration over representation.  I believe the promis has been made, we can expect the removal of the myth of meritocracy, we have needed it only because we had no better choice, the technology of getting people together 10,000 at a time for collaboration will make old meritocracy obsolete.

Netroots for politics and net communication in general can help us put our heads together and make good ideas together.  We can do that instead of invent yet another system we use to raise some above the rest. Any system we invent will not prove “merit” for the purpose of deciding for others, it will only serve a purpose, like any system, like any machine, it may be a good purpose, but it will not, cannot prove merit for the task of ruling others.

I seek self-determination, autosoveriegnty, a replacement of authority with good sense, and to free ourselves from the philosophies of the oppressed.

A new kind of human being, clearly, is what I seek.

NOTE: this essay escaped from My Left Wing.

Specifically a man.

What makes a good man? I think I have good answer, but I don’t want to give it because then this is a diary about my idea.

You know a good man, don’t you, what’s he like?

Can a good man have faults? can he lie?

He has  responsibilities, what are they to his family? What are they to his life choices, should he contribute to society? or is it also sufficient to simply not be a drain on society, but wait, certainly, some good men have been a drain on society, and it may well have been worth the price, if he truly was good. Was he?

My interest here is due to the fact that some of my best friends are men, I am one, and I am curious what makes a good man.
Ok, I’ll tell some: I believe a good man does not need hope to persevere, knows right from wrong, does not harm anyone unless that person is an aggressor. A good man will stand up for the weak. A good man is willing to work hard. A good man does not believe in petty advantage, and a good man will admit an error. A good man will treat people honestly, and failing, will rectify the situation. A good man can cry without shame. A good man has principles and compassion, can be stern and also compromise. A good man appreciates that other people’s interests have value, and knows how to be polite, but isn’t always.

First off, I totally admit I am posting this here because I know there are those that object… that say that framing is dishonest, or that as practiced is dishonest, or at least, that the people that claim they are engaging in framing are really engaging in focus group least-common-denominator dumbing down and pandering to the worst in us.

I seek out difference of opinion… what can I say, I think it’s beneficial… we can solve problems, clarify reality.

I believed that the accusation above, give or take a modest amount of hyperbole, had something in it… and I’ve found it. I think I have a simple explanation about the concern, and it’s not that I don’t share it.

Update [2005-11-3 22:51:38 by pyrrho]: some minor corrections

Firstly… I only engage Booman on this out of respect.  From my point of view we are using the classical philosophical/scientific/intellectual dialogue method. When Einstein said, “God Doesn’t Play Dice” in criticism of Niels Bohr’s theory, it was out of respect… he didn’t debunk the nutty theories of just anyone. When Bohr said “don’t tell God what to do”… the debate was very clarifying. The issues are still not really resolved, but the dispute is a part of the argument, helping to illuminate the dispute still.

Well… we’re not Einstein and Bohr, but my point is… I take contrast with Booman because I think it’s worth it. Booman’s position is relevant, it’s clear, it’s intentional… it’s well thought out (but mistaken), all good things in a position used to contrast its anti-pode.

Framing is about ideas, the ideas are everywhere, they are the engines behind what we say… to say “don’t frame, just do” is to say “don’t have an engine in your car… just go”… frames are the programs of the mind. To say, “don’t frame” is to say, “don’t run a word processing program… just word process”.

You cannot speak without framing.

The simplest perspective to have on framing is to understand that frames are made of the metaphor we think with, from which we draw conclusions.

Asking progressive to frame is asking us to think about which metaphors we use, to know why we use them, to create new metaphors and refine those we use, and to never use metaphors rigged against us. That last one is important, the advice is to recognize rigged, dishonest metaphors, when we see them.

Booman is actually quite good at this! So I have sought out the frames in his good work at dkos debunking the “defense” of the WH by the WSJ.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has presented Karl Rove and Scooter Libby’s defense. If this all they’ve got, they are going to be doing hard time. The WSJ should carefully consider testing their kool-aid, because I don’t think the best defense for lying to a grand jury is to lie to a trial jury. Let’s take a look at how many lies the WSJ is putting forth:

Already two frames are invoked in the traditional home for the frame… above the fold.

Firstly, the WSJ is framed in the “true believer” frame invoked by “kool-aid”… they are not rational, but “true believes”, aka “kool-aid” drinkers.

Also they are framed as “liars”… accurately let’s note, but still as a frame, they are cast as such liars they fix their lies with more lies. We KNOW that lying in a trial is bad… proving that is not the purpose of that text, of course, the point is that these “true believers put lies on top of lies”.  

Don’t get confused here, I like Booman’s essay, a lot, but I like framing as well, because it’s a conscious traversal of metaphor.

That claim is a frame, the trial in question has yet to run… this is invocation of a frame. The Administration and WSJ are being cast as something… not something in itself, but something from metaphor, as “kool-aid drinking lie addicted true believers”. That’s before the facts are presented, and why? because you need a frame to interpret facts. Put your facts first and they fall to the ground, with nothing to hold them, just so many dead symbols.

You have to put your facts into a framework, a metaphorical (or metaphor-like) framework ready to find place for said facts.

The assumption here, is that the decision to bypass the traditional vetting of intelligence by stovepiping raw intel into the VP’s office, and then using that raw unvetted intel to push forged documents on Congress, the United Nations, the IAEA, and the public…all to trump up false rationales for a war of aggression…all of that is beyond the scope of the law. All of that is merely a policy fight and/or political differences. Okay. Let’s be generous and grant them their assumption.

I am tempted to go into the fact that the “stovepiping” language is also part of a frame, and will… but note again… it’s an accurate one… we use that metaphor, both left and right, because it makes clear what’s really going on in a situation involving sensitive information… information is not going through “channels”… it’s being fed directly to source.  Sometimes this is good, “getting information where it needs to be”, sometimes bad, for it may be “missing reality checks” along the way.

We can’t think without metaphor, metaphors help us understand the real world… ideally honest metaphors allow us to draw various conclusion, and are not overly rigged.  I think “stovepiping” is certainly such a metaphor.

That is an agreed on metaphor, but Booman also decides to accept the frame presented by the WSJ that this is all “merely” a policy fight… Booman doesn’t think this, nor do we, but it’s for the sake of argument, a fair enough concession to make. We do accept some frames, even questionable ones presented by opponents (e.g. “it’s just politics) as worthy, if imperfect, fields of battle… we have to, because only if you are accepting the same frame can you actually engage… otherwise you are in different worlds entirely.

Judith Miller was stonewalling

Judith was stonewalling, but is not actually made of stone.  It’s like a metaphor we use to understand that Miller was being obstinate. I think it’s fair to frame that as stonewalling… others like to frame it as “journalistic integrity”… which metaphor is more honest?  Should we stick to the “fact” that she was “protecting a source”..? or was she “stonewalling” an investigation? There are “facts” to fit in either frame… I prefer that latter of the two as more accurate, more apt… as a frame that leads to conclusions more in line with all the facts, with the complete situation.

Amid an election campaign and a war, Bush administration officials understandably fought back. One way they did so was to tell reporters that Mr. Wilson’s wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame, had been instrumental in getting him the CIA consulting job. This was true — though Mr. Wilson denied it at the time — as a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documented in 2004.

This all depends on what the meaning of ‘instrumental’ means. Joe Wilson took a trip to Niger for the CIA in 1999. At that time, his wife may have suggested him for the job. But in 2002, she was asked whether he was willing to go, asked to write up his bona fides, asked to raise the matter with him, and then introduced him to the meeting at headquarters, before recusing herself. She did not authorize him to take the trip. She didn’t have that authority. She had newborn twins at home, and the Niger job payed nothing. How could it have been a ‘boondoggle’, as Rove or Libby told Walter Pincus it was? How is any of this relevant in any way?

VERY CLEVER framing here… you see, this draws similarity (that metaphorical basis) to another famous phrase… does it not?  “depends on what the meaning of ‘instrumental’ means”, I think it’s fair to note this is really invoking the “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” frame.  Booman is framing the WSJ as partaking in ridiculous levels of parsing, not merely by saying “you are partaking a ridiculous level of parsing”… but by invoking a well known frame, complete with years of back and forth thus invoked, and knowing the conservative position in that past battle, doing so pointedly to have impact, to say, “you are hypocritical”.  I don’t think this is a dishonest way to say “you are hypocritical”… it’s a fair way.  But it’s framing, fully.  It is using a frame to make that accusation. Then, the facts presented have somewhere to sleep.

This is the new line the GOoPers have been pushing this week.

Frame: The GOP are talking point distribution automatons… this week, here is their mindless mantra.  Then Booman provides the facts to fit into this frame which detail how the assertion is false, and the frame then does the heavy lifting of explaining why they are saying something clearly false, simply false, easily shown false: because they have weekly talking points and they go to battle with the talking points (“new lines”) they’ve got.

Mr. Wilson’s original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited. What a bizarre irony it would be if what began as a politically motivated lie by Mr. Wilson nonetheless leads to indictments of Bush Administration officials for telling reporters the truth.

This is such horseshit.

Ok, that’s not framing… that really is horseshit, literally.  It came from a horse, and it’s shit.

Mr. Fitzgerald may have recognized this problem early, because in February 2004 he asked for permission for much broader investigative authority. It was granted by the man who appointed him, his friend and then Deputy Attorney General James Comey. (Attorney General John Ashcroft had recused himself, in what looked to us then, and still does today, as an act of political abdication.) Mr. Fitzgerald’s office only recently created a Web site and has posted Mr. Comey’s letters — an act of odd timing, at the least.

Let me get this straight.

Ok, stop. Even this is framing.  It’s also a common rhetorical device. Why? Because framing is how we think, and common rhetorical devices have evolved due to how we think.  Before I go to the next sentence, I know that Booman is going to say that the argument quoted is overly confusing… that it’s self contradictory, that he will lay out the same details and draw another conclusion. The sentance doesn’t spend even a MOMENT implying it’s literal meaning… which would be that Booman is going to follow their argument as they have made it, straight to the conclusion they’ve drawn.

To the contrary, when Booman says, “let me get this straight”… we are certain to not find him subsequently “getting it straight”… but rather, instead, he’ll most likely be “drawing the opposite conclusion”… iow, “they don’t have this straight, let me straighten it”… a more literal statement would have been, “wait, let me PUT this straight”… and invoking this frame, really, is to point a finger and say, “they have reasons to make this convoluted, they wish to draw the erroneous conclusion for their own interests, not because their argument really leads in the direction they would like to claim.”

——

Summary: if you think I’m criticizing Booman you don’t understand… so here is the syllogistic form (framing my argument as logical), and note it’s not about Plame or Booman’s excellent points on the Plame affair… it’s about framing.

( ) Booman told the truth and was honest.
( ) Booman used framing.

(therefore) Framing can be truthful and honest

see?

Also Posted at MLW